Did you know that three out of four people are on social media? And if your business isn’t active on social media, then you’re missing out on key potential prospects for your business. But how does your social media marketing fit into your overall digital marketing strategy?
Don’t worry if you don’t know the answer to that question because you’re in the right place. Keep reading to see how social media can work with your SEO strategy to grow your reach and build your business.
Does Social Media Affect SEO?
Every day the Google bots crawl billions of web pages and rank them using over 200 different factors. And technically, social media isn’t one of those hundreds of factors in the Google algorithm.
So, social media doesn’t directly affect your search engine optimization. But, it does seem to correlate to improving your authority. And that is one of the hundreds of factors assessed in SEO.
When you have an active and engaged following on social media, they will likely click through your website. And, hopefully, they will then share your content on their social media profiles. The search engines notice this activity and then take it into account when they determine their rankings.
When you create your social media marketing strategy, you need to remember that your content is all about your readers at the end of the day. Yes, optimizing for the algorithms is important, but you still need to keep your readers in the foreground of your strategy.
How Do You Use Social Media Marketing for SEO?
So, how can you implement this when we can’t pinpoint exactly what will improve your SEO? We need to look at the signals coming from the search engines themselves. The fact is that if you search for your business, your social media profiles could rank in the search results.
And when you build your following on social media, you can encourage them to share your content. This will lengthen the lifespan of your articles and improve their visibility. Unfortunately, too many business owners track the wrong metrics and worry about how many likes or followers they have.
And these factors won’t affect your SEO in any way. So stay focused on the metrics that will affect your SEO, like engagement and social sharing. These will help you move the needle in where you rank in the search engines.
Simple Social Media Best Practices to Help Your SEO
Now you know you need to include social media in your search optimization strategy. Let’s cover some basic best practices that will improve your overall strategy.
Optimize Your Profiles
Your social media profiles are the number one place where you can improve your search engine optimization. Be sure to include the main target keyword you want to rank for in your business.
Are you a plumber in Albuquerque, NM? This needs to be highlighted in all your social media profiles. As we mentioned, you can rank your social media profiles.
But it would help if you told Google what you want to rank for. And the best place to do that is in your profile.
Remember That Social Media Can Be a Search Engine Too
While Google is the authority when it comes to search engines, it’s not the only one. And each social media platform has its own search features. So, if you’re ignoring these important features, then you’re missing out on possible new leads and potential customers.
People want to do business with companies they trust. And you can build that trust through engagement on social media. One of the best ways your future customers can find you on social media is through the strategic use of hashtags on sites like Twitter and Instagram.
So don’t ignore these important features as you create your social media plan.
Create Quality Content That’s Easy to Share
The biggest factor for signaling to the search engines that your site should rank is quality content. And your social media followers can help you boost your authority when your readers share your content. Focus on creating quality content first and foremost in your digital marketing strategy.
And when you publish your content, make it easy for your readers to share. It’s easy to do this with social sharing plugins and a simple call to action to encourage your readers to share your content.
Backlinks Still Matter
While backlinks aren’t as prevalent in most people’s SEO strategy, they’re still important. Again, we return to the main concept of showing the search engines that your content is relevant and authoritative. So, while old backlinks tactics such as leaving comments on someone else’s site or buying backlinks are thankfully a thing of the past, it’s still important to create links to your site.
And social media is a great way to create external links to your content continually. Creating valuable infographics about your area of expertise is also a great way to create easily shared content. Everyone loves to include a great infographic, so if you can create one that many other people will want to reference, you will see your authority increase.
Don’t Ignore Your Captions or Image Alt Text
These are key areas and prime real estate where you can rank for your targeted keywords. Google ranks all the images on your website, but they can’t rank them if they’re titled “img145.jpg” or something else equally ambiguous. So, take the time to create an alt text for each of your images using the focus keywords and their synonyms for that article.
Your captions are another key place where you can tell your story. They need to grab your readers’ attention and immediately compel them to share your article. Remember, while we all want to rank on the search engines, our content should still focus on our readers. And our reader’s actions will tell the search bots that the content is worthy to rank higher.
Work With an Expert to Ensure That You Have a Winning Strategy
You can see that your social media marketing is key to improving your rankings on the search engines. But you don’t have time to spend all day on Facebook. You have a busy company to run and customers to help. So, don’t try to do it all yourself. Work with an expert to help you improve both your social media marketing plan and your search engine optimization strategy.
So, don’t try to do this all yourself. Work with an expert Los Angeles SEO company that can guide you each step of the way. When you work with a digital marketing service, you get their years of expertise to help you create and implement your SEO and SMM strategies.
SEO and Social Media Marketing Are Even Better Together
As you can see, your social media marketing does play an important role in your SEO game plan. And, as you build your business, working with an expert digital marketing company can help you scale your plan.
So, don’t let your SEO and SMM stay separate entities. Use them in conjunction to further your reach and grow your audience.
For more great information on this and other articles, check out the rest of our blog.
