Social media SEO: How social media strategies can boost your SEO
Although a social media strategy and SEO strategy can be viewed as two separate entities, if the strategies align, you can use social media to support your organic efforts and boost your SEO.
A social media strategy refers to the process of creating, posting and optimising your content for social media platforms whereas an SEO strategy refers to the process of optimising your website and its content so your site appears high on the search engine results pages (SERPs). Organic and paid social media can also increase your online visibility and in turn generate more traffic to your site, boosting your SEO. We will explore this in more detail in the next section.
To find out how social media SEO works and 10 must-know social media SEO strategies, keep on reading!
So how do social media and SEO work together?
When social media profiles are optimised, they help to boost SEO efforts as they enhance online presence and visibility. Because social media content and profiles can reach a large audience, optimised social media profiles increase referral traffic to your website and also lead to more backlinks. When social media is used to help boost SEO, it is known as social media SEO.
The main advantage of social media is that you can use it to reach your target audience and drive them towards your website (by using an effective social media strategy) no matter where they are in the world, or the time of day
Your social media strategy should align with your SEO efforts; relevant keywords and hashtags should be present in your social media content, as they help enhance online visibility and ultimately improve rankings in the SERPs.
10 must-know social media SEO strategies
1. Optimise your social media profiles
It is useful to look at your social media profiles as extensions of your website. The processes you take to optimise your website can be reflected in your social media optimisation too. For example, by adding the relevant information and keywords in your bio. You should also make sure that your handle/username features a keyword and are consistent across profiles, as this will significantly increase your chances of appearing in the SERPs.
Another optimisation technique is to regularly update your profile. This could involve changing your cover photos, and adding announcements to your page when appropriate. Keeping your account active helps to maintain brand visibility and drive traffic to your website.
As one of the main aims of social media optimisation is to drive traffic to a website, your profiles must have direct links to your website.
More optimisation techniques include establishing credibility through high-quality images, a verification badge and adding social icons to your website that link to your social content.
2. Create consistent, shareable, valuable content
As with any social strategy, you must understand your audience so you can create content that they will resonate and engage with. If your audience doesn’t find interest or value in your content, they won’t interact with or share your content, which will harm your social media results, and in this case, SEO results too. Great content that encourages sharing is an effective way to generate backlinks and direct more traffic to your site, which ultimately increases your chances of ranking in the SERPs.
You should also create content that promotes your website content. For example, if you write blogs for your website, you can use social media to advertise your blog and encourage readers to visit your website to read more. Blog posts are great ways to try and increase your backlinks, as often people will link to related blogs in their content. Backlinks are a crucial part of a successful SEO strategy – so if you haven’t started writing blogs for your industry, it is worth giving it a go. You can then use your social media to promote your posts and get more people to read them!
Top tip: user-generated content is an effective content type when wanting to increase engagement and connect with your audience.
3. Include keywords in your copy!
We know you’ve probably heard the word ‘keyword’ before, but you shouldn’t think of keywords only in relation to websites. You can also apply keywords to your social media strategy too. We mentioned including the same keywords in both your website and social media profile earlier, but you can also include keywords in the copy of your posts to improve discoverability. Keyword research is an essential step here and you can discover keywords that are specific to social media platforms.
For example, TikTok has a keyword insight tool you can use to find the most searched terms within a certain time period. You can then include these keywords in your content and increase your reach. Remember, the more people see your content, the more engagement will increase and the more traffic will be directed to your site.
Image source
4. Invest in paid social advertisements
A great social media SEO strategy will increase reach and in turn, generate more engagement traffic. But how do we do that?
This is where investing in paid social media advertising is crucial. Platforms offer advanced targeting options that help advertisers get their content in front of the right people e.g. those people most likely to engage. By targeting social media users, you not only reach new audiences but can also boost your engagement because you’re reachingt those users who will be interested in your content. An increase in organic website traffic is a positive effect of this.
Top tip: Don’t be tempted to buy followers. This can have detrimental effects on your social media performance as platforms can recognise this and penalise you for it. This in turn will negatively impact your search rankings. Not worth the risk!
5. Work and engage with social media influencers
There is no way you can overlook the power of influencer marketing anymore! 94% of marketers consider influencer marketing an effective practice. If your competitors are using influencers, they will be reaching a much wider audience than you, so it’s about time you jump on the influencer train, it isn’t stopping anytime soon.
Building solid relationships with influencers and partnering with them as a way to promote your content, not only increases your social media reach, awareness and followers but provides more backlink opportunities. When influencers mention or backlink your content/website, you boost your SEO.
It is important to note that influencers need to align with your brand. By this we mean, that partnering with any influencers isn’t likely to drive the results you want, you need to research, understand and decide to partner with an influencer that represents your brand positively and relates to your target audience.
6. Optimise your ‘Content creator’ profiles
It is common for websites to have multiple content creators. What you might not know, is search engines actually crawl ‘creator’ information in addition to the content itself. It is a way of determining site credibility and authority; the more credible the site, the higher its authority and the chance of ranking in the SERPs. Search engines can also pull ‘creator’ information from social media platforms, so making sure their web profiles are accurate and up to date as well as their social media profiles (like LinkedIn) is important.
Top tip: include author bios in every piece of content. Here you can link to their social media profiles.
7. Increase and track mentions
Having a strong online presence is key to SEO success and one way you can use social media to achieve this, is by growing online ‘mentions’. They will increase brand visibility, awareness and positive brand reputation.
You can do this by employing an efficient social listening system. Social listening allows you to understand what your customers are saying about your content and your brand. It also helps you further understand what methods competitors in the industry are using so you can take inspiration from them.
You should keep on top of brand mentions and also keyword mentions (as discussed earlier). By doing this, you can see in what context your brand is being mentioned and re-purpose content to align better within that context. Ultimately mentions help you better understand what type and theme of content you should be making for your audience.
8. Embrace the power of backlinks
At this point, we have mentioned backlinks many times but there is a reason for that – they are critical for SEO and social media SEO. They help your brand establish credibility and authority in the search rankings. To encourage backlinks through social media, you should:
- Create content that users can easily share and is visually appealing
- Utilise the work of influencers
- Consistently engage with your audience – this includes actively responding to comments, mentions and direct messages.
The more engagement and reach, the higher your online visibility. With more visibility, comes to chance of more people seeing and referencing your site (e.g. backlinking!)
9. Leverage platform features (Instagram shopping)
Make the most out of what the platforms offer. 72% of Instagram users say they’ve made purchase decisions based on something they saw on the platform. This shows the power Instagram holds in generating sales. Why is this?
One main factor is the Instagram shopping feature. It allows brands the option to turn their profile into an online shop. You can create shoppable posts by tagging products that will connect users to products on your site, boosting your SEO efforts.
Instagram shopping is an effective way to increase engagement and conversions. Better than that, it is right there, provided by Instagram, ready for you to utilise.
10. Learn from data and adapt your social SEO strategy
Real-time monitoring of your social media performance will help you boost your SEO efforts. How? Because you can see what content is driving traffic to your website and increasing engagement. You can take this information and use it to refine your content strategy. If a certain content format or content theme is boosting engagement, do more of it!
Ultimately, the data will tell you which content is resonating with your target audience. Don’t ignore it- learn from your mistakes and grow from your wins.
Ready to begin your social media SEO journey? Embryo can help!
Here at Embryo our team of paid social and SEO experts can help you create a successful personalised social media SEO strategy that boosts your SEO. What are you waiting for? Get in touch today and get ready to watch your brand move up the rankings. We look forward to hearing from you.
