Social Media and SEO: What Actually Helps Your Rankings
Likes and shares do not lift a site on Google, which has said so since 2014. What social media still does for SEO, and how a small business can use it.
By Hugo Marceau, Editor-in-chief
Updated on · 5 min read
In short: likes, shares and follower counts are not Google ranking factors, something Google spokespeople have repeated since 2014. Social media still helps SEO indirectly: it puts your content in front of people who will cite it with a link, it drives searches for your brand name, and your profiles fill the first page of Google when someone looks you up.
The confusion comes from a correlation. Pages that rank well are often widely shared. Sharing is not what lifts them: their quality earns them both shares and links. Once that is clear, you can use social media for what it does well.
Is social media a Google ranking factor?
No, and Google’s position has been consistent for over a decade. Search Engine Journal compiled the statements of its spokespeople. In 2014, Matt Cutts explained that the algorithm did not take follower or like counts into account. In 2016, John Mueller advised using links to social profiles to bring value to users, not in the hope of better rankings. In 2017, Gary Illyes added that most links from social networks carry, in PageRank terms, about as much weight as a drop in the ocean.
There is a technical reason. The big platforms mark the links their users post. Google’s documentation provides the ugc attribute (user-generated content) or nofollow for that case, and says links carrying them are generally not used for ranking. A link posted on a social network therefore does not pass ranking credit to your page.
Google’s own SEO Starter Guide does list promoting your site on social media among the ways to get it known, alongside community involvement and word of mouth. The message is consistent: social media serves discovery, not the algorithm.
How does social media help SEO anyway?
It leads to real links
An article read by a thousand people on LinkedIn earns no ranking credit from those views. But among those readers are journalists, bloggers, teachers and newsletter editors. If one of them cites your study in an article, that is a real editorial link, the kind Google rewards. The methods to trigger those citations are covered in our guide to free backlinks.
It drives searches for your brand
Someone who has seen your posts for weeks eventually types your name into Google. Those branded searches land on pages where you are, by definition, the most relevant result. They convert well, and they show up in Google Search Console: it is one of the few ways to measure the real effect of your social presence.
It fills the first page for your name
On a branded search, Google often shows a company’s social profiles next to its website. Complete, active profiles with the same name, the same logo and a link to the site give a consistent picture at the moment a prospect checks you out. A profile abandoned three years ago has the opposite effect. Also make sure each profile points to the right website address, and that your site links only to the profiles you actually maintain. On the technical side, Google’s Organization structured data accepts a sameAs property listing your official profiles: it helps search engines connect your website and your social accounts as one entity, which matters for the brand panel that sometimes appears next to results.
It feeds Google and AI search engines
In February 2024, Google announced an expanded partnership with Reddit, with real-time access to its data and the goal of showing more Reddit content across Google products. Forum and community discussions take up a growing share of results. Being cited usefully in those conversations, without spam, has become a form of visibility in itself, and those same threads are often what AI assistants quote when they answer a question about your industry.
Which social networks matter most for SEO?
They are not equal for this purpose:
| Network | Role for SEO | Prioritize it if |
|---|---|---|
| YouTube | Videos appear in Google results and the Videos tab | Your topic can be shown (tutorial, product, demo) |
| Gets in-depth content read by professionals likely to cite it | You sell B2B | |
| Reddit and forums | Presence in the discussions Google displays | Your audience asks its questions online |
| Instagram, TikTok | Awareness and branded searches | Your offer is visual or consumer-facing |
| Local and community reach | Your customers are local |
YouTube deserves a special mention, because it is the only one on the list whose content ranks directly in Google. A clear title, a written description and chapters are part of the video’s own SEO. TikTok and Instagram also work as search engines for younger audiences, so a caption that names what the video shows, in the words people would type, helps it surface inside those apps. Our guide to hashtags for business covers the in-app side.
How do you prepare your pages for sharing?
A page that gets shared well is first a page that displays well when someone pastes its link. That preview depends on Open Graph tags, which Facebook, LinkedIn and most messaging apps read. The protocol requires four:
og:title: the title shown in the preview.og:type: the type of content (article, website, video).og:image: the preview image.og:url: the canonical URL of the page.
Check your important pages with LinkedIn’s Post Inspector or Facebook’s Sharing Debugger. A missing or badly cropped image is enough to cut clicks.
For share buttons, prefer plain links to external scripts. Some widgets add weight to the page, which drags down its Core Web Vitals, for a modest gain.
What is a simple social and SEO routine for a small business?
Here is how to connect social media and search without spending your days on it:
- Publish on your site first. In-depth content lives on your domain, where it can rank and earn links.
- Cut it up for each network. An article becomes a LinkedIn carousel, a short video, a thread. Our method to repurpose content covers that work.
- Always point back to the source page, without making it the only reason for the post: a post that is useful on its own travels further.
- Spot who shares. People who pass your content along, especially those who run a blog or a newsletter, are your best candidates for a citation with a link.
- Measure in Search Console the trend in branded searches and clicks to the pages you promoted.
Which social media mistakes waste SEO effort?
Buying followers or engagement. It has no effect on Google and damages the account’s credibility, as we explain in our article on the risks of buying followers.
Stuffing posts with keywords and hashtags. A social post is not optimized like a web page. Write for the people on that network.
Posting nothing but links. Platforms often favor content that keeps users on their site. A post that delivers complete information, with the link as a bonus, usually reaches more people than a bare link.
Mixing up the goals. Social media builds the audience; the website captures demand. Each reinforces the other, as long as you do not expect one to do what only the other can. A written social media strategy keeps those roles clear.
Frequently asked questions
Do likes and shares improve Google rankings?
No. Google spokespeople have repeated since 2014 that follower counts and likes are not part of the ranking calculation, and John Mueller restated in 2021 that Google does not use likes as a factor. Social media helps SEO indirectly, through the visibility it gives your content to people who may later link to it or search for your brand.
Are links on Facebook or LinkedIn backlinks?
Technically yes, but the major platforms mark them so that Google does not pass ranking credit through them, typically with nofollow or ugc attributes. Their value lies elsewhere: they bring readers, and some of those readers run blogs, newsletters or media sites that will cite your page with a real editorial link.
Which social network is best for SEO?
YouTube, because its videos appear in Google's own results and the platform works as a search engine in its own right. For a B2B company, LinkedIn is the best channel to get an in-depth article read by people likely to cite it. For consumer brands, Reddit threads increasingly show up in Google results.
Should I add social share buttons to my website?
They do no harm if they are lightweight, but their effect is modest. Some platforms' official share scripts add weight to the page and slow down rendering, which can hurt Core Web Vitals. Plain share links with no external script do the same job without the speed penalty.