People in the search industry are always talking about how social media can influence SEO. How can social media activities help improve your website’s ranking on search engines? This is a topic that is always relevant, based on several case studies.
The reason is simple: social media is important for SEO in more than one way. Not only will your SEO activities be effective, but they will also be profitable. Social media and SEO are two different things, but they help each other.
While social media may not have a direct impact on SEO, it is still a beneficial tool for promoting content and engaging with potential customers. This means that social media interactions and shares will not directly improve your website’s position in search engine results pages. Sharing links to your brand’s content on social media platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, and Pinterest may help increase exposure, but those links will not be factored into Google or Bing’s ranking algorithms.
This may seem counterintuitive, but social media is not a superficial ranking factor for search engines. However, if you look deeper, you will see that it does have significance. It indirectly affects a page’s search ranking in a positive way. A site’s position in the search engine results pages (SERPs) is definitely correlated with the number of social signals it has. If you look at the websites that are at the top of google searches, you will find that many of them have strong social signals.
If you’re a marketer investing in social media marketing, you’re also improving your chances of performing well in search engines.
- Even though social media is not a ranking factor on a superficial level, it indirectly has a positive effect on a page’s search ranking.
- An effective social media strategy has to have a solid SEO plan in place because both of them go hand in hand.
- Every step you take towards improving your social media marketing efforts should be aligned with your SEO strategy.
SEO and social media management have more similarities than you might think. This article will highlight some of the most important shared elements between these two strategies. I will spend most of my time talking to social media managers and professional marketers who are also working on social media promotion.
Keyword research
Social media managers should learn from their colleagues who are optimizing websites how to do keyword research. Websites aren’t the only medium that rely on keywords. This same strategy can be beneficial for social media marketing campaigns and I’ll tell you why.
The ranking of a page on a search engine will be higher if the content on the page is deemed to be valuable and informative by the search engine. The ranking of a website depends on how popular it is, which is determined by the number of backlinks from reliable sources.
This is also true when considering social media platforms. There are two strategies that you can use to deal with the situation. First, you should research and include traditional keywords in your titles and texts. In addition to increasing the reach of your content, hashtags also make it more discoverable to people who are interested in what you are sharing.
1. Traditional keywords
I’m sure you’ve all dealt with this type of keyword before. Short phrases that tell the reader what your post will be about are called “topic sentences.” Search engines use these topic sentences to help readers find relevant information.
When using hashtags in social media content, use them in a similar way as you would in a blog post. Make sure that your main keywords are found in the title of your post and in the text as well. This will ensure that your post is being found by people who are searching for information on that topic.
When creating content for social media, it is important to use keywords that people are likely to search for. Otherwise, what’s the point?
2. Hashtags
Using hashtags on social media networks such as Instagram and Facebook can be helpful in order to connect with other users who are interested in the same topics. There are two types of hashtags you should use here:
- Branded hashtags
- General hashtags
A branded hashtag is a great way to build a strong and powerful brand for your marketing campaigns on social media. This will make it easier for your fans to access your content and engage with your company.
The more often people see your brand’s hashtag, the more likely they are to think of your brand. If someone has never heard of you, the hashtag will help them learn more about you.
Hashtags that are specific to your niche will help you connect with people who are interested in the same thing as you. Choosing hashtags that are related to the content of your post will make it easier for people searching for that content to find your post, which will in turn expand your audience and increase traffic.
The traffic to your content will convert to customers, fans, likes, or any other type of engagement/conversion you might seek if your content is truly valuable.
3. Performing keyword research
You might have an idea of the keywords you want to use for each copy piece. Your results with a certain decision may vary. Sometimes you may have good results while other times, your results might be less than expected. The solution is simple. Before posting any content to social media, it is important to do extensive keyword research and look to on-page SEO specialists for guidance.
Content for mobile
As a social media manager, you will be working on developing and maintaining a strong relationship between your fans or customers and the brand you manage. You will also be responsible for maintaining relationships with all other communication channels the business depends on.
The website/blog administration is responsible for the published content that is also used in social media campaigns.
Since social media platforms are constantly changing, you need to be aware of the latest updates and work with the content team to ensure your posts are optimized for the particular channel. A key element of this is making sure the content is mobile-friendly.
Mobile devices are now responsible for over half of all web traffic, so it’s more important than ever to make sure your site is mobile-friendly. This includes optimizing your site for mobile search engines and making sure your social media pages are easily viewable on mobile devices.
Mobile phones are now more popular than ever. The number of people using mobile devices to connects to the internet, get information, and navigate is increasing rapidly. The future of mobile content is uncertain, but it is clear that it is just as important as traditional content.
Every website should be designed for mobile devices in order to be more successful in marketing. 87% of consumers already use their smartphones to shop, while 68% use them to research purchases in advance.
There are two aspects that are important here:
1. Speed. Major search engines are ranking websites based on several factors. The speed at which your pages load is a key factor in your website’s success.
This is not important only for your page rank. People access online pages from their mobile devices. Some people will follow the links you post on social media channels.
To keep your customers engaged, you need to deliver pages that load quickly and securely on mobile devices.
2. Readability. No matter what type of mobile device you have, the screen will always be smaller than that of a desktop or laptop computer.
As a social media manager, you should be concerned with the readability of your pages, considering that at least half of your traffic will come from mobile.
Visual content in social media and SEO
Visuals are an important part of a website/page optimization. Although they may not seem as important, visual social media channels are a big part of any social media marketing strategy since people are more likely to engage with visuals than any other type of content on the internet. People get distracted today faster than ever. A significant percentage of people will take a quick view of a page or social media post and move on within 5 seconds. The students will only read a small part of the text during this time.
The visuals in a presentation are not just there to keep the audience from getting bored. Visuals are able to communicate a message more effectively than text in a shorter amount of time, making them a valuable tool in your social media marketing arsenal.
People make up their minds about other people very quickly. If the visuals in your marketing campaign are attractive, informative, and able to transmit the right message, then the short amount of time that they are seen by consumers may be enough for your purposes as a marketer.
This is thanks to technology that has made it possible for people who are not professional designers to create stunning visuals. You don’t even need to master design software.
The following are some tips for finding success through social media SEO best practices.
Publish High-Quality Content
SEO is not what it used to be. It’s a lot more mature and approachable. If you want your social media content to rank for the right keywords, you need to focus on creating fresh, original content that is valuable to your target audience. Forget about stuffing your social content with keywords.
Focus on creating content that naturally attracts links, provides people with what they are looking for, and easily ranks high on search engines. Getting into the shoes of your target audience is the most important step to publishing high quality content.
It’s not just about who you share your content with, but also about the quality of the content you’re sharing. An effective marketing campaign must be useful or resourceful to your potential customers or prospects.
Make Social Sharing Easy
The goal of social sharing is to make your content visible to more people. Your content should address a need that your target audience already has.
By creating targeted content for your brand and connecting it to the social web, you can increase the reach of your brand’s message, as well as improve the brand’s visibility. If you want people to share your content on social media, you need to do more than just add social media buttons to your website. To make your content successful, you need to work on making it helpful, entertaining, and enticing enough that people will want to talk about it. In order to get people to share your content with their followers, you need to provide them with a reason to do so. This can be done by including motivating factors such as providing exclusive content or rewards for doing so.
Optimize Your Social Profiles
One obvious factor that impacts your social media SEO results is not optimizing your social media profiles.
At our company, we work with hundreds of clients to help them improve their social media presence. We know that one of the goals our clients have is to come up higher in search results. If you want people to learn about you and your business, you should optimize your profiles with relevant content. This will create multiple “doorways” for people to find out about you.
Make sure your website is consistent with your social media profiles to easily rank higher on search engines and get more clicks and organic traffic.
Optimize Your Images for Both, SEO and Social
Pictures can be very helpful in getting your point across and communicating your ideas. Keywords are important for search engine optimization.
If you’ve been neglecting to use images, you’re committing an error. Images can help improve the ranking of your website on search engines if they are properly optimized. You can optimize your images for search by using the keyword in the file name, adding the right alt text, and using relevant surrounding text.
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Whether you’re trying to track how often your posts are being shared on social media or how much social media-based traffic your website is getting, it’s important to focus on the metrics that matter to you. Don’t blindly jump on the social media SEO bandwagon without having a plan or knowing how you’ll measure the success of your actions.
If you want to be certain about your next move, focus on data instead of guessing.
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