We do not know the true impact of the social media on SEO. Time and again we have heard some bits and pieces about SEO and social media working as partners for bettering the SEO cause. Way back in 2010, Google had hinted that the shares of Twitter and Facebook constitute ranking signals. Then again in 2014, Google added a new twist to the tale by declaring that it treats the pages of Facebook and Twitter just like any other web page. It was a clear sign that the social media does not affect search rankings. This gave rise to some confusion about whether social media does any good for website design and search engine optimization. However, there should not be any doubt that if you are not using social media alongside SEO, your digital marketing efforts would surely lack the punch to rank higher in search results.
Ample proof is available that points to the fact that whether social media signals are essential for search engines or not, it does enhance the SEO performance. According to an SEO agency Chicago, not including social media as a significant part of your digital marketing strategy would leave you handicapped. The most interesting aspect of the two forms of online marketing is that these go hand in hand. There is an underlying link between the two marketing tactics and these complement each other perfectly. Therefore, you have to be careful when creating digital marketing strategies because changes done to the social media strategy can affect SEO and vice versa. For creating a comprehensive digital marketing strategy, you have to integrate social media with SEO as it would lay the foundation for successful digital marketing strategy.
Content is king
All strategies for SEO and social media revolve around content and this aspect you have to keep in mind when formulating online marketing strategies. Content is king on both platforms, and besides creating interesting, relevant and valuable content easy to understand, you have to create the most extensive outreach for it by spreading it far and wide. This would ensure that you can reach to the largest section of the audience. When done correctly, you would observe that the success of one channel will indirectly affect the success of another. To enable the audience to discover the content quickly via search engines, the following social media practices can be very beneficial.
Social content optimization
You must have noticed that social media content often finds a place on the first page of Google search results. Facebook pages, YouTube videos, etc. appear in search results. It creates a great attraction for visitors and plays a vital role in driving organic traffic to websites. Take steps to ensure that your social media content finds a place in search results. An easy way of doing it is to include the most relevant keyword phrases in the description and title.
Get an idea of what kind of social media content Google lists for the industry niche and then use the same keywords for creating engaging content. The keywords have the power of attracting visitors whom you can lead to your website. In this way, you get a stream of pre-qualified visitors to your site as they are already familiar with your content. Only because they found it interesting that they would click it to reach your site.
Focus on Social media links
Marketers have observed that there is some correlation between the mention of website content on social media and search rankings of websites although Google’s stand about it is not very clear. However, when some site or some of its web pages find high mention on the social media, it means that viewers have found it interesting and considered it worthyof sharing with many others. The content garners lots of attention due to its intrinsic worth, and you must capitalize on this aspect by creating quality content for social media networks. You can either create content for exclusive posting on social media networks, or you can promote your website content of social media so that it earns high amount of shares and likes.
Encourage organic link building
When content finds popularity on the social media, it earns lots of sharing. Sharing demonstrates the value of content because people not only liked it but have felt like sharing it. People would like to cite or refer to your content by offering links. Thus, social sharing encourages links to websites which are still very important to earn good ranks in search results. By promoting content on the social media, you are doing a favor to your SEO campaign and one of the reasons why you have to use social media together with search engine optimization.
Social media boosts local SEO
That social media has the abilities to boost SEO should come in handy for local businesses that have a focus on the local market. The wider is the market, the higher is the competition and going by this logic, the competition in the local market is less. When you compete at the national or international level, you face tough competition for focused keywords which is much less when you operate in the local market. Local SEO gives more opportunities for better rankings, and you must use the social media platform to your advantage. Mention your address together with the city, state, and province correctly on the social media page that can drive traffic to your website. Insert the most relevant keyword phrases in the social media content.
Use social media as search engines
Google, Bing, Yahoo, etc. are not the only search engines if you know how to use the search functions of social media. The social media networks behave like search engines because you can conduct searches on YouTube, Twitter, etc. Identify the keyword phrases that searchers use on the networks and use it in content descriptions and titles. Analyze the keywords carefully to identify the best-performing ones so that you can boost the results many more times.
The social media is unparallel in its abilities to provide high visibility to content, and you must exploit the opportunities to strengthen your SEO campaign.
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