The Role of Social Media in SEO: Why It’s Important and How to Benefit From It

Intro

SEO has long been proven to be a treasure trove for businesses. In a digital era, it’s the primary weapon for making your brand noticed by consumers, driving traffic, and ensuring conversions.

Social media, in its turn, makes up a huge part of the lives of modern consumers. According to DataReportal, in 2023, an average internet user spends 2 hours and 31 minutes on social media per day. This is 2% more compared to data from last year’s reports and this indicator has a tendency to grow, which makes such channels another crucial tool for businesses.

Both SEO and social media are widely used by marketers to get in front of their target audiences, though they often come separately. You can always make use of them. For SEO, all you need is a wise strategy and the best rank tracking software to monitor your progress and find areas for improvement. At Top10seosoftware, you can discover a vast variety of top-class SEO software and pick handy tools that will assist you not only in rank tracking but also in many other areas of optimization. And for social media, you need a wise SMM strategy and some consistency.

But should they be used separately? Or are these tools connected? The truth is that they are. A wise optimization of your media pages can maximize your brand's exposure and kick organic search rankings, increasing the efficacy of your SEO. Read on to learn what is the real role of social media in SEO and how you can use these tools together for outstanding results!

A new Digital 2023 April Global Statshot Report by DataReportal revealed some exciting insights on social media and how businesses leverage it for marketing. The primary insight is the growing global population of users. According to report data, there are 4.80 billion active social media users in 2023, which is teasingly close to 60% of the total world’s population. The past year brought 150 million new users to different networks, which accounts for an annual growth of 3.2% and the number of users keeps growing.

Another interesting insight is the ratio of the internet and social media use motivations. Researching products and brands (43.1%) remains one of the top 10 reasons people hop on the web. As for social media, more and more consumers now say that researching brands and finding things to do & buy are among the most common motivations to use networks. 49.2% of users between 16 and 24 years call networks their primary channels for online brand research. It’s also the primary channel for research in the 25-34-years age group and the second most popular channel for users between 35 and 44 years. Interestingly enough, even older consumers use networks to research brands - 38.2% among 45-54-year-old users and 30.6% among 55-64-year-old users.

These stats clearly indicate the widespread usage of social networks among users all across the world and within all age groups. But that’s not all the value that these channels hold.

The role of social media in consumer behavior and buying decisions is startling. According to industry analysis of the past years, in 2021, 68% of consumers made at least one purchase straight from social media and 98% of consumers planned to make at least one such purchase in 2022.

Also, 81% of US-based users stated that related publications from their friends and family directly affect their purchasing decisions on social media. Another 78% stated that posts from the brands they follow also affect their decisions to buy. These numbers suggest that businesses now have much more influence on social media than ever, which triggers them to integrate such channels deeper into their marketing strategies.

Understanding SEO and Its Significance

Now that you know more about social media and its role in the modern business landscape, let’s shift to the second part of our topic.

SEO stands for search engine optimization, which is the process of improving the quality of a website or web page to meet search engines’ criteria for site ranking. The primary goal of this process is to boost the site’s visibility in search result pages, known as SERPs. And the core target of SEO is unpaid traffic instead of paid or direct traffic.

SEO is an all-encompassing field that spans a large number of website factors that affect its performance, traffic, etc. Namely, the key elements of SEO include:

Keywords;
Meta tags;
Backlinks;
Images;
Content;
Internal links;
User experience.

Apart from these factors, there are technical aspects that also affect your positioning. These include website architecture, page loading speed, crawling, indexing, etc. All these elements affect how search engines see your website and, respectively, how high you stand in SERPs.

The importance of SEO for businesses is hard to undervalue. According to Google, 51% of consumers use Google to research products they plan to buy online. What’s more, 74% of in-store shoppers also conduct online research before heading to the store. That is, search engines are now the primary source for consumers to discover brands and products/services they want to purchase. And since SEO helps you get higher in search results, it basically makes your brand more visible to potential buyers. Apart from this, search engine optimization helps businesses drive a lot of organic traffic and convert prospects into actual buyers.

If you want to beat the game and bring your website higher in SERPs, you need a brilliant search engine optimization strategy that adheres to up-to-date algorithms. Currently, the primary factors that affect your rankings include:

Security and accessibility of the website;
Page speed;
Mobile friendliness and mobile page speed;
URL and domain age;
Authority;
Technical SEO;
Optimized content with relevant, up-to-date keywords;
Links (including outbound, internal, and backlinks);
User experience;
Up-to-date business information for local SEO.

Once you implement all these factors on your website, your positioning will skyrocket. All you need is a wise strategy and the best rank tracking software to monitor your progress and find areas for improvement. At Top10seosoftware, you can discover a vast variety of top-class SEO software and pick handy tools that will assist you not only in rank tracking but also in many other areas of optimization. Still, that’s not all.

Among a variety of factors that affect your ranking, there is one that’s often overlooked, and it’s social media.

Google’s official word is firm - social signals, such as shares, aren’t considered a ranking factor. Search engines don’t see links from networks like Facebook or Instagram as authoritative as links from trusted websites.

Nevertheless, some of Google’s top-ranking pages typically have a lot of shares, likes, and other signals. That is, such signals do affect your SEO rankings, just not directly.

Here are some of the biggest benefits of media for SEO to confirm this:

Improved Content Performance

When you let users share your content seamlessly on networks, you generate more engagement. At the same time, you gain access to wider audiences thanks to shares. And the more people engage with your content the more benefits you get in terms of ranking.

(Netflix has a convenient bar with engagement features right at the top of every blog post)

More Opportunities for Backlinks

If you have excellent content that goes unnoticed, it can be hard to find opportunities for backlinks. However, content spreads incredibly easily through media. Thus, if you gain shares, there is a good chance that your content will be discovered by people who will find it valuable and will want to give you a backlink. And as you already know, backlinks significantly affect your positioning.

More Traffic

Higher visibility and traffic are the two core objectives of SEO. By being active on different networks and spreading valuable content, you have a chance to bring plenty of organic traffic to your website and, respectively, increase your ranking.

Improved Trust

These days, most large and recognized businesses have active profiles. Due to this reason, consumers expect all legitimate brands to be there. So poor or nonexistent social pages can be a red flag to buyers. On the contrary, if you put enough effort into your SMM strategy, it will help you build trust with your audience and boost your online reputation. At the same time, it’s a great way to humanize your brand and engage with your audience on a deeper level.

High Ranking for Branded Search

Finally, it’s worth noting that not only can your website be optimized to position higher in SERPs. You can do the same for your media accounts. Simple optimization of your pages can put your profiles at the top of SERPs for branded search queries. This performs a crucial function for your business - people who are interested in seeing your social media accounts will be able to hop on them right from search engines, without searching through the website.

(If you look up “Apple Twitter” in Google, you can check out the brand’s account right away)

Now that you know how your SEO can benefit from social media, let’s get to the most exciting part. Below are the top three strategies that will help you maximize your effort.

Social listening is one of the SEO best practices, which aims to find and track online mentions of your brand. This tactic allows you to monitor your reputation. But most importantly, it lets you monitor your competitors’ reputations as well.

With the help of this tactic, you can keep an eye on what your competitors do on social networks and how their audiences react to their activities. This will help you gain valuable insights into your competitors’ weak spots and use them to your benefit.

2. Optimize Your Profiles

If you want to build trust and rank high for branded search, you must fine-tune your profiles. There are a few things you can do for this purpose.

Start With Your Picture

A profile image that’s off your brand’s style or ill-fitted screams “unprofessional!” right into your prospects’ faces. So before you do anything else, be sure to pick the perfect picture. First of all, it must meet your overall brand image, a logo or another image that associates with your brand is a perfect choice.

Secondly, it must be of the right size:

Facebook - 170 X 170 px
LinkedIn - minimum 400 X 400 px
Instagram - 110 X 110 px
Pinterest - 150 X 150 px
Twitter - 400 X 400 px
YouTube - 800 X 800 px
TikTok - minimum 20 X 20 px

Pro tip: The right size isn’t the only important factor. Different networks have different shapes of profile pictures (typically circular or square ones). So if you want to make your page look flawless, you must keep in mind the shape of the picture to ensure that your photo fits perfectly.

Retain Your Visual Identity

Typically, there is not much you can tweak on social networks design-wise. However, you can support your visual identity by designing the small details that you actually can design. For example, on LinkedIn and Facebook, you can add a relevant background image.

(Microsoft styled its LinkedIn background photo to go in line with its logo)

On Instagram, you can plan your grid wisely and ensure that your whole page goes in line with your brand image.

(Too Faced Cosmetics sticks to the same branded color scheme in its publications on Instagram)

Tricks like these help create a sense of cohesion and emphasize your brand.

Write a Killer Bio

Every network gives you some space to introduce your page to the audience. Some platforms provide more than enough space, whereas others like Instagram or Twitter only give you a few sentences to welcome your followers. In both cases, you must make the most out of your bio.

If you have a beginning business, the best use of a bio is to provide a straightforward and up-to-date description of your brand. This will let users get to know you better. Also, you can use this space to share your slogan or inform others about the latest promotions. Or if you are bold enough, you can get creative with your bio and keep it intentionally vague.

(Pull&Bear used its Instagram bio to share the brand’s slogan and promote its hashtag to encourage more user-generated content)

Add a Link

The next optimization point doesn’t need to be explained. If you want to drive more traffic and boost your SEO with the help of social networks, you must have a link to your website on your pages. Place them right in the bio to give users a chance to visit your site.

3. Craft Impeccable Content

The quality of your content plays the most crucial role in your social media SEO efforts. You must research your audience thoroughly to craft content that will resonate with it. Every publication must align with your brand’s vision and mission, bring real value to readers, and most importantly, inspire shares and other engagements. The better quality of your content, the more brand recognition you will gain. Respectively, you will get more chances to score backlinks, build authoritativeness, and boost your rankings.

Also, be sure to add relevant keywords to your posts. As you know, keywords play a crucial role in search engine optimization, so use them to the fullest. Ideally, empower yourself with the right SEO software to make your keyword research precise.

Finally, if you want to maximize your social media efforts, start cross-promoting your content. Share the publications you make across all your profiles and encourage viewers to check them out. Also, promote new content on your website or blog in your accounts. This will help you gain even more exposure.

Conclusion

Although it might still not be obvious to some businesses, search engine optimization and social media marketing should go hand-in-hand. These two powerful assets can bring you a lot of organic traffic, build awareness, and take you higher in SERPs. Use the knowledge and advice from this guide to take your SEO strategy to a completely new level!

The Role of Social Media in SEO: Why It’s Important and How to Benefit From It

Intro