According to a study produced by SEOmoz, today 71% of search marketers are using social to optimize their SEO efforts. If you’re part of the other 29%, it’s time to get on board. Social is an accessible and effective way to boost your SEO and should be part of your overall marketing plan.

Why use Social to improve your SEO:

1. More visible content.

As you’ve hopefully noticed, Google is now including Twitter in search results, that means if you search for the keyword, “royal wedding” you’ll see the latest real-time conversations from Twitter about Prince William and Kate Middleton’s impending nuptials (or some other royals, depending on the day.) Content is now delivered in real-time.

Plus, according to Samswebguide, Social Media sites are being indexed at a much higher frequency than the average site. For example, when you update your active public Facebook profile or fan page, Google will see it in at least an hour.

What does all that mean? The goal of Search Engines is to deliver the best result based on any given search. SEO strategy plays off of this by structuring & optimizing your content and links so that the SE’s can read it. However, content is changing from static content to real-time social content. So SEO will have to change around social because the Search Engines are having to change around social media, according to Social3i.

2. Search is now social. Building a quality landing page now includes adding testimonials and word of mouth mentions. Showing that you’re engaging in social conversations can statistically increase your conversion rates.

In addition, almost three in 10 search marketers have used badges, widgets or embeddable content to build links.

Include relevant keywords when linking back to your site, this will make links more relevant in search results pages.

There are literally dozens of other good reasons to include social in your overall marketing campaign, but if you need convincing, better SEO is a pretty darn good reason.