Five Ways to Use Social for SEO and Vice Versa

Five Ways to Use Social for SEO and Vice Versa

We also know that SEO efforts don't have the same effect on social algorithms as they do on search engines. Use research on one platform for the other Though people may have different intentions when searching versus engaging with social, you can still use the information about your users on one platform to create effective content and calls to action on another. Working in the other direction, you can crowdsource user-generated content from social media to create content for your website. This approach includes looking through social posts for common questions and then writing pieces of content that answer those questions—and having those posts show up in featured snippets on search results pages. Using that information, the store can create a how-to blog post that it can link to in those social posts to answer users' questions, and that blog post can then also be found in organic search as well. If you create a video for YouTube, find or edit the best 15- 30-second snippet for social media (and don't forget the call to action to drive people to where they can see the entire video). Consider how you engage with social media, images, infographics, and videos, and have your own content efforts reflect that. We know people may see our posts and ads, but does that really translate to new customers? When people see your brand in social media ads and boosted posts, they may not click directly; they may instead google your brand name or go directly to what they assume is your URL (if it's an easy assumption). Social media can help boost local SEO efforts And, finally, how social media platforms have become citations for local businesses.

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Social media and SEO are often viewed as mutually exclusive marketing practices.

Sure, your tweets may show up in certain Google searches, but we know that social media links don’t figure in SEO link-building (or we’d all rank for everything). Plus, unless someone is searching specifically for your Twitter profile or Facebook page, those social SERP results typically don’t convert leads into customers. We also know that SEO efforts don’t have the same effect on social algorithms as they do on search engines.

The main difference between SEO and social is that SEO often finds consumers when they’re actively looking for something, whereas social posts are incidental, appearing while people are just performing normal social browsing tasks:

  • If I’m actively looking for an Italian restaurant near me, I’ll Google nearby places, click on their Google My Business profiles, read their reviews, and make a choice based on their menus.
  • If I’m just casually browsing Facebook, I may see a post from a nearby restaurant, but since I’m not actively looking for it, I could well just pass it by and promptly forget about it—even if I’m actively following that restaurant’s page.

There are inherent issues in treating social like SEO and SEO like social. So what’s the point in SEO marketers working with social media and community managers and vice versa?

Though it seems they’re on two ends of the marketing spectrum, there is quite a bit of overlap that can benefit both sides.

Note: If you’re interested in learning the latest in marketing and attribution best-practices, check out the latest best-practice webinars (and some you may have missed).

Here are five ways that SEO marketers and social media/community managers can work together to improve their respective practices.

1. Use research on one platform for the other

Though people may have different intentions when searching versus engaging with social, you can still use the information about your users on one platform to create effective content and calls to action on another.

For example, you can use organic search queries from Search Console to determine what problems people are looking to solve when they find your product or service. That information can then be tweaked to create ads for social media.

If you own a local bakery and find that many people who find your site on Google are searching for “birthday cupcakes,” that would point to a great opportunity for a Facebook ad with images of your creative birthday cupcakes for kids or a promoted post that links to your most recent popular cupcake recipe.

Working in the other direction, you can crowdsource user-generated content from social media to create content for your website. This approach includes looking through social posts for common questions and then writing pieces of content that answer those questions—and having those posts show up in featured snippets on search results pages.

For example, an appliance store may find that many people are posting questions and…

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