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One of the most important acronyms essential to understanding social media search and marketing as a whole is SEO — search engine optimization. Specifically, SEO in social media is vital to growing your business as online marketing is becoming more and more prominent in everyday life.

With so many new online algorithms and best-use marketing practices to remember and utilize, it can be overwhelming and confusing. Creating good content takes time and practice if you do not know how to utilize the correct technology and there are so many places you could start to improve upon. Social media is much more complex than just posting photos, videos, and articles related to your business. It’s about building brand recognition, understanding your target audience, sharing worthwhile content while displaying your expertise, and ultimately driving traffic to your website.

That is why SEO in social media is so principal: it is how the use of social media activities and links can boost your website’s organic traffic through search engines. In this article, we will cover what social media SEO is, how to optimize it for your business, and how it works precisely.

Don’t be one of those companies that are still ignoring the massive potential of SEO. By skipping out, your company is missing the amazing advantages of SEO that will support your efforts in social media search and expanding your business.

Social SEO

So what is social SEO? Well, SEO is the process of improving your website to expand the visibility it receives when people search for your product or service on a search engine like Google, Yahoo, or Bing. The better SEO your website has, the more reach and attention it will receive. Social SEO is just adding the social media aspect to SEO practices to improve your search results and traffic. Social SEO will advance the SEO efforts and attract prospective customers while also engaging with existing customers.

Good SEO involves many different but all vital aspects:

• Identifying keywords that will drive search traffic
• Creating quality content
• Including relevant links from other sites
• Analyzing the results

Social Media Optimization

Social media optimization is very similar to SEO in the way that they both are working to drive more traffic to your website. The main difference is that social media optimization is the use of different social media networks to manage and grow a company’s message and online presence. This could be on Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, or Twitter. SEO, meanwhile, is the use of search engines aiding in website traffic. Social media optimization is great because while it drives traffic to your website, it also allows you to talk to customers and keep them up-to-date with new products or events.

Using multiple social media platforms to display your business can be overwhelming and time-consuming, so that is why many businesses use internet-based tools to help organize and deliver their content. These tools allow an employee to manage multiple social media platforms all in one place and create and time the release of content while also being able to see any customer interactions like comments, likes, and views. A few popular social media management tools include Hootsuite, Sprout Social, Buffer, and Loomly. By learning to use one of these management tools, you can save so much time and energy while staying up to date on your social media platforms to ensure the best brand presence.

How SEO Works

Understanding how SEO works is a core skill to have in today’s technological world. It can seem daunting at first, especially if you have never used SEO before. However, it is a necessity when learning to enhance your social media SEO results. SEO is always changing but its key aspects are always the same, and we can break it down into three main components:

• Technical Optimization: Technical optimization is the process of completing activities on your website that will help boost your SERP and your SEO but are not related to content. These tasks are more behind-the-scenes.
• On-Page Optimization: On-page optimization is the process of improving your website’s content and ensuring it is relevant to your target audience. This means using the correct keywords and managing them using a content management system, like Wix, WordPress, or Shopify.
• Off-Page Optimization: Off-page optimization is the process of building up your website’s search engine ranking through activities, not on your site. This is mostly driven by backlinks.

How do search engines actually work though, you ask? We all know and love to ask Google a million different questions about anything and everything. After all, their only job is to give you an answer. Search engines have algorithms that search for keywords to give searchers the results they might be looking for. The algorithms find relevant websites and social media and then decide which ones are the best for any specific search. There are three steps to how search engines work: crawling, the discovery stage; indexing, the filing stage; and ranking, the retrieval stage.

Step 1: Crawling

The first step is crawling. Search engines will send out “spiders” or “robots” to find new pages and gather data about them. They will also check in on pages they have visited before to see if they have been updated. These web crawlers find new pages through links they already know. For example, if you have a blog post linked on your homepage, and the web crawler finds your homepage, it is going to look for another link to follow and may use the link to your blog post.

Step 2: Indexing

The second step is indexing. In this step, a search engine decides whether or not it will use the information it has just crawled. If information is relevant, the search engine will add it to the index. This index is helpful again in the final ranking step. Most websites that offer unique and valuable content are put in the index and can be stored there for later retrieval. A website may not be indexed if:

• Its content is considered duplicate
• Its content is considered to have no value
• It could not be crawled
• The page does not have inbound links

Step 3: Ranking

The third step, ranking, is the most important step! Only once the search engine crawls and indexes your website can it receive its ranking. Search engines use over 200 signals to help rank websites on the SERP. These include the presence of a keyword in the title, the loading speed of the website, and the website’s reputation.

Since Google is the most commonly used search engine, it is helpful to understand how its algorithm works. Google’s main search algorithm is called Google Hummingbird, and its job is to rank and order search results. Its sub-algorithm is called RankBrain. If RankBrain sees a word or phrase it does not understand, it will use artificial intelligence to understand it by comparing it to similar search queries. It converts keywords into well-known topics and concepts so Google can understand them and provide better search engine results. RankBrain ranks websites based on user satisfaction. It then provides the result users want instead of ranking based on keyword-optimized search result.

Social Media Search Tips

Once you have mastered the ins and outs of Google’s RankBrain, you will have a big step ahead in optimizing your social media and website. Here are a few easy tips that will enhance your search engine results to get you started:

Don’t Leave Info Fields Blank

Social media marketing is all about explaining why your product or service is better than the rest. So, be as descriptive as possible! Use keywords or phrases to describe your product or service that users may also look up when searching for your business. For example, if you are a local business, it is important to include your address with the city, state, and zip code so it will appear to people searching locally. Make sure to include a link on your social media page back to your website. Include a link to your website on your social media page, too. Also, make sure you categorize your business as the correct type of business, whether it be “digital creator,” “product/service,” or “clothing brand.” Instagram has this option for a business account to categorize your page so your target audience can reach it more easily. It’s a simple and easy step to ensure more searches.

Create Shareable Content Through Link Building

Link building is the process of acquiring hyperlinks from other quality websites to your own. The goal of this is to increase search engine rankings of that website. More links mean more valuable content and a higher authority equals a higher SERP (search engine results page)! Likes, comments, retweets, pins, etc. all add weight to the links you add to your website

Set Up a Business Account on Pinterest

Pinterest is great for learning exactly what keywords and phrases your target audience is searching for. It’s also a great place to help your link-building strategy. By adding keywords in the title of a Pinterest board and the description, it will garner more attention and traffic and raise your ranking to a higher SERP.

Trust Webmix Networks SEO

Even with a how-to guide, SEO can be difficult to understand and maintain. So, for all of your SEO needs, we are here for you. The Webmix Networks SEO team has a team of seasoned professionals who can help boost your website and your business on search engines and social media. Sign up for your free consultation today!