In many businesses, SEO and social media are considered as separate entities, and that just simply is not the case. Social media marketing can be an ally to SEO and help increase your organic reach.
If you have a business that has a larger team, one that could easily separate SEO and social media marketing and management, there are strategies for including social media that could be beneficial to you.
At Genius eCommerce, our goal is to provide you with the tips, tricks, strategies and more to succeed in the eCommerce space with the right practices from design and development to SEO and optimization. This is who we are and what we do.
Before going into these social media strategies, it’s important to know that social media does not directly boost SEO. Being mentioned and engaging with people on social media over a link does not help boost the link on search engines, just because there is a lot of traction and activity around it on social media.
It’s not that social media isn’t an effective marketing location, it’s just an unreliable signal for search engines. Google is not crawling or indexing all social media posts, so no matter how viral you think a post may be, it is likely not doing anything for your organic traffic through search engines.
One area where social media does stand out is in the ability to share external links. That said, social networks do not add any equity to SEO for these target pages.
Why is this? There are two main reasons. For one, search engines cannot identify the authority of a social profile, so there’s difficulty placing value on the link. Because search engines are smart enough to recognize that a link posted on a social network like Facebook is not directly endorsed by the website but by the user posting, there is no reason to give authority to the link target.
So, how can you use social media to effectively build your SEO? Here are three ideas:
Create Link Opportunities – Posting a link several times yourself is not going to boost your SEO. The goal of using social media is to get other people from a third party to share your link without you prompting the action. What this means is connecting with people for them to not only like what you promote but to use it later. Perhaps someone will include your content in a blog post of their own, creating a backlink. Now there is influence on your SEO as a result, starting by sharing on social media.
Build Brand Recognition – One thing Google may do is use mentions on social media to identify a brand. If a brand that is not recognized by Google starts getting mentions and a lot of buzz on social media, Google may start to view it as an entity. It’s not just about building recognition but doing so in a positive way. Google doesn’t look at just the amount of mentions, but to see how people are talking about a brand and if it is positive. This can have a direct impact on what you rank for, not how high your search engine rankings are for certain keywords and terms.
Gain Partners – In online marketing, building strong and strategic relationships is important to this strategy of gaining partnerships. It’s difficult to reach an audience organically, which means that you need to concentrate more on fostering new relationships on social media networks. There are different levels of relationships with social media, fans of your brand who increase your exposure with positive mentions, organic influencers who can provide a positive influence on your brand to their audience, and strategic partners who can share content and experiences for leverage on their audience and yours.
Were these tips helpful to you in forming your social media strategy? Check out more tips from Genius eCommerce by reading the Genius eCommerce blog. We provide tips, tricks, updates and more from the eCommerce world so you stay informed.
