Harnessing Social Media for SEO
SEO is all about online visibility, and although it is possible to avail marketing gains from it, the scope is quite limited. To add marketing muscle to your SEO initiative, you must tie it up with your social media campaign. Although SEO and social media can run on its own to achieve marketing goals, the power of the two when combined promises much better results. The gap between the two has narrowed over the last ten years, and now the two pillars of online marketing are so close to each other that not making proper use of the collaboration is a mistake.
Nowadays, content is important for SEO because quality content corresponds to a website’s worth. It is a well-known fact that content is king and Google is critically evaluating websites to weed out poor content. The quality of content demonstrates the site’s authority, which Google uses as a signal in its search algorithm. How does Google evaluate the quality of content? Google picks up social signals to evaluate how well the content is accepted and shared among users. Therefore, it is apparent that publishing quality content and ensuring its extensive sharing are the two points that marketers must take care of. This is where the importance of using SEO and social media together comes into play.
Similarity in strategies for SEO and social media
Social media and SEO are based on the same brand building foundation. While social media contributes to brand building, it also has the capability to drive organic traffic to websites through content sharing. The two platforms work towards similar goals of building a relationship with viewers and creating extended audience engagement. With so many similar activities aimed towards common goals, it makes enough sense to use the two platforms of SEO and social media alongside one another so that the concerted effort yields better marketing results. In this post, we will explore how to harness social media to make it work more in favor of SEO.
More opportunities for search listing
Social media has created tremendous opportunities for building brands, and more and more businesses have started using it aggressively. By creating the right brand profile, social media can reach out to a larger audience. When creating a brand profile, take extreme care to uphold the real picture of the brand. Embed strategic keywords in the profile and select the most optimal social media channels. Make use of those channels to open doors to more search listing opportunities. The more search listings you have, the more traffic that will be directed to your website.
Use social media for building local brands
SEO campaigns for small businesses focus on local markets. The majority of traffic that reaches these websites generate from local searches. The main characteristic of local searches is that it is brand oriented. Therefore, you must use the power of social media to build a strong brand image and spread brand awareness by engaging with the audience. Making people more aware of your brand will develop a positive image. Once you carry out the branding exercise successfully, the results will reflect in the SEO campaign in the form of better rankings.
Social media content shows up in search results
Search results are evolving every day as search engines want to give users the best experience in identifying the right results quickly. To make this happen, search engines like Google and Bing are now incorporating content extracted from social media in their search engines. Snippets of content are now visible when searching for a product or service. This move has brought social media closer to SEO, and using the two together highlights on a more extensive business presence.
Better indexing with direct link sources
Search rankings depend on how well search engines index web pages, and higher indexing corresponds to better search rankings. For indexing, search bots crawl through web pages whenever any new content shows up. Similarly, search engines also crawl through social media content with dofollow links. Therefore, if you have your site links placed in social media content, the chances of indexing goes up. As a result, search rankings improve. There are many other ways to make your SEO campaign stronger. There must always be a proper integration of these activities so no conflict arises.