As a marketing channel, social media gets a lot more attention than other digital channels. After all, it�s sexy, evolves at a fast-pace and is what keeps us connected to so many of our friends, families and colleagues.
Social media, however, has limitations as a marketing channel because as much as it allows us to engage users based on their interests, it can�t always bridge the fact that most social users are there to socialize rather than purchase. So as much as social can help you build brand awareness and loyalty, it may take some time for those to convert into sales and can be even harder to track.Search & Intentional Targeting
While social media allows marketers to engage users based on age, location and interests, search allows them to target users by intention. That is, when someone types a search terms (e.g. product or service name) into a search bar, they are actively interested in related products/services.
Essentially, because search users are taking the first step to find more information on products or services, they are already one-step further down the conversion funnel (at least insofar as they are a much more pre-qualified lead). With social media, on the other hand, as much as you can target users according to interests (and other demographics), there is no guarantee that they are interested in or in the market for the kinds of products/services that you�re promoting.
This is why SEO and PPC are such popular marketing tools. Not only is it easier to track and measure ROI, but the traffic itself is of a much more pre-qualified nature.
How Social Can Support SEO
Insofar as both onsite content and �social signals� are search engine ranking factors, much can be done to align social media marketing efforts with SEO. So even if SEO is not a priority for your organization (though it should be), a few minor tweaks to your social campaigns can offer you added SEO benefits without compromising the integrity, tone and messaging of your social media campaigns.
Blogging and SEO
The most immediate SEO benefits of blogging are (1) having more keyword related content on your site that (2) is regularly update and (3) can attract backlinks and social signals that increase the trustworthiness and authority of your site and its content. Consequently, if your company is blogging, it can take a few small steps to ensure you maximize these SEO benefits; and if it�s not, it should really consider working blogging into its social media strategy.
Keyword Optimization: Before publishing new posts on your blog, you should consider whether they can be optimized for targeted keywords. Basically, if you�re already invested in SEO, you�ve probably conducted a keyword research to identify the most relevant keywords for your products/services. Well, before clicking the �publish� button on that blog post, consider how any of those keywords can be worked into the content of that post. Potential places to integrated these keywords include:
- The Page Title and Meta Description of the blog post page
- Any of the headers within the post � e.g. H2s and H3s
- and within the actual content of the post
While working one or two keywords into a post will not make or break your rankings for that keyword, doing so on an ongoing basis will increase the overall relevant of your domain/site for those keywords. And as your blog content accrues popularity through your social efforts, the instances of those keywords will carry more and more weight.
Interlinking: It�s one thing to have blog posts accrue popularity, backlinks and relevance for certain keyword combinations, it�s another to funnel that authority and relevance over to your product/service pages that are designed to convert. This is where interlinking comes in. Basically, by linking blog posts back to relevance product/service pages, you can funnel over some linkjuice and help those product/service pages rank better in the search engines.
Of course, it can be tricky to link back to a product/service page without making a blog post seem overly self-promotional. A good workaround, then, is including backlinks in an author bio that appears at the bottom of the post.
Essentially, since you should be blogging about different topics in your industry, you should probably be drawing on different members of your team with different expertise. And oftentimes, those different expertise will reflect your different product/service verticals. So it�s in showcasing those expertise through an author bio that you have an opportunity to link to relevant product/service pages.
Infographics
A well designed infographic is a great way to get a branded piece of content to go viral and get your brandname in front of countless users. But did you know they are also great for SEO?
One of the most significant search engine ranking factors is backlinking. In a word, the more backlinks you acquire from different sites, the more �votes of confidence� you receive in the eyes of search engines.
And infographics are a great source of link bait. Not only do they tend to get shared a lot through different social networks, but other sites/blogs tend to repost them and link back to you in the process. So when looking to generate a lot of social buzz around your brand, consider the following strategy:
- designing an infographic related to your industry and posting it on your blog
- offering a copy & paste embed code that includes a backlink to your website
- and then promoting on social networks through your Facebook Page, Twitter account, Facebook Ads, and Sponsored Tweets (if you have have the budget)
Tweeting for Maximum SEO Impact
Chances are if you�re investing in Twitter as a marketing channel, you�re focused on getting Retweeted for maximum exposure and traffic referrals. But did you know you get those Tweets to help improve your search rankings, as well?
Normally, a link has the greatest impact on your rankings when (1) it features targeted keyword anchor text, and (2) appears on page that is dense in related keywords. The problem with Twitter links, however, is that they are shortened URLs that contain no keywords.
However, there other ways to signal to search engines that a link in a Tweet is relevant to certain keywords, and that�s by making sure that those keywords appear in the Tweet in the form of actual text and hashtags. Of course, a single optimized Tweet won�t have much impact on your rankings, but if you�re regularly optimizing your tweets and they�re frequently Retweeted, search engines will take this as a vote of confidence by other Twitter users that your Tweeted content is both trusted and relevant to the keywords/hashtags appearing in the Retweeted Tweet.
Image Sharing Sites: Pinterest & Tumblr
If your products/services translate well into engaging photographs, you have an opportunity to both (1) raise awareness about them through popular image sharing sites while (2) gaining valuable backlinks that will support your overall SEO strategy.
Pinterest: When images are pinned on Pinterest, they always link back to the original source; and when they�re re-pinned, that backlink is duplicated by yet another user. The overall affect is that �social signals� are created letting search engines know that your content is popular with social users. The only drawback to leveraging Pinterest, however, is that it requires a dedicated Pinterest strategy that can be time intensive � albeit worth it if it�s successful.
Tumblr: This social networking is a kind of �reblogging� community where users can repost each other�s posts at the push of a button. It also happens to be a community where images are particularly popular. By setting up a branded Tumblr profile then, posting branded images with backlinks to the source page, hashtagging all your posts accordingly, and building up your following, you can generate considerable social links as your following reblogs your (product) image posts.
Reddit is a social bookmarking site where users submit links and users then vote these links up or down. The site is also divided into hundreds of interest-based communities called subreddits. So chances are there is at least one subreddit that�s interested in your industry.
If a link receives enough votes, it can appear on either the homepage or the homepage of a subreddit, and these homepages enjoy a lot of trust/authority with search engines, meaning that a link from one of them will send not only considerable traffic, but linkjuice as well. If your brand is investing in killer content like how-to/tutorial blog posts or infogrpahics, it is probably worth investing in seeding it throughout the relevant subreddits.
That being said, it won�t pay to be overly self-promotional on Reddit. Not only does the algorithm discriminate against spam, but the community is particularly effective of down-voting perceived marketing schemes. So effectively seeding content through Reddit requires that you actually participate in the community, voting and commenting on other users� submissions, and demonstrating that you�re an active and engaged member of the subreddit community.
Economies of Scope: Search & Social
Whether or not SEO is a priority for your brand, there are clear and present benefits to aligning your social media efforts with SEO best practices. After all, search engines are focusing more and more on �social signals� as a search engine ranking factor, and as any SEO can tell you, social can impact SEO with relatively little effort.
On the lower hanging fruit side of the equations, it can be as simple as working targeted keywords into your blog posts and Tweets. On the more aggressive side of things, in can entail developing engaging infographics and photos, and seeding them through both the blogosphere and popular image sharing sites. The point is that if you�re willing to invest in any given channel, a slight modification to your approach can yield considerable SEO benefits.
It�s important to remember, however, that social can impact your SEO only insofar as your social campaigns themselves are a success. A successful social campaign is often about engaging interested communities and contributing value to that community. Failure to do so will not only mean that your social initiatives will fail to raise brand awareness, but also fail to accrue any SEO significance that can then be passed on to your site.