How Social Media Marketing Can Improve SEO Rankings

Creating content that will compete and rank for relevant keywords that bring in regular traffic and convert into leads continues to become harder as competition heats up. Finding ways to drive more traffic, engagement, links and interactions to your pages continues to form a larger part of ranking signals, and that's why social media has become such a fundamental part of SEO.

While Google may not like to admit it, when content gains traction on social media, they tend to show a bias towards it in their rankings. It's not always a given, but in many cases, the more social engagement and social signals, the more likely your content will perform well in search.

What is social media marketing?

SMM or social media marketing is a subset of internet marketing. It focuses on the creation and sharing of content across platforms like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Pinterest, etc. The goal is to ensure branding, customer relation, brand awareness, and advertising.

Marketing activities on social media can include posting image and textual updates, videos, and any other form of content that could drive up engagement.

Another way to promote yourself on social media is via paid advertising.

Relationship between search engines and social media

Let's get one thing clear - social media is not a direct ranking factor governing SERP rankings. However, it does share an indirect link with search engine optimization. The links you share on social media sites do lead to brand exposure. In the long run, your efforts add up, redirecting more and more users to look you up in search engines.

Below are the six major ways in which social media marketing influences SEO:

• Through extensive content distribution and sharing directly with audiences Offers organic online traffic and visibility
• Bolsters brand reputation
• Enhances better brand recognition
• Helps in boosting local SEO services
• Encourages link shareability among target customers
• It gives a longer lifespan to posts

The links and posts you share on social sites don't have a direct place in SEO rankings. But, when a growing number of people proactively share your content, it sends a social signal. It indicates the usefulness of your posts and that they're helpful to the target market.

How to use social media to influence SEO

Encourage social sharing

Believe it or not, people love being told what to do. And so, in each post, encourage your readers to share the posts with their friends and families. You could even conduct giveaways to encourage sharing.

Include all relevant links on social media channels

Within your posts and the main profile, be sure to place the link to your website, e-books, fundraiser link, and all other important links.

Even though search engines don't crawl social platforms the same way they do other sites, the links on social platforms tend to be considerably higher quality. So, indirectly it could improve your SEO.

Use keywords in social media posts

Don't think that keywords are only important for blog directories, website content, and paid ads. They are just as crucial for social media posts. Let's say your keyword is 'women's online clothing, make sure to incorporate it within the snippet. In this way, the odds of your post popping up against relevant searches would amplify.

Make it easy to share content

There's no point in sharing quality content if people don't know where to find the share buttons. Make sure to put compelling CTAs and social share buttons in prominent places. Place share buttons on all your blogs. Do the same for all your social media posts.

Use power keywords

Use high-impact words to lock customer attention. Put a bit more thought into crafting posts and messages. Don't think that only ad copies use power words. They are just as important in headlines, emails, CTAs, pop-ups, landing pages, social posts, and everywhere else where a user action is required.

Use hashtags wisely

Hashtags are super helpful in improving your branding discoverability. By incorporating brand-specific, relevant hashtags within your social media pages, you can appear more frequently in front of your target audiences. Hashtags could capture you quality leads.

Best social media platforms

Each social media platform handles content delivery, linking and pushing traffic to external sources differently and thus can have different impacts on the SEO potential of your site and landing pages.

Facebook

This is the oldest and most popular platform, with over 2.91 billion active users. In 2007, Facebook allowed search engines to crawl its pages. That means posts on Facebook are available for indexing. That's why any time a user performs searches, relevant business Facebook pages appear on SERPs.

Take advantage of this social media giant in the best way possible. It's great for driving organic web traffic to your site.

Twitter

Unlike Facebook, Twitter doesn't allow crawling of its pages. However, it does have a bunch of unique features. Hashtags, for one thing, were started by Twitter. After Twitter, Hashtags are predominantly used on Instagram.

Think of hashtags as keywords for your social presence. Picking the right hashtags and incorporating them within tiny posts is a great way to boost discoverability.

YouTube

Thanks to increasing internet speed, YouTube's popularity exploded in recent years. More people want to access video content now.

You don't need a big production house to produce videos for YouTube. They could be an excellent organic traffic booster. Helpful videos are engaging and have a higher recall value. Longer videos with higher engagement send a signal to Google. In time you could reach valuable leads via YouTube videos.

Instagram

Instagram is the next big thing. It's big on visuals, most images. So, it's a lot more captivating. Also, with the introduction of IGTV and Instagram Live, you can produce and share long-form video content.

You could use the stories feature to put out interactive shots, stories, behind-the-scenes, and even conduct giveaways.

Instagram's primary appeal lies in high-quality graphics. So, be sure to capture quality images.

LinkedIn

This is a professional network for B2B marketers. LinkedIn is responsible for almost 62% of all B2B leads. Place all the right keywords strategically in your profile to boost organic visibility.

By putting out regular, relevant content, LinkedIn's search algorithms could push you higher in SERPs.

Quora

Quora is a highly interactive Q and A site. You can publish quality content to drive traffic. Interactions on Quora appear against relevant keyword searches. Through quora, you can publish anything like:

• Business Advice
• Lifehacks
• Content brainstorming
• Blog posts
• Subject matter
• Answer people's queries and doubts regarding frequently asked questions.

Final thoughts

If you still haven't boarded the social media bandwagon, don't worry! It's never too late. Not only is it an incredible tool for your business, but social media is fun too.

About the author

Sunny Popli is the owner of SPOPLI Web Development & Services. He loves to learn and grow. His key interest areas are to learn and implement the latest & impactful ideas in the field of digital marketing.

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Recommended reading

If you enjoyed this post and have a little extra time to dive deeper down the rabbit hole, why not check out the following posts on SEO and search updates.

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Tags: SEO, Social Media Marketing, Guest Post