Social SEO Tips for Every Network

When it comes to growing your business, most companies now fully accept that search engine optimization (SEO) is a must. But for some reason, too many still ignore the massive potential of social media – especially in the B2B space.

If your business skips out on social media, you’re missing the awesome superpower that is social media SEO! That’s right, social media can enhance your SEO efforts.

We get it though. With so many algorithm changes in recent years, it’s so hard to get organic results from social media. Creating great content takes time that lots of small businesses don’t have to spare. And if you don’t have the technology to make videos, it can seem like there’s no point.

But social media isn’t just a bulletin board for you to promote your business by tacking up articles and images, and that misconception is the problem. Social media is about building brand recognition, sharing valuable and memorable content, earning trust, showcasing your expertise, and ultimately driving targeted traffic to your website.

Sounds an awful lot like SEO, doesn’t it?

In this article we’ll cover what social media SEO is, how to improve your SEO with social media, and even how SEO helps social media in return.

What is Social Media SEO?

Social media SEO, or social SEO, is the practice of combining social media and SEO strategies to improve your position in search, your website traffic, and hopefully your conversions.

At a small business, social media and SEO usually fall on the same person to tackle – if they have time, and without much (if any) training. For larger SMBs, social media and SEO strategies are often developed and executed by different team members, departments, or even outside agencies, and are treated as independent marketing tactics.

But neither strategy should exist in a silo, and neither can do it all when it comes to driving digital strategy goals!

Why Social Media is Important for SEO

SEO is about optimizing your website so that it turns up in searches done by people seeking your product or service, and enticing them to visit your website. Social media does the same thing – it gets your name and content in front of people interested in your offering.

“But my business is serious, we can’t make TikTok dance videos or post photos of our clients.”

Most of our clients are in the B2B and non-profit spaces, so we hear this a lot. SEO makes obvious sense, because it’s about using data to identify the best queries, then produce content around them. No matter your industry, our customers all use Google every single day, and we all want to be on page one.

But did you know that social media platforms actually now function in largely the same way?

Every single major social media app now uses hashtags, keywords in post copy, or both to categorize content. Users can follow hashtags or topics in the same way they follow accounts, and every post they engage with tells the platform about their interests.

Then the app shows them similar content from accounts they don’t follow. That content could be yours!

Check out these impressive stats on how social media drives the same goals as SEO:

54% of social media users research products on the platforms
Social media users overwhelmingly trust other users’ product and service recommendations over those of celebrities
71% of consumers who have had a positive experience with a brand on social media are likely to recommend the brand to their friends and family
Consumers are 6x more likely to buy from a product page that includes pictures from social media, ie. content that shows real people using the product

Both social media and SEO have similar potential for reach. There are 5.6 billion Google searches done each day, 2 billion Facebook searches, and 1 billion hours of YouTube video are watched. Of course, only a tiny fraction of those searches relate to what you do, but you get the idea.

Where social media outshines SEO is in the social aspect. SEO gets people to come to a website, but it doesn’t gather anything from them in return. That’s left up to your website and its user experience.

You can use social media to conduct audience research by asking questions through posts and polls. You can engage with customers in the comments, learning valuable insights about their wants and needs (while responding to questions and concerns).

And then you can use all of that precious information to improve your offering – including the keywords you target and the SEO content you produce.

How Does Social Media Impact SEO?

Let’s just dive right into the goods. Here are five major ways social media impacts SEO:

Content amplification — helping your content get discovered and enjoyed by more people, especially when it’s not on page one of search results
Brand awareness — building your online presence through exposure, so that when your name appears in the search results it’s familiar
Trust and credibility – supporting your reputation within your industry, especially when someone is researching you online because of a referral
Link-building – the more places your content can be discovered, the more chance that it will earn SEO-friendly inbound links (backlinks) when cited on other websites
Local SEO — increasing your local presence and ranking through business profile data and customer reviews

Each of these areas has an indirect impact on your SEO, and thus on how you rank. This is why social media SEO is important for businesses of all sizes and industries.

And don’t forget:

Your company social media profiles appear in searches for your business, often right under your website – they’re a great way to take up that whole first page and leave no room for competitors
Search engines index tweets, which appear in search for your business and can also turn up in results for specific queries
Google has been working with Instagram and TikTok on an agreement to start indexing video posts

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

The official answer is no, but also yes.

You may have heard about social signals as a Google ranking factor. This idea says that social media posts, engagement (likes and comments), shares, or follower counts can directly impact ranking.

Although Google DOES use your social media accounts to verify the legitimacy of your business, it’s typically only your NAP – that’s name, address, and phone.

Google is extremely picky about NAP accuracy, so it will check everywhere that your business is listed to make sure all contact details match. If your email address or website link is different, Google might decide that your business shouldn’t be shown to someone doing a local search.

Google may or may not check social media profiles to verify a website author’s expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness (E-A-T). E-A-T is not a specific ranking factor itself, and more like a cluster of signals that create a factor: content from a trustworthy author and site will rank better.

At different times, Google SEOs have also said that Google’s algorithms do and do not take note when content earns a lot of social shares and traffic. Not helpful. What IS helpful is that Google uses data from Google Chrome to see website traffic volume and frequency – from any traffic source.

Most of the other supposed effect of social signals is actually the result of indirect ranking signals – lots of traffic coming to your website and engaging with content in a positive way, and earning more links, which helps it rank higher.

Bing, on the other hand, does use social signals in its ranking factors.

Like Google, it uses social media accounts to verify a brand’s credibility. But beyond that, if content gets a lot of social shares, Bing’s algorithms take it as a sign that it should be ranked higher. Bing even uses social content in its knowledge panels.

Social SEO Tips for Every Network

Here’s what you need to know to get your content found on every social network.

Instagram SEO Tips

Optimize your Instagram profile SEO. Use keywords in your name, handle, and bio, and include a location if relevant.
Include relevant keywords and hashtags in the caption. Hiding hashtags in the comments is no longer effective. Keywords in the caption help your content appear on keyword search pages.
Add alt-text. The main purpose of alt-text is to make visual content more accessible. However, it serves the added benefit of helping Instagram understand exactly what your content is so it can serve it in response to relevant searches.
Use subtitles. Instagram has auto-generated captions, which is great for accessibility, but using subtitles also means your target keyword will appear onscreen.
Tag your location. So your content will appear on the new Instagram Maps, which can function as a local business search.

For more in-depth Instagram SEO strategies, check out our full blog post on Instagram SEO.

TikTok SEO Tips

Optimize your TikTok profile SEO. Add relevant keywords to your TikTok user profile to improve the SEO of your whole account.
Double-dip your main keyword with the TikTok itself. Say the main keyword for your TikTok out loud in your video clip and include in-text overlay on the screen. Saying your keyword out loud means it’s also included in the automatically generated closed captions, which kind of makes this a triple-dip.
Include relevant keywords and hashtags in the caption. By caption here, we mean the video description, rather than speech captions (although you should include your keywords there too, as noted above). Focus on keywords, rather than hashtags, for improved TikTok SEO.

YouTube SEO Tips

Use your primary keyword phrase as the video file name. For example, DIY-bookcase.mov
Incorporate your primary keyword phrase in the title. But use a longer version that people might type into YouTube’s search bar, such as “how to build a DIY bookcase”
Use keywords in the video description. Especially within the first two lines, which are visible without clicking more. Include your primary keyword for sure, and add a secondary one or two later in the description if you can do so without making it sound like keyword stuffing.
Say your keywords in the video and turn on captions. Make sure to speak your keywords out loud at some point in the video. Then, turn on subtitles in YouTube Studio.
Create how-to videos. How-to videos get most of their views from search, whereas other types of videos get most of their views from the home page, suggested videos, or playlists.
Don’t worry about tags. YouTube says tags aren’t a big factor in search. They’re mostly used to address common misspellings, such as DIY vs DYI.

Facebook SEO Tips

Optimize your Facebook Page SEO. Use your main keyword in your Page title and vanity URL, About section, and description.
Add your business address to your profile. If it’s relevant, this will allow your page to be included in local search.
Add location pages for different locations. If you have multiple bricks-and-mortar locations, add a location page for each shop or office to increase all of their chances of appearing in local search.
Include relevant keywords in your posts. Using natural-sounding language, make sure to include the most relevant keyword in each post and photo caption.
Include alt text. Using specific, descriptive Facebook alt text in your images is a great way to make sure the platform understands what your post is about.

Twitter SEO Tips

Optimize your Twitter profile SEO. Use your main keyword in your Twitter name, handle, and bio.
Include relevant keywords and hashtags in your posts. You don’t have a lot of characters to work with, so use keywords wisely. Incorporate them into the post naturally so your post is still valuable to readers.
Add alt-text. If you include images in a Tweet, add alt-text that includes your keywords (if relevant to the image – remember the main point of alt-text is to make content accessible to the visually impaired). Do so by clicking Add description under the image when creating a Tweet.

Which social media platform is best for SEO?

It’s a tough question to answer because the network where it’s most important to focus your SEO efforts is the one where your audience is most likely to spend their time or conduct their research. To answer that, you need to do some basic audience research.

Beyond that, it depends. Twitter and Google have a partnership that allows Tweets to feature prominently in search results. Pinterest ranks well for highly visual content. LinkedIn Pages often appear in business searches, and Facebook Pages rank especially well for local businesses. Google is currently working on improving its ability to index and serve TikTok and Instagram video results, too.