4 Surprising Ways Social Media Impacts SEO
Social media is great for many things: staying on top of world news, watching videos of very cute owls, and letting your grandma keep tabs on you. But did you know that social media can also help with your SEO? If you are familiar with SEO, you probably know that there is no surefire way to guarantee improved rankings or increased traffic. Sure, there are best practices to abide by and things to stay away from, but SEO is an ever-changing industry. Mastering SEO involves constant trial-and-error and continuous testing.
While many SEO gurus have argued over the impact of social media and whether or not it truly has an effect on rankings, most people now agree that overlooking social media means missing a powerful strategy component. Social media and SEO are undeniably interwoven, as both represent a brand’s overall online presence. Both SEO and social media are organic strategies that rely on unique content and user experience to engage potential customers and build brand awareness. Here are four ways to improve your online presence via social media and SEO:
1) Optimizing Social Media Accounts for Search
Admit it. Not only have you Googled yourself, but you also scour a plethora of social media platforms before any date. When you do a Google search, you can’t miss the laundry list of Facebook accounts, Twitter feeds, and Google+ pages dominating the search results. (Also, bonus points if you stumble across the magical high school debate team photo of your date.)
The prominence of social media in our everyday lives makes it that much more important to have optimized Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Google+ pages. It’s imperative to make sure your business’ social media accounts include accurate, up-to-date information. Don’t forget to include your phone number, address, website, short bio, and profile picture on each social media platform.
2) Building Positive External Links
Social media accounts offer a platform for sharing your content and building external links back to your site. Of course, these external links are easier to come by if your content is useful and high-quality.
By sharing your content with your followers, tagging associated people and organizations, and using relevant #hashtags, your content is easier to be seen and shared by the right people.
This encourages a powerful network of sharing and linking that can be traced back to your site. Not only will broadening your network in this way increase your brand awareness, but it will also result in a higher domain authority on Google and other major search engines.
3) Social Sharing
Social sharing is similar to link building in that it improves your site’s domain authority, which in turn has an effect on search engine rankings. Consistent social media posts, updates, likes, shares and retweets can all improve your domain authority. An obvious way to get people to share or like your posts is to place your content in front of the right people via tagging and hashtags.
Anyone noticing a hashtag trend, here? Unlike Trix cereal, they aren’t just for kids. Side note: I can’t remember the last time I ate Trix. The more people you get to interact with your brand, the higher your brand awareness will be, and the more likely people will be to share your products and posts with their family and friends.
4) Become Locally Relevant
Social media accounts provide an easy opportunity to become locally relevant and engage with your community. A great way to do this is to connect with other local brands and companies. If you expect your posts to be liked and shared by the community, make sure you are making an equal effort to like and share fellow community member’s posts. It goes both ways! By connecting with the community via social media, you are building your local presence and notifying search engines of this. You are therefore more likely to come up in locally relevant searches and grow your local brand awareness.
The guidelines above are helpful for anyone striving for a successful social media presence. What many don’t know is how a strong social media presence can also influence SEO and search engine rankings. It’s actually quite simple: the greater your web engagement, content, and user experience is, the more likely it is that you will be able to improve your search engine rankings and overall web presence.
Want more tips on improving your online presence? Read this post on 5 easy digital marketing strategies. If you’re interested in getting our help, learn more about how Perfect Search can boost your brand’s presence on social media here.
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Do you have any specific tips for businesses trying to strengthen their social media presence? When was the last time you ate Trix cereal? Email us at info@perfectsearchmedia.com or tweet us @perfect_search!