When you think about it, it's an amazing idea to increase your website traffic from different social media platforms right? For many people, or so they assume, this is a no brainer. But, you need to ask yourself how this is possible.
When it comes to digital marketing, you need to invest in your website SEO strategy. If you are not, then don’t expect web traffic to just happen.
However, SEO isn't the only marketing strategy that you should rely on. You should also take advantage of the power of social media marketing. This means, apart from using Google Analytics to track your web traffic, you should also analyze your social media interactions. This would include tracking your social signals.
What exactly are social signals? Simply put, social signals are indicators that people are talking about your business or brand. This is done through social posts, votes, reviews and engagements. By shifting your digital marketing strategies, you will realize social media is a powerful tool that complements your SEO strategy.
Unfortunately, success on social media is easier said than done. How successful you are comes down to one thing - content! In this article, we'll be looking at techniques of creating shareable content on social media to drive traffic to your website.
How Social Media Helps SEO
While social media has no direct link to Google ranking, below are a number of ways that social media can support your SEO strategy.
Get More Quality Links
When it comes to ranking on search engines, backlinks have proven to be the game changer. This applies for both quantity and quality backlinks. Marketing on social media ensures that you will attract the right backlinks. What happens is that once your social media content has a high number of social shares, people will notice it.
You will not only be noticed by normal users but bloggers and webmasters who might be interested in linking to you. Recent studies have established that there is a correlation between social media shares and the number of backlinks to your website. Looking back a few years back, social media content was mainly about shares.
You needed to create content that people will share-regardless of how these social shares came about. Today, you need to leverage your quest for a high number of social shares with creating engaging content. This ensures that the content is not shared by anyone but the people who matter the most in your marketing strategy on social media.
Build A Strong Following
Establishing a brand in the market is one of the challenges that many businesses face. It takes time before a product or service is considered to be successful. The reason for this is that people have to first know your product or service exists. Without such knowledge, it will be like the product doesn’t exist at all.
Due to the competitive nature of the current marketplace, business owners are willing to invest in creating awareness about their products and services. This is an attempt to reach a wider audience. The key to this strategy requires you to be proactive in your approach. By being proactive, success of the product or service will be achieved sooner. The good thing about social media is that you are able to establish some online presence without spending too much on search engine optimization.
It is worth noting that there are still many small and medium enterprises that are unwilling to scale. This unwillingness is not purely out of ignorance but limited cash flow. Considering that a significant percentage of people today interact on social media, target specific social media platforms that you think most of your target audience have some presence. The idea is to engage the said audience at a certain emotional level creating a call-to-action for your product or service.
Improve Branded Searches
According to Hubspot, creating a brand and growing the business is always part of any digital marketing strategy. This means that social media is no different. Once you have identified your target market, the next part of the challenge is creating high quality content that allows engagement with your audience. People who frequently post on social media are more likely to create more awareness of their products and services.
By creating this awareness, you find that both existing customers know about your business, your products and any other information related to the business. You can even benefit on your social media search engine optimization strategy by having users recommend your products or services. By adopting the right strategy, social media marketing will always work.
The opposite happens when you start assuming that things will just happen. Remember, it is the customers who drive your brand. How then would you create brand awareness if less people are talking about the business? Many search engines including Google give priority to click-through rates. This is what predominantly affects your ranking and ultimately visibility.
It's All About What Your Target Audience Wants
The mainstream SEO strategies often focus on getting the right keyword. However, this has evolved over time creating another challenge-knowing how to choose the right keyword. The secret is in the user-intent. You need to put yourself in your target audience’s shoes and ask yourself “what will the user search for?
Take for example when you search, "lawn mowing." When you search for the phrase online, search engines will display search results based on what you have typed. If you want to search for specific content, that is when you enter an entire phrase such as, "How to choose a professional lawn mowing service."
To identify the things that most people are fascinated with, start by doing some research and see what people are talking about. Try and keep up with the current trends so that you do not miss crucial information related to your business.
The Hidden Power Of Local Search
There is immense power in local search that many people are yet to take advantage of. Local search is in fact very helpful to small and medium enterprises. Currently, search engines are becoming increasingly interested in localizing the searches. If you have a business with a physical location and address, including this information on your social media profile is critical. Localizing the geographical location is what enhances the user experience.
To give your business more credibility to an average user, people start by searching for businesses that are in close proximity to them. Even when business interactions are not made from a physical location, there is a certain degree of confidence in local businesses. Once you list your business on Google My Business, make sure to update your social media profile to make the best out of your social media SEO.
Social Media SEO Best practices
For digital marketers, aligning your SEO strategy with social media marketing is what makes the whole difference. This is because your aim is to tap traffic from both sides. Below are some of the best social media SEO that will have a real impact on your digital marketing strategy.
Understanding your Target Audience
Most marketing campaigns require that you first identify your target audience. The same concept is applied when creating shareable content. You need to know the basic characteristics of your target audience such as their likes for you to be able to engage more in a much better way through your content. There are high chances that your content will be shared on social media once you are able to identify with the intended audience.
The key to understanding the target audience is through research. It makes no sense creating social media posts just for the sake of it. Take time and approach the research process in a similar way that you would in an interview. If you are interviewing a business entity, you would have to first learn about the business, its operations and decision makers. If you want to learn more about your target audience, Google is of course your first source of primary information.
You can use other secondary sources to back up your data about the target market. There is however the need to understand the distinction between the target audience and the target market. When you talk about the target audience, you are talking about a group of people that is segmented based on their purchasing history and demographics. The target market on the other hand refers to a specific market whose business' products are intended for. A number of ways that you can identify your target audience is by using tools such as:
- Google Analytics
- Market Surveys
- Social Media Insights
- Google Ad Planner
Use Catchy Titles Or Captions
When you think about the importance of having a catchy title, just know that the title is the first thing that the reader will come across when clicking on your page. This means a catchy title is meant to draw the attention of your target market. A good title is one that speaks volumes regarding the issue you are discussing and how you intend to solve that issue.
Considering that there are millions of social media posts on a daily basis, your title should stand out from the rest. By standing out, readers will feel inclined to click on your link thus increasing traffic to your website.
Create High Quality Content
Unlike in the past, SEO has evolved a lot. The strategies used in developing content are more approachable and mature. If you want to effectively engage your target audience more effectively on social media, then your content should be fresh and original instead of populating social media platforms with generic content that adds no value to the intended audience.
It is no longer about focusing on keywords when creating social media post. That would work with other form of SEO strategies. The content should attract links naturally. Engage your audience on real issues and find a way to solve problems for other users. By doing this, you will effortlessly climb the SEO ladder.
To create quality content for social media posts, put yourself into the audience’s shoes and imagine the things they look for. It is more about what you are sharing as opposed to who you are sharing it with.
Make Social Sharing Easy
The idea of social sharing is to ensure that your content is seen by a wider audience. As long as you understand how to create sharable content, then there will always be a need for your content among the intended audience. You should make social sharing easy for your content with the aim of improving the visibility of your brand.
Of course this is not easy and requires a lot of patience. The correct strategy of making social sharing easy is more than adding different social media buttons to your website. While this is assumed to be the right move, you also need to consider making your content interactive, entertaining and adding value so that you get people to talk about it. This is how you get people motivated to share the content with other users.
Optimize Your Images For Social And SEO Purposes
Images are powerful tools for easy expression of one’s thoughts and conveyance of the message. Images also play a critical role when it comes to search engine optimization. This means that constantly ignoring images and instead focusing on content is somewhat counterproductive. If you optimize the images you share on social media the right way, then the impact of the said images is unlimited. The correct way of optimizing images for social media SEO involves using targeted keywords as the file name.
You further improve the optimization of images by creating the right content to go along with the images. Once this is done, make sure that the images are optimized for social sharing. Whereas the impact is immediately felt, you will realize that it is the small things that have the greatest impact in the long run. You can optimize the images further by making sure that you share them on all social media platforms where your brand has a presence.
Be Part Of The Conversation
People want to be part of the conversation if you want to make any meaningful progress in your social media SEO. This is the whole idea of adding social media as part of your overall SEO strategy. Be sure to engage your audience in a conversation such that they get the feeling that they are having their issues addressed in real time.
To achieve all this, you can post quality information, respond to comments or even ask questions. Try and do all these in real time for the audience to have a positive impression of your brand. When you engage the audience, they feel as being part of your brand hence a stronger bonding. In the long run, it is established that this is one way that you establish authority for your business while keeping the audience updated on crucial information about the brand.
Take for example a press release. When a business makes a press release, other news platforms often pick the story up and share it on their own social media pages. When this happens, their followers too will see the press release and also feel the need to share it if the content is considered helpful.
Measure Social Media Performance
Making sure that your social media SEO strategy is working requires that you constantly track your progress. There is no point of trusting your insects that your efforts will pay off in the end without measuring your progress. Tracking your progress is supposed to be an indicator that your social media marketing strategy is working. Unfortunately, there are still many digital marketers who constantly ignore this important step.
A broad strategy sometimes does not work especially in a wide field such as search engine optimization. You need to monitor the metrics to establish what is working and what needs improvement. For example, you can choose to measure the number of social referrals that your social media content is generating.
Hootsuite states that you can also choose to focus on checking the number of social media shares for your posts. By doing this, it is easy to realize that there is one metric that is working for your social media SEO strategy than the other. Even before you embark on choosing a good social media SEO strategy, have clear goals and an implementation plan. You need to shift your focus from guesswork to data.
Bottom Line
There are various ways that social media supports your SEO strategy. From the analysis above, what you need is an actionable plan. Even when you might not see much progress in terms of Google ranking, high quality content on social media is meant to drive traffic. Apart from having a good and optimized profile on social media platforms, YouTube videos are also essential in order to boost your SEO strategy on search engines.
