What Is Social Media SEO? How to Use SEO for Social Media Marketing?

What Is Social Media SEO? 

Many assume that SEO is impacted only by the elements that appear on a webpage, and while these factors do greatly contribute to increasing rankings and helping to improve SEO, there are other platforms and ways that you can help increase your search engine optimization! Social media platforms offer many great opportunities whereby you can increase the amount of visibility that your brand or business receives, helping you to stream more content to a wider network of people! Social media is slowly becoming one of the more preferred methods of marketing as many people from all over the world join the different platforms and use them each and every day! The exciting world of social media marketing is one that is constantly changing, with new updates coming from different platforms all the time! To be sure that you are using each and every tool on offer as effectively as possible, it is important that your social media team keep up to date with all the changes! 

So why is social media so important and how does it impact SEO? Social media SEO is becoming a vital part of any brand or businesses marketing campaign and while many do not know that social media affects SEO, we are here to let you know that it definitely does! The impacts that social media has on SEO are indirect, but still extremely important when it comes to increasing your online visibility! Creating a brand awareness for your business across both a website and social media platforms will help to increase the amount of traffic that is organically streamed to your website, both from social media platforms and from search engine results pages. 

What Does Social Media SEO Do?

Social media SEO is designed to help increase your rankings in an assortment of different ways. The overall impact is designed to stream users from social media platforms to websites, ultimately increasing the amount of traffic that specific pages receive! This is extremely useful because search engines use the amount of visits that specific pages receive and use this, along with other ranking factors, to determine the reliability of your website. Having your social media pages streaming traffic that is generated through organic means, without the help of a search engine, lets these search engines know that you have other means of attracting potential customers, which is beneficial when it comes to SEO and placement of search engine results pages! SEO and its relationship with social media should not be underestimated, and brands and businesses should make sure that they are using every possible stream or platform to find new potential customers! Having an active social media account with links that connect to your website is an easy way to increase traffic and help your SEO strategy. 

What is The Importance of Social Media SEO?

Social media SEO is only growing in importance, as social media platforms become more popular and more people join the world of social networking. There are two ways that social media SEO can impact your website, the first being through visitors being streamed from social networks to your page and the second through social signals that are read by search engine crawlers. Every like, follow, comment or interaction that happens on your social media page is noted by search engines as social signals, which help to increase your page rankings! The importance of social media SEO is only growing and as more people from all over the world join social media platforms, there is more opportunity to extend your reach and increase the visibility of both your brand and your website. 

How Does Social Media Affect SEO?

When considering social media and seo integration, looking at the effects that this has on your rankings and placement on search engine results pages can help- to determine as to why it is such an important part of any SEO strategy. The following are just a few of the effects that social media can have on your website’s SEO. 

Search Rankings

When a social media account is properly optimised it can have amazing benefits when it comes to your search rankings. Your rankings are one of the best ways to increase the amount of organic traffic that makes its way to your page and ensuring that you are doing everything in your power to rank as highly as possible is extremely important, especially in today’s age. Search engines use two social media factors when looking at your rankings, they use social signals and traffic. When a comment is left, a page is visited or a new person has requested to follow you, social media platforms release social signals that are picked up on by search engine crawlers. These signals show that potential customers are interacting with you and the content you are releasing and this helps to increase your rankings. Along with this, when a person clicks onto your website through your social media pages, search engines register this site visit as an interaction, and consider your page more reliable and trustworthy. As your social signals and the amount of traffic streamed to your webpage increase, so do your rankings on search engine results pages! 

Content Amplification

As you release high quality content onto your different social media platforms and see interactions between yourself and the consumer, your content is amplified! Content amplification helps to increase the amount of traffic that makes its way to your page through the interactions that social media users have with your content. This is why it is so important to post interesting and informative content across your social media channels. 

Brand Awareness

We have all, at one stage or another, been slowly making our way through our instagram or facebook page and come across an interesting brand, be it one that is found through paid advertisements or even just organically. Social media can greatly increase brand awareness and help to spread your business far and wide, to a much greater network of people than you would access on your own. Using social media to increase brand awareness is one of the many benefits that come with increasing your social media presence! 

Link Building

When social media content is engaging and informative it will ensure that it is liked and shared across multiple pages and networks, getting hits from far and wide. Just one share to a person’s story or a like that generates your post being displayed across someone’s feed can get you tons of traffic, and it can also be used as links on other peoples pages and websites! These extra links are extremely important and a vital part of any SEO strategy. Links let search engines know that your content is valuable and informative, and that others are finding use in the content that you are posting about. 

Local SEO

For those who are looking to increase their reach within their local market, social media is a great way to do this. Business profiles within specific areas can help increase your reach within your local market, and since social media does take location into account for paid ads, you can be sure that your content is being seen by the most valuable market; those who reside within your specific area! 

What are The Ways Social Media Can Improve Your SEO Results?

Now that we fully understand what Social media SEO is, it is important that we also know how it can help to improve the optimisation of a website! 

Publish High-Quality Content

A social media page is only as effective as the content that is posted and ensuring that you are creating engaging and informative content to release is extremely important. You want the posts to emulate who you are as a brand and it therefore needs to engage your users and want to make them share, like, respond to or even visit your website. Having content that is not engaging will reduce the number of people who are referred to your site or engage with your content, meaning it will not be an impactful and helping contributor to your SEO. 

When trying to develop the best content to release on social media platforms, though posting regularly is important in keeping relevance, rather publish less often and supply your readers with good content. Quality is always considered better than quantity when it comes to your social media marketing! 

Make Sharing Your Content Easy for Users

Shares are one of the biggest ways that you can get into new markets through social media and creating content that is shareable is a great way to increase your number of followers and boost your SEO! Many brands and businesses use influencers to share their content to large networks and this is a great way to increase the amount of traffic that your social media pages and website receives. It is important that those who you pay to share your content are big within specific markets as this will ensure the highest return on the investment that you have made. Along with being shared by influencers, you should be creating content that is easily shared by others and creating content that makes sense to share with your friends and loved ones is a great way to make content sharing easy. 

Optimise Your Social Media Profiles

Before a customer even considers purchasing something from you or asking about the services that you offer they will want an idea of who you are and they get this information through examining your profile. Looking at the different elements that make up your profile is a good way for a consumer to get a feel for who you are and what your business stands for so be sure to include these elements when creating and optimising  your profile! Making sure that your profile is 100% complete is another thing to consider as brands and businesses with half completed profiles may not be considered as dependable as those brands who have taken the time to do this. 

Optimise Your Images for SEO and Social

Social media platforms are extremely visual and it is therefore important that the images that are posted on your channels are of the best quality. Through optimising your images and ensuring that they are in the correct format, have relevant names and include things like structured data, you can be sure that your images are optimised for both SEO and for social media. 

Build Relationships Through Active Conversations

The more social signals that get sent from your social media account, the more that a search engine may consider your brand and website to be reliable. Holding conversations, replying to messages and increasing the amount of interaction that occurs on your social media pages can help to greatly improve your SEO results! 

Evaluate Your Social Media Marketing Operations

How you market yourself across social media platforms is becoming increasingly more important and ensuring that you are aware of how the different tactics that you are using are working and whether they are effective or not is an important part of the process. Having different metrics that are monitoring the interactions you receive across social media can help you to evaluate whether or not the current tactics you are using are effective, and if they are not it gives you the opportunity to adjust your strategy to help you reach your goals. Evaluating your social media marketing operations is extremely important, and the information that it provides is vital to reaching your social media marketing goals. 

Craft Compelling Social Media Post Captions

Captions are what draw people in, it is one of the first things that a social media user will see and it determines whether they will scroll past and ignore your post or reach out for more information. Creating engaging captions will help to ensure that social media users are finding the posts you are releasing engaging and interesting!

What Are the Best Social Media Platforms for SEO?

There are tons of different social media platforms, and more being developed all the time! It is extremely important to keep up with the trends and find the best channels and platforms to help you reach your SEO goals! The following are just a few of the best social media platforms to use when it comes to your SEO. 

LinkedIn

For those who are looking to promote their brand to other businesses, LinkedIn is the best social media platform to use. LinkedIn has created a space whereby leads can be easily generated, whether you are cold messaging brands and businesses or creating engaging posts that inform users of who you are and how you can help them to expand their business! It is estimated that around 90% of marketers are using LinedIn to generate leads and find potential customers, particularly when the leads that need to be generated are B2B. Through using SEO features, like keywords, within your content, you can ensure that search algorithms will place your webpage at the top of search engine results pages. 

Facebook

Facebook is one of the most used social media platforms in the world, reaching billions of people a year and helping to spread information across many different networks. In knowing this, it is no wonder why this platform is considered to be one of the top to use, and the reach that can be gained through having an active account and posting content onto it can help to increase both your rankings and the amount of site visits that your website receives. Facebook is a social media platform that works closely with Google, with interactions being seen on search engine results pages and even reviews being linked to Google. Having a facebook account can therefore greatly improve your SEO and help you to better rank and attract users. 

Twitter

Twitter is a platform that is often overlooked when it comes to content and business marketing, but it can actually be extremely beneficial! Much like Facebook, this social media platform sees hundreds of thousands of people from all over the world scrolling through their feed each and every day, and with such a big platform and audience, getting your content out there is that much easier. It is important to remember with these larger platforms that you need to not only be creating content and releasing it, but the content that you release needs to be good to attract attention and set you apart from the other businesses that may also be promoting on these channels.

Pinterest

Pinterest is a very unique social media platform and using it can help to extend your reach if you are releasing good and valuable content. Many brands and businesses use pinterest as their main distribution platform, gaining followers through the releasing of well-crafted and well designed posts! Pintrist is  a great platform to use, particularly if you are hoping to use imaging as your main source of attracting potential customers. 

How Can Markethinkers Help You With Social Media SEO?

When it comes to both SEO and social media, we here at Markethinkers have all the tools that you and your business need to succeed! As a marketing agency that has a focus on SEO, we are able to help you develop the best social media tactics, strategies and content to help you succeed and improve both your rankings and your traffic. With our professional SEO consulting and SEO copywriting experts on hand to help you through every step of the process, you can be sure that you will reach every goal that you set! For more information on how we can help with your social media SEO, please do not hesitate to contact us!