The idea that social media can improve traffic to your site goes without saying. It is also well known that SEO also attracts visitors to your website. However, SEO and social media are connected by more than a common goal. Your performance on social media is intrinsically linked to your search engine ranking. To fully understand how to measure the success of social media strategies, you need to understand how it can impact on SEO. With a more detailed understanding of social media successes, you can better hone your approaches.
Get as many followers as you can
The number of followers on social media has more impact than just a large audience for your content. The total number of followers have a significant impact on rankings. There is absolutely no point thinking you can buy in followers using black hat strategies. Google have honed the algorithm to spot proxy followers. This means you are going to need to organically grow your followers to do anything for your search engine rankings.
This is a fair way to judge your authority as a brand and a provider of products and services. Each follower you gain organically acts as an endorsement. If you have a million followers on Twitters and a million Facebook likes, then you deserve to be perceived as credible.
Getting your followers is a slow process but is best achieved through consistency. You need to regularly post quality content and encourage conversations and direct customer engagement. The more you can encourage current followers to engage with potential followers, the quicker you will grow your key numbers.
Inbound links are crucial
Inbound links offer you a sense of authority. As with followers, each link is considered a badge of respectability for your site. Gaining inbound links from the same sources again and again will start to count against you. Therefore, social media can serve as variety in the channels that link back to your site. You could even post your content on already popular threads – and use hashtags to make your contribution more visible.
Get your social media on SERPs
The best of all worlds would be to get your content on social media to show up on search engine results pages (SERPs) too. This mean optimising your posts with keywords that searchers would potentially use to find such content. This means that your social media content needs to be managed as closely as your website copy.
The more popular the social media channel the more likely it is to appear high in search engine results pages. This helps to prioritise efforts made by your marketing content manager.
To optimise social media, you need something that will attract attention. This can be a video or an infographic or maybe even a link to an article on your website. It is the title for this content that is going to draw the traffic – therefore, name it accurately and descriptively.
Sharing is good
People who share your content are achieving the same as external links. People sharing suggests you are credible, as it acts as a verifiable external source that says your content is worth visiting. It is not only shares that are going to impact on your ranking. If you can get likes, favourites, replies, retweets – you can increase the authority of your website and so increase your ranking.
The best way to get shares is to be shareable. This means producing items that people are likely to click on and then think friends will want to click on too. It might also mean offering a reward for sharing – maybe entry into a prize draw or a prize for the 1000th share or something similar. Interactive surveys also encourage shares and likes more than passive posts.
Local SEO
More and more search engines and social media are dictated through location. Finding ways of including your location in your posts also helps to increase your ranking. You need to give updates that emphasise where you are located. This might mean advertising local events or interacting with other local brands.
It could be even easier than this. Get your company involved in local events and then post images and articles about the event. Invite residents to comment on your posts – more complex would be inviting social influencers from your local area to engage with your social media and your site. However, their popularity then becomes your popularity.
In short, you need it clear where you are based in the country to appear in localised searches. The more ways you can get your location out there – the more searchable you are.
Boost your sense of brand
Social media is all about increasing awareness of your brand. Google enjoys pushing known brands up the rankings on search pages. Therefore, you need to make the most of what social media has to offer to get known and get spoken about around the internet. The more you can increase chatter about your brand, the more awareness there is and the more you are likely to seen as a company that should be at the top of any search list.
The relationship between brand and Google searches is complex. For those without a brand presence it feels like a horrible catch 22. You need to be known to get to the top of searches, but you need to get to the top of searches to get known. Social media is the means by which you get this elusive brand awareness.
Overall
Both SEO and social media require the organic building of an audience. Both require you to produce quality content consistently. Both require you to know your audience. However, search engine algorithms make the connection between SEO and social media even more important. You can seriously improve your credibility and your authority using Facebook and Twitter to show you are a company with influence.
