As someone with a passion for both SEO and social media, I am always looking for ways they coincide and how they can work together to achieve results. Although social media does not directly affect SEO rankings, when it comes to enhancing your brand’s visibility in search engines, there’s no doubt that the link between SEO and social media is significant. For instance, the links you distribute across social media platforms can help to boost brand awareness, and users following those links can then increase traffic to your website. Social media is also a reliable approach to increasing the reach of your content and reaching a larger audience. Of course, it seems there are endless factors that can play into site performance and SEO results. Even so, it is important to be well-versed in various areas of the digital marketing space and understand how they connect, no matter your expertise. 

Using Social Media to Build Links

If you use social media to your advantage, you may gain quality backlinks and direct actual visitors to your website. This could involve links in shared content or even links that are gained from outreach and networking relationships. Although social shares do not have an impact on search engine results pages (SERPs), linking social profiles to specific pieces of information can be a powerful source of new visitors. Continuously posting and sharing content throughout your social networks can help your brand to occupy more of a SERP, because it is very probable that you’ll get a social media page alongside the main site as one of the top results of a brand search. This tactic can also help you to remove competitors or unfavorable information about your organization from result pages. Overall, brands that are engaged on social media can either passively or actively build more backlinks, and consistently publishing material implies more exposure, which might lead to connections or relationships with people who may link to you in the future.

Optimize Your Socials for SEO

Another method of using your SEO and social media skills to work together is through an integrated keyword strategy. When appropriate, you should practice applying your website’s keyword strategy to your social media accounts. Although you don’t want your tweets and status updates flooded with keywords, being intentional with how you phrase your posts may help you boost the reach of your content, and content creation is one of the most effective ways to improve your SEO results. Another tip for fully optimizing your social accounts is to take advantage of all of the details you can add about your company or brand in the biography or “about” section of your profiles. Including location information, relevant keywords and a link to your site can help boost the quality and visibility of your social profiles.

Establishing Social Relationships

Establishing online relationships is critical for generating inbound links and attracting social media attention. Using social media to create relationships can lead to opportunities for link-building opportunities and build trust among your audience. Developing relationships can also give you the opportunity to humanize your brand and improve your reputation. Utilizing social media as an active link-building tool by engaging in conversations with individuals in your field can make you more likely to get clicks and relevant traffic to your site. When encouraged, the same people can give your content a much-needed boost.

As mentioned above, you might not see a huge effect on your SEO results when you implement these social media practices. However, Google Analytics recognizes when your social media accounts are a significant traffic source to your site, and receiving a lot of traffic to your website helps search engine crawlers consider your brand to be credible. They may then prioritize your search result above others resulting in an increase in visitors. A 2016 study from cognitive SEO analyzed Google rankings in conjunction with likes, shares, and comments across various social media sites and discovered that sites with higher rankings had more social traffic. Creating shareworthy and relevant content is also pivotal because if consumers or trusted companies read your social media posts and share your website’s link, your page authority may increase.

Ultimately, leveraging your knowledge and skills in both SEO and social media can help you gain results and traffic from a wide variety of sources, and you may even see a difference in your site’s rankings as well. No matter what your primary focus in the digital marketing space is, consistently assessing how the different channels supplement each other is a skill that is becoming more and more crucial as the digital world evolves. The next time you are establishing an online business or performing an SEO audit, consider how you can use social media and SEO to support one another.