Improve SEO With Social Media
Social Media Marketing and SEO are intimately connected in many ways. Changes made in either strategy can profoundly affect the other, and so efforts that focus on integrating social media with SEO have become crucial for any successful digital marketing strategy. To improve SEO with social media, we can implement several strategies which are listed below.
While many of the details relevant to this integration can be quite complex, the basic principle is fortunately very simple: both revolve around providing the most useful, interesting, and user-friendly content, and making it available to a larger audience. And so the integration of both comes quite naturally.
In addition, it is highly motivating to know that if your efforts lead to success in one area, this can indirectly improve performance in the other, thereby building the overall momentum of your marketing strategy.
In this article I focus on using social media to boost SEO, and describe 5 social media practices that can improve discovery of your content via search engines.
1. Use Social Media Links To Improve Search Rankings
Since about 2014, classical link building has been almost dead. Before that it was considered to be the most powerful tool to boost the ranking of any website, by generating a lot of links on third-party websites pointing to a particular website, to convince the Google search algorithm that website was respectable and contained useful content for people searching on the web. However, since Google figured out that many of those backlinks were not genuine, but rather purchased or artificially generated by marketers, it stopped using them to calculate ranking. In fact, too many low-quality backlinks can now negatively impact search ranking, and should be avoided.
Since then, many studies have shown that the number of links, or mentions of website content, on social media is very closely correlated with the search ranking of that website.
While Google denies directly using this information in their algorithm, it is clear that whatever they do use in their calculations is closely linked to it. This makes a lot of sense intuitively: if a certain website, or specific content from that website, gets a lot of attention on social media, then it must be of interest to many people.
So it follows that you should generate as much attention around your content on social networks as possible.
Most of the big networks such as Facebook and Twitter allow paid promotion of posts, and this is certainly worth doing. However, before diving into this approach, you should focus on generating original content that is genuinely interesting and useful.
Ideally, this will motivate many of the visitors brought in by paid promotion to re-share your content on their profile, which might even make it go viral. To facilitate social spreading and improve SEO with social media, all your website content should have prominent sharing widgets.
Takeaways:
- Improve SEO with social media by promoting your content on social media to generate links and traffic
- Generate compelling content to ensure a high level of audience engagement and re-sharing
2. Promote Organic Link Building By Being Found On Social Media
While artificial link building is dead, a few genuine backlinks from high-ranking websites relevant to your niche can still significantly improve your SEO. While you cannot force people to generate these links, you can make sure they can find your high-quality content on social media, and thus improve the chances that they will reference your website with a link. So you should keep all your social profiles up to date and post regular engaging content. In addition, it is worth investing efforts to build your following on the most relevant social networks.
Takeaways:
- Improve SEO with social media by investing in creating a top quality social presence to allow your content to be found and thereby promote organic backlinking to your website
3. Optimize Your Social Content For Listing By Search Engines
The aim of SEO is to make your content more visible in organic search results, thus enabling as many people as possible to find and visit your website. Ideally, this means your website itself ranks high in search results. However, organic visitors can also be brought to your website indirectly. The first page of Google search results often contains relevant social media content, such as YouTube videos, Facebook pages, or Pinterest boards. This means you have several opportunities to improve SEO with social media and get your content in front of a search audience. For example, if your YouTube video ranks high for a particular keyword, you can include a link to your website in the video description, thus directing some of that traffic to your website. An additional advantage of this approach is that these visitors are pre-qualified because they have already engaged with your content, and found it interesting enough to click through to your website. To ensure that your social media content is listed in search results, make sure to include the most relevant keyword phrases in the title and description.
Takeaways:
- Research what type of social media content is listed by Google in your niche, and then create engaging social media posts targeting the same keywords
4. Use Social Media To Boost Local SEO
Ranking for high-competition keywords on a national or international level can be very tough because of the heavy competition. However, many businesses have products or services that can be marketed locally as well. For example, if you are a Digital Marketing Agency, you’ll find there are a lot fewer competitors in your local area, and so it’s easier to rank. If you do a local search, you’ll find that Google lists Facebook pages and Google Plus pages as well as websites, or even specific social media posts. In order to optimize your social profiles for local ranking, make sure to include the correct address in the ‘About’ section, and refer to your province, state, and city in the description. In addition, you should also include the most important keyword phrases.
Takeaways:
- Improve SEO with social media by optimizing your social profiles to rank in local Google searches by including relevant keywords and address details
5. Harness The Search Function Of Social Networks
While most people focus on Google search traffic, it should not be forgotten that many social networks function as search engines too. Twitter reports more than 20 billion search queries per month, and that figure for YouTube is 3.7 billion. So it makes sense to optimize your content for SEO on the most relevant social networks, by targeting the keyword phrases that are most often searched on those particular networks. The easiest way to do this is by using the ‘autocomplete’ function of the search box. For example, as you start to type in a search query in YouTube, a number of different phrases are suggested to you. Make a list of all these, and include them regularly in your titles and descriptions. In addition, analyse the results to identify the best performing keywords, and then boost them further.
Takeaways:
- Improve SEO with social media by optimizing your content to be found by search on social media
Conclusion
In summary, it should be clear that social media provides plenty of opportunities to get your content in front of people searching the web. So make sure you are harnessing the powerful tools offered by social marketing to boost the visibility of your brand in organic search.
