7 Social Media Strategies to Boost Your SEO

Research shows, there are currently 3.2 billion social media users worldwide. Regardless of your industry, what this number signifies remains consistent — social media is essential for successful marketing.

So how does social media help increase website traffic?

With greater flexibility, reduced costs and broader audiences, social media is providing marketers a new and improved way to reach their target audiences. Social media efforts can also positively impact your SEO when used correctly.

To help ensure you’re making the most of your social media campaigns, we’re sharing 7 social media strategies to boost your SEO. 

Use a multichannel approach

The goal of any content marketing is to reach as big an audience as possible. The same applies to SEO goals. More traffic means more sales, leads, and shares. Social media can help expand your audience by providing a variety of platforms for your content to live on and for others to engage with. You can boost your rankings when you publish on multiple social accounts, rather than on a single platform and hoping it’s picked up by other sources.

Focus on local engagement

Social media platforms provide a great outlet for engaging with local communities, brands and individuals. Over a period of time, local engagement activity will in turn signify local-specific SEO authority.

Collaborate with other local businesses to share each other’s updates, announcements and blog posts on social media. Same goes for any local events you take part in. Take pictures, create videos and share updates on your experience for local residents to engage with. Finally, show your investment in your local community by dedicating a section of your company blog to locally relevant content. Optimizing your posts to include voice-search keywords can help boost your ranking in relevant local search queries.

Prioritize mobile optimization

Another important factor for visibility is mobile search optimization. Research shows 76% of people who search for something on their smartphone visit a related business within a day, and 28% of those searches result in a purchase. It’s imperative your site shows up in those searches. Google even prioritizes mobile-friendly sites when ranking pages. Build your site with a mobile-first approach to make it easy to find from smartphones, tablets and other smart devices.

Reach out to influencers

The value influencers offer brands is rapidly increasing as social media continues to grow. Taking advantage of influencer marketing can improve SEO by helping you build more backlinks on their blogs and websites. To maintain credibility and avoid sponsored link language, it’s important to properly strategize your relationships with influencers.

Rather than utilizing influencers as a subset of your sales efforts, create content-based influencer campaigns. Remember these people are professionals in what they do, so trust their input and collaborate on a campaign that authentically relates to your brand and the topics surrounding your industry. The more relatable your influencer campaign is, the better response it will receive from the influencers audience and the more visibility and authority you gain.

Utilize video

YouTube is the second largest social media site and is often considered the second largest search engine after Google. A fully optimized YouTube channel can improve brand awareness and significantly improve your search results.

Ensure your YouTube content is providing the most SEO value by following these best practices:

• Video keyword research: Keep in mind the unique way people search for online video content. Include keywords and phrases in video titles, descriptions, tags, and transcript.
• High retention videos: Audience retention is the average percentage of a YouTube video people watch. Keep your content interesting and relevant to ensure you get optimal visibility on YouTube.
• Cross promotion: Provide exposure to your content in every place you can. Include links to your videos on your blog, email signatures and public forums.

Look for link opportunities

Natural, followed links are fundamental to improving SEO rankings. While this is an often difficult task to accomplish, social media can aid in your efforts. Keeping in mind the fact that people have to know about your content in order to link to it emphasizes the need for promotion and the impact social sharing can have. Search Engine Journal recommends best practices to ensure your content is link-worthy:

• Create a strategy for social promotion of your content and keep it consistent.
• Keep an updated list of your best evergreen content and schedule it to be re-shared regularly.

Use hashtags

Hashtags are essentially just another form of the search query. Research which hashtags are best suited for your brand and how your community uses them. Focus on Twitter and Instagram for the best results. Tools like Tailwind can help identify trends and monitor success patterns to guide you in these efforts and ensure you’re reaching the audience you want.

While social media posts are not known to be a ranking factor used in Google’s algorithm, social media is still extremely important when it comes to driving traffic and generating leads for your business. Google likes websites that users find engaging. By encouraging users to share and engage with your content, you can indirectly boost your SEO and your rankings.

Marie Johnson is a contributor to Enlightened Digital, UX Designer and technology writer from New York City. When she’s not writing her latest blog post from her kitchen, you’ll likely find her strolling through Central Park, cappuccino in hand.