Achieve more visibility in social media channels with Social Media SEO services. With search engine optimization, you can not only optimize your website for Google but also rank better in social media search results. But how can companies strengthen their website through social media? Which SEO tips lead to more success on Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, Twitter, and LinkedIn? Read more here.
Importance of social media in SEO
Behind every modern search engine is an algorithm. These algorithms draw their knowledge from an incredible amount of data and evaluate the results in seconds.
To get the best rankings in a search engine, you need to get to grips with the algorithm behind the machinery. For each search engine, there are factors you should consider to get your own content ranked as high as possible.
Positive SEO effects of social media activities
However, the generation of social signals is by no means the only way in which social media activities can influence the search engine rankings of a website. The following possibilities can be distinguished:
Direct effects of social media presences: The best example is the author images in the search results, which require a link to Google+ author profiles. Besides, there are, for example, backlinks in profiles.
Generating social signals through social media activities: Social media activities can generate social signals such as likes and shares, which can influence the ranking. More on this below.
Indirect backlink building through social media activities: Much more important than social signals are still classic backlinks. But these can also be created indirectly through social media activities. This is because when content is spread virally via social media platforms, and bloggers and website owners are also reached, backlinks to the content can be created.
However, some direct effects such as author profiles are not necessarily “social SEO”, but fall under other areas such as snippet optimization.
Opportunities of Social Media SEO
When you perform search engine optimization for social media, it offers some potentials, such as:
- more presence with fans and customers
- direct communication and interaction with the target group
- increase of reach
- improvement of brand awareness
- increase of page views by linking to the website
- presentation or sale of products or services
- attracting new employees through social recruiting
Before you start with social media activities, you should create an overall marketing strategy. To do this, clearly define your company’s unique selling proposition, target audience, business goals, and communication objectives.
Prepare topics covering different areas. For example, you can create an interesting article for the blog, which in turn is shared on Facebook and Twitter and for which there is an Instagram competition.
Depending on the social media platform, you should choose a suitable format and prepare it for the target group.
Always keep in mind that maintaining a social media account takes time. Regular posting and interacting with users is important for success on any social media platform.
How to improve Google SEO through social media
The extent to which social signals are used by Google as ranking factors is hotly debated. It can be assumed that they are indirect ranking factors. Social media marketing can nevertheless improve the SEO performance of a website:
- Link building: users spread the content on social media and other websites, increasing the number of backlinks.
- Branding: the better known the brand becomes through social media, the more brand queries there are on Google.
- Traffic increase by linking the website to social networks.
- Social media profiles and content can rank in Google search results.
- Content can be redistributed: By spreading it on various channels, relevant content gets to the user.
- Through the reactions of users to content, you can conclude the interests of the target group and identify trends. This can be valuable information for the website.
- A consistent strategy between all marketing channels leads to visible success.
- To link the social media channels and the website and gain reciprocal traffic, all platforms should be linked pictorially on the website.
A good option is also to integrate a Twitter or Instagram feed directly on the website. You can integrate the Twitter feed especially well in the news section of the website, while the Instagram feed fits better in the blog section. By using “click-to-tweet”, quotes from the website’s content can be shared directly on Twitter.
Another option to increase traffic between the website and social media is to include share buttons in website texts and make images shareable for users (social share icons).
Social logins are a very interesting area of a website. If users can log in directly with an existing social media account, the hurdle of creating a new account is eliminated.
Besides, the social media channels should be stored in the structured data of the website. With structured data, Google can better understand the content of a website and accordingly play it out appropriately in the search results.
Also, make sure to link to the website for each social media platform and the appropriate article or landing page for posts.
In the following sections, you will now receive tips on how to proceed in the individual social media channels.
Instagram SEO
Instagram has become one of the most important social media platforms in recent years. With the Explore feed, you are offered a way to be found by users who have not yet subscribed to your channel. However, you will only be found in this feed if the post is assessed by Instagram as relevant for the user. The relevance is influenced by Instagram through various factors.
For a new post, the performance of the first hour counts. During this time, the post is only shown to about 10% of the followers. Depending on how they react, the post is then shown to the other followers or even ends up in the Explore feed. In addition to regular Instagram posts, Instagram stories, Instagram live videos, IGTVs, and reels are also important on this platform to increase the relevance of the account.
For example, you can give even more insights about your business through Instagram stories. The 15-second videos have become very popular. You can definitely include that in your Instagram marketing strategy.
Facebook SEO
On Facebook, you can share text, photos, videos, and other multimedia content. To gain greater visibility on Facebook, it’s especially important to create a company page instead of a personal profile.
With such a page, you’ll have additional features and tools for creating content, more options for sponsored content, and analytics in Facebook Business Manager. Thus, you can reach a larger interest group (which you can define within the Business Manager) with your sponsored posts in addition to your existing followers.
TikTok SEO
TikTok is the new social media trend. With over 800 million users, the platform for self-made short videos has been able to inspire an enormous number of young people in a very short time. You will become successful on TikTok if you engage with the app and understand it. This is where real-time marketing comes in.
On TikTok, it is especially important not to “advertise cheaply” – as always, the added value for the user should be in the foreground. The key here is to experiment and be one of the early adopters. There is a lot of speculation about TikTok’s algorithm.
Increasingly, there is talk of a level system. TikTok monitors the video based on KPIs and checks whether the video has enough likes and comments, how often it has been shared, and what the watch-through rate is. Depending on the level of the video, TikTok will play the video. This means that a video at a new level can suddenly get a lot more likes and comments, even after a long break.
Twitter SEO
The use of Twitter as a social media channel and for e-commerce is widespread worldwide. Many companies use Twitter to share the latest news. For a professional company profile, the choice of Twitter name and username is important.
For your company’s tweets to be used successfully, creating regular tweets about the latest news and topics of the company or current events is especially important – not to forget that here, as well as on Instagram, you use the relevant hashtags so that your posts are played out to users who are interested in a certain topic but do not yet follow you – thus you become more visible with your profile here, too. However, make sure that the focus is on the added value for the user and not on the self-promotion of the company.
SEO for LinkedIn
Attracting new employees is one of the main functions of the two networks. If a company wants to find experts who work internationally, LinkedIn would be the more suitable network.
Do you want to successfully present your brand, make new business contacts, and attract new employees? Then your first step should be to analyze which of the business networks is the most suitable. To do this, you analyze the advantages and disadvantages of LinkedIn to weigh up the various payment functions for the company. With a suitable product package and a marketing strategy, you can create a professional company profile. You will then develop a marketing strategy to generate new contacts, present the brand, for employer branding, and for attracting new employees.
Social SEO: conclusion
In this age of being online on the go, social media brings with it some potential. We all know our own surfing behavior: On the road, on the way to work or home, or simply at home on the couch – our smartphone is always with us and is used every free minute. So think about how you can cleverly use social media for your website to achieve more visibility in search engines and to attract even more users to your content. Have fun trying it out!