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Do you want to rank higher in search engines?
Interested in ways to use your social accounts to improve your SEO?
Social media has a significant impact on your search results, and a strong social presence can boost your search rankings.
In this article you'll discover five ways to use social media to improve your search rankings.
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#1: Build Links With Your Social Channels
Google used to put a high value on link building in their search rankings, no matter what quality of links you were building. When people figured this out and started manipulating rankings with fake or low-quality links to their site, Google started to focus on higher-quality links.
Links on social media are often considered higher-quality links, because social sites have a high web authority from the get-go. Even if your Facebook page is new, it's likely to rank highly (and maybe even surpass your website) thanks to Facebook's overall high authority.
It may sound obvious, but make sure that you include a working link to your website not only in your content, but also in every social profile you have. In addition to increasing traffic to your site, it's also highly valuable for link building.
When it comes to link building within content, post content like new products or blog posts to your social profiles to encourage sharing. For example, you could create a relevant YouTube video for each blog post and embed it in the post, capitalizing on the high web authority to send traffic to your site and increase search rankings.
#2: Grow Your Follower Base
Pages with a lot of high-quality followers rank better in searches. High-quality followers are real followers on your social channels, and a large percentage of them engage or interact with you in some form.
This interaction might be repinning pins, retweeting your content or sending you a tweet, placing reviews on Google+ or engaging with your posts on Facebook.
Social signals are a very real factor when it comes to SEO. Search engines look at social signals to find out how often you're posting to your social media accounts, how many people interact with you and if there are social-sharing elements available to visitors to your site.
There's no point in trying to outsmart the algorithms with fake likes on Facebook. Low-quality followers are not good for you. Not only will Facebook penalize you for fake likes, search engines like Google will punish you with lower rankings, too.
So, make sure you're steadily gaining a solid base of followers that are interacting with you and your content, and encourage them to share, engage and interact with you.
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#3: Make Your Content Searchable and Sharable
Pinterest is a great example of a social platform that makes your content both searchable and sharable. Pinterest encourages sharing to a great extent. Users post pins they like to their boards, and share them with other Pinterest users.
Many social accounts give you the option of keeping your content private, or relatively so. On YouTube, you can have unlisted videos, and only people who have links to the videos can watch them. Pinterest allows secret boards, and Twitter gives you the option to have a private profile.
When it comes to your business, you want all of your social accounts to be public, and you want all of your content to be searchable.
For example, for your Facebook profile, you have the option to make your posts searchable in search engines. To do this, go to your Facebook privacy settings and enable the option Do You Want Other Search Engines to Link to Your Timeline?, shown here.
The more people who see your posts, the more people who might share it. Encouraging sharing (including through methods like Facebook contests) is a great way to increase your search rankings.
#4: Use Keywords in Your Posts
Keywords are important for your website, blog and paid ad campaigns, so it should come as no surprise that keywords matter with your social content, too.
On Pinterest, a great way to rank higher in search engines is to use keywords in your pins or boards. Similarly, doing keyword research for YouTube videos can bring in traffic not only to your channel, but also to your website and blog if they're listed in your profile. Even using keywords in your posts on Facebook can pay off.
This comes back to making sure that your content is searchable. This way, when users search for those keywords, your content will pop up.
#5: Create Local Listings
Make sure your business has a local listing on Google+Â and that you include your address and other pertinent information. This allows customers to review your company directly on Google. Also, Google recommends businesses with the highest reviews first.
Similarly, make sure that you have a list of locations or a map for your business on your Facebook page. Not only can it be helpful for social media, but it also makes it easier for customers to find you and check in. This is great for local SEO.
Conclusion
Using social media as a marketing tool is highly valuable in its own right, but it can offer even more value when you leverage it to increase SEO.
While some changes to SEO algorithms make it challenging to keep up with best practices, one thing that is clear is that social media can make a big impact on your search rankings.
What do you think? Have you tried any of these tactics to increase SEO? What practices have helped you boost your rankings in search engines? Please share your experiences, thoughts, and knowledge in the comments below!
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