Social media has become one of the most important platforms and ways customers interact with their favorite brands. It also provides a valuable space for companies and brands to interact. However, since search engines do not directly take social media activity into account when ranking pages, it can be difficult to figure out how to get your social media to perform better in search results.
Fortunately, reputation management experts at agencies like BRANDefenders develop and implement new strategies to rank clients’ social media pages higher in search results. Here are seven tips you can implement to manage your social media pages and improve your social media SEO to help you rank higher in search results.
1. Verify Your Social Media Accounts
This is a basic step in setting up your social media for success, but it’s significant. Getting your business’s social media account officially verified increases the likelihood that customers and fans of your brand will follow you instead of accidentally following a fake or parody account. It could damage your search engine standings and online reputation to become inadvertently associated with the wrong account, so setting your official profiles apart with a verification symbol is wise.
Consider adding the word “official” to your profile bio or username to set your business further apart from similarly-named or copycat accounts. If you need assistance figuring out how to verify your business account, just drop your friendly BRANDefenders agent a line or reach out on our Contact page.
2. Publish High-Quality Content
Content is the backbone of any social media page, whether personal or corporate. Search engine algorithms are more sophisticated than they used to be, which means spammy tactics like keyword stuffing are no longer applicable. Your posts should be detailed, specific, well-written, thoroughly researched, entertaining, and informative.
Of course, just because keyword stuffing doesn’t work anymore doesn’t mean keywords aren’t important. You should still follow SEO best practices when writing your content, including working relevant search terms into your content in natural, believable ways. Get in touch with a BRANDefenders agent for details on determining which keywords are most likely to boost your content’s search engine performance.
While it’s important to post frequently, you should never sacrifice quality for quantity. A blog that puts out in-depth, impeccably researched content once every week is likely to perform better and acquire a broader following than a blog that posts shorter, shallow pieces every day or every other day. Contact the experts at BRANDefenders for in-depth, personally-tailored advice about the types of content that will increase your online engagement and improve your social media pages’ performance in search engine rankings.
3. Make Your Content Shareable
Getting your social media to rank higher in search engines depends largely on increasing your brand’s reach and generating leads. The best way to increase your brand’s reach is to make your content easy for social media users to share.
Utilize elements like social share buttons on your blogs and social media profiles, and make sure to include calls to action for your followers to share your posts with their friends or on their own pages. The farther your content travels, the more likely your page is to gather new followers and increase the scope of its influence.
4. Follow SEO Best Practices
Whenever you’re talking about search engine rankings, SEO best practices are some of the most important tools in your arsenal. Optimizing your social media pages for SEO can take several forms, some of which are easier to master than others. Here’s a rundown of some of the ways implementing SEO best practices can help your social media pages show up higher in search results:
- Make sure your username matches your business’s name exactly.
- Use the same version of your full name for every social media profile. Consistency is key.
- Always complete the “Description” or “About Me” field, and write a unique description every time. Original content ranks higher than copy-pasted content.
- Link your profiles to each other whenever possible.
- Incorporate relevant, branded images into your content on all social media platforms.
- Update your profiles frequently.
- Use relevant hashtags to increase traffic to your pages and posts.
If you get lost or confused, don’t panic; just reach out to our SEO experts at BRANDefenders for guidance.
5. Optimize Your Images
As previously stated, images are an important part of SEO for social media pages. All major social media sites utilize visual elements these days, and an eye-catching image can go a long way toward increasing your content’s appeal and shareability. Humans have a much better memory for images than text; after all, we’re all familiar with the saying “a picture is worth a thousand words.”
The first step in optimizing your images for SEO is to rename the photo using relevant keywords with dashes between each one. Next, compress the image size as much as possible to avoid slowing down your page’s loading speed. Finally, include relevant keywords organically in your captions and alt text.
6. Interact With Other Online Profiles
Actively participating in social media is one of the most important aspects of using social media to increase your search engine rankings, and it’s a step that businesses who aren’t working with BRANDefenders often miss. That’s because many brands and businesses think their best use of social media is to amplify and promote their own content, over and over again, in the hopes of drowning out local competitors and reaching the widest possible audience. This approach can damage your social media profile’s search engine standings. It makes you and your business look self-absorbed and lowers the chance that new customers will be interested in sharing or interacting with your profile.
In reality, studies have shown that the most effective social marketing strategies businesses use are social media the way it was meant to be used: to interact with others individually and help people connect.
For example, if a coffee shop announces on Facebook having a two-for-one special on a given day, the bike shop next door might share that post with its followers and encourage them to take advantage of the promotion. Both the coffee shop and the bike shop profit from this interaction: the coffee shop’s message spreads to the followers of the bike shop page, and the bike shop gets the benefit of demonstrating neighborliness and the power of small businesses supporting each other.
It’s also important to establish relationships with individual customers over social media by starting insightful, relevant conversations and inviting discourse on your social media page. These conversations will improve your brand’s SEO by demonstrating your ability to offer useful information and exemplify your expertise in your industry. Your BRANDefenders agent can coach you on cultivating meaningful relationships with customers and other brands on social media.
7. Keep Track of Current Social Media Marketing Strategies
As new generations enter the workforce and begin to contribute their own ideas and experiences to the world, the internet in general and social media, in particular, will continue to change and evolve to suit these new expectations and worldviews. These changes will require subsequent shifts in marketing strategies, so it’s important to monitor and evaluate your social media marketing operations and strategies and be ready to adjust any approaches that don’t seem to be working.
For example, according to research published by the American Marketing Association, the best time of day to post on social media in 2022 is early morning on a weekday. One of the first things people tend to do in the morning before going to work is to check their social media, so if you schedule your posts to go live during this time, you’re increasing the likelihood that people will see them. Conversely, the day with the lowest social media engagement is Saturday, so you should avoid publishing important or high-priority content on Saturdays.
As you continue to monitor the success and return on investment of your marketing strategies, ask yourself the following questions to determine whether you’re on the right track or whether you might need to adjust your approach:
- Are your social media activities increasing your profits and/or website hits?
- Does spending effort on your social media feel like a waste of time?
- Can you tell which strategies are succeeding and which aren’t?
Remember, BRANDefenders is here to help you identify your problem areas regarding social media marketing strategies. Get in touch with one of our expert agents for advice.
The Bottom Line
SEO and the world of social media may appear endlessly confusing to business owners born before the age of the internet. But adopting key practices in your use of social media can advance your brand or company’s performance in search engine rankings, broadening your online reach and potentially increasing your customer base and profits.
The online reputation management experts at BRANDefenders are always on hand to help you navigate the world of social media marketing if you happen to get stuck. In the meantime, keep these seven tips in mind for boosting your social media in search results.