Enhance SEO Efforts with Social Media | Knowmad Digital Marketing

In this guide, you will find information on the following topics:

- General Guidelines »
- Best Practices for Social Media »
- Keywords & Trending Topics »
- How to Approach Each Social Channel »

Social Media’s Changed. Your Goals Haven’t.

Even after years of evolution, social media still has the potential to offer serious opportunities for your business, starting with the ability to scale your networking activities. As an online networking channel, social media can be just as valuable as offline networking—especially considering it isn’t limited by geography like traditional networking is (and this is especially true for small businesses).

Ultimately, your goals with social media will be the same as your goals for your offline networking efforts:

• Create brand awareness

• Build professional and company credibility

• Build and foster new relationships

• Create new sales

Best SEO Practices for Social Media

Get the Most Out of Your Social Media Efforts

Whether you’re using Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, or Youtube—or all of them—for your business, there are three key tips that will ensure your social media success translates to SEO success.

Tip 1: Create Killer Content and the Links Will Come

You can’t treat your social media channels like your website; you need more than just info about your products and services. Try to focus on content that is more informational in nature, and less about making a sale. Think more along the lines of an instructive infographic or an in-depth blog post.

Tip 2: Avoid Building Links on Social Media

Did you know that links from personal accounts don’t pass search engine reputation? And even if they did, they would be from the personal user and not the social media sites themselves. Moreover, social media links normally get buried within a news feed quickly, so their visibility is low to nonexistent.

Tip 3: Avoid Building Links on Social Media

For SEO purposes, having a smaller following full of key influencers within your industry is the best way to give your SEO a boost. Create relationships with these influencers by sharing their content in thoughtful ways, and by linking to them from your guest posts on large blogs.

Remember: It’s a Marathon, Not a Sprint

Though these three tips help SEO indirectly, they’re invaluable for organically creating valuable backlinks that will lead to better rankings on SERPs. When it comes to social media, it’s often better to operate without expecting anything in return from your followers. Just provide them with content that solves their problems, slowly build a following, and then help them out any way you can.

Keywords & Trending Topics: 3 Simple Steps

3 Simple Steps for Keywords and Trending Topics

Targeting both social chatter and search volume has the potential to deliver the best results with your keyword research and trending topics.

With this approach, internet marketers can ensure that they’re not ignoring the proven relationship between the two. And even if the number of likes and followers don’t directly impact SEO factors, the fact that these social posts can appear on Page 1 of SERPs gives them relevance in the world of SEO.

Here are three simple steps you can take:

Step 1: Use Buzzsumo

Enter your keyword or topic into Buzzsumo to see what words, phrases, and topics are gaining the most shares and buzz in your field. Buzzsumo will also let you automate this process: you can track expert mentions and brand mentions by setting up content alerts. Pro tip: when you set up your alerts, build your query in the most precise way possible.

Step 2: Take your topics to SEMRush

Take your topics and phrases over to SEMrush and identify which keywords have the search volume that is worth pursuing, and ditch the rest (for the moment). However, don’t go by volume alone—take the topics and phrases over to your Analytics account, and dive into your Landing Page data. If any of these topics or keywords align with Landing Pages that convert, you’ll know which pages to link to when you’re posting links in your social posts.

Step 3: Add Your Hashtags

Finally, add relevant hashtags to your social posts that incorporate these keywords. See what’s trending and identify related hashtags with the Google Explore or

RiteTag research tools. In the end, hashtags give you the best of both worlds: you’ll attract audiences for popular topics in the social realm without abandoning your traditional keyword focus, and have relevance to SEO and the SERP.

Gain Authority with Google and Your Audience

To gain authority you need to send the right signals, utilizing data on trending topics as well as keywords. Using some of the advice we’ve already discussed, create content to garner social media shares across a variety of platforms, from Facebook and Twitter to Youtube and LinkedIn. The more often your voice is found at the center of the conversation, the more authority your brand will gain on Google, for SERPs, and with your target audience.

Let's Get Specific

How to Approach Each Social Media Channel

We’ve discussed some best practices and tools, but let’s also go a step further and touch on how you can approach the following social media channels:

LinkedIn
Twitter
Facebook
Youtube

- LinkedIn -

LinkedIn is more formal than some of the other social sites such as Twitter and Facebook. Here’s the type of content you'll want to share:

Company Page

Post company blog posts
Announce job openings
Include company history
List services/products
Ask trusted clients for referrals

Personal Status Update

Share interesting/helpful blogs and articles from others
Comment on industry trends and topics

Pro Tip: Use Direct Messages to personally introduce yourself to industry leaders or prospects to get noticed. Tell them why you’re introducing yourself or how you noticed them.

- Twitter -

Here are some approaches to consider when using Twitter:

Follow Your Industry

Follow individuals, products, and companies within your industry to keep up with trends, news, and events. A significant amount of the time, these users will follow you back in return, increasing your Twitter reach. Also, if you’re following users aligned with your primary focus, your feed won’t be clogged with irrelevant tweets.

Influence Virtual Communication

Encourage conversation with hashtags (#): Hashtags are a way of tagging tweets to make it easy for anyone anywhere to follow, promote, and respond to news, products, ideas, events, webinars, and offers. Also, tag tweets as you would a blog post. If you’re tweeting about SEO, add #SEO. Users seeking information on SEO will search the hashtag, and depending on timeliness, your tweet will appear in results.

Reach Out and Respond to Others Using @Replies

All you need to do is click the reply icon below someone else’s tweet, or just type “@” followed by the recipient’s Twitter username.

- Facebook -

Here are some approaches to consider when using Facebook:

Build Thought Leadership

Post relevant industry content to educate your followers in order to gain trust.

Show Personality

Facebook is less formal and provides a platform to show your company’s personality. Create posts that your followers will want to share with their friends.

Engage, Don’t Interrupt

With a daily post, you can create a lighthearted topic as a stepping stone to an actionable content piece (blog posts, ebook, special offers, etc.)

- Youtube -

Here are some key benefits to using Youtube:

Brand Exposure

YouTube provides a platform that is easy to search, watch, and share, and is used by billions.

Engagement

Don’t just walk away after uploading a video. Engage with your followers who provide comments to show you are paying attention and care.

Increase Sales

Video demos are more captivating than a slideshow. Studies show decision-makers want to watch, not read and that people who have seen a video are more likely to convert to a lead.

SEO

Search engines highly value video. Quality videos on your website will help your website rank higher in SERPs.

Raise Your Profile

The goal for your respective social media channels is to widen your approach and attract not only traffic, but attention from industry experts and leaders who have extensive fans and followers who would be interested in your brand. Blog posts, events, images, and videos can all be leveraged accordingly to enhance your social media presence, and, ultimately, your SEO efforts.

QUICK RECAP

Align your social media goals with your offline networking efforts
Utilize social media to increase the ranking signals that matter to Google and other SERPs
Create killer content and the links will come
Avoid building links on social media
For followers, look for quality over quantity
Use online tools and hashtags to target keywords and trending topics
Be methodical and consistent in your approach on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Twitter, or any other channels

ABOUT KNOWMAD

Knowmad is an award-winning internet marketing agency, located in Charlotte, NC. Knowmad helps clients get found, get leads, and grow their business online.

We’ve been partnering with clients to attract qualified sales leads using their online presence since 2009 and have clients in a variety of industries, including manufacturing, B2B business services, and technology.

If you are curious how we can help you increase the opportunities you have from online marketing, let’s talk.

Social Media SEO Guide