5 Things You Need to Know About Social Media and SEO for 2020

68% of American adults use Facebook. Even more use YouTube regularly.

Social media is an essential component of many consumers' lives. As platforms become more interactive and adaptable, they are only likely to stay relevant in the coming years.

Marketers have already taken advantage of all that social media has to offer.

From Pay-Per-Click ads to business profiles, social media can work wonders for business owners!

Social media also has a lot to do with Search Engine Optimization (SEO). If you've implemented an SEO campaign, it's essential to know its relationship to social media.

Read on for insight into what you need to know about social media and SEO!

What is SEO?

Before we dive into the relationship between social media and SEO, let's discuss the basics of SEO itself.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a leading digital marketing tool that enables marketers to boost their content visibility.

Google processes 40,000 search queries every second. When a user performs a standard search query, she types a few words into Google that best approximate her desire.

When the search listings appear, she will likely prioritize the ones that are at the top of the first page of results. This is because Google arranges results in order of decreasing authority.

This is coveted real estate for marketers everywhere. After all, the higher Google ranking a site has, the greater its odds are at getting a click from a user.

This is where SEO comes into play. SEO marketers can optimize content for keywords that users are likely to enter in order to find their pages.

There are a lot of other factors that go into a successful SEO campaign. Choosing the right keywords, for example, is often a time and research-intensive task.

Google also has a lot of guidelines about optimization itself.

For a complete guide explaining SEO, take a look at:
What is SEO?

Lastly, social media alone can influence how your SEO campaign performs. Let's look at the five things you should keep in mind when delving into this important relationship.

1. Social Media Boosts Your Link Building Potential

There are many things marketers can do to boost Google ranking and leverage SEO efforts. One of these is link building.

Google takes a lot of factors into consideration when ranking sites. It gives preference to sites, for example, that have rich, relevant content likely to be valuable to visitors.

It will also prioritize the sites that have a healthy amount of backlinks.

Backlinks are links to your website found on external sites.

Backlinks function a lot like references or letters of recommendation. In general, the more backlinks to your site, the greater your credibility in Google's eyes.

In fact, the number of backlinks your website has determines its domain authority. DA is a factor that Google considers when ranking search results.

There are many ways to acquire backlinks. However, not all backlinks are created equal!

The best ones are natural links, ones that you acquire with no effort on your part. These often are the result of a powerful online presence and relevant content.

Since these are harder to achieve right away, another solution involves reaching out to sites. Some marketers, for example, request guest blogger or contributor access to certain sites to gain more high-quality backlinks.

Many SEO marketers integrate a link-building strategy into their campaigns by necessity. However, social media can leverage these link-building efforts more effectively than most realize.

Social media platforms give business owners a chance to set up a commercial profile. Marketers can post relevant content on these profiles to gain consumer interest.

If you're crafting the right kind of content on social media, you're boosting your chances of acquiring more backlinks. For example, a follower who finds one of your blog posts to be intriguing may include a link to it on their site.

What's more, followers who like your content are apt to share it on their news feeds. The more shares–rather than mere likes–you have, the greater your potential is for gaining more organic backlinks.

Highly shared content can also boost the performance of the keywords you've used for optimizing that specific content. Powerful backlinks and boosted keyword performance can all positively impact your SEO efforts.

2. Social Media Cultivates Brand Awareness

If your company is just starting out, or if you are seeking ways to cultivate brand awareness, harness the power of social media.

Social media gives marketers a cost-effective platform for building a brand image, message, and even ideology. Marketers who use social media as a tool for building an audience are more likely to experience success with SEO down the road.

After all, Facebook has over 2 billion active users at the moment. A Facebook business profile gives you an opportunity to have an incredible reach.

It can also help you identify new audiences to engage with. Developing a solid online presence through social media can give you the following you need to influence your SEO.

How does this work? Simple. A high social media following means that your brand is gaining traction in consumers' peripheral vision.

If your brand pops up in search results for a certain keyword, users who recognize it from social media may be more likely to click on it. This can influence your click-through rate, a metric that Google keeps in mind when assigning rankings.

In general, the higher your click-through rate, the greater your keyword value. Marketers dream about high click-through rates because it means that their SEO efforts are generating more than mere impressions.

Using social media to build brand awareness ensures greater visibility and name recognition of your content. Both can impact SEO results and rankings.

3. Use PPC Ads to Leverage SEO

Most of Facebook's revenue comes from advertising. The same is the case with Google.

Pay-Per-Click advertising gives marketers yet another means of engaging with social media users. Social ads can appear in in-app messaging systems, in the margins of pages, and in news feeds themselves.

PPC ads sometimes get a bad rap, simply because they can be quite variable with results. But they do incorporate the same principles as SEO and can, therefore, be valuable when it comes to leveraging your SEO efforts.

If you've already had experience with Google AdWords, you're likely familiar with this relationship between PPC and SEO.

The benefit of social ads, however, lies in their ability to incorporate media as well as trending keywords. In this sense, social ads have a higher potential to grant a business visibility.

PPC social ads are also more cost-effective than Google AdWords, in many respects.

They are a great solution for emerging marketers or startups with limited advertising budgets. They may also have a higher potential for return.

4. Social Media is A Search Engine

A lot of marketers overlook the fact that social media platforms are search engines themselves. Users can search for friends, businesses, events, and more while logged into a platform.

What does this mean for your SEO campaign?

It's important to treat social media like Google itself. Optimizing all posts for relevant keywords can grant the social visibility necessary to bolster any Google ranking.

Much like SEO principles in the context of Google, powerful social media SEO necessitates a hefty foundation of rich and relevant content.

Your Google SEO is less likely to take off if you have a few slim pages of web content, after all. The more valuable digital content you have, the more optimization opportunities you have.

Similarly, a robust social media profile is more searchable than a thin one. Building a powerful content base on a social media platform can help any social media SEO campaign take flight.

Social media profiles also appear in Google search results. If you are a local company, this is invaluable.

For one thing, it can help support any local SEO strategies that you've implemented. Local optimization means optimizing your content for location-based keywords, such as “hair salon in Atlanta” or “designer shoes near me.”

Local SEO also involves gathering a host of local citations on platforms like Yelp, TripAdvisor, and Angie's List.

If your company has a solid local SEO campaign in place, some hefty citations, and a social media profile, you're doing a lot to impress your community members.

What's more, if you've enabled messaging on your social media profile, searchers can reach out to you in real time to ask about local services.

This tight relationship between social media and local SEO, in particular, is not to be overlooked.

5. Social Signals May Impact Future Rankings

Social media can influence so many Google ranking factors, including link-building and content. For this reason, marketers may find value in viewing social signals as ranking factors.

Google has not formally declared that it inspects a site's social media presence when ranking pages.

Nonetheless, social media continues to grow and play a role in commercial living.

LinkedIn, in particular, is becoming a leader in professional online networking. It enables users to search for jobs and respond to recruiter invites. The platform also gives professionals a chance to publish articles, message followers, and discover influencers.

Facebook is close behind with users' ability to showcase customer reviews, create company events, and more.

Google very well may add social signals to its list of ranking factors in the years to come.

Where This Leaves You: Social Media and SEO

Now that we've taken a deep dive into the relationship between social media and SEO, let's talk next steps.

Where does this leave you in your path to SEO success?

First things first, it's essential to jump aboard the social media train now, while it's running fast.

Choose Your Platform

Set up a business profile on a social media platform that's most suited to your audience and industry.

A lot of businesses opt for Facebook, simply because it is the social media giant at this time. However, not all companies may find success on Facebook.

SnapChat, for example, caters to largely younger audiences. Companies that are working the age 15-25 age bracket may wish to begin here to target their audience.

Instagram suits businesses or professionals who depend on conveying meaningful images and media content to their users.

Choosing your platform requires a solid understanding of your target market. If you're having trouble picking a platform, begin by clarifying your intended audience.

Build Content

If you haven't done so already, start building rich social media content that's designed to resonate with your chosen audience. You may find value in outsourcing content marketing assistance in this regard.

Make sure that all content you do post on social media is optimized for specific keywords. In fact, your social media optimization strategy should align with your general SEO strategy.

Even if your social media content marketing involves a lot of videos, images, and other media, you can still optimize this content for keywords. Images, for example, can be optimized for keywords via their file descriptions and ALT text.

Stay Committed

It's important to see social media as one of many crucial factors in the scope of your SEO strategy. While social media signals have yet to clearly influence ranking, they may very well do so in the future.

For this reason, stay committed to your social media presence. Be active and consistent with your postings and responses.

When crafting social content, always keep your SEO efforts and aims in mind. Stay on top of analytics so that you can always be aware of the relationship between social media and SEO.

Final Thoughts: Social Media and SEO

The relationship between social media and SEO is complex but, ultimately, very close. In general, any SEO campaign can benefit from a solid social media foundation.

Social media can bolster existing SEO efforts through PPC ads, audience engagement, and optimized content. In fact, social media platforms can cultivate powerful brand awareness, aiding in click-through rates and organic traffic numbers.

Marketers will appreciate social media's ability to turn the spotlight on local companies and other location-based optimization campaigns.

While social media has yet to formally influence Google rankings, its role in the world of link-building and audience engagement is hard to miss.

At Marketing By Kevin, you can find everything you need to take your marketing into your own hands. Ready to see how your SEO campaign is doing? Get your free SEO score here.