SEO and Social Media, Why the Two are Not Mutually Exclusive
An effective social media strategy can help you gain customers quicker and be ranked higher. Who doesn’t want to gain customers and have one of those
coveted top 3 spots on Google? Ad nauseam, we have all heard about the adverse impact of Panda and Penguin updates. What is not as widely known is the increasing influence that social media engagement has on your rankings. We have put together seven ways a strong social media strategy benefits you.
1. An Active Social Media Presence Sends Strong Social Signals
At the end of the day a search engine is like any other business out there: it wants to keep its customers happy with their experience and coming back for more. Busy websites that attract organic content and where visitors are engaged with compelling and interesting content are rewarded. Sites with high bounce rates (visitors leave site immediately after landing on the site) are discounted by search engines. A key component is how socially engaged your visitors are with your site. Are they tweeting out, posting information to Facebook, sharing video and content from your site?
2. You Can Create Backlinks to Your Website
With social media marketing you don’t have to worry about potentially black hat techniques being used or the possibility of being penalized. Social media channels are considered high authority websites. When people are organically sharing your information, you will gain links naturally. It is the sites that gamed the system and purchased links or participated in link building schemes that Google nailed.
3. Increase the Amount of Traffic Flow to Your Website Using Engaging Social Media Posts
SEO helps you get found and is used to drive traffic to your site. Ultimately, your objective is not to just drive traffic to your site, but to create an impact on the visitor that will cause them to take action, i.e., place an order, become a customer, call you, convert to a lead or become socially engaged with you.
The lower the hurdle and greater the offer (assuming it is the right offer for your buyers), the higher your site will convert.
However, if you are not on the first page of Google, how do you drive traffic traffic to your site or a landing page. Social media can be leveraged through interesting engaging posts and content. You can use promoted posts and tweets to target your audience and drive traffic to your site.
4. Develop an Organic Following and Increase the Size of Your Database
While most offers are tied to capturing an email address, why not use an offer to gain new followers on Twitter, likes on Facebooks, subscribers to your YouTube channel? Once you initiate that social engagement with them, you can have a dialogue and stay engaged with them as you build that relationship.
Businesses need to understand who their ideal clients are, what they are looking for, the conversation they are having in their head, how your product or service solves a problem, enhances their lives, stops a bleeding neck, etc. Having a dialogue through social media, provides you with the opportunity to more fully understand them and connect with them.
However, the firs step is to increase the size of your social circles.
5. Gain Greater Insights about Your Target Audience
Social media data is continuously evolving. Members willingly share a significant amount of data about themselves or business. Businesses, can leverage this social media to create highly targeted marketing campaigns. Because social media channels have a self-serving interest of monetizing their sites, they have developed comprehensive insights about behavior, likes, dislikes, gender, age, geographic locations. Coupled with insights and targeted campaigns you can setup, they provide tools for measuring response and conversions to campaigns allowing you to determine its effectiveness.
6. Analytics Data Allows You To Analyze Performance and Visitor Experience
If you have a landing page tied to a marketing campaign or are redirecting your targeted audience to your site, the social media metrics coupled with Google Analytics allows you to drill down to the granular level of how effective your campaign performs. Google Analytics provides information about where your visitors are coming from – down to the city level, the time spent on your landing page or site, the entry and exit page, and a number of other details that provides valuable insights.
Knowing what information is attracting visitors, causing them to stay on your landing page, the social shares and social engagement allows you to tailor campaigns and leverage social media channels that will connect with your targeted audience.
7. Results Can Be Quicker To Achieve
Through organic and paid online advertising techniques, businesses need a bit of time to develop traction. This is especially true if you are a new business or new domain. However using social media allows you to quickly connect with your audience. A high level of engagement and interaction can result in rapid success for your business. Paid advertising through social media channels can help you quickly connect with new customers and shorten your sales cycle. Even better is when you produce content that goes viral.
In Closing
Ultimately, an effective social media marketing strategy should be considered an integral part of your SEO and Search Engine Marketing strategy. Google, Bing and other search engines are placing an increasing weight on social signals. Simply put, the more socially engaged your business is, the more people that are talking about your business, the better your rankings will be.
We’d love to hear about the steps you’ve taken to leverage Social Media channels for your business?
