If you’re having a conversation or reading about SEO, chances are that the term ‘keyword’ will be thrown around a lot.
The keyword stands to SEO as ‘Engagement’ stands to social media, but you never hear ‘SEO stands to Social Media’.
This is because Google has not yet given clear directives in regard to the subject.
Search engines have now been around for about 20 years, whereas social media only half of that. And the latter is far more changeable entities, so much so that search engines are yet to entirely integrate them into their algorithms. Google and the likes are still trying to find a way to gather data and assign value to the data.
In an ideal world, what bloggers and marketers would like to happen is that to an x amount of likes, followers, shares equal an x ranking on Google. Wouldn’t that be easy?
Here’s how it really works instead:
- Get tons of social shares, especially by high-quality accounts
- Get a lot of traffic to the web page
- Get a lot of mentions across other websites
- Get a lot of inbound links to your website, especially from high-quality websites
As you can see, there are a lot of variables and it’s anything but easy in today’s competitive landscape.
Want to know what works instead? Read our 4 tips below.
First of all, nail down the focus of your website page and make sure that when shared across social media the messaging and hero image is consistent. You want all social media users to see the same title, description, and hero image whether they’re viewing a Facebook post you wrote, a tweet they shared, or find a pin on Pinterest. Here, you need likes and mentions in your posts. This is why it is important that you learn Why do I need to buy YouTube likes?
To achieve that use a handy guide (like this one) and a plugin like Yoast to write the metadata (what you see in Google), the Open Graph tag (what you see on Facebook and Pinterest’s Rich Pins), and Twitter Card tag (what you see on Twitter).
- Don’t let them go away
Getting visitors to your website is hard but it’s even harder to keep them there. If there’s one thing that Google values really highly is how engaged people are once on your site. If a person arrives on your site and leaves within seconds (and this happens regularly), Google then thinks that your website page isn’t relevant for that query and may stop showing your site as a result of a keyword. So make sure that your website page is informative and leads your users to other informative pages on your site. This is especially true for blog pages or editorial pages: insert videos, tools, images, and anything that can enrich the blog post. Decreased bounce rate, higher time on site, and more repeat visitors to your website can lead to greater visibility on Google.
- Keep the conversation going
Repetition of your brand name across the web is really good for SEO. Bonus points if in addition to that you get links to your site! If there’s enough interest in your brand, people will talk and hopefully write blog posts, social media posts, and more. Social media are a great vehicle to get traction but it’s your creative ideas that really push your brand forward. Red Bull is just one of the hundreds of energy drinks but the only one who sent a man to outer space. Think about what you can do to keep people from forgetting about you, you don’t need big budgets: Holstee started out as yet another t-shirt brand on bootstrap but had a core idea for an awe-inspiring manifesto. Today they have a subscription box, stationery products and have been featured on tens of publications.
If you’re running a local business, have your customers review you on Google+, Yelp, and similar websites. As specified above, mentions across the web are key for better visibility on Google. Of course, always strive for positive reviews and making the customers happy!
Overall, never treat SEO as something separate from your strategy or think of it as something only IT peeps can deal with. All the tips above are just the best practice for any business owner and entrepreneur and achievable without large budgets.
