Social media & SEO.
Is social media important for SEO?
Social media has become integral to the way we use the Internet. Important
content is not only linked, it is shared, liked, tweeted and pinned. How people
use the Internet has drastically changed, and this hasn’t gone unnoticed over
at the Googleplex. Many of the independent studies on Google’s ranking
algorithm show a large correlation with high-ranking pages having strong
social media activity.
While the official stance from Google is that they do not directly use social
signals in their algorithm, the SEO community pretty much agrees it is
certainly a factor in achieving rankings. Disagreements aside, I can tell from
my own experience, sites with large social followings consistently get higher
rankings in a shorter timeframe.
Not only can you use social media to build social activity to increase your
overall SEO strength, you can use social media to regularly create backlinks
that are free and easy to build. It also increases referral traffic back to your
site and engages previous customers. As a rule, social media should be a part
of every SEO project, or even every marketing project.
Facebook & SEO.
Facebook is the world’s most popular social network. What’s popular on
Facebook is essentially a snapshot of public opinion, and Google have noted
this by making Facebook activity a very strong factor in their algorithm. You
should consider using Facebook for every SEO project. If you only have the
time or budget to use one social network in your SEO strategy, use Facebook.
To improve your site’s Facebook social activity, share content from your own
site on your Facebook page on a regular basis.
Each time you do this, you receive more exposure from your fan base, and
you also build up social activity around the content on your site. Be careful to
mix this up with relevant, engaging non-commercial content for your user
base, so you don't turn them off and maintain high levels of engagement.
Examples include infographics, inspirational quotes, inspirational photos, and
so on.
Build up your audience by including a Facebook follow button on your site,
your email signatures, and your thank you or success pages.
If you want to speed up building your audience, you can use Facebook
advertising to build a relevant audience of local customers. This is a good
strategy if your competitors in the rankings have a larger following and you
are looking to beat them. You can also use Facebook advertising to increase
exposure for your posts, or even run advertising campaigns for a promotional
offer. Facebook advertising stands out as a great way to build up an audience,
social activity and referral sales for projects with a budget.
Facebook for business
https://www.facebook.com/business
Facebook advertising
https://en-gb.facebook.com/business/products/ads
Twitter & SEO.
Twitter is filled with discussion on the world's latest news and events. In
many cases, groundbreaking news stories are released on Twitter before the
world's major news outlets. The death of Osama Bin Laden is the perfect
example—it was leaked on Twitter by a former chief of staff to the US
Defense Secretary and within minutes it was all over the news.
Google have recognized this and use Twitter activity in their algorithm.
While it may not be as strong as other social networks, you can use Twitter to
build up your overall SEO strength. Twitter is a great social network to
weave into your SEO strategy as you can schedule a lot of your tweets in
advance without coming across as too spammy, and manage your account
with only a small commitment of time and effort.
Schedule tweets to your pages such as Hootsuite and start building up your
tweet counts on your pages. Mix this up with relevant and informative tweets
about your industry. You should aim for a maximum of 12 tweets per day. 12
Tweets per day is roughly the limit you can post without annoying your
followers. If you’re lazy like me, you can schedule all of your tweets about 3
months in advance.
If you want to encourage site visitors to tweet your content for you, include a
“tweet this page” link on every page or blog post on your web site.
Tweetdeck -Free
https://tweetdeck.twitter.com/
Free and easy Twitter management software. You can install Tweetdeck on
your computer and manage your whole Twitter account from inside the
program. Popular features include managing multiple accounts, scheduling
tweets, and arranging feeds so you only see updates from Twitterers you're
interested in.
Hootsuite -Free to start. $29 monthly for power users.
https://www.hootsuite.com/
More advanced than Tweetdeck, you can use Hootsuite to schedule tweets,
analyze social media traffic, manage multiple accounts, create social media
reports to monitor your success, and much more. Recommended for power
users or automating multiple accounts.
Other social networks.
Let’s face it, we'd all love to play around on social networks all day, but we
don't have the spare time to be always looking for great ideas and sharing
them endlessly on social media accounts.
If you have limited resources, focus on Facebook, Youtube and Twitter.
If you are looking for an extra edge, doing SEO for a large brand, or maybe
you have an army of helpers waiting for your command, you can gain
significant boosts by expanding your social activity to several social media
sites.
Setup an account on the below networks, posting on the networks most
relevant to your business:
LinkedIn
https://www.linkedin.com/
LinkedIn is the Facebook for professionals. LinkedIn is a fantastic
networking tool if you are in the business-to-business industry and looking to
build up your personal brand or the brand of your site. If you want to increase
your effectiveness on Linkedin, join groups and participate in discussions,
post relevant updates about your industry and post content in the news feed.
Pinterest
https://www.pinterest.com/
Pinterest has become one of the fastest-growing social networks in a very
short timeframe. Pinterest’s fast-growing user base is primarily made up of
women. The site has effectively turned into a giant shopping list of wish-list
items. If your target audience is women, you should be on Pinterest.
Instagram
https://www.instagram.com/
Initially a mobile app to help users make their photos look pretty, Instagram
has skyrocketed from a fledgling mobile app to competing with major social
networks in just a few years. Instagram limits the amount of links you can
post, which essentially means the links from your profile on Instagram are
much more powerful. If you work in a fashion or image-heavy industry,
Instagram is a must-have social network to incorporate into your SEO and
overall digital strategy.
Social media analytics.
If you invest time and effort building up your social media profiles, you will
want to track your results so you can separate the parts of your strategy that
are successful and not so successful.
Social media analytics is different compared to other web analytics, because
social analytics are geared to measuring the conversation and interaction of
your fan base with your brand. Using the software listed below, you can
monitor results and get valuable insights on how to improve your social
media efforts:
Sprout Social - Free for 30-days. $99 per month for regular use.
https://sproutsocial.com/
Sprout Social is a great web analytics and social media management package
that allows you to track the performance of your social media profiles over
time. It has a free trial, suited to advanced level use and offers powerful
analytic reports for major social networks.
Hootsuite - Free plan available. Paid plans start at $29 per month.
https://hootsuite.com/products/social-media-analytics
Hootsuite is quoted many times in this book and for good reason—Hootsuite
is a robust social media management software allowing for control over many
social networks, as well as powerful web analytics insights. Its paid plans are
also quite affordable for pro-users.
Google Analytics Social Tracking - Free
https://www.google.com/analytics/
Google Analytics social-tracking features are great for tracking basic social
interactions that occur when visitors are on your site. It is free and includes
an out-of-the-box solution with the standard setup. To see social reports, log
into Google Analytics, click on the “Acquisition” tab in the main menu, then
“Social”.
Is social media important for SEO?
Social media has become integral to the way we use the Internet. Important
content is not only linked, it is shared, liked, tweeted and pinned. How people
use the Internet has drastically changed, and this hasn’t gone unnoticed over
at the Googleplex. Many of the independent studies on Google’s ranking
algorithm show a large correlation with high-ranking pages having strong
social media activity.
While the official stance from Google is that they do not directly use social
signals in their algorithm, the SEO community pretty much agrees it is
certainly a factor in achieving rankings. Disagreements aside, I can tell from
my own experience, sites with large social followings consistently get higher
rankings in a shorter timeframe.
Not only can you use social media to build social activity to increase your
overall SEO strength, you can use social media to regularly create backlinks
that are free and easy to build. It also increases referral traffic back to your
site and engages previous customers. As a rule, social media should be a part
of every SEO project, or even every marketing project.
Facebook & SEO.
Facebook is the world’s most popular social network. What’s popular on
Facebook is essentially a snapshot of public opinion, and Google have noted
this by making Facebook activity a very strong factor in their algorithm. You
should consider using Facebook for every SEO project. If you only have the
time or budget to use one social network in your SEO strategy, use Facebook.
To improve your site’s Facebook social activity, share content from your own
site on your Facebook page on a regular basis.
Each time you do this, you receive more exposure from your fan base, and
you also build up social activity around the content on your site. Be careful to
mix this up with relevant, engaging non-commercial content for your user
base, so you don't turn them off and maintain high levels of engagement.
Examples include infographics, inspirational quotes, inspirational photos, and
so on.
Build up your audience by including a Facebook follow button on your site,
your email signatures, and your thank you or success pages.
If you want to speed up building your audience, you can use Facebook
advertising to build a relevant audience of local customers. This is a good
strategy if your competitors in the rankings have a larger following and you
are looking to beat them. You can also use Facebook advertising to increase
exposure for your posts, or even run advertising campaigns for a promotional
offer. Facebook advertising stands out as a great way to build up an audience,
social activity and referral sales for projects with a budget.
Facebook for business
https://www.facebook.com/business
Facebook advertising
https://en-gb.facebook.com/business/products/ads
Twitter & SEO.
Twitter is filled with discussion on the world's latest news and events. In
many cases, groundbreaking news stories are released on Twitter before the
world's major news outlets. The death of Osama Bin Laden is the perfect
example—it was leaked on Twitter by a former chief of staff to the US
Defense Secretary and within minutes it was all over the news.
Google have recognized this and use Twitter activity in their algorithm.
While it may not be as strong as other social networks, you can use Twitter to
build up your overall SEO strength. Twitter is a great social network to
weave into your SEO strategy as you can schedule a lot of your tweets in
advance without coming across as too spammy, and manage your account
with only a small commitment of time and effort.
Schedule tweets to your pages such as Hootsuite and start building up your
tweet counts on your pages. Mix this up with relevant and informative tweets
about your industry. You should aim for a maximum of 12 tweets per day. 12
Tweets per day is roughly the limit you can post without annoying your
followers. If you’re lazy like me, you can schedule all of your tweets about 3
months in advance.
If you want to encourage site visitors to tweet your content for you, include a
“tweet this page” link on every page or blog post on your web site.
Tweetdeck -Free
https://tweetdeck.twitter.com/
Free and easy Twitter management software. You can install Tweetdeck on
your computer and manage your whole Twitter account from inside the
program. Popular features include managing multiple accounts, scheduling
tweets, and arranging feeds so you only see updates from Twitterers you're
interested in.
Hootsuite -Free to start. $29 monthly for power users.
https://www.hootsuite.com/
More advanced than Tweetdeck, you can use Hootsuite to schedule tweets,
analyze social media traffic, manage multiple accounts, create social media
reports to monitor your success, and much more. Recommended for power
users or automating multiple accounts.
Other social networks.
Let’s face it, we'd all love to play around on social networks all day, but we
don't have the spare time to be always looking for great ideas and sharing
them endlessly on social media accounts.
If you have limited resources, focus on Facebook, Youtube and Twitter.
If you are looking for an extra edge, doing SEO for a large brand, or maybe
you have an army of helpers waiting for your command, you can gain
significant boosts by expanding your social activity to several social media
sites.
Setup an account on the below networks, posting on the networks most
relevant to your business:
https://www.linkedin.com/
LinkedIn is the Facebook for professionals. LinkedIn is a fantastic
networking tool if you are in the business-to-business industry and looking to
build up your personal brand or the brand of your site. If you want to increase
your effectiveness on Linkedin, join groups and participate in discussions,
post relevant updates about your industry and post content in the news feed.
https://www.pinterest.com/
Pinterest has become one of the fastest-growing social networks in a very
short timeframe. Pinterest’s fast-growing user base is primarily made up of
women. The site has effectively turned into a giant shopping list of wish-list
items. If your target audience is women, you should be on Pinterest.
https://www.instagram.com/
Initially a mobile app to help users make their photos look pretty, Instagram
has skyrocketed from a fledgling mobile app to competing with major social
networks in just a few years. Instagram limits the amount of links you can
post, which essentially means the links from your profile on Instagram are
much more powerful. If you work in a fashion or image-heavy industry,
Instagram is a must-have social network to incorporate into your SEO and
overall digital strategy.
Social media analytics.
If you invest time and effort building up your social media profiles, you will
want to track your results so you can separate the parts of your strategy that
are successful and not so successful.
Social media analytics is different compared to other web analytics, because
social analytics are geared to measuring the conversation and interaction of
your fan base with your brand. Using the software listed below, you can
monitor results and get valuable insights on how to improve your social
media efforts:
Sprout Social - Free for 30-days. $99 per month for regular use.
https://sproutsocial.com/
Sprout Social is a great web analytics and social media management package
that allows you to track the performance of your social media profiles over
time. It has a free trial, suited to advanced level use and offers powerful
analytic reports for major social networks.
Hootsuite - Free plan available. Paid plans start at $29 per month.
https://hootsuite.com/products/social-media-analytics
Hootsuite is quoted many times in this book and for good reason—Hootsuite
is a robust social media management software allowing for control over many
social networks, as well as powerful web analytics insights. Its paid plans are
also quite affordable for pro-users.
Google Analytics Social Tracking - Free
https://www.google.com/analytics/
Google Analytics social-tracking features are great for tracking basic social
interactions that occur when visitors are on your site. It is free and includes
an out-of-the-box solution with the standard setup. To see social reports, log
into Google Analytics, click on the “Acquisition” tab in the main menu, then
“Social”.
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