As more peo­ple see more of your brand on social, and as they share your con­tent and inter­act with you, it’s only nat­ur­al that you’ll see some very entic­ing sec­ondary ben­e­fits like search vis­i­bil­i­ty, web­site traf­fic, and engage­ment.

The link between social media and organ­ic search vis­i­bil­i­ty has been a much-debat­ed top­ic over the years. Google has said in the past that it’s too tricky for social to be a direct sig­nal in its rank­ing algo­rithm for a vari­ety of rea­sons. Despite this, com­pa­nies put out year­ly cor­re­la­tion reports and sur­veys reveal­ing this year’s “top search rank­ing fac­tors”. Social media met­rics (e.g., the num­ber of Face­book shares and tweets) tend to fig­ure promi­nent­ly into these search rank­ing fac­tor reports. Cor­re­la­tion stud­ies are fine to read, but should­n’t be tak­en seri­ous­ly. At all. Why? Well, would you believe that the num­ber of swim­ming pool drown­ings cor­re­late with Nico­las Cage films? See for your­self. Do social met­rics influ­ence rank­ings? Unless you work for Google, you’ll nev­er know for sure, there are too many unknowns. Any­thing is just a guess. Can social met­rics influ­ence search vis­i­bil­i­ty in any way? Absolute­ly. Social media offers incred­i­bly valu­able ben­e­fits – when done right. Being present on social gives brands anoth­er way to be where their audi­ence is and dri­ve those impor­tant KPIs. As SAP CMO Jonathan Belch­er said it so per­fect­ly: social is an enabler, not a goal in itself. Let’s look at four real ways social pop­u­lar­i­ty can impact vis­i­bil­i­ty, traf­fic, and rev­enue.

1. SERP Visibility

Google can index your brand’s social pro­files from a vari­ety of net­works, and that in turn means more real estate on the search engine results page. The more social pro­files you man­age, the more real estate you can own on Page 1 for your brand. In addi­tion, Google announced in 2015 it would dis­play rel­e­vant tweets in its search results – allow­ing for real-time updates:

2. Social Traffic

Some reports show that social traf­fic drove as much as 31 per­cent of over­all traf­fic to sites in 2014. When it comes to retail sites specif­i­cal­ly, social media increased its share of ecom­merce refer­rals by 200 per­cent from Q1 2014 to Q1 2015. Expo­sure to Face­book ads report­ed­ly influ­ences people’s search behav­ior and lifts search refer­ral traf­fic for web­sites, at least accord­ing to Face­book. It’s not always easy to suc­ceed in social, how­ev­er, if you don’t know what res­onates. Turn to research like this data to find out which type of con­tent tends to be shared and linked to more than oth­ers.

3. Website Engagement

Once you dri­ve that social media traf­fic to your site, how are you engag­ing them? This is a crit­i­cal next step in mak­ing your social traf­fic work for your web­site. Brands like Red Bull, Coke, and Taco Bell are tak­ing an edi­to­r­i­al-dri­ven approach, putting social media at the core to engage con­sumers. Not only does it make good sense to keep users on your site longer engag­ing with more of your con­tent and per­haps even sign­ing up for your mail­ing list, but it might also impact a search engine’s per­cep­tion of the rel­e­vance of your site. That’s not to say fac­tors like hav­ing a low bounce rate, high­er time on site, and more page views direct­ly impact rank­ing and vis­i­bil­i­ty. But they could be indi­ca­tions to the search engines that your site is a use­ful, rel­e­vant, and engag­ing resource.

4. Being Where Your Customer Is

Audi­ence opti­miza­tion is the art of being where your cus­tomer is when they need you most. Social media presents a stel­lar way for you to be more vis­i­ble across the Web, to inter­act direct­ly with your audi­ence, and to par­tic­i­pate in social com­merce (which con­tin­ue to quick­ly rise). The consumer’s deci­sion-mak­ing process is com­plex today, and many turn to social media to make impor­tant deci­sions.