There are at least a few ways that social media affects a website's SEO both directly and indirectly. We'll count down a few of the ways.

1. Links and their potential to be used as backlinks:

No matter how many articles float by on Twitter, invariably some of them are cited by other websites and even in journalism. This kind of inbound linking is an indirect way that social media affects page ranking.

2. Traffic:

People who visit a website via link on social media, contribute directly to its search ranking. Depending on the frequency of their visits they may actually represent the majority of the traffic reaching a website. This would be a direct way that social media affects site ranking.

Tips for increasing seo ranking.

Google+, Among the many social sharing sites this one sits nearest to the indexers themselves and spending a little time sharing your content here can boost your rankings as well as your engagement.

Pinterest, If you have blogs with images pin them after renaming them logical names rather than numbers, because many shares come from this platform in ways that drive up rankings.

Of course the essential thing to remember is that engaging others on social media is critical to the success of any Social SEO strategy, so use the tools that each platform offers. Hashtags on twitter help index your content on twitter but also may help writers find articles to cite.

Reshared content gets indexed much more quickly than it would simply sitting on a website so make sure your visitors know where the sharing buttons are.

(Mine are over on the left, that strip of colored buttons, click the + if you don't see your social sites of choice and you want to send something.)

Equally important is allowing people to connect across platforms so have visible follow buttons. (On the right, near the top of the blog. #Cheers)

Content related keywords should always be relevant. I could highlight any of the words in this article and turn them to links, but if they do not relate to the blog topic, it doesn't do the reader of the indexer any favors.

Likewise on social media this will affect how many people reshare your content.

I'll add this to my blogs about social media, and continue the series with:

• Product information
• And monetization

Thanks for reading this!