Social Media Strategies to Boost Your SEO

Originally published: May 23, 2021 11:57:47 AM, updated: November 19, 2022 12:00:00 AM

Digital marketing is a complex art that involves different methods to promote your brand online. Two of the most popular ways to do so are social media marketing and search engine optimization (SEO). Social media marketing utilizes social media platforms to share your content with its active users. Meanwhile, SEO is the process of applying certain steps on website development and content publishing to make your site rank higher in search engine results.

Why Is Social Media Important for SEO?

You can probably see how well these two work. The question, though, is how they work together. Is social media even important in SEO?

The answer is yes. While social media posts might not have a direct impact on your website’s performance, it still has a significant impact on its search rankings through the reasons that we are going to share with you below.

Social Media Will Help You Build Backlinks

One of the biggest contributions that social media has to offer to SEO is the number of backlinks that it can provide. These links can come from both your own posts and user-generated content. These links can then signal search engines that your website has valuable and relevant content. Aside from that, it can also invite more viewers to drop by on their most active platforms.

As an added bonus, we have found our social media efforts to have increased the leads received by our lead distribution software as well.

It Raises Your Brand Awareness

Another great thing about social media SEO is the attention it brings to your brand. A regular posting schedule is essential to keep reminding your online audience about your company consistently.

Here’s an extra tip: Make an effort to connect with your social media followers. Reply to their comments. Answer their questions. Take advantage of the opportunity that social media brings to connect with your global audience. Aside from that, you are also making your brand more memorable in the process with each positive customer interaction you create.

How to Use Social Media to Indirectly Boost SEO

Optimize Your Social Media Profile

Take note that the keyword here is “memorable”. The most effective way for people to remember your brand is to make your posts stand out from your competitors. Set them apart, and while you’re at it, why don’t you optimize your social media profile as well.

Make sure everything is branded, from your cover photos, profile photos, background images, and other types of media content that you will add to your page. Don’t forget to add your links to your website and other social media profiles as well. Finally, apply some uniformity on your posts, from profile descriptions, catch-phrases, images, and other brand materials.

Use Various Profile Strategies for Each Social Media Channel

Here’s a big no-no when it comes to SEO and social media marketing: assuming that what works for one platform will work on all of them. It doesn’t. Each social media platform has a different approach. For instance, while you can always share images and videos on Facebook, its strength lies in posts that appeal to emotions. At the very least, it should be enough to get people to react to them. Plus points if you can get people to share them.

Instagram, on the other hand, relies heavily on image quality and interest given that it is mainly an image-sharing platform.

Finally, Twitter requires a more concise written post with strict limits on character numbers.

Is Social Media a Google Ranking Factor?

As Gary Illyes of Google puts it, "The context in which you engage online, and how people talk about you online, actually can impact what you rank for." So yes, social media is a ranking factor and an efficient one at that.

More Tips on How to Improve SEO with Social Media

So now that we know that it works, here are even more tips on how to improve your SEO social media optimization:

• Turn your digital efforts into an ecosystem. It is ideal to make all your posts related to each other. For instance, you might want to expand on a statement you have shared over Twitter with a little bit more information on Facebook. You might want to link both to your website as well where they will be able to find even more detailed information about the previous social media “blurbs”.

• Invest in social media marketing tools. Juggling multiple social media platforms can be a real pain. Fortunately, there are a number of related online tools already that not only allow you to plan your posts in advance, but also post them automatically during the exact time that you have previously set.

• Less Is Sometimes More. Finally, those who don’t have access to such tools will find multiple social media profiles challenging to juggle. Hence, we recommend just sticking to a couple of accounts first. Doing so can help improve the quality and consistency of your posts instead of being stretched too thin.

Good luck!