We all know that SEO is crucial for any business for greater searchability and visibility in the online space. With organic search being the primary source of traffic for your website, it is essential to stay at the top of Google search results when potential clients search for you or the services you offer. But, with every-changing search engine and social media algorithms, you’ll need to be armed with effective SEO hacks to stay on top.
While you are exerting all of your efforts to improve SEO on your website, have you thought about applying it to your social media profiles as well? At this time, having a Facebook or a Linkedin company profile is not enough; you also need great content to go along with it to make sure that search engines pick up your social media channels in the search results.
Social Media SEO Hacks To Improve Ranking
It’s simple – the content that you share across social media platforms increases brand exposure. So the more high-quality content you share, the more your SEO ranking gets better and better!
1. Increased web traffic
If you have a blog, sharing your article across all your social media profiles improves brand visibility as more people click on your landing page and become interested in your brand.
2. Evergreen content
Social media posts last for as long as your profile stays active. Think about all the content you made ten years ago that is still making it in the search results!
3. Opportunity for influencer or viral marketing
The more you share on your social media, the higher the possibility of an influencer shares your content and makes it viral. And we all know what a viral post can do to a business — it amplifies your brand presence and boosts your visibility.
4. Improve your online reputation
Got some bad reviews from years ago that you want to bury? With the right SEO hacks, your negative reputation can easily be turned around.
So how can you boost your social media presence through SEO? This article will list proven and tested SEO hacks that you can apply to your social media strategy today.
SEO Hacks to Skyrocket Your Social Media Presence
1. Share, share, share!
As mentioned above, sharing your content across your social media channels is a great (and FREE!) way to drive traffic and generate leads to your site. This is also an excellent opportunity to earn backlinks from other authority sites, increasing your credibility and trustworthiness. A backlink from a high-ranking site immediately boosts your rankings in search results and allows you to earn more leads.
2. Maximize the use of hashtags
For networks like Instagram and Twitter, hashtags work like keywords — users that are looking for a specific topic can search for it on social media. While it was previously used to discover trending topics on social media, it is now a compelling feature that helps users find relevant content and connect with similar profiles.
In SEO, keywords are crucial as this is what search engine results are based on. All major search engines index hashtags, as they know that it is a great way to bring people together and initiate discussions, increasing traffic and engagement.
3. Partner with influencers
When you team up with a social media influencer to promote your brand, your social media reach is not limited to just your brand profiles — it opens the door to a broader audience that is relevant to your business. For example, a travel agency can partner with a travel vlogger to promote the agency in their Youtube videos.
4. Run UGC-focused campaigns
User-generated content promotes authenticity for your brand – it humanizes the experience and allows other people to speak on your behalf. There are many ways to encourage customers to create content for your brand:
- Host contests: This is the quickest way to generate content — after all, who doesn’t love to win free stuff? You can ask your customers to share a photo of them using your product or have them share what they love about your brand. This will quickly rake in some great content on social media and costs as cheap as a gift certificate or a package with your best-selling items!
- Start an engaging topic: Encourage your audience to engage in your content by asking them to share their experience on a relevant topic. For example, a clothing brand may ask for an OOTD (outfit of the day) post and caption it with your current mood. Younger audiences love to take selfies and OOTDs to generate great content that the brand can use to promote on their own social media channels.
- Feature customers: Potential customers want to see real people engaging in the brand that they are interested in; that’s why more and more brands feature regular people on their social media profiles. In addition, creating content centered around your customers shows that they are important to you and that you recognize them as a huge part of your success.
5. Consistently engage with your audience
Create a personal connection with your audience by responding to comments and mentions. People trust a brand more when they know that there is an actual person behind it, it builds a good reputation, and they will feel more connected to the brand.
A simple thank you or an acknowledgment of their publicly posted concern goes a long way – make them feel important, and they will eventually promote your brand to their friends and family for free!
6. Create eye-catching content
Did you know that Facebook users only spend an average of 1.7 seconds on a piece of content that they see on their news feed before scrolling down to the next post? Creating awesome content is one thing, but capturing the audience’s attention is a whole other thing. Your visuals need to be so good they need to literally stop on their tracks and check you out, otherwise, your efforts are down the drain.
7. Establish yourself as an industry expert
Question and answer social networks such as Quora and Reddit are great places to be active if you want your business to be known as an expert in the field. Share your knowledge and educate people who are not familiar with topics you are an expert on. Eventually, people will be interested in what you do and trust you and your brand. Ash Satyanarayana, the cofounder of FetchProfits, said this very well on Smart Hustle:
“Hustling or selling is exactly what you shouldn’t be doing on Quora. Instead, aim to spread knowledge. Expertise allows you to answer right. Right answers get you attention. Attention gets you hungry traffic. Hungry traffic leads to conversions.”
Don’t forget to add links to your responses to drive traffic back to your website!
8. Be consistent with your business information
If you are a business with a physical location, do not ignore the power of local SEO. Google takes into account a user’s location when providing search results, so make sure that your social media profiles all say the same thing regarding your company name, office address, phone number, and email address. Being consistent with this information is crucial as it avoids confusion in the algorithm and boosts your local rankings.
9. Optimize your content for social sharing
When you create an article on your blog, make sure that you include images that can be easily repurposed for social media. Infographics are best as they can stand on their own even without the content that goes along with it. In addition, make sure to follow the recommended image size of social networks. For example, Facebook recommends 1200 x 628-pixel size for link share images. If you use an image that does not meet this size, the link preview may be cut, pixelated, or simply unpleasant to look at. Remember that social media is all about the visuals; sharing a poorly made image is a brand social suicide.
10. Cross-promote across all channels
This may seem obvious, but some still fail to realize the importance of cross-promoting and sharing content across all channels. One way to cross-promote is to make sure that your website has all your social media links so your site visitors can click on it and follow you. You can also link your social media posts to your blog, so anyone who clicks on it will directly reach your social profile. The same goes with your social media profiles – make sure that all of them include your website so they can easily visit your website to learn more about you!
Conclusion
Remember that search is more than just Google. As long as you see a search box in a platform, SEO hacks can be applied. People go to Facebook not just to see how their friends are doing, but also to find out where the best sushi place is in their area. And because social networks are evolving from merely a direct information exchange platform to a powerful marketing tool, never leave it behind when planning your marketing strategy.