Matt Cutts, Google’s head of the Webspam team, announced earlier this year that Google does not give special consideration to social media signals as part of its search algorithm. This basically means that when Google is figuring out which website to put at the top of the organic search result, for a specific search term, that it does not give 
However, that doesn’t mean search engines like Google don’t consider it at all. Remember, Google wants to stay as relevant as possible, and with Facebook being the sole source of interaction for participants in recent revolutions and grassroots political movements internationally, Google doesn’t want to ignore social media either.
But there’s even more reason that businesses should use social media as a marketing tool: the groups in Facebook and Google Plus. In a recent marketing campaign for one of our clients, a private nursing education entity called NAWCCB, I used these social media groups as platforms to promote our client’s services.
Why? Not only are there groups with over 50k+ members that I could post content to (such as, “Get your Wound Certification at NAWCCB.ORG” with a link that takes users back to my client’s website), but there were dozens and dozens of such groups, each with over tens of thousands of members, where I could post similar statements to.
Did I see a spike in traffic? Yes! According to Google Analytics, in less than one hour after posting my client’s link to these social media groups NAWCCB received the biggest spike in traffic that that website had seen in almost one week! This, as a result of taking one hour to find Facebook groups like ‘Certified Nursing Assistant’ which has over 60k members, and Google plus groups like ‘Nursing’ which has over 24k members. One hour on social media gave my client more visits to their website that they have seen in over four days.
Social media is a very powerful tool, it’s free, its reach is great, and it is underestimated. These groups can be used for your link building, your brand building, and for growing your business. There is no reason a business should not be using social media if only for the groups on there. Social media is one aspect of the Search Engine Optimization campaign that we offer our clients at Infront Webworks. Call us to find out how we can put your website in front of your competitors.
