Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is a multi-billion industry that encompasses skills all the way from coding to marketing. But what actually is SEO? And how does it link (no pun intended) to the social media marketing industry?

What is SEO?

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is the process of making your brand visible when people search for related products or services in a search engine. It refers to the visibility of your website (i.e. how far up the search results page it ranks), and the better visibility your site pages have, the more likely you are to reach customers, make sales and grow your brand.

The term “Social SEO” refers to the use of social media as an indirect tool to increase your search visibility and organic search ranking. Social media doesn’t directly impact SEO, but activity such as likes, shares and comments generated from people sharing your content on social media does contribute to the growth and reputation of your brand, which in turn indirectly helps boost your online visibility, traffic and reputation.

Social media indirectly influences the factors that impact search rankings.

As with many industries, social media can be an incredibly useful tool for improving your SEO. So what are some best practices when it comes to using social media for SEO?

5 Best practices for social media for SEO

1. Publish great quality content

Despite what many people have been taught, it’s always better to post fewer blog posts of a high quality than to rush to post blogs that don’t offer a huge amount of value every other day. SEO has evolved hugely since the industry began, and Google’s bots and search engine algorithms have now been developed to understand user intent, content relevance and content quality, so this should be the utmost priority for brands.

Understand what your audience wants from your content and deliver it.

2. Make your content easy to share

Making your blog content shareable is crucial to expanding your brand’s reach. This includes integrating social share buttons into your content and ensuring clear and compelling calls to action in all of your content.

3. Optimise your social media profiles

Optimised social media profiles (both personal and for your business accounts) allow your target audience to find you easily and effectively online. That means your profiles should be consistent in terms of branding and messaging across social media and your website, making you instantly recognisable.

4. Build relationships and have conversations

Every great social media marketer knows that the best way to increase engagement across your social media accounts is to actively engage in conversations with your followers (i.e. potential customers). Building relationships with the people that matter to your brand will not only keep you front of mind, but will also allow you to understand your customers better in terms of what their needs are as well as their pain points.

5. Write great social media copy

Social media copy - and particularly post captions - are an ideal way to engage with your audience, which itself is indirectly beneficial to your SEO. You can also make sure to add relevant keywords into your post captions, as well as relevant hashtags which can help to optimise your content and increase its discoverability. For more tips on how to write great social media copy, check out this helpful article.