Social media and SEO are constantly evolving animals that digital marketers spend their days trying to tame. The nature of the beast is that trends can change in a matter of moments so how can you keep on top of how to best align your social media and SEO strategies to your business goals?
In days gone by, social media and SEO were separate entities, with no real connection between the two. The question of how social media helps SEO has long been asked; 2010 saw both Google and Bing admit to using social signals to help rank pages in their results. Fast-forward 4 years and Google released a video explaining how they couldn’t rely on signals that might not be there tomorrow, and Twitter temporarily blocked access to their social network.
But thanks to game-changing Google algorithms, and a shifting attitude to these two strategies on a wider scale, they can now complement each other as they appear more and more in search engines. Meaning should you leverage them both, you can gain traffic from a number of sources to ultimately reach your carefully identified goals.
A perfect example of this is a Hootsuite study conducted in 2018 which tested the SEO of articles with and without social promotion. Interestingly, those shared socially received an average 22% boost during the duration of the experiment, as opposed to those without.
Let’s see how else social media can help SEO
Make content good
There is a difference between articles and good articles. Creating good content is key – no one wants to read waffle – so make it engaging and see the likes and links rack up. Links are one of the top Google ranking factors so by posting great stuff on social media to increase linking will potentially impact your SEO ranking… it’s a win, win.
Sharing Buttons
It might sound simple but it’s incredibly important to have social media sharing buttons on your website or blog. Why? It encourages visitors to share your content on social media which will get picked up by search engines. And from your point of view, having people share the stuff you’ve been slogging over writing all morning is rewarding in itself.
Good Social Presence
Even though your social shares may or may not affect your position in search results, having a good social account definitely pays. Social media profiles are often amongst the top results and can feel more personal than web pages; it’s an opportunity to get your social persona out there even more and show to consumers your brand in a fun and engaging way. You can also align your SEO strategy to your social media profile by having consistent branding and style. Have all your fonts, colours, logos the same as your website and immediately you have a great brand image.
Build New Relationships
Facebook has nearly 2 billion users and the wider web is an unending source of relationships. Use social media communication capabilities to forge new relationships; with guest bloggers, influencers, industry contacts, the list goes on. Using guest bloggers as an example, their article on your website is great for your SEO in terms of a difference in content and external (and hopefully internal) links. Regarding social media, you’re combining yours and their reach with twice as many people seeing your content, and hopefully linking. All great for SEO.
Consider Keywords
Keyword research and implementation can be lengthy and time-consuming but if done correctly, the SEO benefits they bring are worth the investment. So, if you’ve spent all this time, effort and money on keywords why not transfer that knowledge over to social media? Let’s not cram our posts and tweets full of hashtags and keywords but be mindful of wording. Carefully craft your social media posts to include keywords and you can increase the reach of your messages.
What next?
As with anything related to search engine optimisation, we must make an educated guess due to the ever-changing algorithms. But we know that by using both SEO and social media strategies symbiotically, you’ll have more chance to get your brand out there in front of your audiences and hopefully help with your page rankings too.
With increased visibility comes the opportunity to make your brand more credible. If your website and social media is full of engaging, on-topic content then it will encourage people to share. By sharing, you’re getting out there into the digital world and people will start to recognise your name. The more your brand is seen, the more credible it’ll seem and that could boost your page authority.
These tips and tricks might not sound important enough to take time in your busy day to put them in place but, trust us, they are. And we get that, and that’s why at drumBEAT Marketing we do all this stuff, so you don’t have to. By taking the time and making the effort to put these steps into place, your SEO and social media will begin to compliment one another like a well-oiled machine.
