Is it possible to improve website SEO through social media channels?

Nowadays, all webmasters and SEO specialists know that search engine optimization and social media marketing are interrelated and mutually advantageous promotional aspects. SEO serves as the basics of digital marketing while SMM is designed to gather a targeted audience around a brand. It is worth to say that social media does not directly affect website rankings but it contributes to a website SEO success.

 So, when your social signals work for you, it may enhance your SEO efforts. In this article, you will find some valuable information how to make your social content more SEO-friendly and benefit from a correctly conducted social media marketing campaign.

How may social sharing affect my rankings?

• Improve content visibility

It is a proven statement that social sharing works the same as link building and may influence the visibility of the page. If your content is visible on search, it may get noticed by different bloggers, journalists and related niche domain owners who can find this content valuable and put a link to it on their sources. As a result, this page will be more likely to rank. So, the social sharing affects rank only in a case if it raises visibility among people who generate content and those who are interested in a content topic and found so valuable that put a link to it. As a result, maximizing creator impressions increases the chance of obtaining relevant links from users who power the link graph.

In order to bring some value to your site rankings, your content should go through four stages - social shares, social impressions, creator impressions and finally links and mentions. You can accelerate this process by cooperating with content creators and opinion leaders. Opinion leaders on social media platforms exaggerate user impressions, while people who create content give you a ranking benefit.

• Lead to quality backlinks

The number and quality of backlinks that point to your web source is the essential ranking factor for search engines. Social media platforms serve as a perfect source to get these links for free. You need to publish SEO-friendly and relevant content on your social media pages to use them as a staging ground for enticing links. Quality established social media marketing campaign works to engage users in following your page and actively interact with your content (put likes, leave comments and make reposts). The primary purpose of SMM is to foster engagement around the content to raise the number of shares and subsequently backlinks. So, a quality content together with a winning social media marketing campaign brings more targeted traffic to your site through quality backlinks.

• Improve brand awareness

Social media platforms serve as another digital space where your potential customers may find your brand and learn more information about it. Through social media, you may build the loyal and warm relationship with your targeted audience and increase your brand awareness. As a result of social media SEO promotion, users will more easily recognize you in search and be more inclined to click on your site. Moreover, a brand awareness you raise through social media channels can bring more branded organic search traffic to your site.  

How to SEO my social media account?

So, you have already learned about the benefits that social media signals bring to your site optimization and rankings. Now, it is time to discuss some SEO tips that can improve your social media account's presence.

• Posts and profiles optimization

Social media platforms work the same as search engines, giving the relevant answer to the user’s query based on the most relevant search terms. That is why you need to make sure all your posts include high-volume keywords, have a correct structure and refer to the topics related to your business. What about profile optimization, you need to act with the same logic, putting targeted keywords in titles, heading and at the beginning of the text.

• Implement the hashtags in a correct way

On social media platforms, hashtags play the same role as the search queries on search engines, helping users to find the content they are looking for. You need to conduct a hashtag research to understand how they work for each media platform and how to implement them correctly. Moreover, you need to make sure you know what hashtag means to use it for the right purposes. To leverage hashtags in the right way, you may use the native search box within social platforms.

• Announce each content update on your site through social networks

All the times you publish the new content on your blog or website, tell your targeted audience about it. The perfect way to do it is to create optimized social posts for Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and other social media platforms. It will help you to create relevant messages that can be found in native search and attract more concerned users to your domain.

• Implement tagging and mentioning to your social media account

To make your post visible on search engines, you need to specify and tag other people within your content. One benefit is that your tags will be notified by these users. Another advantage is that you will be more compelled to engage in your post or share it with an audience of people whom you mentioned in your content. As a result, it gives you more potential for driving quality and targeted traffic to your site that will most likely convert into sales and rankings growth.

There are also other ways how to improve your follower's interaction with your social content. In most cases, they relate to content quality. Let us speak about some of them.

First of all, think of the format of your posts. You should avoid too long and unformatted posts that are overloaded with information. Users prefer to read relevant and precise content 200-300 words long, especially on social media platforms.

Secondly, refer to visual content as users perceive visual information much better than texts. That is why, I advise you to add multiple images, videos, graphics and other visual elements your followers can engage with.

Thirdly, you should continuously stimulate comments and interact with your audience. Marketers advise creating contests, giveaways and other promotional campaigns that will help you to establish loyal relationships with your audience. Besides, you need to actively communicate with your followers in the comments - raise conversations on different highly demanded topics, ask questions and stimulate answers. Comments serve as a type of social activity that directly affects user interaction signals.

And finally, I would like to note that there are no some special SEO secrets for social media marketing. You just need to create pages that people love and read every day for their pleasure. You need to focus on your followers and provide them with a perfect experience. It is your primary key to success.