How Social Media Can Improve Your SEO?

Is Social Media a Ranking Factor?

No, search engines do not deem social media as a ranking factor. And it is safe to conclude that social media channels do not directly affect your SERP ranks. 

Google overlooks the backlinks from social media, and these links do not add authority to your site. 

But you cannot ignore that social media indirectly gives an upward nudge to our SEO efforts. And several factors correlate social media marketing with SEO. 

CognitiveSEO surveyed 23 million social shares on popular social media platforms. And they were able to spot an equivocal correlation between social shares and SEO ranks. 

The survey concluded that Google appreciates the social shares, likes, and comments on your posts. And this consideration has an indirect positive impact on search engine rankings. 

Does Social Media Support SEO?

Yes, social media signals and engagement contribute indirectly to your SEO performance. 

Social media sharing gives good exposure to your content and improves brand recognition. 

When your content is shared across social media, it draws good traffic. And if this traffic engages well with your content, it reflects a positive page experience. 

Search engines will appreciate these positive user metrics. 

Google will further consider that users find your content sharable and deem it valuable for relevant search queries. 

Social media marketing also contributes to your brand reputation. If a brand gains good social engagement and enjoys a positive user sentiment, it will likely earn some SEO value. 

Social media sharing also increases your content’s reach, and users might love linking to it. If you gain quality links from other sites, it adds to your page authority. 

How Can Social Media Improve Your SEO?

1. Encourage Users to Share Your Content and Make Sharing Easy

While you compare your marketing opportunities on social media, content sharing must top your checklist. 

Content sharing on social media helps you find a significant reach. Users actively share good content with their followers in feeds, stories, and other social platforms. 

You, as a marketer, must make sharing simpler for the readers. Add social sharing buttons to your content and encourage social sharing through CTAs. 

Moreover, when you share your blogs on social platforms, try to boost their reach. You can add CTAs like “Share this Tweet,” “Tweet Your Reply,” “Share with Your Friends,” etc. 

The simpler your audience finds sharing your content, the better its reach will be. 

But do not jump across your basics; your content quality shares the prime credit in your marketing success. 

Produce content that intrigues your audience; they must find it valuable enough to share.  

Also, get crafty about your social media captions and post headlines. Your audience must not browse past your post without interacting or reacting to it.

2. Utilize Social Media to Attracting Backlinks and Better SEO Value

In 2020, the total number of social media users surpassed 3.8 billion active users. 

Meanwhile, the total audience that was leveraging the internet was 4.5 billion. This ratio shows that 84% of internet users are on social media. 

If you place the cards right, a significant part of your target audience is active on social media. And this audience is capable of pushing your business across the winning line.

Therefore, focus on earning valuable backlinks through social media.

Produce visually rich content that is engaging, valuable, and highly shareable. The more users share it on social media, the better its reach.

For example, Take a look at this post from Gucci.

Your content will also reach users who want to link to it from their sites. And this will help you gain relevant backlinks that translate into better SEO value.

Aim at producing viral content and encourage social media followers to share it. You can even promote your content through Facebook Ads or on LinkedIn.

3. Establish a Valuable Follower Base for Productive Social Media SEO

Your followers will be your special forces when it comes to social media. And you might not want to buy or trade off them for a certain sum of money.

E.g., Gaenzle Marketing has gained more than 400 followers on Twitter, and its CEO, Anthony Gaenzle, has gained over 10.5k.

Instead, you must build your follower base through a strategic plan. 

• Your followers must resonate with your target audience
• They must actively engage with your content and posts
• They must share your content and show interest in your stories 

You must not focus on the number of followers but consider building a follower base that is more interested in your brand. 

Some ways to build your social media follower base include:

• Encourage your site visitors to follow your social media accounts
• Share special discounts and VIP access with your social media followers
• Add your social media profiles along with your business details to your listings

Also, produce engaging posts and maximize their reach using hashtags, keywords, and increased engagement. These posts will engage new users on social media and convince them to follow your brand.   

4. Utilize Searchable and Sharable Options on Social Media Websites

As you utilize social media to grow your content’s reach, enable the shareable and searchable options. 

The first step is to make your official business account public on several social media platforms. It ensures that any user can see, share and engage with your posts or stories. 

You must make your content searchable when social media platforms have search engines. 

One way to do this is to use the right hashtags, keywords, and alt text for your posts. So when users use relevant hashtags or keywords, they can find your post and engage with it. 

Another crucial point is that Facebook posts appear in search engine results. So, have you made your Facebook posts eligible to rank in the SERPs? 

Here is how you can do it: 

• Just visit your Facebook profile and click on the Settings tab. 
• Here you can find the Facebook Privacy Settings option. 
• Click this option to enable “Do You Want Other Search Engines to Link to Your Timeline?”

5. Use Relevant Keywords in Posts for Search Engine Optimization

Keywords uphold crucial SEO value. And this can be summed up by the underlying fact that keywords make your content searchable. 

Optimize your content and post cations for relevant keywords. 

When you add keywords to your pins on Pinterest, your pins rank higher for these keywords in SERPs. 

Another social media platform that utilizes keywords extensively is YouTube. Whether you wish to search for a video on YouTube or Google, keywords work as your fishing rod. The same goes for Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, etc. 

In combination with keywords, you must also add hashtags and Alt Text to your posts. These two work amazingly for platform-specific searches on various social platforms. 

6. Build and Analyze Your Social Media SEO Strategy

As you utilize social media for SEO, you must brainstorm and devise the right social media strategy. 

You need to jot down your social media activities that can contribute to your SEO. You need to plan the schedule and implementation of these activities. 

The next step is to evaluate each of your social media efforts. 

• Strike the right balance between organic and paid social media activities. 
• Track which strategies are just exhausting your social media marketing budget. 
• Analyze the result of your social media activities on your site SEO
• Examine the ROI from your efforts and prioritize accordingly
• Deprioritize or eliminate activities that are eating into your efforts and budgets
• Set clear goals with your social media strategy and measure your progress. 

Each social media platform offers analytics to help you optimize your efforts. 

You might want to track your posts’ engagement (likes, comments, and shares). Moreover, you might want to see the percentage of clicks on your posts for referral traffic.

Platforms like LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram offer even deeper analytics for your business.

Search Console and Analytics would further help you measure the reflection of social media efforts on your SEO. 

7. Build an Active Interaction Channel with Your Audience 

While some brands post regularly on social media, they still fail to generate much-needed engagement. 

See how Apple is replying to customers on Twitter.

That said, just scheduling your posts might not boost your post engagement. Instead, you need to interact with your audience actively. 

You need to be highly particular about your social media content. You cannot keep promoting your business or add a sales perspective to each of your posts. 

Instead, your posts must also interact with and engage your audience. A significant part of your social media posts must highlight your brand’s mission and vision. 

The audience must connect with your brand’s ideology and wouldn’t mind turning into your brand advocates. 

Many brands try interactive stories, live sessions, and even share user stories on their channels. 

The ease with which your followers interact with your brand, the higher will be your post engagements. 

They will actively share your content, and you can expect higher reach and more backlinks to your content. This surely adds some propulsion to your SEO efforts and results. 

8. Collaborate with Social Media & SEO to Grow the Brand’s Popularity 

Let’s not forget the huge potential of social media to generate brand awareness. 

A majority of businesses start their branding campaigns with social media marketing. And it works immensely for both B2B and B2C businesses. 

Social media platforms help you reach a significant amount of relevant audiences. This audience can turn into your followers or customers. 

Common consumer behavior is that they buy from brands with which they are familiar. And social media marketing is a credible way to grow your brand familiarity.

Your brand familiarity is also social proof, and it positively affects SEO. 

Some effective ways to grow your brand familiarity include: 

• Growing social media engagement with contests, giveaways, and interactions;
• Utilizing influencer marketing to boost reach and engagement
• Leveraging social media ads; Even if these ads fail to bring you traffic, the ad impressions will boost your brand familiarity. 

Google considers brand popularity signals. And brand popularity also yields you a high click-through rate on your SERP listings. 

Best Social Media Websites to Use for SEO:

#1 Reddit

Reddit attracts a significant number of internet users in the US, making it the 7th most popular social media platform in the US. 

Reddit houses over 1.2 million communities that cover topics ranging from tech, history, and space to so many more things in between. 

What’s more, 59.7% of Reddit users are from the US. And a majority of users visit Reddit to gather news updates and intriguing content.

That said, you can attract whopping traffic if you appear on the first page of popular subreddits. Here, users can upvote, share, or comment on your posts.

But the Reddit community isn’t welcoming any promotional content. And so, here are some tips to utilize Reddit for your SEO:

• Search and follow the most popular subreddits related to your domain.
  
• Use search terms like “biggest challenge,” “how to solve,” or “tips” to search for problem-solving content ideas. 
  
• Video content works amazingly on Reddit, but ensure it is engaging and not promotional.
  
• You can find popular conversations where you can answer common questions. Also, subtly add your links to gain traffic. 
  
• And even message Redditors who started the thread. Request him to check your content and engage with it. 

#2 LinkedIn

LinkedIn is among the most popular social networking platforms across the world. 

It brings huge success potential to b2b marketers, recruiters, job seekers, businesses, etc. 

If you still utilize LinkedIn as a resume-sharing platform, you might miss its SEO-building capabilities. 

LinkedIn can provide a huge targeted reach to your content and attract leads. 

So, you need to start optimizing your brand’s profile on LinkedIn. Optimize the profile image and cover photo and add a crisp and clear profile headline.  

LinkedIn targets a more intellectual audience, so you must plan more valuable and engaging content. 

• Don’t forget to utilize popular hashtags, catchy captions, and searchable keywords for your posts. 
  
• Try collaborative posts and post mentions gaining more engagement on LinkedIn posts
  
• Use LinkedIn pulse to rank your content in search engines and backlink it to your site. 
  
• Use LinkedIn Live and share posts in LinkedIn groups to increase post reach. 

#3 Medium 

Medium is an established content submission and sharing platform with a good DA of above 90.

And so, the blogs hosted on Medium are more likely to rank higher in the SERPs. 

A majority of businesses today include Medium in their content distribution strategy. There are multiple reasons to utilize Medium to enhance your SEO value: 

• Sharing search engine-optimized blogs on Medium allows them to rank faster. It is owing to Medium’s high DA. 
  
• When you add backlinks to your Medium blogs, these are Nofollow links. But you still get referral traffic through these links. 
  
• You get significant brand awareness when your Medium blogs rank high in the SERPs. Moreover, as your article ranks high in the search engine results, more webmasters will link to it.  
  
• Medium articles generally draw high engagement. And you must utilize these by replying to the comments. 

#4 Twitter

Twitter is popular and loved by a large population of internet users. The platform can offer your site considerable brand awareness, traffic, and SEO value.

Suggested Reading: Benefits of Twitter: How Your Business Can Gain and Grow

See how this Dallas real estate company is making use of Twitter.

Here is how to utilize Twitter for SEO:

• Keep your brand’s username and handle consistent with your brand name. Introduce your brand and its mission within 160 characters in the bio and link to your site.
  
• Use hashtags in your tweets and keep their optimal number up to 3 hashtags. Also, promote your branded hashtags for events and new product launches. 
  
• Twitteratties love trending and creative content. Strike the right cord to gain plentiful comments and retweets. These wins will translate into significant referral traffic. 
  
• Tweets also rank on Google, so you must optimize them for keywords.

#5 Facebook 

With over 2.85 billion users, Facebook is undoubtedly the most widely used social networking platform. 

Follow these tips to leverage Facebook’s huge audience for SEO:

• Optimize your brand’s official profile, make it public, and highlight its offerings in the bio. 
  
• Select the “Do You Want Other Search Engines to Link to Your Timeline?” option in the Facebook Privacy Settings. This makes your Facebook posts and profiles searchable in the SERPs.
  
• Create keyword-optimized and creative captions to capture attention and engagement. 
  
• Also, create Facebook pages and join groups to get more reach. These will add to increased referral traffic. 
  
• Facebook Live, Stories, and Messenger further allow you to boost interaction. 
  
• Facebook Ads can help you earn a targeted reach of up to 190 million users.

#6 Pinterest

Pinterest is among the most popular search engines for visual search. 

Here are tips for capitalizing on your Pinterest marketing efforts:

• Keywords like “ideas,” “tips,” “DIY ways,” etc., work especially well on Pinterest. The audience here loves to stay ahead of the curve with future trends and styles. 
  
• Use catchy and detailed Pin descriptions. Use Rich Pins to promote your articles.
  
• Use vertical image Pins for the large mobile audience.
  
• Optimize your Pins with keywords to rank in the search engines
  
• Claim yourself as your site owner and create original content Pins to rank higher on Pinterest
  
• Pin at regular intervals instead of Pinning all at once. 

#7 Quora

Quora is a highly active and popular social forum. Answers on Quora gain a prominent presence in search engines and offer huge SEO value. 

The community has over 19.8 million pages indexed pages. 

You need to find the popular questions related to your business. And create valuable answers that get good upvotes and views. 

Akin to your site content, do formal keyword research for your Quora content, and optimize it.

As your answers rank on Quora, they are most likely to appear in search results. In these answers, you can add backlinks to your site, which will grow your site traffic and offer considerable SEO value. 

#8 YouTube

YouTube isn’t just the biggest video-sharing platform and a powerful visual search engine. 

Here are tips to utilize YouTube’s SEO power:

• Add relevant channel keywords and descriptions. 
  
• Create short and definite video titles of less than 55 characters. Also, add keywords and tags to it. 

• Make the initial part of the description optimized for CTR. And add keywords and your site links to the description for referral traffic. 
  
• Add transcript and caption to your video for search engine bots. 
  
• Promote your videos in your blogs and other social platforms.

#9 Tumblr

Tumblr is yet another popular microblogging site that hosts over 200 million blogs. 

The community offers an exclusive advantage to marketers by offering Dofollow links. 
Here are some tips to gain an SEO advantage:

• Create the right category tags, customize Title Tags, and optimize with relevant keywords.
  
• Customize your post URLs for better SEO
  
• Try to make your posts relevant to the audience for reblogs. 
  
• You must add your page links to your posts, and when people reblog your posts, you gain more backlinks. This directly adds to your SEO advantage.