Social media and search engine optimization (SEO) go hand-in-hand when it comes to digital marketing. Both social media and SEO aim to increase visibility and reach for a website or brand. Using social media and SEO together can have a powerful impact on your overall internet marketing strategy.
Why Social Media is Important for SEO

Social media creates new opportunities for websites to be found in search engines. When content receives engagement on social media, it signals to search engines that the content is worth paying attention to. Higher quality, more useful content tends to get more social shares and links.

Search engines want to surface content that satisfies user intent and provides a good user experience. If content is resonating on social media, that’s a sign that search engines should rank that content higher in results.

Overall, integrating social media and SEO leads to better content discovery, which ultimately drives more relevant organic traffic to websites.

How Does Social Media Impact SEO?

There are a few key ways that social media impacts SEO:

What about social signals? Is social media a ranking factor?

• Social shares – When content is frequently shared on social media, it signals to search engines that the content resonates with users. More social shares can lead to better SEO rankings.
• Engagement – When people like, comment on, or click social media posts, that engagement shows content is connecting with an audience. Higher engagement tends to lead to better search visibility.
• Links – Social media can be a source of external links back to a website. Search engines use links as one ranking factor, so more high-quality social links can improve SEO.
• Brand awareness – Being active on social media increases brand visibility and awareness. A strong brand tends to perform better in SEO.

So while social signals themselves are not direct SEO ranking factors, they can impact organic search in indirect but meaningful ways.

How to Use Social Media for SEO

Here are some tips for leveraging social media to support your SEO strategy:

1. Amplify New Content

Whenever you publish new website content like blog posts or videos, share it across your social media channels. This amplifies the content and puts it in front of an engaged audience.

More eyeballs on your new content means more social engagement signals. It also increases the likelihood of earning links. Both of these help that content perform better in SEO.

2. Engage With Your Audience

Don’t just broadcast on social media; engage with your followers and partners. Like, share, and reply to their content when relevant.

This type of thoughtful engagement builds relationships and shows you are an authoritative brand people can trust. Higher engagement also creates more social signals.

3. Promote Keyword-Relevant Content

Research what keywords and topics your target audience cares about based on search volume and trends. Then create content around those themes and actively promote that content on social media.

Optimizing social posts for SEO keywords helps drive searchers from social platforms back to your website. Make the content discovery path seamless.

4. Build Links

Leverage social media to connect with influencers, journalists, website partners, and industry resources to build relationships that may result in earned backlinks.

For example, share their content when appropriate, engage with them in meaningful ways, and pitch guest posting opportunities. High-quality links are hugely impactful for SEO.

5. Optimize Social Profiles

Fully optimize your social media profiles by including keywords relevant to your brand, linking to your website, adding location details, and ensuring consistent branding across channels.

This helps search engines understand what your brand is about and makes it easy for new visitors to find your website from social profiles.

When you integrate these types of social media best practices into your SEO plan, you get the most out of both strategies. The combined effect is greater than just the sum of each isolated part.

How SEO Supports Social Media

While social media can power up your SEO efforts, SEO also provides benefits for social media marketing:

1. More Website Traffic to Convert

Top SEO rankings earn significant website traffic from organic search. All this new traffic gives you a huge pool of visitors to convert into social media followers.

So SEO brings more people in the door, then social media gives you a way to retain them for repeat engagement. The two strategies work hand-in-hand to grow your audience.

2. Keyword Research to Inform Content

Thorough keyword research is the foundation of any SEO strategy. This gives you data-driven insight into topics and themes that are resonating with your target audience.

You can take these same SEO keywords and research to create social media content, like posts and videos, that you know will engage your followers.

3. Credibility From Organic Rankings

Earning top search engine rankings adds tremendous credibility and authority to your brand in the eyes of website visitors and social media users.

When people see you ranking prominently in Google, it signals that your content is trustworthy. This grows your social media presence.

4. Assets to Promote on Social

An effective SEO plan generates website assets like blog content, videos, tools and resources. You also want to promote all these assets on social media.

So SEO gives you a wealth of optimized content to showcase to your engaged social audience, facilitating cross-promotion between channels.

5. Alignment on Quality Content

Both SEO and social media thrive on consistently creating high-quality, valuable content.

The blog posts, videos, visual assets that you optimize for organic search can also be the engaging social media content your audience loves. The strategies align around great content.

Smart integration of SEO and social media amplifies the reach and effectiveness of both. When done strategically, the two complement each other perfectly on the path to digital marketing success.

Take Your SEO to the Next Level with MacroHype

After reading this guide, you can see that SEO and social media work hand-in-hand to accomplish your digital marketing objectives. But executing an integrated strategy across these two complex channels takes skill, resources and experience.

That’s where the SEO experts at MacroHype can help. We specialize in leveraging search engine optimization and social media marketing together to boost brand visibility, website traffic, leads and sales.

Our data-driven SEO services include conducting keyword research, optimizing website content, building high-quality backlinks, amplifying content promotion across social, and tracking KPIs. We customize our approach based on your business goals.

Don’t go it alone – partner with MacroHype’s seasoned team to integrate SEO and social media to your fullest advantage. Contact us today for a complimentary digital marketing assessment. Let’s work together to maximize your online presence and ROI through strategic SEO.