There are many strategies that can be used to build a business presence online, but search engine optimization (SEO) and social media marketing are among the most impactful.
Fortunately, you don't have to choose between the two. Social media and SEO are best used together, and once you understand how to strengthen the relationship between them, your marketing plan will be all the better for it.
Fortunately, we're here to help. Below we'll list our top 8 tips for using SEO and social media together as part of your digital marketing strategy.
One of the best ways to make use of social media is to let it serve as a promotional tool that amplifies your SEO efforts.
As part of an SEO plan, you'll likely be using content marketing to create blog posts, videos, infographics, and other types of sharable content. You can boost the reach of this content by sharing it on social media accounts, and in turn, this will make your website more likely to rank.
Socially shared content is more likely to pick up natural backlinks. If your content is valuable to your audience and there are a lot of social shares, other website owners may see your content and want to link to it from their own websites as well.
The more you focus on building brand awareness on social media, the more your website will benefit as well.
As potential customers become more aware of your brand through social media marketing, they'll eventually start searching for your business brand name in Google searches more often as well. As the reputation of your brand grows and it is incorporated into more Google searches, your website will start to rank better as well.
Once Google's search algorithms start to recognize the popularity of your brand, you may find that you start getting more search traffic than before.
Consistently posting on social media can be difficult, and it can take a lot of effort to come up with new ideas for posts. Fortunately, creating more content for your site will also give you an endless stream of post ideas for social media.
When you create a new blog post, you can also share it with your followers on Facebook, Twitter, and other social media accounts. You can also repurpose content you have created for SEO purposes and share it on social media in another form. A blog post, for example, could be reimagined as an infographic, a video, or simply a status update.
By working on your SEO you'll also have plenty of fodder to use when building your social media presence as well.
Every customer is different and while some of them may be happy to bookmark your website and visit it regularly, others like to learn about your business through following your social media accounts. Because of this, it's important that your website and social media pages are well-linked. Your website should feature links back to your social media pages and vice versa.
If a customer discovers your website through your SEO efforts first, they can then connect with your social media pages as well. This will allow them to start following your business and interacting with you until they decide to take the relationship further.
By having a professional website and creating and maintaining social media accounts as well, you'll be able to stay connected with your customers in the way that's best for them.
It's important to remember that your social media pages will rank in search engines just like the pages on your website will. You should work hard to create engaging social pages and post regularly. If you do, you'll soon find that your social media profiles are showing up in search results alongside your website.
By improving your social media profiles, there will be more opportunities for your brand name to show up in searches on Google and other search engines. It will also reduce the chances of competing brands showing up in results when someone is searching for your business online.
It's important to realize that most social media platforms are search engines in their own right. Believe it or not, many web users search for brands through a social media site rather than through a traditional search engine. YouTube, for example, is actually the 2nd most popular search engine on the web.
Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Pinterest all provide search functionality to users. By having active social media pages, searchers on social media platforms will be more likely to come across your business and its products and services online.
When using social media sites, remember to tag your content and use keywords in your descriptions and status updates. This will make it more likely that social media users will find your business online.
Google will automatically crawl your website occasionally, checking for new content. However, it doesn't always happen as often as you may like. Fortunately, maintaining social media accounts can also help your content get indexed more quickly. When you share website content and blog posts on social media, it can serve as a signal to search engines that your site has been updated.
Social media profiles are a signal that Google looks for when establishing rankings, so by linking to your content on social media, search engines will be more likely to crawl and re-index your site. Be sure that you share any new website content immediately if you want it to start ranking as quickly as possible.
One of the best ways that you can use social media to strengthen your SEO strategy is by using it to perform market research. Social media can serve as more than just a tool for sharing your content, but can also be used to start conversations with your unique audience.
By being willing to ask questions, launch polls, and create a back and forth dialogue with your followers, you'll learn a lot about them. The information you gather can help you determine what type of content you'll create, how to optimize your CTAs, and how to develop products and services that your customers will love.
If you're trying to build your business online, it's important that you understand the relationship between SEO and social media and that you're making the most of it. While both of these tools can be powerful for building a business online, they're even more effective when used together.
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