5 Ways to Maximize SEO and Social Media

In this blog, we’ll help you understand the complex relationship between SEO and social media, and offer 5 tips on how you can maximize both.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) plays an important role in any digital marketing strategy as it helps people find your content. The higher your content ranks on the SERP (search engine results page), the more visitors it will attract.

Social media marketing has become another highly effective way to drive people to your website. And all of this depends on having an effective social media strategy that drives brand awareness and ROI. The sweet spot in a digital marketing campaign is ensuring that your social media, content marketing, and SEO strategies complement each other.

Does Google look at social signals?

Social signals are actions such as likes and shares on social media. So, if your content generates a lot of social signals, will this improve its ranking on Google? Well, Google has been giving mixed signals about this over the years.

In 2010, the search engine giant regarded social signals as a ranking factor, with a focus on quality over quantity. This means that Google looks at the reputation of the author or creator on social media sites to determine ranking.

However, in 2014, Google decided to no longer rank these social signals: in other words, likes or shares cannot be used to boost your rankings from an SEO perspective. However, that doesn’t mean you should abandon your social media strategy as it’s an important part of any digital marketing campaign.

5 Tips to Improve Your SEO for Social Media

As we’ve explained, in most cases, social media sharing doesn’t directly impact SEO. However, when you share your content on social media, can influence SEO.

1. Work on Your Profile

Remember that your social media profile is one of the first things a prospect or customer will see, so take time to craft one that’s engaging and reflects your business. 

• Include as many details as possible so you give a good picture of what your business does
• Use keywords that are relevant to your brand and searched words or terms
• Have backlinks to your site content to drive traffic

For B2B, LinkedIn is a very powerful social media network.

2. Have quality shareable content in your social channels

There are many platforms and accounts for customers to choose from so you need to make the most of your content to attract and engage. Use a variety of content types such as videos, blogs, testimonials, etc. to get an idea of what works for your audience.

Also, use good imagery that’s tied to your brand so that when people see it they recognize it as yours. This will increase brand awareness and recognition.

3. Encourage backlinks through good content

People will only share content that they believe is good or relevant to their audience. So it’s worth prioritizing quality over quantity if resources or time is an issue. 

Take time to research topics and include high authority research and third-party links alongside internal links to show authority. Quotes are also good to include from industry experts or statistics that back up your point of view.

Above all, adopt a tone and opinion on your industry as that will help you become an industry leader.

4. Use social listening to see what’s going on out there, with your competitors and others

Social listening is a powerful SEO tactic.  This will help you to monitor conversations to see what your audience is saying about you and also keep track of your competitors.

As people turn to social media more and more to ask questions, read reviews (and complain), keeping a close ear on your platforms is a good idea for managing online reviews and overall customer service. 

5. Pay attention to influencers and consider using them

As you probably already know, influencers have sway on social media. You just need to look at the influencer stats to see how much.

You don’t need to aim that high for your influencer marketing strategy, but if you know of influencers in your sector or area that your audience listens to then it may be worth considering using them in your social media.