Many people describe the relationship between social media and search engine optimization (SEO) as mysterious. The two are seemingly connected, but it’s hard to find someone who can accurately describe exactly how the relationship works. You have to do more than post frequently on social media to experience success.

We know that engagement is the key to victory with social media, but how does social engagement affect SEO? And can business owners use social media to increase their rankings in search engines? The answers to these questions aren’t straightforward, so let’s take a closer look at what we know about the existing relationship between SEO and social media.

Maintaining your social media profiles won’t increase your rankings

The best SEO companies claim that Google doesn’t directly use social signals — such as Facebook or Twitter followers or frequent posts — to determine your site’s rankings. The reason for this is that Google has become increasingly sophisticated. It won’t consider any type of signal for ranking influence unless it understands — with certainty — the meaning of that signal.

Google doesn’t completely crawl social media sites, so it misses a lot of data that it would otherwise need to make an accurate assessment. Because of this, it doesn’t have the confidence to use social signals as a definitive ranking factor.

However, it’s also important to mention that Google doesn’t completely ignore social signals, either. It doesn’t index every tweet, but it does crawl a portion of social media sites.

Social media drives traffic

Social media is a great platform for sending visitors to your new blog posts, articles, and other site content. When you and your followers share links, you have the opportunity to attract lots of new visitors. This makes social media platforms an optimal location for driving traffic.

Here’s a good example: You should post high-quality content on your blog. Your posts should bring something new to online conversations and offer readers something valuable. After you post the blog, you should share it on your social media platforms with a short, enticing introduction.

Hopefully, many of your followers will click on the link to read your blog. Then, they will like what they read and share your post on their social sites — which will lead to more people clicking the link back to your website.

There’s a direct connection between Google and Twitter

Google loves timely information, and Twitter is the best social platform for timeliness. Your tweets can be found in search engine results if they’re the most recent thing posted about a particular topic. Tweets can easily be found at the top of the search engine results, but it’s important to remember that it’ll likely be short lived. Your tweet can easily become buried if more relevant and authoritative content becomes available about the topic.

The takeaway is that SEO is crucial to your online success, and social media is also a vital component to your success. The two, however, shouldn’t be treated as a single project. One will not automatically bring success to the other. Your SEO won’t improve if your only efforts are on social media, and your social accounts won’t miraculously bring you followers or increased site traffic without putting in your due effort.

Use social media as a way to engage with people and give them an up-close perspective on your brand. Don’t think of social media as a quick way to reach the top of the search engines, but a way to attract new users and introduce them to your company.

Essentially, social media provides you an opportunity to showcase your unique voice and converse with the people interested in what you have to say.