Social media may or may not have a direct impact on your website’s ranking on search engines. But the truth is that social media channels play an incredibly critical role in helping businesses get their content to a larger online audience. They can provide your business exposure like nothing else.
So, when SEO Services are used in tandem with social media, there can be significant results. These include higher engagement signals, a boost to backlinks, and better rankings, among other things.
Moreover, a deeper understanding of SEO strategies and efficient social media marketing can help companies perform better on both these channels.
So, what is social SEO?
Social SEO is the utilization of social media sites by a business to boost its visibility, sales, and organic search rankings. While social media might not necessarily directly impact SEO, it can help build trust between customers and businesses through social media signals such as likes, comments, and shares. These are vital signs that search engine giants use to rank a website.
Inadvertently, these are critical factors that can drive brand awareness and visibility, boosting traffic to a website.
Reasons social media is an irrefutable part of SEO
A huge volume of diverse content is published and dispersed online every single day. And when your content is shared across various social media platforms, it indicates that the content on your website is relatable and relevant to your target audience.
Following are a couple of other significant reasons social media SEO strategies can make a difference to your business.
- Social media profiles rank on search engines.
Your business’ social profile can have a significant impact on your search results. For instance, a company that sells shoes will undoubtedly have a Facebook or Twitter page. So, when a user searches for their brand name, their social page will come up in the search results. Typically, more people prefer to browse the social media profile of a brand over their web page. So, they are just as likely to click on a business’ social account as they are to click on their website.
- It can lead to more inbound traffic.
When people share your content on social media, an increasing number of potential customers will click on the links that lead back to your website. This increased traffic can benefit your business vastly. That’s because when optimized aptly using SEO services, your website can captivate the visitors’ attention and convert it to sales. Therefore, even the content you share on your social media handles needs to be SEO-optimized for maximum returns.
- Social media postings get indexed faster.
Many businesses wisely use SEO on their social media pages to get the content indexed faster. There is a simple way this works. Once a fresh piece of content is out, they will quickly share it across social media platforms such as Facebook or LinkedIn to get clicks on it. This will give Google and other search engines the signal that a new page needs to be indexed.
- Social SEO can help you identify your target audience.
Among the best things about social media, SEO gives you an insight into your audience. You will learn about their interests, thoughts, beliefs, and opinions, among other essential things. You can study their reasons for getting online, the kind of keywords they search, and their typical browse times. This will help you segregate audiences and identify the ones that can do business with you. You can use this information to craft products, services, and content tailored to meet these audiences’ expectations.
- Social media sites are great for keyword research
Social media platforms can function as search engines too. Scores of people look up various keywords each day, trying to find services or products they need. You can research this trend to identify keywords that can help you rank. This social media search data can be used along with a robust SEO strategy to understand what people are searching for, the kind of links they click, the conversations they are having, and the type of things they are likely to buy.
- You can get new content ideas from social media channels.
To conceive brand new content ideas may become challenging after a point. In such cases, you can use social media to find the latest topics that interest people. Then, have your SEO professionals study the comments section for original thoughts. You can use the most prominent and sensible ideas among all the comments and form your content around them. SEO services can help by optimizing the content to enable it to rank on search engines.
- Technical SEO can boost social performance.
One of the most exciting ways SEO and social media work together is by tracking how users routed from social sites interact with your website. Your bios, outbound links, and other social properties about your website must be correctly coded and tested. Your website may experience a high bounce rate if they do not match, as most visitors leave instantly.
Also, it is essential to make a note of the fact that SEO-optimized content must be made more accessible to share socially. Users should find it convenient to share your content with a single click on several different social platforms. This is very important as the more times a piece of content is shared across social media sites, the higher the number of signals to search engines. In the long run, this will enable you to rank higher and faster.
Final thoughts
Social media may not impact a website’s ranking by itself. But together with SEO, it can make a considerable difference. That’s because social media is increasingly becoming an integral part of a brand’s online presence. Also, just because social media does not impact rankings directly at present, that does not mean that it won’t do so in the future either. So, intelligent brands will most likely continue to build their presence online using various social media handles.
And remember, to rank anywhere, your content must be of the highest possible quality. Moreover, it must engage audiences and keep them hooked, looking for more such quality content from you.