How To Use Social Media To Improve Your SEO?

We all know the benefits we can receive from proper communication in social media. However, do we realise what impact that aspect of our marketing communication might have on our SEO? Mostly, we don't. And it's a shame, especially considering how valuable of a resource it might be, if we use it properly. So here are a few tips to help you with that.

Let's establish one thing first. When thinking about SEO, we almost exclusively think about Google. While social media profiles are frequently ranked high in the service, it is worth remembering that Facebook, Twitter and their likes are search engines themselves. In 2016, the former was seeing roughly 2 billion searches per day, while the latter saw about 2.1 billion. For comparison, Google's result is 3.5 billion.

While it's important to keep your website updated and ready for Google indexing, it's time to focus a bit on your social media. So here are some basics that you can build on:

1. One or two social media profiles is not enough

While it is expected that you have one or two of them already set up (most likely on Facebook and Twitter, judging by how most businesses fare), you should work to have several more. The reasons for this are simple: backlinks and search results. Having multiple portals link to each other increases the effectiveness of every single one of them, as well as the number of results that will show up in search engines. The popular ones you should have covered are Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, Instagram and Pinterest. For bonus points, include your website in "company information" section in each of them.

2. Take care of your visual presence

Your profile pictures, cover pictures, and any other visible section of your main site need to fit together to create a coherent image. We already know that poor design results in larger number of website bounces - the same applies to social media profiles. Of course, unlike your webpage, you won't be able to control every aspect of it. It's fine. But the elements that you are indeed able to edit should not only fit your business page thematically, but also coloristically. Keep in mind that some social media allow you to not only use pictures, but also videos as a mean of interacting with your viewers.

3. Establish your frequency of posting

The key to posting is not to post every day. Not even every other day. But you need to post quality, captivating content often enough for it to be noticed by your followers or subscribers. Naturally, it takes effort to post on 5 or 6 social media channels every day, but spending some time to set up content that will show up twice during the week is completely feasible.

While we're at it, keep in mind that if one of your accounts is inactive, it might bring you down a bit. 10.000 Facebook likes on a company profile looks good, but if someone visits your YouTube first and notices only one video and 15 subscribers, they might be put off a little.

4. Fill out your company information and bio

People want to know who you are, if they don't already. Even if they do, seeing empty description fields raises the feeling of suspicion that you're not really involved, and potentially discourages them from using the page to engage with you.

Even more importantly, while describing your profile, you should do what you can to include multiple keywords that will make your website stand out in search engines. We know that "short and sweet" sounds great (and it really is, sometimes), but there are moments when you need to elaborate on what your company is doing for the sake of search engine recognition.

Once you have solid basics, you can try to move forward with broadening your reach and appealing to your audience. The benefits of using social media are significant, and you should not get discouraged by the initial struggle to become visible and achieve recognizability and benefits from social media's and Google's SEO.