Over 90% of marketers say the main benefit of social media marketing is gaining online exposure. If you want to boost brand awareness online, it’s not enough to stay social, though. Instead, you can use search engine optimization (SEO) to boost awareness, web traffic, and generate fresh leads.
In fact, you can use both social media and SEO to accomplish your digital marketing goals this year.
What is the connection between SEO and social media marketing, exactly? How can the two work together to benefit your business? Keep reading to find out.
Understanding the relationship between social media and SEO could give your business a competitive edge. You can gain more online exposure, boost your credibility, and generate fresh sales. In fact, your ROI could improve as well.
Give your business the advantage this year. Keep reading to discover how to use SEO and social media together today!
1. Boost Brand Visibility
First, it’s important to note that Google doesn’t consider social media a direct ranking factor. However, social shares could impact your search engine optimization strategy. Social media can give you an opportunity to reach more customers and attract them to your content.
You could find new opportunities for link-building, which can also benefit your search engine rankings.
One of the biggest benefits of social media and SEO is their ability to boost your online visibility. Generating more brand awareness and sharing your content could help you generate links. Gaining quality backlinks can boost your domain authority.
As your domain authority improves, your rankings on search engine results pages (SERPs) can as well.
It can take an average of six impressions before you start generating brand awareness. Without awareness, people won’t recognize the valuable content you can offer. They’ll fail to recognize your experience and expertise as well.
Instead, you can use social media to share your valuable content. As more people read your posts, you could generate brand awareness and recognition.
People could even continue coming back to your website to read your posts. In fact, 56% of marketers believe personalized content promotes higher brand engagement. Another 59% prefer familiar brands.
You can use social media to boost your brand’s visibility. More people will see your content. They might even share your content with others.
As more people read your content, you can increase the chance someone will link to your content. Then, you can generate more backlinks, benefiting your SEO strategy.
Start creating informative, high-quality content on your website. Then, share it on social media.
You can generate more content promotions, encourage bloggers to link to your content, and boost your ranking.
Diversity
As part of your link-building strategy, it’s also important to generate links from a diverse range of sources.
Improving your visibility with social media marketing could help you generate diverse backlinks. Trying to accrue diverse links manually can take time and energy. Instead, you can simplify the process through social media.
Make sure you’re creating content people want to share. Offer valuable tips and tricks people can’t find anywhere else. Then, find multiple ways to share your content through social media.
For example, you can reformat a blog post into an infographic, short video clip, or animation. Then, link to the blog post within your social media post.
You’ll start appearing in front of a diverse audience. As you amplify your reach, you’re also delegating many components of your link-building strategy.
You won’t have to do as much work in terms of promotion and outreach!
2. Improve SEO Ranking Signals
Remember, social media alone isn’t a ranking factor. However, social media could impact other metrics that impact rankings.
For example, Google looks at your website’s dwell times and clickthrough rates when determining SERP rankings. It also considers your bounce rate. You need:
- High dwell times
- High click through rates
- Low bounce rates
Otherwise, a high bounce rate indicates people are leaving your website without exploring your content. Google might think you’re failing to meet the reader’s search intent as a result.
Instead, you can use social media to attract people to your website. Offering content your customers want to read will keep them on your site. You can also use interactive content (such as polls and quizzes) to boost your clickthrough rate.
As these metrics improve, your SEO ranking can, too.
Use social media to drive more traffic to your search engine-optimized content. Your social media visibility, brand awareness, and engagement will rise. As more people engage with your content, you can strengthen your SEO rankings.
Take the time to research your target audience. Then, create personalized content with your customers in mind.
About 74% of consumers get frustrated when content has nothing to do with their interests. In fact, 80% of consumers are more likely to buy from brands that offer personalized experiences. Personalization can drive as much as eight times the ROI, too.
Today, about 50% of consumers would pay more if brands provide personally relevant content.
Personalizing your content can increase how long people spend on your website. Your SEO rankings could rise as a result.
Meanwhile, your ROI could improve, too.
3. Speed Up Content Indexing
Immediately after creating a blog post for your website, share it on social media. Sharing your content right away can help you drive traffic right away. Google will then receive a signal that the page needs crawling and indexing.
Using social media can speed up the content indexing process.
If you’re not generating traffic to your content, Google might not realize you have anything new to share. It might take time before it crawls and indexes your site again. You could miss a chance to boost your ranking as a result.
Instead, keep this mutually beneficial relationship between social media and SEO in mind.
While social media can boost your SEO rankings, high-quality content could boost your social media engagement. Generating more engagement on social media can help you generate a loyal following. Then, you can keep connecting with customers, giving you more opportunities to boost sales.
4. Improve Your Content Strategy
You can also use social media marketing to better inform your content marketing strategy.
As you post content on social media, take the time to review your post metrics. How many people are liking, commenting on, and sharing your posts? Consider which posts generate the most engagement.
Then, spend more time and energy developing similar posts.
Social media gives you an opportunity to test different forms of content. Once you determine which posts gain the most engagement, you can adjust your content strategy. You can develop more content you know will appeal to your target audience.
Then, you can boost your clickthrough rates and dwell times on your website. As these metrics improve, your SEO rankings will, too.
What if people aren’t interacting with your social media posts? There’s a chance your captions are weak. You can use that information to improve your SEO titles and meta descriptions, too.
Content marketing is the backbone of an effective SEO strategy. Without strong content, you can’t boost your ranking.
Using the data you gather can help you make more informed decisions in the future.
5. Increase Search Demand
Sharing your high-quality website content on social media can help you boost social media engagement. It can also help you generate more traffic to your website. As you gain more traffic, you’re also gaining visibility.
Gaining more visibility can increase your search demand. A consumer might remember reading one of your blog posts in the past. They’ll search for your website directly through Google.
As people search for your brand name, your search demand will improve. Generating more search queries that are related to your company could boost your ranking.
In fact, consumers might start seeing your Google My Business (GMB) listing on SERPs. They can click on your listing to find your address or website. You could generate more website traffic or foot traffic as a result.
Remember, generating more website traffic from different sources can benefit your SEO ranking. Google will see that people are looking for your website directly. You’ll continue improving your ranking, helping you reach even more potential customers.
6. Understand Your Target Audience
One of the most important SEO trends to consider right now is search intent. Google’s search algorithm allows it to better understand what consumers need. Then, Google can provide consumers with search results based on their intent.
If you’re not writing with the consumer’s search intent in mind, you could struggle to boost your ranking. Consumers now expect personalized content. If you’re not writing content based on their needs, they’ll look elsewhere for help.
Your bounce rate could rise, which could hurt your rankings.
Social media marketing can help you better understand your target audience. For example, what questions do people ask when commenting on your posts?
You can use their social media comments to create content that answers those questions.
You’ll have an easier time appealing to the user’s search intent, which can boost your SEO ranking.
7. Gather Keyword Research
You can also use your social media strategy to gather keyword research. For example, you can use their comments to understand the language they use. Then, you can use that same phase as a target keyword.
Gathering keyword research can inform your content marketing strategy. You can create content with specific search queries in mind. For example, you can find long-tail Q&A keywords for your posts.
In fact, about 8% of all search queries are phrased as questions. About 12.29% of search queries have featured snippets in the results. Meanwhile, the number one result generates nearly 32% of clicks.
Using long-tail keywords could help you appear for voice searches or featured snippets. Featured snippets appear at the top of SERPs. You can boost your visibility by reaching the top of SERPs.
You’ll rank ahead of the competition and generate more website traffic as a result.
Consider which hashtags your social media audience follows, too. Pay attention to the topics they’re interested in. Then, create content with those topics in mind!
You can find more tips for gathering SEO keywords here.
8. Discover New Ideas
Discovering the connection between social media and SEO can help you discover new content creation ideas, too.
Pay attention to which social media posts your followers are already liking and sharing. Consider the latest social media content trends as well. For example, video content is becoming more popular, including Stories and Reels.
In fact, video content represents 80% of all internet traffic. Virtual and augmented reality traffic could increase 20-fold, too.
You can start creating video content for your blog posts. Then, you can share your videos on social media to boost engagement. Consumers will then visit your website to explore the other content you offer.
You can remain relevant by following the latest trends, helping you stand out from your competitors.
9. Gain SERP Space
Your social media accounts will rank on search engine results pages. Social media channels like Facebook and Instagram can become prominent citations. It’s important to keep your SEO accounts updated as a result.
Make sure to optimize your social media account profiles. For example, you can add keywords to your profile descriptions. Make sure to link your accounts to your website, too.
As people click on the link to your website, you’ll generate more traffic, which could boost your SEO rankings.
10. Drive Website Traffic
In order to boost your SEO rankings, you’ll need to show Google you’re a relevant resource. To prove you’re relevant, you’ll need to generate website traffic from multiple channels.
Above all else, social media marketing can help you generate more website traffic.
You can get your brand out there, draw more traffic, and start boosting your ranking over time.
As you rank higher, you’ll also appear in front of more consumers. You can increase your chances of generating fresh traffic as a result. Then, your ranking will improve even more!
Step Up Search: 10 Ways Social Media and SEO Work Together
Understanding the connection between social media and SEO could give your business a competitive advantage. Don’t risk ranking behind the competition. Instead, start using social media and SEO integration to take the lead.
You don’t have to build your social media marketing and SEO strategies alone. We’re here to help!
Contact our team for a free, no-obligation consultation today.
