We at SeoExpertDanny.com have experimented comprehensively with different social media platforms in order to measure their SEO benefit. Be aware that this article is all about search engine benefit, it is not about traffic.
For example, one of the social media platforms that offers very little search engine benefit is Instagram. Yet, it is possible to drum up a lot of business with a highly-followed Instagram account, and you may be able to make some decent conversions and sales starting out on Instagram. However, in terms of SEO, it is a lame duck.
Therefore, do not ignore the social media platforms mentioned on this article because even though they offer very small SEO benefits, they may still be suitable ways to draw traffic to you.
YouTube
Yes, it seems wrong, but YouTube offers a very small SEO benefit for most websites. Unless you are using videos to demonstrate or review your products, then there is very little SEO benefit. On the other hand, if you are using YouTube to show off, advertise, review, or demonstrate your products, then you can draw a fair amount of search engine benefit.
The Instagram platform is set up in a way that makes it difficult for people to drag traffic away from it. Instagram is more of a branding platform, which has a small amount of SEO benefit, but the fact is it is a very poor performer for people wanting to rank up the search engines. If you wish to gain brand exposure, or do a little brand educating, then choose Instagram, but do not choose it for its SEO benefit because it doesn’t really have any.
SnapChat
It is possible to draw people from SnapChat by offering sneak peaks at your content, but it is viciously difficult and very inconsistent. Some people claim they have gained a fair amount of SEO benefit from SnapChat, but it is usually because they are able to draw large amounts of people from the social media network.
In reality, most people will struggle to pull people away from SnapChat and so will have a hard time gaining any sort of search engine benefit. Plus, it is very difficult to get targeted traffic to your website. If you get targeted traffic to your website, then it helps your SEO. If you get any old random traffic to your website, then it only helps your SEO a tiny tiny bit.
This is probably the most controversial on this article, but again let us point out that this is all about search engine benefit. There are very few ways to directly benefit your website using Pinterest. You can pull people from Pinterest and deposit them on your website, it is not super difficult, but that is the only search engine benefit.
The reason why a strong Pinterest account will not help you rank up the search engines is because Google is very happy to show off your Pinterest posts before your web content. If you have the same image on your website and on your Pinterest account, then Google will be more than happy to show off your Pinterest image before your website image. People with a strong Pinterest account do not often find their websites ranking up the search engine results.
Contact us to learn how we can help with your social media marketing.