A High-Level Overview of How Social Media and SEO Can Work Together

If you’ve dabbled in any type of digital marketing, you know that every click counts and every visitor, viewer and follower could become a customer. Getting a good grasp on the fundamentals of how social media and SEO work together to promote brand discoverability grants you more growth opportunities.

In this article:

• How Social Media and SEO Work Together
  • How Social Media Impacts SEO
  • How SEO Impacts Social Media
• 12 Ways to Blend Social Media and SEO
• 1. Align Your Content and Keyword Strategies
  2. Optimize for Both Search Engines and Social Media Platforms
  3. Build Relationships with Influencers and Community
  4. Engage in Social Listening
  5. Engage with Your Audience Across Channels
  6. Analyze and Refine Your Approach Based on Performance Metrics
  7. Fill Out Your Social Profiles Completely and Consistently
  8. Integrate Keywords
  9. Share Website Content on Social and Encourage Further Sharing
  10. Use Hashtags and Category Tags Effectively
  11. Optimize Video Content with Transcripts and Captions
  12. Leverage Alt Text for Images
• Final Thoughts
• FAQ: How can engaging with influencers benefit both social media and SEO strategies?

How Social Media and SEO Work Together

Social media and search engine optimization influence one another in unique ways to increase a brand’s presence online.

How Social Media Impacts SEO

Social media and SEO work together in many ways. While there is no confirmed “social media” ranking factor, there are plenty of ways social media can positively impact an SEO program.

For example, social media impacts SEO by playing a role in content promotion.

Social media puts your content front and center, where a wider audience can see it. When appropriately leveraged, your social media efforts can generate buzz around your brand and inspire others to link to your site – this directly impacts your rankings in the SERPs.

With more content visibility and engagement, you can also increase website traffic. And, if your content begins to rank in the search results and you can keep people on your site, you can improve behavioral signs like dwell time.

Last but certainly not least, let’s not forget that social media content is getting ranked in the search results.

Google has long since ranked YouTube videos and some social content in the search results and recently made several updates to include more social and forum content (like Reddit) in the results.

That means more ways your brand can be discovered from Google results.

How SEO Impacts Social Media

Over time, social networking platforms have evolved in substantial ways, becoming more and more like search engines. In fact, Gen Zers are now using TikTok as a search engine.

With so much social content out there (like 360,000 X posts created in just one minute), social media SEO is key to reaching your target audience.

Social media SEO refers to the idea of using SEO tactics to optimize social profiles and posts for more visibility.

Doing this can help attract more followers, generate more engagement, drive more traffic to your website and make more revenue for your brand.

12 Ways to Blend Social Media and SEO

1. Align Your Content and Keyword Strategies

You can use data from both your SEO and social media programs to inform one another about topics you want to create content about.

Find out what’s trending on social and what’s ranking in search, and create more of that content.

You can also ensure that social media content aligns with your overall SEO content strategy and topic/keyword targets.

This helps create a cohesive brand experience and can improve the effectiveness of your digital marketing efforts.

2. Optimize for Both Search Engines and Social Media Platforms

As you progress through the content development process, brainstorm ways to make your content attractive to social networking sites and top search engines.

This means using rankable keywords, including engaging media and writing eye-catching titles and descriptions that inspire clicks and shares.

(For more ideas on how to optimize web content, check out our comprehensive SEO checklist.)

3. Build Relationships with Influencers and Community

Establish influencer relationships in your niche by interacting with their social content, teaming up on projects and contributing to relevant discussions.

These connections often result in more brand exposure.

4. Engage in Social Listening

Listening to your community, including monitoring brand mentions, helps identify opportunities to engage with your audience, address any concerns and further build relationships.

This can help improve your brand’s reputation and increase visibility. It can also inform your messaging and content strategy for the organic search channel.

Many tools on the market can make this step much easier. Simply Google “social listening tools” for a variety of options and advice on the topic.

5. Engage with Your Audience Across Channels

Make sure you respond to comments and messages, ask for feedback and opinions and participate in relevant communities.

These are just basic best practices for both social networks and comments on your blog.

6. Analyze and Refine Your Approach Based on Performance Metrics

Always monitor the success of your content across social media and your own website, tracking metrics such as follower growth, engagement rates, click-through rates (CTR), referral traffic and follower growth. Note which strategies resonate most with your target audience and adapt content strategies accordingly.

As part of your analysis, it would be advantageous to identify high-performing social media content and base your blog strategy off of it.

You might even realize that your website gets the bulk of its traffic from social and capitalize on that by repackaging content in diverse ways across channels.

7. Fill Out Your Social Profiles Completely and Consistently

Among the most promising ways to optimize your social media profiles is to fill them out completely with relevant brand details.

Such details include your business name, website URL, contact information, other key links and a clear description of your business’s value proposition.

Providing generous factual information about your business makes your brand easier to find online.

It’s also vital to make sure your profile information is consistent across all your social accounts. The goal is to develop a cohesive brand identity.

8. Integrate Keywords

One aspect of marrying social media and SEO is exploring relevant keywords and topics on individual social networks to help inform content creation and, when appropriate, integrating relevant keywords into profiles and posts.

9. Share Website Content on Social and Encourage Further Sharing

You can further expand your company’s reach by sharing content through social channels. Doing so can spark engagement, grow your traffic and draw in new followers. You can take things even further by including social sharing buttons on your blogs and asking your followers to share your content.

10. Use Hashtags and Category Tags Effectively

Just like keywords, category tags and hashtags are impactful tools for boosting social media content visibility.

They guide users to content on specific topics and signal to search engines what your content is about.

Research relevant hashtags and category tags for your industry and incorporate them into your posts. But avoid using too many hashtags or irrelevant ones to avoid looking spammy.

11. Optimize Video Content with Transcripts, Captions and Descriptions

We know that video content is highly desirable on social media.

Add transcripts, captions and more detailed descriptions to make your video content more searchable and/or user-friendly.

All of these can aid in the user experience, making it more accessible to users who are deaf or hard of hearing, those who prefer looking at the words on the screen and those who want to navigate to different parts of the video quicker.

Descriptions and transcripts can also aid in making your video content more discoverable, for example on YouTube, through the text it generates. It offers more context to the search engine.

12. Leverage Alt Text for Images

Alt text, a known ranking factor, provides a brief, descriptive explanation of an image when it does not load, or when someone with visual impairment uses a screen reader to navigate their way around websites.

This SEO practice serves two functions – 1) to make content accessible for those with visual impairments and 2) to rank well in Google Image search.

Additionally, alt text can be used in social media images for greater accessibility.

When creating the alt text, focus on accurately describing the image and incorporating relevant keywords only where appropriate.

Final Thoughts

Social media and SEO together offer powerful, new ways to amplify your brand online. This article is a starting point for merging these two strategies for better outcomes in your overall digital marketing.

Ready to put SEO and social media to work for your business? Our marketing experts can help. 

Schedule a free SEO consultation

FAQ: How can engaging with influencers benefit both social media and SEO strategies?

Few things are as critical to modern marketing as influencer engagement. When companies take advantage of these influencers’ audience and credibility, they can boost not only their own social presence, but also their SEO strategies. Digital influencers have cultivated loyal followers that trust in their suggestions and recommendations.

Because of that, engaging with influencers can result in extreme success for your business, from an increase in visibility and engagement to a bump in website traffic. When done well, influencer engagement can raise your brand’s perceived authority on the web.

To begin, leveraging influencer marketing can equate to a more robust social media presence. Whenever someone with influence in your niche drops your brand name or recommends your product or service, it widens your audience. Your chosen influencer’s supporters will suddenly know about your business. That does several things for your brand – amplifies reach, fosters organic engagement (comments, share, likes, etc.) and even improves your metrics on social sites.

What’s more, working with trendsetters in your niche may also bring your site more relevant backlinks. They come from influencers creating content about your brand and linking back to your website. These backlinks translate to growth in domain authority for your website, since inbound links from trustworthy sources directly affect your ranking ability in the SERPs. As a result, your site will rank higher in search result pages for applicable queries and keywords.

Another substantial benefit of influencer marketing lies in content creation. The right influencers regularly create top-quality content that connects with their followers and viewers. Cultivating a partnership with these individuals can give you outstanding material to use in your marketing campaigns. You get engaging, fresh content you can distribute through social media sites and even publish on your website. Taking advantage of this helps to grow your brand’s SEO and online visibility.

In addition to the above, engaging with influencers gets more eyes on your website. Pertinent influencers have specific niches and follower demographics; their audience could very well be interested in your industry. The chance of them being converted into patrons, subscribers, or leads is elevated. This is great for your company’s SEO and social media position.

Your customer engagement also improves from partnerships with influencers. When these internet personalities mingle with their own followers about your brand’s products or services, that opens the doors of trust and community. In cases like these, you could see more user generated content and customer reviews. All of this is great for SEO.

One of the main issues businesses struggle with is partnering with the right influencers. To avoid this issue, you should conduct deep research and use tools that pinpoint influencers that are a good match for your target market. This is essential if you’re going to reach searchers that are actually eager to learn more about your brand and offerings. More conversions and engagement will naturally follow.

Here’s some insightful advice from experience: don’t miss out on the chance to build connections with influencers. And when you do reach out and invest time and effort into influencer marketing, make sure you’re actively striving for long-term connections rather than one-off collaborations. It will ensure that your promotions look and feel more authentic.

Step-by-Step Procedure

1. Draft specific marketing goals pertinent to social media and SEO.
2. Define the target audience you’d like to reach.
3. Utilize tools like BuzzSumo, Traackr and NinjaOutreach to explore the influencer market and shortlist promising influencers.
4. Learn about all your shortlisted influencers, taking a close look at their audience demographics, content quality and engagement rates.
5. Write personalized pitches and send them to your chosen influencers.
6. Chat with influencers about deal specifics, including the timeline, deliverables and compensation.
7. Spell out all the terms in a formal contract; include topics like content rights, disclosure requirements and expectations.
8. Collaborate throughout the content creation process, making sure that the final content communicates your brand’s message in your voice.
9. Approve the influencer’s content before publishing.
10. Check how the content performs – keep tabs on how many likes, comments and shares it gets.
11. Track conversions and clicks to your website from your influencer’s backlinks.
12. Look into your SEO metrics post-publishing and monitor any changes in search rankings and domain authority.
13. Share the influencer-created content on all of your socials.
14. Repackage the content for other marketing campaigns to maximize your return on investment.
15. Review any data gleaned from the campaign and compare it to your initial goals to gauge success.
16. If you collaborated with multiple influencers, compare their results against each other to determine which were most successful.
17. Solicit influencer feedback to uncover areas for improvement.
18. Keep in touch with successful influencers to pave the way for future projects.
19. Review your performance data and goals now and again; fine-tune your influencer strategy based on that information.
20. Stay abreast of trends in the industry.
21. Evaluate the long-term effects on brand visibility and SEO.
22. Create long-standing partnerships with influencers you’ve seen the most success with.

Carefully following the above steps puts you in the driver seat of your influencer marketing strategy, enabling you to reap SEO and social media benefits galore.

All in all, engaging with influencers is a promising tactic for businesses everywhere. Cultivating these relationships with influencers grants you access to SEO and social media growth in the forms of wider audiences, valuable backlinks, targeted traffic and more. If you don’t remember anything else, remember that success in influencer marketing lies requires tactical planning, in-depth research and relationship nurturing.

Bruce Clay is founder and president of Bruce Clay Inc., a global digital marketing firm providing search engine optimization, pay-per-click, social media marketing, SEO-friendly web architecture, and SEO tools and education. Connect with him on LinkedIn or through the BruceClay.com website.

See Bruce's author page for links to connect on social media.