How You Can Improve SEO (Search Engine Optimization) With Social Media

In a modern world of the information revolution, showing up on the front page of any search engine may become a complementary factor between a well-functioning business and a poor-functioning business. Showing up on the front page ensures visibility of the content and website on search engine pages. SEO stands for search engine optimization. Using search engine optimization you get perfect control of what others do, think, and read on the sites.
Search engine optimization maximizes the visitor numbers to a specific site by ensuring the website appears high on results from the search engine like Google, Bing, Yahoo, etc. It involves directing traffic from free search results on the search engine results pages. Equally, it increases the sale proportionately without the increase in related costs, therefore, permitting the growth of business profits over time.

So can Social Media help Improve SEO?

Yes, social media can play a large part in getting your site to rank high on Search Engines especially for a startup business struggling to get onto their feet. This has been overlooked by many business not realizing how related SEO and Social media are. First you need to understand that there are many factors Google and other search engines use to determine how a site ranks. Social signals such as Facebook likes, post likes, comments, and Twitter followers doesn’t influence your search rankings. However, social shares received on an updated social media status affects your rankings. If an update gets a lot of shares it means that users find it useful and are more likely to click on it and learn more or even visit other pages in your site.

1. Write great and Captivating Content

Great content is the first step to bringing traffic to your site. Without great content, fans will just not click your updates. They will just scroll through, but if your content is captivating and engaging, fans will be willing to read and share it with friends and other fans. The more shares on social media, the more the traffic to your site will be created by Google algorithm signaling that people want more of your content, thus better ranking.

2. Grow your Audience

Pages with a large following tend to rank better on SERPs (search engine results pages). As much as having a large social media following doesn’t directly determine your ranking on search engines, it does affect indirectly. With a large following your updates on social media will likely reach many people, and the higher the chances of getting shares and retweets which also translates to more site visits. So you need to keep growing your social media audience, and not just any following, ensure you get quality followers who always engage with the content you put out there.

3. Use Keywords on your posts

Keywords are very important if you want your site to rank higher on search engines. Other than being used on website, blog post, and in paid ads, keywords used on social media can also bring a great deal when it comes to drawing traffic to your content.
Keywords used in Pinterest pins and boards and YouTube videos help rank higher on SERPs and bring traffic to your YouTube channel. You can also use keywords on other platforms like Facebook to make your content pop up whenever someone searches for that keyword.

4. Use links in you social channels.

Including links in your social channels can influence your search rankings. You don’t have to populate your Social channels with just any links as Google only focuses on higher quality links rather than low-quality links. Some time ago Google put a value to link building in their search ranking, but people realized and started manipulating ranking with fake and low-quality links on sites. Since then Google maintains focus on higher quality links.

The source you use for your links determines its quality. Using links from low ranking sites, disreputable and poorly designed sites, or a link designed to manipulate ranking is low-quality link building and can damage your reputation and ranking on Search Engines.

So you want to use high-quality links to improve your ranking. Social sites have high online authority links; therefore, links on social media are considered high quality.
That being said, it is a good idea to include links in social profiles and also in posts. The link on your social profile can be a link to your website, and online posts can be links to your blogs, content, or products. The links will also encourage sharing and drive traffic to your site giving your site a better ranking.

5. Encourage sharing by using a CTA in your posts.

It obvious that you will automatically get shares if your content is great and captivating, but in other instances you have to encourage users to share by telling them what to do. This is called a CTA ( call to action). Sometimes the audience needs a simple request or a guide on what to do so as to better interact with your content. You can use call to action phrases like “retweet”, “checkout”, “tag a friend”, “tag someone”, “share”, “comment and subscribe” and many others to get your fans to engage with your content. Encouraging sharing will win you new followers, new likes, and quality followers to drive traffic to your site.

6. Make your content Shareable and Searchable

To get shares directly from your site or social media platforms, you need to make sure your content is searchable and shareable. Many social platforms have options in the settings to put content either as private or even shared with specific people. Even YouTube has an option to place a video as ‘unlisted’ making it only available to people who have the link. This is not how you want to put your business content online. You want everything set to the public to make the content shareable and searchable.

For your site, you want to include sharing buttons on your site that links your content (products or blogs) to social media. No one will be willing to copy a link so and to share it with someone if it is a hassle. So make sure you include Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and more buttons to allow users to share your content easily. This will in turn boost your social ranking.

7. Create a Local listing for your business.