In the online world, SEO is crucial for the success of your business, especially in a congested online environment where the competition is fierce.
But what are the things that you want to prioritize if you’re going to boost your SEO?
Well, according to Google, content, and links are the two main factors in ranking sites in search.
That’s why building high-quality content and links are vital. Quite surprisingly, there are also other tactics that you can implement on social media to improve your SEO efforts as well.
How Important is it to Rank High In Google?
SEO is the cornerstone of your online success, but when is a site truly optimized? If your website isn’t visible on the top page of Google, then you might be getting enough traffic on search engines.
According to data, sites that are on top of search results manage to grab 36.4% more traffic than lower-ranking sites.
Your site’s real estate position on search results can make a difference whether your business turns out to be a success or a failure. You need to show up whenever a user types a keyword or a phrase on search results.
Social Media Becoming an Essential Part of SEO?
We live in a world where conventional advertising strategies aren’t enough. Social provides you with networking and outreach opportunities. That kind of interactivity is advantageous for your business for a variety of reasons.
You’ve probably noticed that shift from traditional advertising to online advertising as the increased use of the internet grew. Now, more and more people are advertising online than conventional methods like radio, print, and television.
This brings us to the question, is social media an essential part of SEO?
Well, although Google has stated that social media signals aren’t used as a ranking factor, there are various ways in which social media can affect SEO.
Source: LYFE Marketing
Social media isn’t a direct ranking factor in the search algorithm of Google.
However, a strong correlation is found between the positive social signals your search’s success. That’s precisely why you need to consider social media in your SEO strategy.
In this post, we’ll look at the nine ways how social media can boost your overall SEO and bring more visitors to your site:
1. Share Effective Content
If you’re producing high-quality content and it doesn’t reach the right audience, then all your efforts are futile.
This is where social media comes in. It empowers you to create and promote high-quality content and various social media platforms, widening your reach and boosting your brand.
Although the links found on your social shares don’t have the same SEO value as the backlinks that you get from more authoritative sites, you can still play a role in on-site engagement as well as bounce rates.
If you’re regularly producing effective content, then these engagement metrics will send search engines a positive signal. Also, check out the best digital marketing tools that you should take advantage of.
2. Use Calls to Action
When it comes to promoting your content, whether its a landing page, white paper, or blog article, always include a strong and clear call-to-action. You need to ask or guide your audience on what to do.
You can place effective CTAs like “leave a comment,” “share this post,” or “click on the link below,” to help users take action. Just don’t use CTAs too much, though. Otherwise, you’ll look pushy and spammy, which will affect your click-through rate.
As much as you can, try to go with the 80/20 rule, where 20 percent of your posts should include an enticing call-to-action, while the remaining 80 percent should be focused on creating quality content.
3. Treat Social Media as a Search Engine
Like social media engines, social media platforms are highly searchable. That’s why you need to come up with a solid SEO strategy that helps people search and deliver your content.
Conduct your keyword research, plan your content properly, then use the right keywords for your posts, hashtags, and headings.
Also, see to it that you optimize your profile just like you’ve optimized your website, adding SEO keywords on your links, bio, caption, summary, and on the text itself.
Consider your keywords as the stepping stone in helping you come up with high-quality content for your website. Chances are, a user on Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter might come across them- like, share it, and eventually become a follower.
4. Complete Your Social Media Profile
Users aren’t just searching for your brand and company. They’re also for the people that are behind the brand.
Aside from that, your profile on social media should have the necessary information the user wants to know, and what your position is on the industry. If you lack all this relevant information, there’s a high chance that they’ll go with your competitors instead.
Place all the information users need to know in the social profile of your business. You also need to manage your profiles correctly.
Here’s what you need to do:
Regularly update your contact information, images, videos, CTAs, and content for every social media profile that you and your company have.
Create a positive reputation online by engaging with your audience through content and other types of interaction on social media. Doing so improves your traffic, which can benefit your SEO.
Learn to understand your settings on social media and use them to understand the audience of your social media profiles.
Make sure that your posts are regularly monitored and managed because sending out the wrong message to your audience can send out the wrong message.
If your business has several branches, make sure that your location on various social media platforms like Facebook and Youtube are also regularly updated.
5. Partner with Influencers
Influencers help you raise brand awareness and effectively promote your products are opposed to paid advertising. At the same time, it also helps boost your SEO efforts.
Why is it effective?
It generates natural backlinks for your websites
The quality of your link profile plays a huge role in your rankings on search engines. Your link profile is made up of both your internal links and backlinks.
In fact, according to Moz, the authority and quality of websites that link back to you are one of the predetermining factors in search engines.
Meaning, you have to earn links from domains that have that are of high-quality and are related to your site. However, that’s not an easy thing to do.
Working with influencers helps you have better quality backlinks. Most of these bloggers and influencers have their site or have access to high-quality websites.
When these influencers create content that’s linked to you, you can create a high-quality backlink for your site.
Its massive reach
Influencer marketing is all about reaching the right audience in your niche; through credible individuals (influencers), most people seem to trust.
Given the success that influencers have on social media so far, as a marketer, you need to invest more in influencer marketing. It can take your business into new heights and improve your engagement and sales.
6. Post Consistently
Whether it’s a new blog post or a new product listing that you have, you need to inform your audience on social media and post consistently.
The most successful brands on social media don’t post sporadically or after a couple of months. They don’t start strong only to lose momentum in the long run. By posting consistently, and sticking to a regular posting schedule will help strengthen your social media presence online.
Also, almost all social media platforms favor consistency. Pick what works best for you, whether its posting three times a week or once a day. Create a regular posting schedule.
When you already have a schedule, make sure that you post on the same days of the week — for instance, posting every Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday. You can post at the same time of the day as well.
When you post on a regular schedule, algorithms will favor your posts more, allowing for more people to see them.
7. Engage with Your Audiences
Your content is important to social media. But it’s not just enough that you post your content and then walk away.
Social media is also about establishing meaningful connections and engagement. So, you need to foster the right relationships and gradually gain the trust of your audience.
Here are some effective ways on how you can engage with your audience:
Starting and participating in conversations and discussions.
Regularly commenting on posts.
Sharing relevant information.
Sharing user-generated content.
Asking and answering questions.
Addressing issues, concerns, complaints, and criticism
Showing your customers that you appreciate them.
8. Use Google My Business Listing
According to a survey, 97 percent of customers look for local businesses online. So if you want to perform well on local search results, you need to be critical on how you create your listing on Google My Business.
Update all relevant information about your business, such as your store hours, phone number, business address, and so on- and you’re good to go!
Always keep your business information up-to-date and relevant on both Facebook and Google My Business, because it greatly helps!
Here are also a few mistakes to avoid:
Not making your profile on social media public.
Creating a profile on Facebook Instead of a Facebook page.
Your Facebook URL isn’t customized.
Not using the name of your business as your Twitter name, or the name of your page on Facebook.
Not uploading meaningful file names on social media channels that will help you rank better.
Copying/duplicating the content of other websites. Although your time and other resources are a bit limited, Google doesn’t like this.
If there’s an easy and quick way to improve your site’s SEO, it usually means that it’s a black tactic. Google doesn’t want you to use these unethical techniques to gain rankings and highly discourages them. Aside from that, you can also end up penalized and lose your rankings altogether if you implement them.
9. Promote Relevant Links
Although social media doesn’t quality as a dofollow external link, sharing your on-site content through social can help improve your visibility.
Apart from that, people are more willing to share your content if they find it interesting and relevant enough to share with their followers, which helps boost the credibility of your business and simultaneously widening your reach.
However, it seems though that social engagement does play a role in the ranking factor of Google. According to a report by Moz, social signals comprise at least 3.47% of Google’s ranking factors.
Although this percentage is a bit small, the fact remains- Google recognizes the importance of social media engagement. It also considers this, especially in how it determines rankings. So, the content that you share on social media does matter, especially if you want to boost your engagement. You can also utilize social media to promote internal links.
Because of its relevance, it usually has higher engagements, helping you grow your organic traffic over time as your followers share it in their personal network, helping drive in traffic when these users follow your link.
Integrating your Social Media with SEO
Social media isn’t merely there to boost your search rankings organically. It also has other benefits that your business can take advantage of. As this trend is catching on, consider these as you go on crafting your content on social media.
Although these two might be quite different, it’s still possible that you integrate your social media marketing with your SEO efforts. Mostly because these two help each other out. Think of it this way- your social media should act as an extension of your SEO. It helps boost your reach, your brand visibility, brand identity, as well as your influence online.
So, why not jump into the bandwagon, because it’s worth a shot?
Read More: 9 Ways to Improve Your Site’s Rankings Using Social Media by Kevin
Read more: theguidex.com