When someone shares a company’s social media post, Google does not directly include that engagement in the algorithm that determines their search result rankings. This has prompted many companies to step away from social media as a way of improving their SEO rankings. That decision is a mistake for two important reasons.
First of all, while it is essential to focus on components of your business that directly impact SEO rankings, this does not mean that shares hold no value. The impact created by shares can cause positive adjustments for your SEO to occur in other ways.
Second, shares are not the only benefit social media has to offer. There are a variety of other ways in which social media can lead to beneficial effects on SEO as well.
Here are ways social media can significantly improve your SEO and boost your ranking.
6 Ways Social Media can Significantly Improve your SEO
Creating Effective Backlinks
SEO campaigns often devote a significant amount of their budget towards producing effective backlinks. A successful marketing campaign will drive social media users to share posts with backlinks, helping to improve exposure for your business. To ensure that posts perform at their best, they must be created with their specific platform in mind.
A successful campaign will attract individuals with an interest in your respective field. Followers with a passion for your business have a much greater chance of sharing and engaging with social media posts, leading to further connection. Users with mutual interests such as suppliers or individuals working with similar fields are more likely to engage with your posts.
Another important aspect to consider is where you are leading your customers and followers. Backlinks should have a clear, defined purpose, so emphasizing key parts of your campaign will help to improve conversions.
Not only should backlinks be relevant and attention-grabbing for social media users, but they should also be high-quality as well. Not only will error-free, on-topic content make your followers happy, it will also encourage peers to create backlinks to your website, helping to improve the SEO rankings of both parties.
Optimizing Content for YouTube
YouTube is the world’s largest social media platform and frequently used by everyone from students to professionals of various career paths. High-quality, well-optimized YouTube videos can positively impact your business’s SEO rankings and reputation.
A highly-viewed YouTube video can inform customers of your product and send a wave of new followers to your business. While a popular video can certainly lead to conversions for a business, it is important to keep in mind that trying to reach too many people at once could cause a video to miss its target audience.
Optimizing a video for a specific demographic will help YouTube determine an audience for your content, which will in turn connect your business with interested people. Selecting SEO terms and thumbnails based upon your audience will both help to establish a brand identity while helping users find your content.
Improving Your Instagram Following
Many of the same principles of optimizing SEO for YouTube also apply to Instagram, but there are some key differences between the platforms that make them better or worse depending upon the business. While YouTube thrives at providing high-quality video content, Instagram places a greater emphasis upon imagery.
It is difficult to understate how much Instagram emphasizes visuals. While YouTube videos often feature people speaking, or telling a story of some kind, viral Instagram videos can be as simple as someone cutting soap with a knife or vacuuming a dirt-covered floor.
With the right approach, creating a popular Instagram video can be simple, inexpensive, and ideal for gathering new followers. Posting photos and videos that tie back to your industry and business can improve exposure. Leading users from your social media page to your website will bring them one step closer to a conversion.
Ranking High in Search Results
Depending upon certain aspects of your business as well as your social media profiles, there is the possibility for a company’s YouTube or LinkedIn page to rank higher in Google’s search results than the company website. This can help connect new users to your business, potentially beating out competitors with larger followings.
Social media pages aren’t the only way to increase your SEO ranking. Social media posts and videos can also show up in search results, meaning that a viral post can help improve exposure. The sooner users can go from a viral post to your company website, the more likely you are to increase conversions.
With this in mind, it is important for every social media post to reflect positively on your brand. A single tweet or Facebook post can significantly alter the way someone views your business, so maintaining a consistent brand voice is of the utmost importance.
Improving Your Conversion Rate
Finding the best way to communicate the value of your business to consumers can help improve conversions, but one of the most effective ways to boost sales is to let your customers speak about their experience with your business.
Positive reviews are an excellent way of improving conversions, and Facebook’s customer review section allows countless users to read about the experiences of others. Customers commonly inspect the review section before making a purchase, meaning that positive reviews will often lead to consumers committing to a purchase.
While positive reviews help to improve conversions, many consumers will dig further into a company before making a purchase, especially if they cannot find any reviews. Communicating with your customers in a public space such as on Twitter or in a Facebook post will tell users how you treat your customers as well as how people feel about your business.
If users can conclude that your business is friendly, communicative, and trustworthy, they are far more likely to engage with your company.
Increasing Your Business’s Website Ranking
If users find your social media, they will most likely be interested in your products or services, meaning that it is essential to be ready to meet them with enthusiasm and professionalism.
Retaining these users is of the utmost importance, as their interest in your business can result in repeat visits and purchases. This engagement can also lead to improved SEO rankings. Google rewards businesses with loyal followers, so finding consumers interested in what you are providing will go a long way towards improving your business’s exposure.
Wrapping it Up
Climbing to the top of a search results page might require a significant amount of dedication and optimization, but thankfully, there are plenty of tools available like social media for boosting your company’s rankings.
Through the help of well-orchestrated marketing campaigns and exposure from passionate individuals, your company should see improvements to SEO results and conversions.
Illustration: Social media illustrations by Storyset
Aaron Wittersheim is Chief Operating Officer at Straight North, an Internet marketing agency. He has helped startups, middle-market firms and Fortune 500 companies improve organizational structure and grow through his expertise in process conception, task automation, technology, and internal project management.