How to incorporate social media into SEO strategies
While social media marketing and SEO seem like two separate practices, when used together, they can enhance any organization's digital marketing strategy.
To increase brand awareness and drive more quality traffic to their websites, marketers should invest in search engine optimization.
Marketing teams use SEO to increase a website's visibility when people search for products or services. Most people use search engines to find what they need, and they are more likely to buy from or engage with a brand that shows up high on search engine results pages (SERPs). When done correctly, SEO can help marketing teams rank higher on SERPs and see increases in quality traffic.
While marketers can take several different approaches to SEO, they need a solid content strategy to improve the chances of showing up on SERPs. Blog content, links to internal and external sources, optimized meta descriptions and social media can improve SEO. Social media, in particular, is critical to a brand's content strategy, as it serves as a channel to share content, connect with audiences, build awareness and drive traffic to a website.
Explore how an organization can incorporate social media into its overall SEO strategy.
What is social media SEO?
Social media SEO is the practice of using social media platforms to enhance a brand's search engine results. With this strategy, marketers strategically share content, engage with audiences and optimize social media profiles so they show up on SERPs. All of this can increase a brand's visibility and create a place for more conversations and transactions.
Social media does not directly affect SEO rankings. It indirectly influences search visibility through increased brand awareness, traffic to the site and engagement metrics.
The overall goal of social media SEO is to drive more quality traffic to a company's website. This improves the brand's overall online reputation and domain authority within search engines. When users engage with content on social platforms and share, comment on or like a post, it generates social signals that indicate the content's relevance and popularity.
Effective social media SEO strategies include high-quality, shareable content, active social media profiles and engagement from followers. Marketing teams can also align social media posts with their content and keyword strategies, optimize images and videos for both social and search and collaborate with influencers or other brands to expand the reach of their content.
SEO vs. social media
Social media management and SEO are distinct but complementary strategies. For social media management, teams create, post and optimize content for social networks, such as Facebook, X (formerly Twitter), Instagram, LinkedIn and TikTok. The strategy aims to build brand awareness, engage with audiences, promote content and drive traffic to websites through social channels. Social media strategies prioritize immediate engagement metrics, such as likes, shares, comments and followers.
Neither SEO nor social media is more important than the other.
For SEO, teams optimize website content and structure to make the site easier to find, so it shows up in SERPs for relevant industry phrases and questions. SEO strategies focus on long-term gains by driving quality organic search traffic.
Neither SEO nor social media is more important than the other, despite serving their own unique goals. They support one another, and each approach has benefits and drawbacks, but marketing teams can bring in more success if they use both in an overarching digital marketing strategy.
Why is social media important for SEO?
Even though social media does not directly affect SERP rankings, it can significantly influence SEO, as it can drive quality traffic to websites and specific content, like blogs and campaign-focused pages. When a brand creates high-quality, valuable content that resonates with its target audience, it encourages engagement and sharing, which can transform consumers into brand advocates. This engagement cycle continues as followers find value in, interact with and share content with their own networks.
SEO involves search engine bots that evaluate the quality of content and its traffic.
Quality content can take many forms, including blog posts, videos, infographics, e-books, webinars, reviews and podcasts. These formats should provide valuable information to attract repeat visitors and guide leads through the marketing funnel.
When marketing teams use social media platforms to distribute content, they amplify its reach to a broader audience. Increased visibility can drive higher-quality traffic and generate backlinks to relevant websites, all of which can positively affect the content's SERP performance.
Social media also enhances SEO in the following ways:
Boosts content visibility and distribution. Sharing content on social media exposes it to larger audiences, which increases the chances of generating backlinks and driving organic traffic. Content that performs well on social networks can signal to search engines that it is valuable and relevant, which can improve search rankings.
Generates social signals. Engagement metrics, such as likes, shares, comments and follows, contribute to a brand's online reputation. While these metrics are not direct ranking factors, they can enhance brand visibility and influence how search engines perceive a brand's credibility.
Improves local SEO. Social media helps brands engage with local audiences, use location-based hashtags and share location-specific content. Optimized social profiles with accurate information can improve a brand's appearance in local searches.
Increases brand recognition and loyalty. A strong social media presence can build brand recognition, establish industry authority and encourage branded searches, which can enhance search rankings.
Supports long-term content strategy. Evergreen content shared on social media platforms can maintain value over time, consistently drive traffic and reinforce the content's authority amid ever-changing search engine algorithms.
To remain competitive, marketing teams should adopt modern approaches to integrate social media into their SEO strategies. This includes adopting emerging platforms, like AI-driven tools for content creation and analytics, and focusing on high-impact formats, such as short-form videos and interactive content. Brands can also amplify their reach and build trust with new audiences if they collaborate with influencers and encourage user-generated content (UGC).
12 tips to incorporate social media into SEO
To effectively join SEO and social media strategies, marketing teams can follow these best practices.
Align keyword research with posting topics. Keyword research can help marketing teams identify content ideas to share on social media channels. Teams should create content around high-ranking keywords and update older content that could benefit from improved rankings.
Create quality content to share on social media. Marketers should focus on content quality over quantity, share topics relevant to their target audience and tailor posts to fit each platform's best practices.
Revisit high-ranking evergreen content with social promotion. Marketing teams can revisit pages with high SERP rankings and engagement and evaluate what they did well. They can also recirculate high-performing evergreen content through social channels, as this content often continues to perform well.
Simplify content sharing. Social media posts can encourage sharing, but website content should be easily shareable with social icons and links. These links encourage content sharing with little effort from social media managers.
Optimize images for SEO and social. When encouraging sharing across channels, marketing teams should optimize images for web and social. Images should be 80% visual and 20% copy, when applicable, and shouldn't be too large.
Encourage engagement and conversation. Marketers should make posts compelling enough to create an emotional response from the audience. Posts that encourage conversation may ask questions, include relevant articles or ask for feedback. Organizations should ensure a social admin responds to comments to keep conversations going.
Optimize social media profiles. When users visit a social media profile, it should contain all the relevant information they need to learn about the brand. Social media teams should make the profile informative and professional, include multiple ways to contact the brand and link back to the main website.
Share video content. Video content, such as short-form videos, tutorials and live streams, can generate high engagement rates. Platforms like YouTube, Instagram Reels, TikTok and LinkedIn prioritize video content, which can improve visibility and drive traffic back to a website.
Collaborate with influencers. Partnering with industry influencers can help brands reach new audiences and build credibility. Influencers can share branded content, give authentic endorsements and create backlinks to a brand's website. This, in turn, positively affects SEO.
Embrace UGC. Encourage followers to share their experiences with the brand through reviews, testimonials and posts. Sharing UGC on brand channels can build trust, generate fresh content and increase engagement.
Use analytics to refine strategies. Social media analytics tools and SEO tools like Google Analytics can track the performance of shared content. Insights on engagement, traffic sources and conversion rates can help marketing teams adjust their SEO and social media strategies for better results.
Engage in social listening. Monitor brand mentions, industry trends and competitor activities on social media. Social listening tools offer insights into what audiences search for and help align content strategies with emerging keywords and topics.
Social media helps people discover new brands, and SEO helps brands generate more traffic from their target audiences. Marketing teams that use both can help their organizations increase traffic, brand awareness and authority.
Editor's note: This article was originally published in 2022 and updated to reflect changes in best practices for social media and SEO.
Griffin LaFleur is a MarketingOps and RevOps professional working for Swing Education. Throughout his career, LaFleur has also worked at agencies and independently as a B2B sales and marketing consultant.
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