The Social Media/SEO Connection: Part 2

In my last blog, we covered the basics of how important it is to combine social media and SEO. As difficult as it can be to focus your efforts on different marketing aspects, we are here to help. Here’s how you can combine the forces of SEO and social media to develop an improved digital marketing strategy.

1. Add Social Sharing Buttons to Your Website

Search engines like Google use social media sharing data to influence search rankings. You can encourage visitors to share content on social media and interact more with your brand by adding social media share buttons to your website or blog. These will not only increase traffic to your social media platforms but can also play a part in where your website ranks in search engines.

2. Include Links in Your Social Profiles

Links in social media posts like Facebook status updates and tweets traditionally contain no-follow links, which means they basically carry a notice sign telling search engines “Don’t Count Me!”. They don’t pass any SEO authority to the site they are linking to, and while this is starting to change, the key takeaway is to understand the URL in your social media account’s bio is a follow link. Make sure you are taking advantage of opportunities to include those links!

3. Integrate Your Keyword Strategy

The line between social media platforms and search engines is a blurry one. Remember all that work you did on your keyword strategy? Try applying it to your social media engagement. We’re not telling you to cram your tweets full of keywords, but be aware of how you are wording your social media posts. When you can incorporate keywords into your content in a meaningful way, you can increase the reach of your messages.

4. Use Links In Your Videos and Presentation Content

Social media is about sharing valuable content and that includes platforms like YouTube for videos and SlideShare for presentations. When you share on these types of networks, you can incorporate links to related content from your website or blog posts. This will help you build inbound links and increase traffic to your site.

5. Optimize Your Profiles

Your social media profiles can be thought of as an extension of your website. Just as you’d optimize your website page titles and descriptions, make sure your social media profiles mirror the strategy you’ve implemented for your website’s search engine optimization.

6. Build Relationships

The web isn’t about just blasting information; it’s a channel for communication. If you’ve had any experience in sales, you know that relationships are an important part of closing the deal. The same goes for SEO and social! Relationships can be huge for driving inbound links and drumming up social media attention. Building relationships with your customers on social media can also open opportunities for link-building and guest blog posts.

Social Media Marketing, Meet SEO

When you combine the forces that are social media marketing and SEO, you increase your chances of audiences discovering your brand and increasing your Search Engine Results Page (SERP) ranking.

As the traffic to your website grows, search engine crawlers will notice and the credibility of your brand will increase. You may rank higher than others, so as you post valuable content to your social media, you might see a boost in traffic.

Additionally, if consumers or other credible brands see your social media posts and share them on their own pages, that could boost your page authority which can also help move you up in ranking.

If you focus only on SEO or only on social media, you are missing out on a beautiful partnership that could greatly improve your rankings.

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