7 Reasons Social SEO Matters for Your Business Website

An active social media presence is important for brands and businesses. Through social media, your business website can reach a larger audience.

A recent study by Statista showed that Facebook has over 2.96 billion monthly active users, and that’s only one social media platform. Now, consider how being active on other social platforms like Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter, or YouTube can help your business perform better online.

It gets even better when you combine your social media efforts with SEO best practices—that’s what social SEO helps you achieve.  There are various ways Social SEO benefits your business website, we’ll explore some of them in this blog post.

But first.

What is Social Media SEO?

Social media SEO is the use of social media as an indirect means of improving organic search ranking, increasing website traffic, and possibly, boosting conversion rates.

So, what’s the connection between social media and SEO?

Brands typically use social media to connect with their target audience by sharing useful and engaging content about their services, products, or corporate culture. By doing this, they get the attention of people who are interested in what they offer.

These people interact with the brand’s content by liking, sharing, or even visiting the brand’s website from social media. Indirectly, this traffic from social media signals to search engines that the site has something valuable, in turn, the search engine rewards the website with better rankings—and that’s how social media indirectly influences SEO.

Why is Social Media SEO Important?

As a business owner, it’s important to maintain an active social media presence as part of your overall marketing efforts. However, you also need to be concerned about your search engine optimization strategies. While using the right keywords, getting backlinks, and optimizing your site’s content, you also need to maximize social media platforms to improve your SEO results.

We already established that Social SEO provides awareness opportunities that you can take advantage of to boost your overall traffic. So, here are some other reasons why social SEO is vital to your business website:

1. Increases Your Overall Website Traffic

The main goal of an SEO strategy is to increase brand visibility and drive more organic traffic to a website. Hence, social media can be particularly helpful after you create a website that is yet to gain a high search ranking. It can help to drive overall traffic while waiting for SEO results.

But, it’s not limited to your new website, social SEO also helps to boost the performance of websites that have been active for a long time.

First, people on social media can find out about your products and services through your social accounts. So, as long as you promote valuable and engaging content on your social media channels, you can get attention from your target audience and send them to your business website.

Also, social media platforms allow you to create posts that intrigue and excite your audience. Besides that, you have the option to include links on your social profiles and posts, which leads your engaged audience back to your site. One way to use this effectively is by referring people to your website for more information when they engage with your social media posts through likes or comments.

So, consistently posting on social media allows you to maximize the attention your content gets by generating more website clicks, thereby boosting your overall website traffic.

2. Helps in Knowing User Intent

Social media and SEO offer ways through which you can determine user intent. User intent refers to the specific information users want when they enter their queries into search engines like Google. Before putting out content, it is crucial to find out what your target audience wants to know.

You can discover user intent by using keyword research tools like Semrush or Google Keyword Research to check what people are typing into search bars. But, let’s focus on discovering user intent on social media platforms.

Social sites are valuable platforms for learning about your prospect’s user intent through trending topics and conversations. This information also helps you fine-tune your overall SEO strategy by creating deep and engaging content. For example, on a platform like Twitter, you can locate the trending hashtags or topics on a list, which you can then use to create content on your website.

Understanding user intent can improve your website’s ranking by helping you know the right keywords to use. When you create content that suits the intent of consumers, it makes your website the desired place to get information. 

If you want to discover the user intent of your target through social media, you should consider the following:

• Running social surveys to find out key questions your prospects have
• Following popular influencers that are relevant in your industry
• Monitoring the type of social media content that users like and share often

Another way to discover user intent with social media is through conversations or questions asked via direct messaging or in the comment section.

For example, say you run a software review site, then one of your social media followers asks about the best option between Asana and Jira. This could mean they are looking to invest in project management. So you can fulfill their intent by creating content about both tools or sharing links to blog articles you’ve published on them.

Additionally, you can have some Q & A sessions on your social profiles so your audience can ask for the insights they need. Take note of the questions they ask and create tailor-made content for them.

Finally, knowing user intent offers helps you take up opportunities that other brands might miss or overlook. By knowing what users are looking for, you can introduce relevant keywords and topics that other brands haven’t covered on their sites and boost your ranking.

3. Improves Your Content Performance

Creating valuable and engaging content is important for businesses because it helps in attracting prospective customers and boosts website traffic. However, to achieve this, you need to ensure your content not only gets to the right audience but also performs well, which is where social SEO comes in.

Through social SEO, you can improve your content performance. This is achievable because of the access to a larger audience that you gain through social sites. Remember, the more people come across your content on social media, the more likely they are to visit your website.

Another way social SEO boosts content performance is by generating social signals based on the activity from your content engagement. Social platforms also offer an opportunity to improve the performance of any old content you repurpose or repost. If your content is deemed valuable, social media users can also share the content with new audiences, which can influence its performance.

The bottom line is if your website content has strong user interaction, it can drive even more traffic to your business website and improve your website rankings.

4. Increase in Backlinks

Backlinks or inbound links are links on other websites that lead back to yours. A study by Ahrefs reveals a strong positive correlation between the number of websites linking to a page and how much search traffic it gets from Google.

One way social SEO benefits your link-building efforts is by exposing your content to other site owners who may show interest in it. These could be influencers, professionals, or businesses that backlink to your content because they find it entertaining, educative, or interesting.

Additionally, since your content can reach a larger audience on social media, there are higher chances of having diverse backlinks. However, it’s important to note that the backlinks you get are more valuable if they come from high-authority sites that are similar or related to yours.

For instance, getting a backlink from a fashion blog will not help your website if you run a blog about plumbing. Therefore, you should optimize your social media platforms so they’ll be discoverable to the right audience. Here are some ways to achieve this:

• Ensure that you clearly define what your business is about on your social profiles
• Connect and network with professionals in your niche
• Research industry-specific hashtags and include them in your posts

While backlinks play an important role in SEO, your content will not get linked by other websites unless it’s of high quality and relevant. So ensure that you always create top-notch content on your business website.

Having backlinks from many sources also adds more authority to your business—which we’ll discuss next.

5. Build Brand Authority

Brand authority is crucial to search engine optimization. Through social media, you can share relevant content and earn more backlinks and references, which can help build strong brand authority—especially when the links come from reputable brands and influencers that found your content valuable.

Getting links from quality sites not only helps to improve your site’s rankings but also presents your brand as a trusted source of information and motivates people to visit.

Still on brand authority, since social SEO involves posting quality content, you can showcase your brand’s expertise in a niche through social media platforms. Building brand authority through social SEO is a continuous process that eventually pays off. Some of the ways you can maximize this include:

• Ensuring consistency in how you appear across social networks
• Sharing niche-specific content
• Collaborating with industry-relevant professionals in your content strategy

Another way to improve your brand authority is by humanizing your brand. Top companies like Zoom, Nike, and Hubspot achieve this by sharing content about their employees and satisfied customers their target audience can easily relate with. As a result, they can effectively foster trust and build relationships with their audience.

6. Aids in Faster Indexing of New Content

Before your content can appear in a list of search results, search engines need to index your website. But, it usually takes a while for new content to get indexed, depending on the quality of the SEO. Slow indexing will affect your SEO ranking negatively and cause delays in content visibility, which social signals can resolve.

Social media sites can offer a significant boost in indexing speed. Once you have new content on your website, you can share the links on platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn. Social sharing on multiple networks helps to get new content to your target audience faster and easier.

Finally, once you share your new web content on social media and create buzz around it, you’ll have better chances of gaining quality backlinks and interactions quickly—this can aid in faster indexing.

7. Helps Rank Your Social Profiles

While your business website’s ranking is highly-important, you shouldn’t neglect your social profiles. Through social SEO, your website and social profiles can dominate the first page of your branded search engine results pages.

For example, if you Google IBM, you’ll see their LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram profiles among the search results. Social media platforms like Pinterest and Quora also show up for some user queries on search engines.

Optimizing your social profiles for search engines offers more control over what people see when they search for your brand. To boost the ranking of your social profile, you can link to them from your brand’s website.

A well-optimized social profile will include the right keywords and content for your niche. This can help to drive traffic and grow your followers. When consumers search for your brand, your content can pop up, and they can interact with it.

Also, for users who are yet to decide whether to patronize your business, an active and high-ranking social media profile may serve as the trigger they need.

Frequently Asked Questions

What Exactly Is Social SEO, and How Does it Differ From Traditional SEO?

Social SEO is the practice of using social media platforms to indirectly improve organic search rankings and drive website traffic. While traditional SEO focuses on optimizing website content and structure, social SEO leverages social media engagement and signals to enhance search engine visibility.

How Does Social Media Activity Impact SEO Performance?

Social media activity can indirectly influence SEO performance by generating website traffic, increasing brand visibility, and attracting backlinks from authoritative sources. Search engines may consider social signals, such as likes, shares, and comments, as indicators of content relevance and quality.

Can Social Media Engagement Help Improve Website Rankings Directly?

While social media engagement itself doesn’t directly affect website rankings, it can indirectly impact SEO by driving traffic, enhancing brand authority, and increasing the likelihood of acquiring backlinks. These factors contribute to overall SEO performance and may lead to improved rankings over time.

What Role Does Content Quality Play in Social SEO?

Content quality is paramount in social SEO as engaging, informative, and shareable content is more likely to attract social media engagement, backlinks, and organic traffic. High-quality content not only resonates with your audience but also enhances your brand’s reputation and authority, contributing to improved SEO performance.

How Can Businesses Measure the Effectiveness of Their Social SEO Efforts?

Businesses can measure the effectiveness of their social SEO efforts by tracking key metrics such as website traffic from social media, engagement rates, backlink acquisition, and search engine rankings. Analyzing these metrics allows businesses to assess the impact of their social media activities on SEO performance and adjust their strategies accordingly.

In Closing

While SEO and social media offer unique benefits to businesses, social media, and SEO can work together to achieve your marketing goals. Social SEO provides an opportunity to increase overall website traffic, determine user intent, and improve content performance.

It can also help to increase backlinks, build brand authority, aid faster indexing, and help rank your social profiles. In short, social SEO is a marketing strategy you cannot afford to ignore, as it can contribute to how well your website ranks in search rankings.

Start paying more attention to social SEO today and see your business’s website grow.

Michal Leszczyński

Michal is immersed in developing, implementing, and coordinating all manner of content marketing projects as the Head of Content Marketing & Partnerships at GetResponse. He has 10-plus years of expertise in online marketing with a Master of Science Degree in Strategic Marketing and Consulting from the University of Birmingham (UK). Michal is the author of more than 100 articles, ebooks, and courses for both GetResponse and renowned websites like Crazy Egg and Social Media Today.

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About our Guest Author: Michal is immersed in developing, implementing, and coordinating all manner of content marketing projects as the Head of Content Marketing & Partnerships at GetResponse. He has 10-plus years of expertise in online marketing with a Master of Science Degree in Strategic Marketing and Consulting from the University of Birmingham (UK).