SEO, for the sheer impact it has on generating leads and sales for a business is an invaluable asset for any company to stay relevant in today’s market. SEO is an organic strategy that focuses on creating an appealing identity for a business that helps them to naturally attract their target audience.
Ever since Google first released the panda update for its search engines in 2011, the focus has shifted to return to sites with greater quality content to the top of search results. Now, as social media itself is dependent on high quality content, the effort you spend on boosting SEO for your business can have a great impact on enhancing your social media reach.
Likewise, the social media presence of your business can have a very positive impact on your SEO efforts. But exactly how does social media and SEO relate with each other? Here we talk about how social media practices can boost the SEO for your website:
Increasing Your Number Of Followers
For a business the number of followers it has on social media can 
considerably impact its search engine rankings. For example, a business with a mere 100 followers on Twitter or Facebook won’t receive the rankings bonus that a big brand with say, a million followers will have.
This does not mean that the search engine rankings of your site depend purely on the number of social medial followers your business has. The focus should be to build the number of followers for your brand organically over a period of time.
As Google can detect the authenticity of your followers, buying proxy followers might not benefit your SEO strategy in any way.
The process of building up the number of followers for your brand is slow, but also very effective as long as you are staying true to it. Look to post unique and helpful content like ‘how to blogs’ or helpful tips, then following it up by engaging your customers through social media.
Directly engaging your customers and conversations can be crucial in building up a sizeable following for your brand.
Encouraging External Inbound Links
Social media also makes it possible to link your website content to external sites. To gain more authority in the eyes of Google it is important to have more diverse links to external websites.
Obviously the minimum expectation in such a scenario will be that your site has authoritative, high quality and original content in the first place. Without this, there is nothing you can use to attract external links.
In this instance think of social media like a TV channel which acts as a broadcast avenue for your content. For example, if we were to use a fishing analogy think of social media as fishing poles used to dangle ‘bait’ which is your content in front of the right audience.
Look to capitalise on popular social media trends and use hashtags to gain greater visibility for your site. Casting your reputation in social media as an authoritative leader in your own niche will maximize your chances of gaining more external link sources.
Optimizing Your Posts For Searches
In some of the top sections of its SERP’s, Google also favours social media updates. Optimising your posts for Google opens up a secondary avenue for search. Of course such a strategy is also dependent on the fact that you have pre-existing content but it can help you gain a vital albeit temporary position.
How can you implement such a strategy? Firstly, you require a strong anchor for your post which can be a video, detailed blog or infographic. The anchor is going to be your foundation and then you need to title your post accurately and descriptively.
Now when you are posting it, make sure that you have framed the anchor tag in such a way that it is optimised for a very specific search. By adding seasonal keywords into the mix you increase your chances of rising in search results.
For example, if you have written a detailed article about how to shop during the Christmas period, you could frame it using a specific query like ‘how to shop for Christmas on a budget’.
Influencing Social Sharing
Similar to external links, social sharing can also contribute in helping a brand establish itself as an authority. If your content or brand is validated by a reliable external source then search engines (Google, Yahoo, Bing etc.) use it as grounds for considering your brand a domain authority.
So, for example, if five people share your post on Facebook then it is good for you brand, but if 1000 people share your post then it is even better. Likes, retweets, favourites and shares, they all matter towards increasing your brand authority.
Is it possible to incentivise your customers to share your posts? Yes it is, try offering an award or discount or cash-back to customers for sharing your post. You can also engage your customers with interactive surveys to ‘like’ the message you are sending out with your post or to find out the type of content they are looking for from you.
The biggest benefit of employing such a strategy is a win-win situation for your brand and business. If people share your content, then your brand will have greater number of followers whereas the more followers you have, the more likes or shares you will get.
These strategies can significantly help you in launching a successful social media campaign but ultimately the success or failure of your social media campaign can hinge on how good an experience you are providing your viewers. Understanding the effect of your social media campaign on SEO can guide you in providing the best possible experience for your customers which increases your chances of attracting new customers for your brand.
