Marketers must aggressively pursue the task of gathering social proof that bolsters not only the marketing efforts but also boots SEO. Therefore, how best you can include social media marketing in your marketing strategy goes a long way in SEO success. The virtual world is often a suspicious place because of various clandestine activities that people with ill- motive carry out at will. Building credibility and trust to establish your online entity on a firm footing is a primary requirement that you must fulfill to carry out an effective San Diego SEO campaign. And to build credibility and trust, you must gather extensive social proof that amply demonstrates what others think about you. Search engines use the social signals to evaluate the trust level of websites as you leave it to others to talk about your business that aids its promotion.

Looking at your business through the eyes of others – customers, experts, and celebrities are a great way to expand your customer base as a new audience will be able to discover your business and become your customer. The aspect of socializing is in-built into the human psyche as people enjoy belonging to a group of like-minded people which ultimately influences their online behavior and purchasing decisions. How others perceive your products or services is critical for business success because recommendations from peers have a high trust level of 92% and even online reviews enjoy the trust of 70% consumers.

Here are some different kinds of social proof that can benefit marketers.

• Customer reviews – Most buyers consult customer reviews before making a purchasing decision as it helps to evaluate the product or service. However, too many biased customer reviews that only talk about the good things might often lose its trustworthiness unless balanced with some opposite views because nothing can be good or bad but a mixture of both.

• Expert opinion – Inviting experts to review your product and posting it online helps to prove the worth of the product in a reliable manner. Potential customers feel reassured as the product meets with the approval of an expert.

• Influencer endorsement – Social stars endorsing products is an example of influencer marketing that is gaining wide popularity. Influencers are influencers because of their ability to impact purchase decisions, and it does not matter whether it is a customer review of paid collaboration, it gains wide coverage by featuring in more and more pages. Using the social influence of people to promote products adds more strength to brand promotion.

• Number of subscribers – Even revealing the number of followers or subscribers can act as social proof. By declaring the number of subscribers who enroll for the newsletter of any website, it demonstrates the extent of trust that people repose on the brand and encourages others to join it.

• Media mentions – Media mentions from reputable publishers boost the credibility of business and brands largely. You will find many sites that mention the sources especially if it is quite reputable and its logo known to all.

Now, we will discuss how to use social proof for SEO betterment.

Supply of Fresh content

In your urge to use social proof, you will be publishing customer reviews and testimonials and keep it updated. Regular updates of the content make it easy to maintain the freshness of content which search engines appreciate and more so because it is coming from third parties. Encouraging users to post reviews and comments can be a part of the SEO strategy as it ultimately does a lot of good for SEO.

Build Authority

Building online authority becomes easy if you can fall back upon social proof to back your claims. Whether it is social mention or reviews, your efforts can boost your authority considerably, much more than you can imagine. Although the impact of social signal on SEO is a hot topic for debate, there is no scope to undermine the power of social proof in building authority. When there is a widespread mention about your website on social media and other places on the internet, it generates more links and creates an extended reach that paves the way for business growth.

Better rankings

With increased authority backed by a steady supply of fresh content, your website draws the attention of search engines that consider it as a reliable source of information and data. The aspects of quality backlinks, freshness and relevance impress search engines that do not hesitate to choose your website for better rankings. The importance of social proof increases much more because it uses user-generated content that is free from bias and captures the true picture by providing a better overview that can increase sales. User-generated content like reviews and testimonials can improve the prospects of long tail keywords too.

The better you are in using social proof, the better it is for SEO.