Use Social Media Marketing to Boost SEO
Techssocial | Social media marketing and search engine optimisation are often seen as two separate tools in the marketing world. Indeed, there are many agencies who have been successful concentrating just on social media marketing, or by focusing on the best way to optimise. However, the two are more closely linked than you might think.
In his Forbes article, Jayson DeMers points out a few of the ways in which the two are linked. He states: “The total number of followers and connections your social media profiles contain does have a significant influence on your rankings.” He also makes clear that Google can determine the quality of your followers, meaning that they have to be genuine followers rather than just bots. That means there is a real tangible benefit on SEO from social media marketing, as long as the social media connections you make are genuine.
This leads on to the second way social media can boost your SEO. If your site is mentioned or linked by people on social media, this will also boost your ranking. If your post is popular, then it will be favoured by Google in the top sections of its search engine result pages. Things like increasing your brand awareness, locally optimising your posts and promoting social sharing can all have a positive effect on your page rank too. That means if your social media campaign genuinely involves your audience, your SEO will benefit too.
Cornelia Cozmuc’s 2016 study of 23 million shares found that social signals – such as posts about a company on Facebook – have a profound effect on SEO. She found that a strong presence on social networks had a direct link to better ranking. She found: ‘The smaller the rank number is (so, the higher up the website) the higher the chances are that the average presence on social network is larger.’ She also found that micro-content between 1 and 50 words was the most effective at being shared. Keeping your social media messages short and on point will help their effectiveness.
Both social media marketing and search engine optimization work well individually, but they work better together. If they are both done well, they can create a ‘feedback loop’ that increases a brand’s profile. The better the social media marketing, the better the search rank on Google. The better the search rank on Google, the more people will interact with the company through social media marketing.
This is not the only benefit. Adweek pointed out that skills can be transferred between the social media marketing and SEO as well. SEO is all about choosing the right words to make your business more visible and easier to find. If you start using the language in your titles and meta-tags in the body of your copy as well, it will help to boost your ranking.
Of course, you have to be careful. You have to be aware of when you should use words that will help your pagerank, and when those words will make it seem like your company is populated by spambots. Use as much SEO language as you can, as long as it feels natural. The word social is baked right into Social Media, so you need to remember that you are talking to people, not just putting in the right words for an algorithm to give your page a boost. It’s something that is important to remember when writing meta-tags too.
It seems likely that the link between social media marketing and SEO will only grow in the future. It’s in the interests of both Google and Facebook to reward people who take the extra time to grow social media groups organically. It means that people are more likely to see ads for products and services they actually want. Not only does that mean there is a higher rate of conversion, it also means that Facebook and Google don’t annoy their user base as much with endless inappropriate ads. The important takeaway is that your social media marketing has to be genuine. If it doesn’t connect with people, you won’t see benefits from your campaign or an additional SEO boost.
Hemant is Digital Marketer and he has 6 + years of experience in SEO, Content marketing, Infographic etc.