It’s nearly impossible to have a solid SEO (search engine optimization) ranking without social media. Both are about organic content that builds an online identity to attract visitors. It’s all about being seen in today’s digital world. A solid social media presence will only help boost your SEO ranking. Here are the best practices to adopt on social media to increase your SEO.
1.Sign Up For All Relevant Social Media
This one is a no-brainer but you’d be surprised about how many businesses just don’t bother signing up for certain social medias. A Facebook, Twitter, and Linkedin page are vital for any and every business. Not only will they give you more of an online presence, which will increase your ranking, but it will also give you more authority and legitimization.
Don’t forget about other social media sites, though. Not every business will benefit from an Instagram or Pinterest page, but many will. If your business has visual aspects consider signing up for these sites as well. You can never go wrong with a Google+ account as well.
2.Build Up Your Followers
The number of followers, connections, and activity your social media profiles have will influence your Google ranking. A company with 100 Twitter followers won’t rank nearly as well as a company with 1,000.
It’s not all about quantity, though. Google can detect the quality of social media follower. This means that purchasing likes and followers through proxy or bots won’t do much to help your SEO ranking. Building up your social media following organically if the only way to go. It’s a slow process, and often frustrating, but it will happen if you continue to post quality and consistent content.
3.Optimize Posts for Searches
This tip rests on your site already having content, but optimizing your current, and future posts, for better search results can be beneficial. Make sure your post has a solid foundation, either in form of a video, an image, an infographic or a link to a link to a detailed article.
Make sure the title is descriptive, accurate and for best results has some keywords in it. Frame your social media post with text that’s looking towards a specific type of search. Maybe it’s a question or a suggestion. For example, if you’re an accountant that wrote a blog about tax deadlines you can make a post with the text saying “are you up to date with all the new tax deadlines?” with a link back to your article. Remember that your content and posts should involve keyword phrases in addition to singular keywords.
4.Increased Social Sharing
Social sharing increased your brand’s authority in terms of Google ranking. It happens when people like, share, favorite, reply, comment and retweet your social media posts. The more people that interact with your social media the more you’ll rank in SEO.
An easy way to increase your social sharing is to ask for it. Offer a reward for people sharing your post. Or pose a polling question where people can “like” if they agree with one result or “share” if they agree with the other. Increased social sharing will also increase your followers, which will send your social media, profiles on a positive cycle.
5.Locally-Optimized Posts
People care more about content that pertains to them directly and engaging yourself with the local community is a great way to achieve this. Major search engines will notice locally specific content. Any time you attend a local event or interact with a local brand be sure to post about it on social media. Make an effort to collaborate with local influencers or attend and sponsor local events. You can even simply create an online relationship with the local community by sharing and commenting on content with local players.
6.Brand Awareness
Branding, SEO, and social media are all intertwined in a complicated, mutually beneficial relationship. As your social media presence becomes greater and more reputable your overall brand awareness will go up. The more people search for your brand the more likely you are to rank.
Increasing your brand awareness and authority can be tricky and there’s no one-way to do it. Having a solid social media presence is the first step, though. Brand awareness is all about being seen and there’s no better way to do that than through quality social media profiles and posts.
7.External Inbound Linking
Social media is great for SEO because it becomes both a platform to promote but also a platform to search. Posting links back to your site and content will gain you more authority and presence in the eyes of Google. Use hashtags and tags to highlight the subject and content related to your links so that when people search on social media your profile comes up.
By posting external links back to your site on social media not only do you create external links but you also increase the probability of other people creating them. People are most likely to share your content after you already have on social media then make the effort to do it first.
8.Regular and Consistent Posts
It’s incredibly important to post on your social media profiles regularly and with consistent type posts. You want people to be able to count on you posting. A big mistake people make is starting off strong but then spot posting regularly. It’s a quick way to lose followers.
You’ll quickly lose followers and engagement on your social media profiles when you stop posting regularly. Commit to posting at least twice a week and consider signing up for a social media management website to help you out.
There’s not a single road map to using social media to increase your SEO ranking but following these simple practices will certainly help. The saying content is king is certainly still true when it comes to SEO. Having quality content on your site and using social media to spread it and your brand will help boost your SEO ranking.
If you have any more questions or concerns about SEO contact us today.