7 Ways Social Media Benefits SEO
Search engine optimization (SEO) is very important to the success of any brand’s online presence and that is why it is almost impossible to talk about all the many ways to keep getting it right. And social media is one of the many ways that brands can boost their SEO. It is also very easy and cheap, being that most social media platforms are free to sign up for. And it requires very little to no experience whatsoever to use the platforms.
While most of these social media platforms are designed for individuals to connect with people across the globe, there are also features that appeal to brands also. This is the case on almost all social media networking site like Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest and so on. The Herculean task for most brands would be finding ways to effectively use these platforms to connect with their target audience.
The focus here is on how using social media can boost a brand’s SEO, so if you would like to find out how SEO can boost your business, it would be a smart move to seek guidance from a social media marketing agency. Now let’s take a look at 7 ways social media benefits SEO.
1. It can influence how visitors engage with content
Sharing content from the brand’s website to social media platforms will increase the number of people that visit the website. Encouraging loyal visitors to share content they find useful with their friends on social media will also open the brand to a new set of visitors. Ensure that you have social media share buttons on the website, this will make it easy for any visitor to share content that they feel is relevant. Also, encourage the brand’s followers on social media to share links published on such platforms. If you have not been blogging on the brand’s website, consider doing that so it can help boost the SEO of the website. Whatever content you choose to blog about, ensure that it will be relevant to your target audience.
2. Reduce bounce rate
If website visitors keep leaving the website without checking any other thing on the website, it will increase the bounce rate and this will do more harm to the SEO of the website. People following the brand on social media are following for a reason, and by pushing relevant and very rich content to them, they could also want to check out other things on the website that they might find relevant. This would ultimately increase the time they spend on the website and in turn, help reduce the bounce rate on the website.
Having a low bounce rate can really improve the rank of the website on search engines. Search engines try as much as possible to rank websites that have relevant and rich content for certain keywords. So if the brand’s website is pushing out rich content on certain keywords and the bounce rate on the website is low, search engines would want to rank the website high on search engine results page (SERP).
3. Increase the awareness of the brand which can attract search engines too
Social media is a great place to boost brand awareness and get people talking about the brand. If a lot of people are talking about the brand on social media it can draw the attention of search engines to the brand name. And if the website is also scoring well with its SEO, search engines will quickly pick up on it and push it up the SERP for certain relevant keywords that it performs well with.
4. Localized content
As a brand conscious about its target audience, content published on social media should be localized as much as possible. Localized content, using location indicators or hashtags, can really help boost local SEO. Also, for service-based brands with very strong social media presence, localized content can help boost ranking on voice-based search queries. In addition to this, brands can also leverage blogging about local events that they attended.
Businesses can guest post on other blogs to share more local content too. They can also do live social media events and host relevant and influential people. Finally brands can post all blogs, news and events across all their social media pages and on the website as well. All these really help boost the SEO of the website.
5. Use social media to build powerful links
Link building remains a very powerful strategy for improving the SEO strength of a brand. If you can’t get authority websites to give the brand’s website a very powerful link back, social media is a very good alternative for building powerful link backs. Find people within the industry related to the brand that can help display links to the brand’s website on their profile pages or at least share links to the brand’s website on their timeline as frequent as possible. Brands can also host several content on social media that will link back to the website. This will improve the visibility of the brand as well as boost its SEO.
6. Keep your audience engaged
Engagement is very key to the success of a brand’s social media profiles. Building a community on social media that are constantly engaged will be a gold mine in the future for the brand. Brands can leverage their engaged community to get the word out about whatever they are doing. They can serve as foot soldiers that will carry the banner of the brand all over social media by sharing links or reposting the brand’s post.
7. Properly optimize all social media profiles
Brands should try to have profiles on various social media platforms, even if you sense that your target audience is less likely to be there. Maximize the profile area, insert website links, handles of other social accounts that the brand owns. Share content as frequent as possible to keep building a strong connection with your target audience.
It is important to note that social media does not necessarily have a direct impact on the SEO strength of a brand’s website in terms of using social media to rank high on search engine results page. But it can improve the SEO of the website itself, thus increasing the chances of boost the rank of the website on search engines.