What is the impact of social media on SEO?

A very interesting topic to take into account when we dedicate ourselves to the SEO of a website is to see what is the impact that social networks have for web positioning.

In this article I am NOT going to talk about real-time searches, which became a cliché in a short time and now we have to wait to see what its real impact is throughout 2010.

How do social networks impact web positioning?

We always repeat the famous phrase: "Content is king and links are its queen", however, the relationships we make with other bloggers or webmasters through social networks would be a kind of matchmakers that link content with links.

SEO is much more than controlling duplicate content, meta tags or "tricks" to "fool" search engines, true SEO is also about building long-term relationships with other bloggers / webmasters to help us spread the word about what we have to say / offer.

By citing good sources or giving recommendations from other sites to our visitors we are giving them added value and at the same time generating authority by being recommended… it is a win-win situation.

Why are these links worth so much?

A link generated within the content as a reference or recommendation has a lot of weight since regardless of the anchor text we are giving context and relevance to the link within a specific topic.

If the blog or website has a trained audience even better, because we are presenting ourselves in front of a new audience that is really interested in the content we have to offer.

It all sounds great ... but what do I do to achieve that?

As Seth Godin says: "Many times the best shortcut is not to take any shortcut", the truth is that if we do not have good content or we do not try to satisfy a need of our readers we cannot aspire to more than link exchanges with poor quality websites .

This is not about an ordinary link exchange to try to gain some positioning, but it is about fulfilling the true objective of the Internet and search engines ... to be relevant and to show our audience other interesting people.

Social media is perfect in this regard, it allows us to raise our hands and say to other more established people: “HEY! I exist too ... and THIS is what I have to say »

If we have interesting things to say, our own point of view and we approach as friends who seek to generate a long-term collaborative relationship with people who share our same interests, we will surely be heard ... This is not a competition, it is a collaborative network.