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Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Social Media Marketing (SMM) are two of the largest facets of digital marketing today. While some would argue that one is better than the other, combining SEO and SMM can provide excellent results.
Now I know what you may be thinking, a brand’s social media presence does not directly affect rankings on search engines and vice versa, right?
Studies have shown that there is a correlation between good rankings and having many social media mentions and links. At the same time, you can convert website visitors into social media followers and engage with them more to increase brand loyalty.
You might be asking, can’t I just focus on one?’
Well, it’s a yes and a no. But hear me out.
Look at these numbers from an e-commerce website that is ranking well and has a good social media presence. Both Organic traffic and Social traffic are bringing in users and revenue really well.
You could definitely just focus on one. However, if you remove one, you are definitely missing out on a lot of opportunities to gain more revenue for your business.
Have I convinced you enough that SEO and SMM can work together? Well then here are some tips to get you started based on my experience and from other digital marketers.
Build Trust by Having Optimized Social Media Profiles and Website
One of the hottest topics in SEO in recent years is E-A-T (expertise, authority, and trust). Google uses E-A-T to evaluate each website in its index according to the Google Quality Raters Guidelines.
The reason why I brought this up is that Google quality raters use business directories and social media profiles to assess if a website is legitimate and trustworthy. This means making sure that your social media profiles are properly linked to your website and have complete business details can improve your website’s E-A-T rating.
On the other hand, it also helps build customer trust. Maria Grace, owner/Online Marketing Expert at Maria Grace LLC, said that “a strong social media presence validates a business’ website and vice versa”.
She said “oftentimes, a potential customer that finds a business’s website will visit their social media profiles next, and the same is true the other way around. Having a strong presence online through several different channels builds a trust factor between your business and your future clients”.
Publish Blog Posts that Can Rank Organically and Make them Easier to Share
One of the easiest ways to make SEO and SMM work is to publish SEO content on your website and share them on your social media profiles to get social traffic.
Now the keyword here is posts that “can rank organically”. The reason is why many people rely too much on the traffic that they get from social media. It’s good that you can get a good amount of traffic from social media, however, social media posts decay at a fast pace. You share it today and get traffic to your website in the next 2 to 3 days while your post is at the top of your page. After that, you’ll see a huge dip.
Making sure that your blog posts rank organically allows you to get more traffic as time goes by.
Make sure that you make it easier to share your articles by installing social media share buttons on your website. When a person shares your article, they are most likely associated with other people that have the same interests. This prolongs your content’s visibility without you having to promote it continuously.
Drip Feed Content to Your Social Media Profiles
Drip feed is a strong content strategy that is used by many companies to keep customers engaged. What you do here is instead of sharing your published content from your website to your social media profiles in one go, you release content slowly.
Niles Koenigsberg, Digital Marketing Specialist at Fig Advertising, highly recommends the drip-feeding content to maximize visibility.
He said, “far too often, we see companies put in numerous hours on their blog content to only share the piece once or twice on social media in the days following its publication. Don’t fall into this vicious cycle! Instead, we’d recommend that you slowly drip feed your article on your social platforms throughout the rest of the year. When you drip feed content, you get to maximize the visibility of your blog for a greater length of time and you’ll be able to effectively engage with more followers through those posts.
Connect With Other Webmasters and Build a Network
Outreach is a huge part of link building for SEO. But guess what, website owners are also on social media! Building relationships on social media with other authoritative personalities in your niche/industry can go along way. Not only can you get backlinks, but you can also get visibility from their social media audience when you interact with them.
Here’s what Shayne Sherman, CEO of Techloris says: “Guest blogs, partnerships, and genuine content sharing go a long way toward maximizing your SEO strategy. You can drive more traffic to websites linking to yours, but more importantly, you build better connections in your field by being active on social media.”
“If you get a backlink, tweet about it. Tag the journalist or outlet in a Facebook post about your guest article, or a piece you were quoted in. Write your own thought leadership posts on LinkedIn, then use your insights for a future blog post – which you’ll share across social media, of course” Shayne added.
Use Social Media to Keep Track of the Latest Trends
Social Media is the best place to keep track of the latest trends. You can get a lot of social media engagements by publishing articles about the latest trends and sharing it on social media or through Moment Marketing.
Muhammad Mateen, Digital Marketing Strategist at Pure VPN, also shares the same sentiments. He suggested that you can also use this to generate keywords for SEO.
“Make use of social media for topic and keyword research. Pay attention to trending topics on Twitter and Facebook. Keep tabs on your competitors to determine the content that they are sharing and promoting as well as what is bringing the most engagement. Pay attention to keywords and headlines”.
“Then, let your voice be heard. By creating and promoting content on topics that are trending on social media, you increase the likelihood that you will hit the most important social media ranking factors” said Muhammad.
Why is it important to have both SEO and SMM in a digital marketing campaign?
As I’ve mentioned earlier, you can indeed have one without the other but having both makes up a well-rounded digital marketing campaign. One of the things you should take note of is that both mediums have their own pros and cons and that’s why you should diversify your strategies.
Brett Downes, Founder of Haro Helpers, pointed this out.
“SEO takes at least a few months to start producing any tangible results so SMM – paid or otherwise can get your company out there for branding purposes and to generate leads. You can use the demographic data gathered from social media visits to your websites to help guide your content and keyword strategy moving forward”.
“You should never put all your marketing eggs in one basket, having an omnichannel approach allows you to market your company over various mediums.
Not all of your target market will be using search engines regularly, vice versa for social media. Sure, you’ll overlap customers on both mediums – but that’s great for subconscious branding, but you’ll also reach potential customers you wouldn’t have if you just stuck to one medium”.
Abir Syed of UpCounting seconds this. He said, “It’s usually important to have both because different people will come across your product in different ways, and may need additional exposure before they convert. Some products benefit more from the pull marketing of SEO, others more from the push of SMM, but most benefit from both – especially with retargeting. But at the end of the day, the point is that any channel will have diminishing returns, so diversifying to as many channels as possible is a great way to maximize your ROI”.
Digital Marketing and other types of marketing won’t reach it’s fullest potential if you only dip one foot in. If you have the time and resources, I say go for it. I highly recommend that you use different facets so you can reach a wider audience and you don’t miss out on any opportunities for growth.
