Social Media’s Impact on SEO

You’ve done it! You’ve created a website and an online business, so it’s time to refine its SEO. You probably have tons of questions on how to start and what to do, but fear not—we’re here to help. A strong search engine optimization plan is an integral part of marketing and increasing your business. Without it, you will never increase traffic to your site, as well as, any exposure for your business. In this article, we will discuss a few tips and tricks to help you optimize your position in various search engines and increase your site traffic. We’ll also take a look at social media’s impact on SEO.

Social Media’s Impact on SEO

Social media doesn’t begin and end with Twitter and Facebook, so consider branching out. Digg, Stumbleupon, Delicio.us, and other bookmarking or article sharing sites are a great way to expose your content to a larger audience and drive traffic back to your website. Spend enough time each day to make sure that the word gets out. Develop a social media strategy that is strategic to the type of product or service you deliver. If your product is visual in nature, take a look at Flickr or another visually aimed social media. If your business is all about immediacy, then Twitter may be more your thing. You will find you use your social media more when it is the right one for you, which will only help your overall SEO.

Have you ever seen your Facebook friend share a post from a local business you’re not aware of? What do you? You might Google that business to learn more. And the same goes for businesses advertising in your friend’s News Feeds. If they want to learn more about them, they’ll search for their business name on Google or Bing.

Brand Awareness

Social media marketing can increase your brand awareness, which can, in turn, increase the number of searches for your business name on search engines, and the chances that searchers click on information from your business in search results. For example, if you search for a place to get your car washed and see a result from a company that advertised to you on your News Feed, you’ll probably click to their website rather than a result from a company you’ve never heard of before. This can increase a business’s clickthrough rate, which is a ranking factor search engines take into account when determining where to show your site.

Additionally, one of the goals of SEO is to own as much of “page 1” on search engines as possible. This means that when someone searches for your business name, you want the majority of results to be results you can control, like your website, blog, etc. Social media pages typically appear in SERPs for your business name. If you don’t have social media pages, then these spots may be occupied by your competitors. What would you rather have prospective customers click on: a Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram account that regularly shares helpful content about your business, or a competitor’s website and social sites?

Social media is just one part of your SEO strategy

While social media is important to marketing your business as a whole, it’s not the only thing to think about. In order to improve your search engine optimization, use as much natural language as possible on your website. Don’t pack your text full of keywords as search engines will count this against you, knowing it has been a trick to boost search rankings in the past. Instead, use carefully chosen keywords sparsely throughout your text. When supplying information in your copy, include phrases like “How do I…” or “Where can I find…” in your keywords. People love to write questions into search engines, and you want to supply the answer. You can even use the question as the title of your post, which will rank it high for those keywords. This same idea applies to your content on social media.

In order to obtain the actual search volume for your keywords, you may want to consider opening a pay per click account. The account will cost you, but it may be worth it to see the real search volume data for your keywords, to be able to monitor trends, and also to view the impact when you modify or change your keywords. To better manage your search engine optimization, a pay per click account is a definite must.

Also, be sure to make your web site different from your competition. If you are selling a product that many other people are selling, you need your information to be unique. Do keyword research and write your own content. Not only will this help you stand apart from your competition, but you will also get inbound links.

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