Social Media SEO: 10 Social Media Strategies to Boost SEO

Often, social media and SEO conversations happen separately.

Social media is meant for building relationships and engaging with your audience, while SEO seems more scientific, with specific keyword analyses to attract as many eyes as possible.

However, these two facets of inbound marketing can work together to amplify the results of each other. In this blog, you’ll realize that compromise is in sight.

This guide will help any marketer integrate their efforts across both platforms. Below we’ll cover the following topics:

Now you know the difference between social media and SEO. So, let’s dive into social media SEO.

What is social media SEO?

Social media SEO allows you to optimize your social profiles so you can better attract potential customers through search. SEO best practices will vary across platforms.

However, the goal remains the same: finding the right audience for your brand and exposing them to products they could buy. 

While social media management and SEO optimization tend to be two very different strategies, they can complement each other. Leveraging both can help you gain traffic from a variety of different sources.

Social media lets people discover new content or brands they might be interested in. Meanwhile, SEO allows you to gain traffic from people searching for questions or phrases related to your business.

Both search engines and social platforms aid in information discovery. People use Google to find an answer to a question.

People use social media to discover answers to questions they haven’t yet thought of. For example, Instagram search is one of the app’s core features.

The difference between search engines and social media platforms is blurring.

How Social Media Impacts SEO

Although search engines do not officially use social signals as a ranking factor, there are still benefits to linking these two strategies.

This is because the search engines notice when you attract a lot of traffic to your site and deem your brand as credible, relevant, and high-quality.

With these criteria can come a higher search result. Therefore, if you post interesting, click-worthy content on social media, you just might see a boost in traffic.

Furthermore, if people see your posts and share your website’s link, that could also boost your page authority and rankings.

To back this up, CognitiveSEO performed an analysis of 23 million social media shares and found that there is a relationship between social shares and SEO.

Many social signals inform Google of the integrity of your site. The image below highlights them.

Image source

If you’ve just focused purely on SEO and are ready to hone in on a complimenting social media strategy, check out our guide to social media marketing.

10 Social Media SEO Strategies

1. Social Sharing Buttons on Your Website

It may seem simple, but search engines like Google are starting to use social media sharing data to influence search rankings.

As a marketer, having social media sharing buttons on your blog and website is essential to encourage visitors to share content.

These buttons not only help to increase traffic from social media but also play an important role in ranking positions in search engines.

2. Integrated Keyword Strategy

As mentioned earlier, the line between search engines and social media platforms is blurring. Take the keyword strategy you use for your website and apply it to your social media engagement when appropriate.

This doesn’t mean cramming tweets full of keywords. Instead, be aware of how you are wording social media messages. By incorporating keywords into social media content, you can increase the reach of your messages.

3. Include Links in Social Profiles

The links in social media messages, such as tweets and Facebook status updates, are traditionally no-follow links. This means they don’t pass any SEO authority to the site they’re linking to.

While this is starting to change, it is important to understand that the URL in the actual bio of a social media account is a follow link.

Make sure you are taking advantage of these extra opportunities to draw your audience to your site.

4. Incorporate Links Into Video and Presentation Content

Some of the most powerful social media platforms are those that facilitate content sharing, such as YouTube, LinkedIn, and SlideShare.

When sharing content on these types of apps, be sure to share links to related blog posts or other content on your website.

Yes, this will increase traffic to your website, but it will also help build new inbound links.

When someone writes a blog post about your content, it’s likely they will also include a link from the presentation simply because it is the “easy” thing to do.

5. Optimize Social Profiles

Think of social media profile pages as extensions of your website.

Just as you would optimize website pages for page titles and keywords, audit your social media profiles to ensure they mirror your website’s search engine optimization strategy.

This can fall under your About Us, Services, Products, or the other editable sections to help search engines further understand your website’s relationship to those keywords.

Build Links and Social Media Reach

Search engine optimization has long been about inbound links to your website. While inbound links are still significant, a secondary metric for marketers looking to increase search traffic should be social media reach.

In order to get more people to share your content on social media, you need to increase the number of fans or followers of your account.

By doing this through quality content creation and engagement, you will build not only social media reach but also inbound links.

However, don’t pay for fake followers or likes, as the platform will likely catch and penalize you.

7. Establish Relationships

Similar to sales, relationships are huge for driving inbound links and social media attention. Building relationships using social media can open opportunities for guest blog posts and other link-building opportunities.

You can also implement this by polling followers to drive engagement and responding to comments to show users there are real people behind the screen.

Further, these activities provide you with more opportunities to share additional links with your users.

8. Boost Your Content Creators’ Profiles

Search engines pay close attention to the creators of the content on a web page. In addition to the web, search engine crawlers pull information from social media platforms to better inform the credibility of the author.

Include author bios in your articles or blogs that are linked to their social media profiles and tag them with each new piece of content they produce.

Increase Positive Mentions

As previously shown, having a robust social media presence can create a positive relationship with your audience.

A critical aspect of achieving this is to have online mentions that grow your brand’s visibility and positive awareness.

For example, companies on Twitter reported a 19% boost in overall customer satisfaction. Google reports that positive online mentions can help determine whether your site is relevant in search queries.

Encourage positive mentions through engaging content and customized posts to the platform.

10. Extend Content Lifespan and Engagement

Social media sharing allows your content to have a longer lifespan. A few strategies to grow engagement are to use specific hashtags, tag influencers, and host giveaways to reward engagement.

Track this with likes, comments, and shares.

You can use analytical tools, both provided by the platform as well as third-party tools, to identify which topics and types of content resonate.

Lastly, don’t be afraid to recycle content with strong engagement and performance. You can extend the content’s life by recirculating it.

Getting Started

Whether social media has been a tactic in your SEO strategy or not, hopefully, you have gained a stronger understanding of how to link the two.

The content and product already exist. Now, it is up to you to implement these tips by working across teams and collaborating.

At the end of the day, each strategy will need to be tailored to your brand, so play around with the ten tips above to see which sticks.

10 Types of CTAs You Need to Have on Your Website

There’s no one-size-fits-all solution for calls-to-action (CTAs), especially when you have multiple audiences perusing your website at any given time. 

Visitors, leads, customers, and promoters are likely to visit your site, so you’ll need several types of CTAs to get them to accomplish different goals. 

To help you turn visitors into leads, leads to customers, and customers to promoters, I’ve put together a list of CTAs to use for each audience. But before we get into that, let’s discuss what a CTA is. 

Without a CTA, potential leads and customers may struggle to find the correct path to buy a product or sign up for a service or list. CTAs help companies generate leads, but they also help delight customers and avoid frustration. 

Now you know what a CTA is, here’s a list of CTAs that will benefit your website. 

10 Types of CTAs Marketers Should Know

The CTAs below can be made with our free PowerPoint Template, so download it here if you want to use them on your own website. You can also create a CTA with HubSpot’s CTA tool.

1. Lead Generation 

As mentioned earlier, calls-to-action are crucial to generating leads from your website. Since you’re trying to turn visitors into leads via these CTAs, you’ll want to place them in any spot on your website with a high percentage of new visitors.

The best place for a lead generation CTAs is on blog. Specifically, you should add a CTA at the end of the blog post, in the sidebar, and as a floating banner in the corner.

Successful CTAs are eye-catching and effectively communicate the value of clicking on it. In other words, visitors should know exactly what to expect when they get to the landing page the CTA points to. 

Below is an example of a lead generation CTA:

2. Form Submission

Let’s say your visitor get to your landing page — there are still two more things they need to do to register as a lead. Your visitor still need to fill out a form and click on a button to submit their information to your contacts database.

At this stage, your visitor is close to becoming a lead, so you don’t want them to slip through the cracks with a lackluster submit button.

Instead, trade out your “submit” button copy for something more actionable and specific to the marketing offer they are about exchange information for.

The lead capture form and button below are much more actionable and engaging than a simple “submit” button. If you’re interested in crafting a form for your site, HubSpot has a free online form builder here.

3. “Read More” Button

Whether you place a feed of content in your blog, customer case study page, or press newsroom — you should avoid displaying the whole post one the home page.

You need to entice your homepage viewers to click on individual posts by featuring the first few paragraphs of your content followed by a “read more” CTA.

Here’s what a “read more” button looks like:

Besides allowing more content to be featured on your homepage feed, “read more” buttons ensure your engaging posts receive the stats they deserve.

This allows people to click through to read any post instead of scrolling down on the homepage, In turn, the post itself gets credited with its own traffic, not the homepage. 

4. Product or Service Discovery 

When someone is poking around your website trying to learn about your company and what it offers, make it as easy as possible for them to do so. After all, your products and services are what keep your business afloat.

The CTAs don’t have to be fancy images — simple text on a button can do the trick, as long as the button stands out enough against its background.

Here’s an example of what that can look like, taken from our very own homepage:

Disclaimer: Our homepage product awareness CTA wasn’t created in PowerPoint, but you can easily create the same look with our PowerPoint templates.

5. Social Sharing

One of the simplest types of calls-to-action is one that encourages you to share a piece of content with your friends. Social sharing buttons are a low-commitment way for visitors, leads, and customers to engage with your brand.

So, be sure to include them in places where it makes sense on your website, such as blog posts and landing pages.

Don’t just slap them on everything, though. You wouldn’t want to include them in places where people are giving you their personal information, for example.

The best part about this type of CTA is that it is really easy to customize.

Here’s what it can look like:

 

6. Lead Nurturing

So, what happens when someone becomes a lead but isn’t quite ready to pay for your product or service?

You’ll need to entice them with another type of offer that is more aligned with your product offering than a typical top of the funnel marketing offer.

You’ll need to use a lead nurturing CTA to promote offers like product demos, free trials, and free quotes. A lead nurturing CTA should be in an area you know many leads visit. 

For example, consider a smart CTA option in a blog post or as an offering at the bottom of another marketing offer’s thank you page.

Here’s a prime example of what one looks like:

7. Closing the Sale

And once all of your lead generation and lead nurturing are done, you’ll need to finally turn those leads into customers.

This type of CTA will be very sales-focused: you want to get potential customers to want to buy your product or service right here, right now.

Again, if you have smart CTAs, you can use them at the end of blog posts. However, consider placing them on product pages, as potential customers may want to do one last bit of research before taking the plunge.

This is an example of what a sales-focused CTA would look like:

8. Event Promotion

If you are throwing an event, whether online or in person, it’s pretty clear you’re going to need people to attend.

Use an event promotion CTA to raise awareness of the event or help drive ticket sales. The best part about this type of CTA is there are endless places you can put it, depending on which segment of your audience you’re trying to get to attend.

For customers, place the CTA on their login page, dashboard, or on the page you offer them a receipt. For leads, make this CTA appear in the blog sidebar. The possibilities are endless.

Here’s a simple example of an event CTA:

9. Related Content

The longer a visitor stays on your website, the more likely they’ll convert to a lead. A related content CTA makes it easy for website visitors to jump from once piece of content to the next on your site. 

In turn, they’ll learn more about your product or service and will likely want to make a purchase. Place a related content CTA within the content, such as between sections of a blog post or in the side bar as link.

Below is an example as it would apply to exploring your company’s services: 

10. Quiz CTA

Audiences love to be delighted, and what’s more delightful than a quiz to test their knowledge or learn more about themselves? We all love a good Buzzfeed quiz, right? 

If you decide to use a quiz or a game to encourage visitors to stay on your site longer, you’ll need a quiz CTA to capture their attention. And if the quiz is free, include that in the CTA.

Place a CTA like the one below at the end of a blog or its sidebar. 

CTAs make your website easier to navigate, and they can serve as roadmap that takes a visitor on the path to becoming a lead. However, to get the most our of your CTAs, you’ll need to make them engaging, hard-to-miss, and straightforward. 

Now that you know the different CTAs available for your site, you’re ready to use them to you advantage.