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To increase brand awareness and drive more quality traffic to their websites, marketers should invest in search engine optimization.
Marketing teams use SEO to increase a website’s visibility when people search for products or services. Most people use search engines to find what they need, and they are more likely to buy from or engage with a brand that shows up high on search engine results pages (SERPs). When done correctly, SEO can help marketing teams rank higher on SERPs and see increases in quality traffic.
While marketers can take several different approaches to SEO, they need a solid content strategy to improve the chances of showing up on SERPs. Blog content, links to internal and external sources, optimized meta descriptions and social media can improve SEO. Social media, in particular, is critical to a brand’s content strategy, as it serves as a channel to share content, connect with audiences, build awareness and drive traffic to a website.
Explore how an organization can incorporate social media into its overall SEO strategy.
Social media SEO is the practice of using social media platforms to enhance a brand’s search engine results. With this strategy, marketers strategically share content, engage with audiences and optimize social media profiles so they show up on SERPs. All of this can increase a brand’s visibility and create a place for more conversations and transactions.
Social media does not directly affect SEO rankings. It indirectly influences search visibility through increased brand awareness, traffic to the site and engagement metrics.
The overall goal of social media SEO is to drive more quality traffic to a company’s website. This improves the brand’s overall online reputation and domain authority within search engines. When users engage with content on social platforms and share, comment on or like a post, it generates social signals that indicate the content’s relevance and popularity.
Effective social media SEO strategies include high-quality, shareable content, active social media profiles and engagement from followers. Marketing teams can also align social media posts with their content and keyword strategies, optimize images and videos for both social and search and collaborate with influencers or other brands to expand the reach of their content.
Social media management and SEO are distinct but complementary strategies. For social media management, teams create, post and optimize content for social networks, such as Facebook, X (formerly Twitter), Instagram, LinkedIn and TikTok. The strategy aims to build brand awareness, engage with audiences, promote content and drive traffic to websites through social channels. Social media strategies prioritize immediate engagement metrics, such as likes, shares, comments and followers.
For SEO, teams optimize website content and structure to make the site easier to find, so it shows up in SERPs for relevant industry phrases and questions. SEO strategies focus on long-term gains by driving quality organic search traffic.
Neither SEO nor social media is more important than the other, despite serving their own unique goals. They support one another, and each approach has benefits and drawbacks, but marketing teams can bring in more success if they use both in an overarching digital marketing strategy.
Even though social media does not directly affect SERP rankings, it can significantly influence SEO, as it can drive quality traffic to websites and specific content, like blogs and campaign-focused pages. When a brand creates high-quality, valuable content that resonates with its target audience, it encourages engagement and sharing, which can transform consumers into brand advocates. This engagement cycle continues as followers find value in, interact with and share content with their own networks.
Quality content can take many forms, including blog posts, videos, infographics, e-books, webinars, reviews and podcasts. These formats should provide valuable information to attract repeat visitors and guide leads through the marketing funnel.
When marketing teams use social media platforms to distribute content, they amplify its reach to a broader audience. Increased visibility can drive higher-quality traffic and generate backlinks to relevant websites, all of which can positively affect the content’s SERP performance.
Social media also enhances SEO in the following ways:
To remain competitive, marketing teams should adopt modern approaches to integrate social media into their SEO strategies. This includes adopting emerging platforms, like AI-driven tools for content creation and analytics, and focusing on high-impact formats, such as short-form videos and interactive content. Brands can also amplify their reach and build trust with new audiences if they collaborate with influencers and encourage user-generated content (UGC).
To effectively join SEO and social media strategies, marketing teams can follow these best practices.
Social media helps people discover new brands, and SEO helps brands generate more traffic from their target audiences. Marketing teams that use both can help their organizations increase traffic, brand awareness and authority.
Editor’s note: This article was originally published in 2022 and updated to reflect changes in best practices for social media and SEO.
Griffin LaFleur is a MarketingOps and RevOps professional working for Swing Education. Throughout his career, LaFleur has also worked at agencies and independently as a B2B sales and marketing consultant.
Part of: How SEO can give your content a boost
SEO and SEM strategies help marketers put digital content in front of the right audience. However, SEO strategies focus on organic search, whereas SEM generates paid traffic.
Customer data and behavior analytics tools can give content managers insight into the kind of content site visitors want.
While social media marketing and SEO seem like two separate practices, when used together, they can enhance any organization’s digital marketing strategy.
An organization’s content must rank well on Google to drive website traffic. Yet, SEO marketers face barriers to this success, such as algorithm changes and underdeveloped AI.
SEO keyword research tools can help marketing teams create the content their audiences want to see. Free options include Google Search Console, Keyword Surfer and Semrush.
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