Search engine optimisation and social media are two interwoven strategies.
Both of these approaches are inbound and organic strategies that look to create an appealing identity that will naturally attract visitors. Regarding social media, high-quality content must be relied on heavily along with a strong and visible brand presence.
Your SEO campaign can improve social media reach, and as many experts have stated, social media can have a significant impact on your search rankings.
The following are six social media techniques that have been shown to provide a boost to SEO:
1. Increases your followers
The number of connections and followers that you have on social media platforms will impact your rankings in the search engines.
A company that only has a few likes or followers on social media will not get the same ranking boost that a large company that has millions of Twitter followers and millions of likes on Facebook.
That doesn’t mean it is sufficient to just have all of those followers; the quality of your followers is detected by Google, which means that it won’t help your rankings to go out and buy 100,000 likes. That is why it is recommended to build your following organically.
To grow your followers is a slow process, but if it is consistent, then it will be effective. Your brand should be presented in a logical and unique way, and the same voice should be used to keep your followers updated on a daily basis. Make sure you most useful posts are published that will engage your follows and make them react to them.
Follow up by directly engaging your followers in conversation. It is important to direct customer engagement and communications to build and maintain an interactive and sizable following.
That is because it will help to encourage your followers to keep coming back and help to build authority for potential new followers. Knowing the best times to post on various social media platforms can tremendously boost your chances of gaining new followers and post engagement.
2. Encourage External Inbound Links
Another reason why social media is so important is that it will help to encourage external websites to link back to your pages.
That is good since having a diverse set of links provides you with more authority, and it will be noticed by Google. The trick is to ensure that you offer authoritative and high-quality content. Others, you won’t have anting that will attract high-quality links.
Social media can work as the broadcasting channel for your business. Assuming that your content is original and useful, your content will serve as your bait, and the social media platforms are fishing poles, which helps to ensure that bait is right in front of them.
It is a good idea to use hashtags with your posts since it can help with your visibility for your first syndication rounds.
Don’t hesitate to introduce your content into existing threads and discussions. When you do this is will help you be viewed as an authoritative leader, and more importantly, maximizes your potential sources of external links.
3. Optimize Post for Searches
You can apply this strategy to pre-existing content, and it opens up a secondary channel to use for search. Google favors popular social media update by placing them at the top of their search engine results pages like they do with knowledge graph entries and news article. It will be temporary.
However, you will need to make sure your posts are optimized properly for this opportunity.
The first thing you need for your post is a strong anchor. That will serve as its foundation. You need to have an accurate and descriptive title. When you post it, you need to frame the foundation using the text that is optimized for a certain kind of search.
A few seasonal keywords can be added to your post to make sure your timeliness is maximized, and this increases the chance that your post will show up in the search results.
4. Influence Social Sharing
This contributes to your brand authority in a similar way that external links do. Google and other search engines help to increase your domain authority as long as you have quality links to validate your content.
It is good if tend people share your posts to their Facebook followers, but if can thousands of share, that is of course even better. Retweets, favorites, replies likes and shares can also help to increase your authority.
You need to directly appeal to your followers to encourage social sharing. One good example of this is to offer a reward to individuals who share your posts, such as having a drawing where they can win something.
Or you can come up with an interactive survey and encourage followers to comment or like if they want a certain kind of content or agree with something. One good thing about the strategy is that it is a cycle.
So, the more shares that you receive, the more followers you will obtain, and the more followers that you obtain, the more shares you will receive.
5. Locally Optimized Your Posts
Another great opportunity that social media offers you is the chance to engage with your local community. This will send the major search engines authority signals that are locally specific.
There are several different ways that this can be done, but the easiest way is to make updates whenever your company participates in local events, interacts with social media with other local brands and respond to online reviews posted about your business.
Whenever your company attends events such as festivals, tradeshows or local events, take photos and make sure to post them and invite other local attendees and residents to make comments. That will help to reinforce participation within your local community and make it visible within local searches.
A recent survey by Bright Local revealed that about 73% of consumers trust a business that has positive online reviews.
The better your local social reputation is, the higher your business will rank in search engine and will be trusted by search engines.
6. Increases Brand Awareness
That might seem like it is more of a branding benefit than for SEO, but we cannot overstate the significance of SEO. When your online reputation has increased by sharing quality content and improved engagement, it helps to increase your online brand presence.
Your increased brand presence can result in higher branded searches within the search engines. Getting more searches will increase your chances to rank for non-branded keywords.
It is a bit of a complicated relationship, but it will start to grow after you start developing a strong brand on the major social media platforms and results in you gaining increased visibility. There is no single proven way for your authority to improve, but it all boils down to offering a quality experience.
A 2016 survey conducted by HubSpot revealed that users are more inclined towards video content. This point alone should guide you to create more visually impacting content.
For the most part, the 6 points discussed above are the most important elements to succeed with your social media marketing campaigns.
Like with your SEO strategies, the entire thing all boils down to one thing: giving your users a great experience. The better experience you can give to your visitors, the higher your search engines rankings will be.
Understanding how social media impacts your SEO and understanding what the causes are, then it will help you better know how to manage your campaign, which will result in your users having a better experience, and open up a brand-new stream to attract new customers to your company’s brand.
Tips for Intertwining Social Media Marketing And SEO
Social media can boost your search engine optimization efforts. However, it can also do the opposite. With that said, let’s discuss a few quick tips for SEO and social content.
1. Optimize Profiles and Posts – Essentially, social media platforms are like search engines. Create posts with SEO and users in mind. Optimize your social media profiles using the same logic as you would
2. Use Hashtags Properly – When it comes to hashtags, use them the right way, especially with sites like Instagram and Twitter. Hashtags are what people use to find the content they like, so research what the best practices are for each social media site, and then learn how to use them.
Furthermore, use the search box on the social media sites you want to use, and then you’ll get an idea of how hashtags are used. There are also tools like hashtags.org that you can use.
3. Optimize Social Messages – You want to do this when you’re creating new content. When you’re creating new content, make sure you create social posts to go along with it, but each post should be optimized. Doing this will increase your chances of having your content show up in the social site’s search results.
4. Use Tagging – If you want to build more relevance, then use both tagging and mentioning when creating content. This will generate more traffic to your content, and people will be more tempted to engage with your content.
This will also improve your odds of people liking, sharing and commenting on your content and all of these are ranking signals, which may help your content get found more easily by the social media sites’ algorithms. Let’s not forget to mention that you’ll build back-links this way.
When it comes to marketing, you want to be the absolute best source for your audience, when they are searching for something. This means you need to create an effective strategy that answers the questions your audience is asking. Part of this strategy should include using social media and SEO to boost your marketing efforts.
With that said, the above tips and advice should come in handy, and they are easy enough to implement, so give them a try today.
About the Author – Anurag Pareek (www.anuragpareek.ca) is a Toronto based SEO & Digital Marketing Consultant. He is a creative link builder and conversion rate optimization specialist. When he is not obsessing over how to build better backlinks, Anurag likes to travel and play the guitar.