Some experts have said that if content is king, distribution is queen. Building SEO and gaining credibility for your website is only possible if you create and optimize good content. There are other things you can do to distribute your content on social media and other channels, and ways that you can set up your social media pages, to help SEO as well.
What is Social Media?
Social media is just a catch-all term we use to describe websites with functions that allow users to interact with one another. Facebook is the most well-known, but other sites like Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn, and YouTube are included in social media, too.
How Does Social Media Affect SEO?
Backlinks
One trait that improves your SEO is backlinking. The idea here is that the more links that exist in the internet that point back to your website, the more reputable it is. Search engines want to see links pointing back to your website in lots of places, and social media is one. Plus, you can help this process along by generating interesting content and posting it to social media so others can share it. Even just having your website URL on a handful of social profile pages can be helpful.
Additional Search Results
Social media pages rank in search engines. If someone searches for your practice, the first page of results should have your website in the number one position, and then possibly outside news sources, internal pages that have a lot of traffic, and your social pages, in no particular order. What you don’t want are results relating to other companies or industries on that first page. If your website is relatively new or doesn’t yet have a lot of good content, then social profiles are an easy and cost-effective way to make sure that you’re in control of what web properties dominate the top spots for your branded keywords.
If you put a lot of work into your social pages or have a niche field that doesn’t display a lot of competing local results, your social pages may also rank for organic terms relating to your products or services. If your industry or locale is more competitive, however, your goal should be to increase the SEO for your website and not try to compete additionally with your social pages. That doesn’t mean don’t set up social pages. You should still have profiles on the major sites, but there’s no need to worry if they don’t compete well with optimized websites.
Content Distribution
The popular phrase “content is king” has been used to describe how important it is for brands to create interesting content. Whether it’s text, images, video, graphics, or even podcasts, e-books, and quizzes, you have to craft interesting pieces of art and information to get noticed and stay relevant. This is true not only for marketing in general, but also for SEO. Some people have said that if content is the most important aspect of marketing, distributing your content to users is the second most important part of your marketing plan.
The best and most widely used system for distributing and sharing content is social media. More people get news and information from Facebook than just about any other source, which makes social media a hugely important part of your SEO strategy. Beyond just providing backlinks to your website and possibly raising your search rank in some search engines, using SEO to distribute your content and increase brand awareness will also increase your website traffic and help improve your SEO. As more people visit your website, the search engines will prioritize your domain over other similar ones. In this way, integrating social media with your website will help your SEO.
Social Sites are Their Own Search Engines
Social media websites are their own search engines. When people think of search engines, they usually think of the big ones like Google, Bing, and Yahoo, but more and more we’re seeing social media platforms like Facebook become their own search sites. Facebook now allows you to search not only for business pages and people, but also for posts that were made and topics that were mentioned. This is a powerful tool, and if social media sites continue to develop as search engines, it will be even more important for businesses to build their social pages to stay relevant and utilize important marketing resources.
Special Help from Google+ and Google My Business
The Google+ platform is going through a lot of changes and will soon be different than what we’re used to. What probably won’t change is the way your business’ interaction with the Google+ helps SEO in a general sense. Google offers some special perks to businesses that take advantage of integrating their business information (including phone number and hours), website, photos, user reviews, and “about” copy. Now more than ever, it’s very important to have a verified Google business listing.
If you have any questions about how Innereactive can help you master your social media and SEO strategy, get in touch!