Nowadays, it’s hard to step into the digital marketing space without hearing about the importance of search engine optimization (SEO). But in the push towards SEO, social media is often overlooked.
Social media doesn’t just have the potential to drive brand awareness and engagement. It can also work hand-in-hand with your marketing efforts, driving your SEO to greater heights.
Let’s look at the relationship between these two marketing channels, including how to improve SEO with social media strategies.
How Does Social Media Impact SEO?
Many marketers treat social media and SEO as separate forms of marketing. But if used correctly, they can work harmoniously to improve all parts of your SEO performance, including your organic search results.
With that being said, it’s important to recognize that social media doesn’t directly boost your search rankings.
However, the links shared across social platforms can increase brand exposure. This can add up if you generate enough engagement on social media. These shares don’t contribute directly to SEO rankings, but many shares can send a message to Google that your brand is worth paying attention to.
This concept is backed by a study from 2020, which shows that people sharing your content on social media can generate social signals that show these posts are useful to your target audience. In turn, that can make Google’s ranking algorithm look more favorably on your brand.
Reasons To Integrate SEO and Social Media
If social media doesn’t directly impact SEO rankings, then why are social media and SEO integration so important? Here are some of the top reasons why bringing SEO and social media together can be so good for your business.
Improve Content Marketing Performance
60% of marketers create at least one piece of content a day. With the thousands of content marketers out there, in any given niche, that number is only getting higher and higher.
Getting to the top of the Google rankings with all that competition is challenging. That’s why it’s important to use every tool in your arsenal, including social media.
Unlike search rankings, social media platforms show your content to a set number of people — however many followers you’ve amassed so far. So while there are still algorithms to contend with, you have a better chance of getting content in front of interested, engaged eyes.
Sharing website or blog content on social media can maximize site visitors and engagement, all of which plays into Google’s ranking system. The more people pay attention to your content, the better you’ll fare in the algorithm.
Increase Brand Awareness
The ultimate goal of SEO is to increase the visibility of your brand. Factors like website and content ranking can help with this, but they’re not the only way to bring more attention to your business.
You can bring more traffic to your website by posting relevant, SEO-optimized content. But, most importantly, you can improve brand awareness and brand authority, making your business the go-to resource for your target audience.
Gain Valuable Backlinks
You may already know how important backlinks are to SEO marketing. But do social media links help SEO?
Yes, social media does provide an opportunity for link-building. In fact, your social media page can actually qualify as a backlink. For example, if a social media page with high engagement is linked to your website, search engines will note this as a high-authority backlink, helping boost your website in the algorithm.
It can also improve your chances of getting backlinks on your other content. When you reshare content like blog posts on social media and put it in front of new eyes, you increase the chance that it’ll be linked to another source.
5 Ways To Boost SEO With Social Media
Too many businesses still put SEO and social media marketing into separate strategies without acknowledging how they can work together as a powerful system. When done the right way, social media marketing can be a valuable asset in your SEO strategy.
Here are the five best practices for leveraging social media in your SEO strategy.
1. Craft High-Quality, Shareable Content
To get the most out of social media for SEO, you need to create content worth sharing. Especially in today’s crowded social media space, the right content has to stand out to attract and engage an audience, let alone inspire shares.
It can be challenging to keep up with the fast-paced social media world. But don’t be tempted to prioritize quantity over quality. You might be churning out more content, but low-quality content may not give you the results you’re looking for, like improved rankings, greater brand recognition, and authoritative backlinks.
2. Use Influencers To Build Partnerships
Social media isn’t just about sharing posts with your followers. Just like the name suggests, social media is about being social. Therefore, to maximize your SEO strategy, you must build genuine relationships with others.
These relationships, if nurtured right, can lead to potential partnerships with influencers. A great influencer can create powerful, attention-grabbing content that matches your brand’s audience. The better the content, the more shareable it’ll be, which can bring even more SEO benefits.
3. Use the Best Social Media Platforms for SEO
To see the best results from social media SEO, you need to use the right platforms. While all social media platforms are designed to grab attention, not all of them are equally effective for SEO.
The most important factor to consider is the target audience. Different people spend time on different channels. So even if you put all your effort into one social media platform, your work could be wasted if it’s not reaching the audience it needs to reach.
So take a moment to consider: What is your target audience? What kind of demographics are you aiming for, and where are they likely to spend their time online? For example, the younger generations may spend more time on Instagram or TikTok. Or if you want to target working professionals and CEOs, LinkedIn may be a better platform to focus on.
Choosing a platform best suited for your audience can have real SEO benefits. When your content gets attention — and, most importantly, shares — it signals to Google that the content is worth reading. Conversely, if you’re not posting content on the right channels, you’re far less likely to catch the attention of search engine algorithms.
The more a highly engaged audience circulates your content, the better you’ll perform in terms of social media SEO. This can extend to your accounts too. For example, if your Instagram page attracts a large following and has high engagement, it’s more likely to come up under search results for your company name.
4. Use Social Listening To Analyze Competitors
Social listening is an SEO tactic that uses monitoring tools to find mentions of your brand. Using these tools, you can track what’s being said about your business. But most importantly, it can keep track of your competitors.
These tools allow you to monitor everything your competitors do, from their guest posts to their backlinks. This lets you analyze your progress compared to your competitors, including weaknesses you can take advantage of.
5. Integrate Keywords Into Your Content
Keywords are already a part of your content marketing strategy. But for many brands, the thought of keyword integration begins and ends with blog posts. If you aren’t using keywords in your social media content, you could also miss out on an opportunity to rank higher. Social media accounts also show up on Google rankings — not just your website.
Do your due diligence to find great keywords, and then find ways to sprinkle them naturally throughout your content. This is especially important for platforms like LinkedIn or Medium, where you have plenty of words to work with. But don’t forget the value of captions on platforms like Instagram, Facebook, or Pinterest.
SEO and Social Media: Making the Most of Your Strategy
No matter your SEO goals, you can’t afford to leave social media out of the picture. The best strategies connect the dots between SEO and social media, combining elements of both to generate top-notch results. Combined with the right actions, SEO and social media can create a powerful, comprehensive digital marketing strategy.
Ready to make the most of social media in your SEO strategy? We’re here to help you get the results you’re looking for. When you partner with Sure Oak, you get access to highly-specialized, results-driven SEO services and dynamic tools that can help you master the Google ranking algorithm. Learn more about what we do or schedule a free SEO strategy consultation to see the expertise for yourself.
