Some people believe social media strategy is not related to SEO and they couldn’t be more wrong. Yes, social media and SEO are two different approaches, but they can complement each other and translate into a business’s growth.
Ask yourself, why do you do SEO? To gain more visibility in the search engine space, right? Yes.
And why do you build a social media marketing strategy? To gain visibility in the social space.
So, both strategies work to enhance a business’s visibilty in different digital spaces and can augment your business’ reach and drive brand awareness at a newer scale if you make them work together.
How Social Media and SEO Function Together
What’s the first thing that comes to mind when you hear the words search engine or search results? We bet it is Google search, and that’s not really surprising considering the fact that it constitutes over 80% of all search results.
So, Google has a big market, but do you know what comes next when it comes to search engines? Well, that’s YouTube, which is just social media with morevideos.
Many marketers are already leveraging the power of the YouTube platform for marketing purposes. In fact, 95% of marketers think video marketing has helped their company gain significantly more revenue.
Now, YouTube is one of the many social media platforms. You can implement similar marketing campaigns with other social media and help drive more traffic to your website.
Social media platforms can influence your SEO in more ways than you can know. Let’s take a look at some of the ways social media can influence your SEO and increase traffic.
Social Media Content is Indexed
You may not know this, but social media platforms are heavily indexed.
Let’s experiment a little.
Try searching your name on Google, chances are that the first few results that appear on the search results page will be your social media links, such as Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and more.
That’s because all social media platforms are indexed, so your profiles on those platforms easily appear on Google search results.
Google seems to have a special algorithm to index social media pages, and many marketers are already making good use of it.
They figured out that adding social media to websites is a quick way of indexing your website, so they started embedding social media links.
This has allowed them to index their site on Google a lot faster than before.
Social Media Influence on SEO is All About Authority
What is this authority all about? Is it related to social media platforms? Or is it for SEO?
Well, it’s for both.
In simple terms, authority builds on how valuable a website is to its target audience. Google uses this authority to determine a rank for your website in the search results.
Google’s algorithm tends to favor sites that have high authority.
So, how can you tell if a website has higher or lower authority? Well, it depends on two things. The content on your site and the backlinks within that content.
Social media influence is the best way of building authority. The more influence you have on social media platforms, the higher authority you will have.
When influencers talk about a product, it’s bound to garner some curiosity in their follower base. The same followers will then search for the product on the search engine, potentially bringing more traffic to your site.
But you can’t just drop a few posts on a daily basis and expect to gain a significant influence.
You will have to do the tough work. Engage with your followers, answer their queries, have a Q&A session, post giveaways, and much more. The more engagement you get from your viewers, the higher will be the traction you get.
Social Media Helps Build Search Demand
Social media can benefit SEO in a variety of surprising ways when compared to conventional marketing channels. Sharing information on your social media channels not only increases engagement on those platforms, but it also increases traffic to your website, eventually increasing its visibility.
Techjackie’s Jackie Owen is a good example of this. He has his own digital marketing firm. And being the a digital agency owner himself, he has grown his brand recognition on YouTube. This is why, a lot of people are now aware of him and look up his name when searching.
In spite of the fact that his site has fewer backlinks than other sites, Owen claims that he is still able to rank several pieces of material on the first page of Google.
Tips for Using Social Media to Boost SEO?
Now that you know how social media helps SEO, let’s talk about how you can start leveraging it to boost your SEO efforts.
Step 1: Grow Your Followers
Start by strengthening your social media presence if you want to support your SEO campaign.
Increasing your following is an impressive method to boost your social media presence. More individuals will have the chance to view your content if you have more followers on social media.
Spend time presenting your brand to your audience consistently to help you get more worthwhile followers.
In order to engage your followers, you should offer engaging content. When your audience finds your content valuable, they are more likely to share it on their own profiles, which allows more people to find you.
Step 2: Share Content
One of the best ways to make your social media and SEO strategies work together is to post lead-generating and traffic-driving content on your social channels. This will help funnel your social followers and relevant social media users to your website, potentially improving its search engine rank down the line.
Pay more attention to quality than quantity when producing content. Your audience must find your content valuable otherwise they won’t be interested in it. A lot of low-quality content posting won’t engage the viewers on your website.
Your writing needs to be fresh and unique.
Step 3: Build Brand Awareness
Social media is an exceptional brand-building tool. But how does brand building help SEO? By increasing branded searches.
Consumers learn about brands on social media and than search for the same brands through search engines using what we call “branded” search terms.
Branded search terms are low-competition keywords and when used properly through out a website, can help this website rank higher sooner.
When more people are aware of your brand courtesy of your social efforts, more people will perform branded searches, which will eventually result in increased traffic to your site and better SEO results.
Step 4: Build Relationships Through Active Conversations
Building relationships is one of the best strategies to boost engagement on your social media accounts.
Relationships provide credibility and develop trust. They also aid in understanding your intended audience, their needs and pain points for what they are struggling to solve.
It is therefore simpler for people to interact with you when they sense that you are interested in their problems. Social media is the ideal setting for such conversations.
Here’s how you can build an emotional connection with your target audience:
- Ask some important questions to learn how and what your audience thinks about your brand.
- Request their opinions on your most recent blog post.
- Look for any queries they may have posted on the platform and offer enlightening responses.
- Reply to user comments.
- Make a poll to find out what they want to read on your blog next.
Step 5: Hashtags
Hashtags are similar to the keywords in the social media market. Users who are looking for information on a particular subject will look for hashtags to find posts on that subject.
Your content will get more interested leads who read your material and visit your site if you incorporate hashtags into them.
When doing SEO, you use keywords to improve the ranking of your pages. The idea is the same when using hashtags on social media. When you put relevant hashtags, there are chances that your posts will appear in that relevant search as well.
Hashtags help index your content and make it more visible in related search results. Your hashtag usage may cause your material to show up in search results if someone is looking for a specific topic.
The Bottom Line
Growing your SEO presence is every company’s dream, but it’s one that not every company manages to achieve. Even after you set up your SEO , it takes a while before you get a significant organic reach. But you can change that by pairing your SEO efforts with social media.
Effective social media strategies augment SEO in more ways than one, as we have discussed above. But you will have to build a strong social presence before you can start leveraging your social efforts to boost SEO.
