Social Media and SEO. Does Your Brand’s Social Media Presence Impact Your SEO Strategy?
The relationship between social media and SEO has been contested for many years, with the main argument being that social media doesn’t directly affect your SEO. However, it does influence ranking factors like traffic, meaning social media presence can indirectly impact your SEO strategy. If you’re intrigued to find out how social media impacts SEO, you’ll be compelled to read on and learn more
Social Media and SEO Touchpoints
As a company in today’s modern world, establishing an online presence has never been more important. As SEO continues to change for the better, businesses are measured beyond websites alone, where many of today’s SEO trends interlink with social media.
As companies are forced to be more creative, one of today’s industry objectives is to repurpose content across social media channels. This is a great way to be more effective with your marketing budget, where utilizing your existing content across social media is a great way to maximize its potential so it reaches a wider audience.
We are currently witnessing the rise of influencer marketing, where endorsements from authentic influencers are a great way to instill trust in your audience. Influencers should be a key component of any digital marketing strategy, serving as a way to further elevate your brand’s reputation.
Despite not being considered a Google ranking signal, linking content via social media is a great way to further increase brand exposure. It will have a positive effect on your search ranking, where more social signals will ultimately translate to higher rankings in SERPs.
Today’s users value peer recommendations, instant updates, and personalization more than static search engine results. In this sense, social media is becoming a search engine in itself, where social media primacy is upon us. Social media platforms can be used to yield trustworthy results, having a widespread impact on consumer behavior.
Does Social Media Impact SEO Strategy?
Even though social media activity is not a ranking factor, it can support your SEO efforts in the following ways:
Drives Traffic
By increasing the visibility of your content, social media drives more traffic to your website. The more that people share your content, the more people will visit your website, thereby boosting your rankings.
Social Profiles Rank in Search Engine Results
Your social media search engine results rank in search engines too, often visible on the first page of branded search results. With optimized social media profiles, you can strengthen your online presence. When people visit your company’s Facebook page, for example, they’ll better understand your brand and discover valuable content.
Improve Content Reach
Social media ensures your content reaches as many people as possible, where you can seamlessly get your content in front of people who didn’t realize they needed it. Better content reach translates to high-quality traffic, especially when people with a wide reach share your content. It helps to discover relevant influencers in your vertical who can share your post.
Local SEO
Your business will be considered more credible by Google if you maintain consistent NAP (name, address, and phone number) information across all your websites and listings.
In this sense, social media will have a direct effect on your local SEO efforts, where you can boost your rankings in local search results by offering consistent information across your social profiles. You can gain even more visibility if you geo-tag your stories and posts.
How Social Media and SEO Strategies Support Each Other
Despite being fundamentally different, it’s essential to recognize how SEO and social media marketing intersect as part of an integrated digital marketing strategy. It might be a complicated relationship, but it’s worth exploring:
Keyword Research
As the backbone of any effective content strategy, keywords are a great way to understand which phrases and queries are being searched for most. From this, you can tailor your content so it engages searchers on their own terms.
The insight derived from this can be applied to social media too, where users are regularly performing searches. Here you can better align your content with the search intent of users, using the right keywords (and hashtags) more frequently to drive conversions and engagement. As a result, your brand is more likely to show up on the feeds of people interested in the content you’re sharing. By better understanding what your customers want, you can produce content that matches their expectations.
Compelling Clicks
Modern SEO is centered on delivering the best possible results for a given query. It’s evolved considerably from the days of keyword stuffing, where Google now values click-throughs and time spent on a page more than text arrangement.
With this being said, it’s crucial to have an intriguing headline and meta descriptions for SERP success. This is very much at the heart of social media marketing, where it’s also important to capture people’s attention with an intriguing headline that compels them to click your content.
Captivation is a crucial consideration in an online realm that’s saturated with content. It is of the essence to stand out from the rest, where if a message is pertinent to your social media success, you can adapt it for your meta descriptions and vice versa.
Social Sharing Buttons on Your Website
It’s important to have social media sharing buttons on your blog and website. These will encourage users to share your content on social media, in an age where Google is starting to use social media sharing data to configure search rankings.
The presence of sharing buttons will increase traffic from social media, but most importantly will influence your future ranking in Google search results.
Incorporate Links in Video and Presentation Content
Platforms like YouTube and SlideShare are powerful for sharing videos and presentations. They are highly effective for sharing easily digestible content and are powerful tools for gaining further exposure. When you share content on networks like these, you should always incorporate links to related blog posts and other content.
This will increase traffic to your website while helping you build new inbound links. When someone writes a blog post about your content, they might elect to include a link from your presentation or video, which will increase your reach further.
Summary
They might be two separate tactical areas of digital marketing, but SEO and social media are complementary aspects of any successful integrated content marketing strategy. Understanding how to maximize both together where help you unlock your brand’s full potential.
