Social media is now playing a major role in SEO as search engines are turning to social signals as important criteria for ranking a site. Factors such as how well your brand is engaging your audience, shares, likes, and re-posts of your content are all important to establishing your brand as a trusted source.
Search engines like Google take into account if you are posting quality content that people are interacting with, including the frequency of shares and the authority of those sharing. Even mentions of your brand will be important to an effective SEO strategy that includes social media. Mentions on social media tell search engines that you are an authority figure, your content is authentic, and you are engaging your audience effectively.
So how can you use social media to increase your visibility in search results? The truth is, you don’t have to spend hours a day on social networks to achieve this. You can establish a social presence and increase your brand’s engagement and mentions while doing it in less time than you thought possible. Here are our suggestions on the best social networks for SEO and driving traffic.
Get on Google+
There’s no shortage of articles detailing the SEO benefits of Google+. This network is now one of the top ranking pages for brands in Google search results. It’s worth setting up your business page if haven’t yet already, and spending at least 10-15 minutes per day on the social network. After Page Authority, search engines are highly correlating Google +1s more than any other factor, including Facebook shares, and even keyword usage. If you want to take full advantage of Google+ to optimize your site for search, keep the following in mind to optimize your posts.
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Remember the first 45-50 characters of your Google+ post will appear as the “title tag”.
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Each of your Google+ post has its own URL
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Don’t be afraid to create longer posts, as Google+ posts allows more complex posts and some studies even show a strong relationship between longer posts and higher rankings.
Pin Your Way to the Top
Pinterest is one of the fastest growing social networks and can be a major referrer of traffic to your site if properly maintained. Unlike most social media channels, Pinterest has the ability to drive non-assisted conversions for your site. Here are some tips to optimize your pinning.
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Hashtags in your pins’ descriptions will help anchor the pins to a specific subject and make them easier to discover.
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Always include reference links back to your site in your pins’ descriptions. Make sure you are including a full link, as Pinterest is known to mark pins containing shortened URLs as spam.
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Make sure you have a “Pin-It” button from Pinterest on your website to ensure your visitors can also do some pinning for you.
Make More Time for Twitter
With one of the largest, most widespread userbases, Twitter offers brands incredible SEO potential. Tweets and re-tweets are extremely powerful social signals, so when your content is shared by many of your followers, the ranking of your content will increase. Here are a few lesser known tips for optimizing your Twitter presence.
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If you haven’t tried promoted tweets yet, now is your chance to get your content in front of a larger audience and offer them incentives to follow you.
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Millions of messages are tweeted everyday, so if you want your brand to be heard, you need to find the right times to tweet. There are many free tools out there that can alert you when a topic is trending so you can get in on the conversation.
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Make your Twitter bio count. Search engines view Twitter bios as a summary and index them constantly. Be sure to include your target keyword phrase and describe your business in an interesting way.
Social media is now critical to your online presence as a business or organization. This new approach to getting search engine attention does work if you focus on dynamic content that will engage your audience and encourage them to share. By providing value and being of value to your audience, social media is one of the best long-term ways to get your brand found in search results.
