How Does SEO And Social Media Work Together?

SEO And SMM Benefits

SEO and SMM are like peanut butter and jelly, eggs and bacon, we get the analogy. You can’t have one without the other, or at the least, you don’t want too. SEO and social media work great together for a number of different reasons that we’ll get into detail in this article. According to a lot of different elite SEO communities and metric websites, social media controls 7 out of the top 10 SEO ranking factors for 2015. I’ve studied several case studies at the end of the year and after evaluating the data, I believe it to be true. At the least, we’re looking at 5 out of 10. None the less, SEO and social media are crucial to the success of your website.

Many business owners and webmasters searching for SEO services believe that SEO is enough to make a business successful. After nearly 8 years of providing search engine optimization services, I can confidently say “SEO is not enough.” I’ve always been truthful with my clients before we begin the long journey of search engine optimization. Can SEO take your business to another level. Absolutely, it can, I’ve seen it time and time again. However, SEO can only get you so far.

Our monthly SEO packages at Hale Associations automatically come with social media marketing services. Very simple reason, because SEO is going social. We clearly see this with the new SEO ranking factors in 2015 and I’ve seen it in recent case studies. Social media metrics can help you increase your SEO metrics. The combination of the two is exactly what you need going into 2015 and beyond until we’re told otherwise.

Establish Your Social Platforms

One of the first orders of business is to establish your social platforms. Likely, if you’re already have an established website, you may already have some social platforms. If you don’t, you need to build your social communities. (4) social media platforms count toward your SEO rankings and include Google+, Facebook, Pinterest and Twitter. These are the four social platforms that are listed in our 2015 SEO ranking factors. It doesn’t mean that LinkedIn, YouTube and other social profiles won’t help. So do keep that in mind. You should have a general idea how much traffic is coming from your social websites. If not, you need to start tracking this with Google Analytic or some type of SEO software.

Building social communities takes a lot of work, and I mean a LOT of work. If you’re not promoting your website through social platforms, you likely have no clue how time consuming this can be. Sure, you can make a post in a minute and share it to all your platforms in 3 minutes with your software. Here’s the question, “how is that working for you?” If your social traffic is leading to sales and revenue, then awesome! Keep it up. If your social traffic is not buying anything or non-existent, time to make some changes.

I do a lot of training and speaking locally here in West Virginia, Kentucky and Virginia. One word that often comes up in my marketing training is “human approach.” I use it all the time, our clients hear it all the time. What does human approach marketing mean? It’s very simple, your marketing efforts need to have a human approach. If your social media marketing looks automated, I doubt many people read it. You have to connect with your audience on a personal level to be successful. If you don’t content with your audience in terms they understand, you’ll never convert them.

I learned the hard way coming up as a young marketer. I loved marketing but I hated the time that it took, I didn’t have time for this. I wanted automation. I wanted an easy route. This is exactly why I failed at marketing for the first few months, I never connected with my audience on a personal level. I didn’t have the human approach. I’ve gone a little off topic, but I wanted to mention this because it’s critical in any type of marketing, social media marketing or elsewhere.

Be Active On Your Social Channels

If you want to target the right type of traffic to your websites, you have to be active on your social platforms. All of your social platforms should have at least one new post a day. And just as we talked before, you need to make sure that your post have a human approach. If the pot doesn’t connect with the user, it’s likely that it won’t be read. Think about, when you’re on social media, why do you click on a post? You click because you find it interesting, you click on it because it’s useful. Yes! The human approach.

How many likes you get, shares you get, comments you get, retweets you get and pins, all of them matter. Getting the engagement and interaction going is not always easy, especially when you first start out and nobody knows you exist. It will take time, hard work and patience. The fastest way to grow your social platforms is by providing great high quality content.

Use Your Targeted Keywords In Social Content

Just how you target specific keywords in content on your website, you can do the same in your social post. Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and Google+ all allow you to use #hashtags in your post. This is very important, all of your social post should contain at least one hashtag. This will allow users to possibly find your social post. You can concentrate on both main and secondary keywords. The more prominent your social platform becomes, the higher you will rank in social search engines.

Of course, before you do so, you’re going to need to know how to research keywords for your business. If you already have your keywords, then you can get straight to work.

When you publish a new article on your website, you should immediately share it on all your social platforms with the most relative keywords to the content. In some cases, this may free useful information. Perhaps, you did an article on a new product that you’re selling or looking to build a specific email list. There’s many purposes for sharing your content on your social platforms. The more you build your social communities, the more they will benefit long term.

Organic Traffic VS Paid Traffic

Both SEO and SMM bring in organic traffic. In some of my studies, I learned that organic traffic is more likely to remain with you for the long term compared to paid traffic. Both organic traffic and paid traffic take an investment. With paid traffic, you have to invest your money. For organic traffic, you have to invest time and effort. If you’re paying for your SEO and SMM services, then you also have to invest money.

A lot of people think that SEO and SMM are different, but in many ways, they are two of the same. The combination of both search engine optimization and social media marketing can be enough to take your business to the next level. Likely, you’ll need other marketing techniqes mixed in but to the point, the combination of both are better then only SEO or SMM.

SEO Is More Then Just Ranking Keywords

Search engine optimization is a deep often misunderstood technique. There’s hundreds of techniques that could be classified as SEO. SEO is more then just ranking keywords. Rather, SEO is the process of optimizing your website and business to perform at a high level. The combination of SEO and other optimization techniques is the key that takes a business to another level. Understanding it all can be tough and honestly takes years to master. I thought the same when I was a young SEO. I quickly learned that SEO is just one part of the equation of success. SMM is another. Together, you give yourself the best benefit to growing your online website and business.

How Does SEO And SMM Work Together?