Social media platforms are no longer just means for people to keep in touch with their childhood friends and post updates of their lives. They are a billion-dollar business that have even re-shaped the way brands promote themselves.
No longer is it enough to take out ads in the paper or create a TV commercial to sell products or services. Consumers want to directly interact with the brands and businesses they patron.
But if your focus now is improving your SEO efforts, should you be dedicating time to your social network accounts? Does social media even have an impact on SEO?
The short answer is: yes, and quite a lot!
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3 Major Ways Social Media and SEO Go Together
With over 25 million Australian users on Facebook alone, it’s not surprising to see many brands and companies setting up social media profiles and being active on them, trying to create a really engaged following as a way to support business goals.
But for SEO, social media can help:
1. Support a Content Marketing Strategy
This is the most common way brands use social media. After all, SEO and high-quality content go hand in hand, and social media platforms are a good way to promote said content to your target audience.
The effect is more direct since you don’t have to rely on people making the first step in the search engines for them to be exposed to your articles, blog posts, and other content.
If you are working on improving your search ranking, having keyword-optimised content can help generate some traffic to those pages, which helps support your SEO efforts. Search engines view traffic coming from social media as quality traffic, which can help boost your visibility tremendously.
Additionally, the fact that you have an established audience likely means users will stay on your page and consume your content, lowering your overall bounce rate, another big ranking factor Google looks into!
2. Improves a Business’s Branding Efforts
Many business owners dream about having a strong brand that’s instantly recognisable to consumers, such as Apple, Pepsi, or Amazon. A branding strategy is meant to help your name, logo, motto, and business identity become more known in the industry and among consumers.
One method of increasing brand awareness is, of course, through social media. You not only get to grow a following, but you can also work on how people perceive you, through the direct interactions that are supported on these platforms, from the comment section of your posts to direct messages.
But how does all of this help your SEO efforts?
Well, by posting consistently on social media and providing your followers with relevant content, they can actually help promote your content further to an entirely new audience and increase your brand awareness.
Social media makes it easy for individual users to share content to their own network of followers, friends, and the more popular your posts are, the better visibility you can have on these platforms. Like Google, Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter algorithms take page engagement into account when delivering content to their users.
3. Social Media Links Rank on Search Engines Too
When you search a business by name on Google, it’s not just their website that appears in the search results – it’s also the links to their social media accounts. This is because for search engines, social media sites are just like any other web page out there, even though it doesn’t use the same rules when ranking them.
Specifically, you can’t rely solely on social media to earn a top rank. Google does look into social proof, but considering these can be easily manipulated, it places a higher value on other ranking factors
But if you have active social media accounts where you put in the work to engage with your audience, a branded search on Google may lead a new customer to one of your platforms, and then they can become a follower themselves or even visit your site.
It’s a type of cycle that, at the end of the day, can potentially bring quality traffic to your website.
How to Leverage Social Media for SEO
For SEO and social media to work with each other, you need to coordinate both efforts and ensure they are moving towards the same goals.
If you’re doing SEO to increase traffic to your site, but all your social media posts contain links to one product you want to push to your followers, the two efforts are disconnected. Those posts might still help with SEO a bit, but nowhere near its true potential.
Here are some tips for using social media for SEO:
- Optimise your social media accounts by updating your descriptions and profile pictures. Make sure all your accounts carry your brand identity;
- Echo your content marketing efforts, and promote your blog posts, articles, and fresh content to your followers. You should also establish a publishing frequency;
- Ensure your content can easily be shared from your site by adding social media buttons on your web pages. This increases the odds of your content being published on your follower’s accounts as well;
- Focus on the visuals of your posts, especially on platforms like Facebook or Instagram;
- Run some social media ads to give more visibility to your page.
Over to You
Your social media strategy and SEO efforts ultimately work together to help you reach your business goals. If you need help refining your site’s SEO and improving your search rankings, we at Australian Internet Advertising can create a comprehensive plan for your Sydney business to achieve true online success.
Start by using our free SEO health check tool, then get in touch with us to find out more!
