How Social Media Helps SEO

All busi­ness own­ers under­stand the impor­tance of social media SEO, but not all of them under­stand how to apply the prin­ci­ples suc­cess­ful­ly. That’s why we are here to assist with busi­ness growth through online mar­ket­ing strate­gies that get you noticed and increase ROI. If you’re expand­ing your brand through social media plat­forms, you’ll want to ensure that it blends well with your over­all social SEO strat­e­gy. As award-win­ning inte­grat­ed mar­ket­ing experts who’ve been help­ing busi­ness­es through­out the coun­try, we can show you how to use social sig­nals to your advantage!

What is Social SEO?

Social SEO refers to the con­cept of social media links and plat­forms play­ing a promi­nent role in search engine opti­miza­tion. Although it may sound com­plex, mak­ing SEO improve­ments is a straight­for­ward process. Improv­ing SEO is about opti­miz­ing con­tent in a way that results in high­er search rank­ings. Sim­ple adjust­ments like ensur­ing that all fields in social media are filled, mak­ing share­able con­tent avail­able, and cre­at­ing Google Busi­ness and Local pages can make a huge dif­fer­ence in your brand visibility. 

What are Social Signals? 

Social sig­nals refer to likes, shares, and views of social media posts that sig­nal to search engines and your plat­form fol­low­ers that your con­tent is rel­e­vant. These actions help increase your brand vis­i­bil­i­ty and lead to a snow­ball effect with mil­lions of shares, likes, and views. Social sig­nals are an impor­tant mar­ket­ing met­ric that indi­cates what con­tent res­onates with your tar­get audi­ence. Although Google may not con­sid­er social sig­nals as an offi­cial mar­ket­ing met­ric, high­er rank­ings show that your con­tent is high qual­i­ty. Exam­ples of social sig­nals include: 

• Face­book likes, shares, and comments
• Twit­ter likes, shares, and comments
• Insta­gram likes, fol­low­ers, and comments
• Linkedin con­nec­tions, links, shares, and comments
• Youtube views, thumbs up, and comments

There are many ways to improve social sig­nals in addi­tion to social media. It’s not enough to build a social media pro­file and expect poten­tial cus­tomers to find you. Reg­u­lar and con­sis­tent post­ing and engage­ment show your tar­get audi­ence that you are ready to talk about your brand. 

Includ­ing rel­e­vant and cur­rent con­tent that is relat­ed to your busi­ness and indus­try helps to instill brand con­fi­dence. When you’re on var­i­ous dig­i­tal plat­forms, it’s best to respond to com­ments in a time­ly man­ner. This lets your audi­ence know that you care and want to engage. Last­ly, imple­ment­ing social media plu­g­ins makes it much eas­i­er for your audi­ence to share your content. 

The Impact of Social Media on SEO

Social media is an impact­ful com­po­nent of all aspects of any mar­ket­ing strat­e­gy. It is a pow­er­ful plat­form on its own but can take a dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing strat­e­gy to anoth­er lev­el. When you under­stand how social media SEO is affect­ed by var­i­ous aspects of mar­ket­ing and brand­ing, you will nev­er look at your pro­mo­tion­al activ­i­ties the same way. This is how social media can impact your rank­ings in search engine results: 

• Con­tent per­for­mance — Con­tent is king but mak­ing sure peo­ple see it is more impor­tant. Social media plat­forms can be piv­otal places to share con­tent oth­er than a busi­ness web­site. When you link your blog con­tent to social media plat­forms, you can eas­i­ly expand your social SEO and social sig­nals. The more peo­ple are engaged with your con­tent, the more ben­e­fit you’ll see from search engine rankings. 
• Back­link oppor­tu­ni­ties — When more peo­ple view your con­tent, there is more oppor­tu­ni­ty for back­links to be cre­at­ed. This is espe­cial­ly true when you’ve posi­tioned your­self as a leader or expert in your indus­try. By oth­er peo­ple link­ing to your con­tent, it dis­plays that your con­tent is con­sid­ered high­ly valu­able and will result in high­er rankings. 
• Rank­ing in search engines — Social media pro­files can be ranked as well. In a local busi­ness search, your web­site and social media pro­files will like­ly show up. When using brand­ed search terms, an indi­vid­ual may pre­fer to vis­it your social plat­forms for a dif­fer­ent per­spec­tive on your busi­ness. Hav­ing a cur­rent and engag­ing social media pres­ence can make the dif­fer­ence for some­one unsure if they want to do busi­ness with you. 
• Web­site traf­fic — Increas­ing web­site traf­fic can be accom­plished in many dif­fer­ent ways with social media. The results from social SEO take time to emerge ful­ly. In most cas­es, you won’t see the impact ini­tial­ly, but you may see changes in a few months. If you are new to imple­ment­ing an SEO strat­e­gy, you may see more results in the begin­ning. For busi­ness­es with an estab­lished online pres­ence but strug­gling to see results, an engag­ing and active social media plat­form can make a difference. 
• Build trust — Social SEO helps to build trust between you and your tar­get audi­ence. Cus­tomers don’t want to buy from a web­site but from a busi­ness they feel com­fort­able with. Since there are so many options avail­able, you will stand out from the com­pe­ti­tion if you’ve invest­ed time in trans­par­ent rela­tion­ships with your tar­get audi­ence through var­i­ous social media vehi­cles. With­out an active social media pro­file, you may be con­sid­ered a risky and untrust­wor­thy busi­ness. Build­ing an online rep­u­ta­tion makes your brand appear more approach­able and interesting. 

We can Boost your Social SEO

The links shared on social media have a pos­i­tive effect on your social SEO. Over time, these links add up and sig­nif­i­cant­ly impact your brand expo­sure and indus­try influ­ence. Offer­ing some­thing of val­ue online like pod­casts, videos, blogs, and info­graph­ics will enhance your brand recog­ni­tion in the long run. One of the best ways to increase social SEO is to make it effort­less to share your con­tent. This will increase the like­li­hood of your con­tent being shared many times over. 

What are social sig­nals with­out social media? If you are lost in cre­at­ing a dig­i­tal strat­e­gy for your busi­ness, you are not alone. Cre­at­ing a dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing plan that improves your social media SEO can be time-con­sum­ing. As award-win­ning mar­ket­ing experts with over 20 years of expe­ri­ence, we’ve helped build and grow numer­ous online rep­u­ta­tions. We take the con­fu­sion and work out of social SEO while you focus on oth­er aspects of your busi­ness. Some of the ser­vices we offer include: 

• Mul­ti­me­dia — We devel­op engag­ing and unique online expe­ri­ences using dig­i­tal, social, and mobile media tech­nolo­gies to launch your new prod­ucts and ser­vices. We deliv­er every­thing need­ed to cre­ate strate­gic, engag­ing, and high-impact online reputations. 
• SEO — At the heart of any suc­cess­ful dig­i­tal cam­paign is strate­gic SEO that con­verts web­site traf­fic to sales leads. The first step in chan­nel­ing these leads is dri­ving online traf­fic to well-opti­mized sites. With a unique com­bi­na­tion of design and con­ver­sion rate opti­miza­tion, you can gen­er­ate a pos­i­tive return on ad spend, email mar­ket­ing, social media, and oth­er online mar­ket­ing tools. 
• Web devel­op­ment — Your web­site is your first impres­sion. It plays an impor­tant part in your over­all social SEO. It should prop­er­ly posi­tion your brand for suc­cess. We devel­op var­i­ous web­sites, includ­ing cor­po­rate, e‑commerce, respon­sive, cus­tom, and redesigns. We also help com­pa­nies with web­site maintenance. 
• Oth­er ser­vices — We pro­vide oth­er online mar­ket­ing ser­vices like video devel­op­ment, email cam­paigns, e‑newsletters, and direct mail campaigns. 

As we return to busi­ness as usu­al, you’ll want to make sure your online pro­file is in good shape. We’ll help you every step of the way and part­ner with you as you build your SEO strat­e­gy. Give us a call today for a free mar­ket­ing audit to get started.