Social Media and SEO: Can You Have One Without the Other?

Digital marketers have to work with both social media and search engines in mind, but not all of them know how to bring the two together.

This is surprising because SEO content and social media strategies are natural allies. Like chemical elements fusing into alloys, they can be stronger together. Read on to learn about how strong social media content feeds into SEO performance and for some suggestions that could elevate your online marketing efforts.

Understanding the Difference Between SEO and SMM

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) deals with algorithms. With SEO, the critical goal is to increase traffic to a target site through any means necessary: by building backlinks, using strategic keywords, ensuring strong site performance, employing engagement-boosting tactics, and so on.

By contrast, the aim of Social Media Marketing (SMM) is to promote sharing. It involves creating content that resonates with followers, causing them to share material with contacts. When it works, SMM's reach can stretch well beyond a company's followers and spread their brand identity like a virus.

Which is More Important in the Current Digital Economy, SEO or SMM?

Actually, that's a bit of a trick question. The truth is that social media marketing and search engine optimisation have become two sides of the same coin. Smart organisations know how to entwine the two strategies to amplify their reach and power, and they tend not to see them as isolated concepts.

By investing in SEO, marketers can expand the reach of their high-quality SMM content, creating a virtuous circle. And by ensuring that their SMM content is strong, marketers can maintain and grow their brand identity, turning more of the traffic generated by SEO into conversions.

Here are two valuable tips which can help you close this virtuous circle and harness the synergies offered by SEO and SMM:

1. Use Multiple Social Media Platforms

Firstly, it's important to spread your efforts across major social media platforms. Google doesn't rank pages based on social sentiment (at the moment), but what it does do is include a company's social media channels among the first few results when somebody searches its name.

Having Facebook, Instagram and Twitter accounts, along with a lively blog site provides a more impressive list of results as well as a choice of ways for casual browsers to engage with your content. This should boost your follower count, spreading your social media reach even further.

But there's an important qualification: managing multiple social media accounts is preferable but can be resource intensive. Inactive, poorly updated Facebook pages look bad, even if your Twitter game is fairly solid. So commit to maintaining your presence wherever you post.

2. Make Branding the Heart of Your Social Media Content Strategy

Moreover, wherever you post, be sure to place your brand identity at the heart of everything you write or produce. Social media is most effective as a way of establishing a persona for brands, giving them a 'human' face which appeals to customers.

When people feel positive about a brand, they are more likely to share related content and - crucially - they are more likely to take notice of its pages in search results. So, SMM needs to use this positivity to maximise the sharing potential of its content.

However, followers are not likely to share content that doesn't have a clear purpose. Even if the SEO copywriting is skillful, if the piece it produces isn't useful and tightly focused, it's useless. Shareable content provides relevant information, is well-written and gets right to the point in question.

For an example of what we mean, why not request a quote from greatcontent today? We'll show you how to mix SEO content and brand personality in a naturally shareable package.

Can Social Media Marketing Really Energise SEO Campaigns?

In summary, even though Google doesn't take social media engagement directly into account when building its site rankings, this doesn't mean that SMM can be neglected.

As we've seen, SMM and SEO make a great natural fit. To simplify things a bit: well-written, useful, friendly SEO copywriting creates an identity which makes search engine users predisposed to choose your results.

If you get the nuts and bolts of SEO right, a strong SMM strategy gives you a huge advantage. But remember: enjoying the benefits of SMM requires copywriting of the highest quality, so don't cut corners there. Go for professional, tailored copywriting and you'll be much more likely to see positive results.

Text: Sam Urquhart
Image: unsplash.com
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