Building brand awareness and increasing website traffic happen to be the two most important marketing goals for small businesses, according to research by Top Design Firms. With nearly half of all respondents (49%) planning to invest more in social media in 2022, there’s no doubt that the marketing medium will play a key role in many marketing strategies. While social media doesn’t directly contribute to SEO ranking, however, it does go hand in hand with your SEO efforts. From understanding social SEO to how you can leverage your use of social media to improve your marketing efforts all around, here’s what you should know.
Elevating your marketing strategy
While focusing on the use of social media can aid greatly in getting your brand out there, it’s equally as important to buckle down on standard SEO practices — this is particularly essential for businesses like law firms, as quality content and high ranking SEO translates into credibility. Leveraging the use of specialized SEO services is just one ideal way to do this — for instance, for a local law firm looking to boost visibility online, working with a law firm SEO company will allow you to acquire an asset when it comes to landing a higher ranking spot on the Search Engine Results Page, or SERP (as opposed to investing in pay-per-click ads that only last until you stop paying for them). Through conducting an SEO audit, you’ll be able to gain valuable insight into your current SEO efforts, and where you can improve regarding content and more.
Understanding “Social SEO”
After conducting an audit and evaluating your current status regarding SEO, incorporating the use of social media can be a great way to supplement boosting your brand and your marketing efforts. While many may be familiar with the standard SEO practices, social SEO involves the use of social media in order to increase your search visibility, as well as your organic search ranking. As social media does not directly impact SEO, gaining interaction with your content will indirectly aid in reaching major marketing goals, like boosting brand recognition and visibility. To further highlight the role that social media plays in marketing efforts, Bing’s Webmaster Guidelines do confirm that the search engine ranks pages with more shares higher than those with fewer shares. While the same can’t be said for search engines like Google, many studies do confirm that there is a relation between social shares and rankings.
When it comes to social media and how it works in tandem with SEO efforts, there are a few key ways that social interaction can help. Because the links you share across social platforms will increase brand exposure, they add up and influence SEO in a few key ways — including when it comes to content distribution, ensuring that your posts have a longer lifespan, and improving organic traffic, to name just a few.
Since more interaction can aid in reaching these key goals, it’s imperative to focus on sharing content that is relevant, unique, informative, and most importantly tailored to your target audience. Encouraging your readers to interact, and actively responding to any comments are additional ways to boost engagement in an effective manner. In turn, you’ll not only reap the benefits of gaining more exposure, but you’ll be able to delve into your analytics and analyze which posts are the most useful for your target audience and marketing goals (thus allowing you to improve and adjust along the way).
While social media doesn’t directly tie into SEO efforts, it can work hand in hand with them and aid in reaching your goals — like brand visibility. By understanding social SEO and how social interaction on posts can make a major difference — as well as reevaluating your current SEO strategy, you’re sure to see results in no time at all.