The emergence of social networks has been strongly motivated by the apparent desire of brands to communicate in another way with their consumers. Today, social platforms can be considered as real showcases. They have even become search engines that many Internet users use to find the products and services they need.
In a B2B or B2C type business, social networks can play a vital role. But only some people link these platforms and natural referencing. You can use your social networks to improve your website’s SEO. Here are some tips for optimizing your SEO using social platforms.
Importance Of Social Networks In SEO
The different social platforms that exist today considerably impact the natural referencing strategies of sites. Businesses can leverage social media to increase their credibility and visibility on the web. However, credibility and visibility are two critical criteria that Google uses to rank websites.
Furthermore, natural referencing on Google uses a fundamental rule of increasing the number of keywords and internal and external links to increase visibility. The more active your brand’s social pages are, the more you will increase your online visibility. Your social pages will appear more often in search results when people type in your business name. Social networks increasingly influence Internet users’ intentions.
Search engines have algorithms that constantly suggest more or less relevant results to Internet users. Publications on social platforms, particularly videos, can be offered to Internet users as search results. For example, when you type “How to mow your lawn”, Google may provide relevant Facebook or YouTube videos. Additionally, although the Google search engine does not officially use social platforms as a deciding factor for ranking, Bing does.
What Is The Difference Between SEO And SMO?
To better understand how your presence on social networks can impact your SEO, it is necessary to understand the difference between SEO and SMO.
SEO
Like SEO, SMO is also an SEO technique that aims to improve a brand’s visibility. But between the two techniques, there is a notable difference that you should be aware of. Natural referencing (SEO) is a set of actions allowing a website to be ranked in the first results of search engines. To do this, it uses three axes, namely on-site SEO, off-site SEO and technical SEO.
On-site SEO consists of choosing the right keywords, creating quality content, adopting good internal networking, etc. Off-site SEO aims to improve the notoriety of a site on social networks, to use backlinks quality,… As for technical SEO, its objective is to improve the loading speed of pages, the structure of URLs, HTTP codes,…) Ultimately, SEO’s fundamental objective is to improve a site’s positioning in the SERPs and generate good organic traffic.
The SMO
Also called “Social SEO”, SMO is all of the actions aimed at improving the image of a company and its visibility on social media. SMO is a technique consisting of publishing qualitative content on social platforms. But it also involves interacting regularly with subscribers on these networks. This SEO technique aims to increase search results rankings, mainly on social media engines.
This is the whole point of SMO. Moving up the rankings on social media search engines will undoubtedly attract more visitors to your website. Even if social platforms are not a concrete ranking factor on Google, they strongly influence natural referencing.
How Do Social Platforms Impact Natural Referencing?
As we have previously demonstrated, we can answer yes regarding the influence of social platforms on SEO. But we can also answer no because the impact is not direct. Increasing organic traffic to your website thanks to social networks. If you implement a good content strategy on your social networks, you will generate more visibility for your brand.
By interacting with your publications through comments, likes, or even shares, your community will indirectly increase organic traffic to your website. If you carefully analyze the interactive behavior of Internet users about your publications, you will undoubtedly offer more suitable content. As a result, your subscribers will increasingly click on links on your site that you have taken care to hide in the content of your pages.
This will allow you to gain more traffic.In SEO, the number of visits to a website is one of the central relevance indices that Google considers. The more followers of your social networks visit your site, the more Google will think it to be authoritative. As a result, you will benefit from better positioning in the SERPs.
Positioning Your Business Through Social Networks
From a simple Google query, Internet users can easily access a page on your social networks (Facebook, LinkedIn and X, for example). The pages of social platforms are referenced in search engines in the same way as ordinary websites. So, even if your social media pages do not directly influence your website’s position, they can position your brand.
Creation Of More Or Less Effective Backlinks
Google also considers a site authoritative when it has many quality backlinks. If an authority site refers to your web platform with an external link, Google’s algorithms will trust your site. However, social networks are platforms of authority. By working correctly on your backlinks, you will undoubtedly respond to Google’s relevance indexes and increase your chances of being well-referenced.
What you should do most often on your social networks is to launch influencer marketing campaigns. They will allow you to obtain quality links on influencer blogs or social networks. This will subsequently have a positive impact on your natural referencing.
Use Social Networks To Highlight The Brand Image
You can adopt several strategies on social networks to make your brand known. However, publishing a lot of low-quality content can seriously harm the business. This strategy does not increase the engagement rate. For example, more content from other pages is needed for Internet users to react to your publications.
If the content you post doesn’t belong on your page, then you will see the opposite effect. Few subscribers will respond to your publication, and your visibility will gradually decrease. It is, therefore, better to favor content adapted to your target. These posts generally have a higher engagement rate. Furthermore, instead of sharing a lot of content from other pages on your social networks, preferentially opt to publish your content.
It’s also a good strategy for increasing engagement and organic traffic. When the shares of your publications increase, Internet users gradually trust your brand. This can boost your site’s organic traffic. But here, too, it is essential to offer relevant content corresponding to your company’s vision and your target’s expectations. This is how your social networks can significantly impact your overall SEO.
Optimizing Social Pages With Essential And Relevant Information
As on websites, information on social networks must be carefully maintained. Indeed, social platforms have become real search engines. Users commonly search for company contact details on Facebook, X or LinkedIn. In addition, Google also uses this information to create more relevant answers (results) to Internet users’ queries.
Today, Facebook and LinkedIn are the go-to sources regarding contact information. Google, therefore, is quick to use them to do the local referencing of a website. Internet users’ opinions and comments on social networks also play an essential role in SEO. These opinions are valuable information intended to enhance or degrade the company’s reputation and, therefore, its SEO.
You can publish the comments your satisfied customers have left on your social pages on your website. This will increase the visibility of these reviews and positively influence your ranking in Google search results. This can also help you attract more visitors and lead to your website.
According to some surveys, a prospect reads an average of 10 reviews or comments online about a company before trusting a company. So, optimize your business account profiles. Also, consider publishing qualitative content if you want to get positive reviews. Also, add a link to your website on your Instagram, Facebook, X, LinkedIn, etc. profile. This will allow Google to easily associate your brand with the opinions and comments of Internet users.
Make Yourself Known Through Social Networks
Many Internet users now discover companies and their products or services on social media. However, each social platform has its way of operating. To make your website known, you must diversify your reach using as many social networks as possible. On the other hand, you must first choose the platforms according to your targets.
One of the surest ways to improve a website’s natural referencing today is to acquire notoriety on social networks. But contrary to popular belief, it can be challenging to make yourself known online thanks to these platforms. However, there are some relatively effective methods to achieve this.
Create Viral Content That Adapts To Each Platform
The social network Facebook does not operate like LinkedIn, Pinterest, TikTok, etc. Each social network has its particularity. Content that may be viral on TikTok may not necessarily be viral on Facebook. Since audiences, motivations and preferences differ from one social network to another, you must learn how to create viral content for each platform.
Platforms like X and YouTube are ideal for introducing Internet users to new things. But if you want to strengthen the relationship with your audience to increase your brand image, Facebook and Instagram are more suitable.
Create Partnerships With Influencers
Viral content alone cannot raise awareness of your website or brand. Applying a real influencer marketing strategy on social networks is also necessary. This type of marketing is a relatively effective way to increase the visibility of a business on the web. But when it comes to natural referencing, is influencer marketing effective?
Once again, the impact cannot be direct. On the other hand, partnerships with influencers can contribute to the influence of your business. Indirectly, it is possible to create traffic to your website. To do this, influencers who agree to work with you must add links from your site to their social pages or blogs.
Creation Of Non-Advertising Content
Most social networks today have, like Google, efficient advertising networks. You can use these paid advertising tools to promote your business and drive traffic to your site. But it would help if you only sometimes tried to highlight your products and services on social platforms. In your publications, occasionally highlight content that raises awareness of topics likely to interest your audience.
For example, Internet users today greatly appreciate companies that take a stand on societal issues (politics, environment, human rights, etc.). These are topics that have a very high virality potential. Internet users tend to share content that defends a cause easily. We have demonstrated previously that sharing content from your social networks makes you more visible online. This will impact your natural referencing.
In Conclusion
Although social platforms do not directly play a role in the natural referencing of a website, they contribute to improving a brand’s visibility. Social networks are becoming increasingly important in the sales cycle for brands. Google and other search engines also use relevant information from companies’ social profiles to assess their importance and rank them.
Marketing and SEO specialists must now take advantage of the benefits of social networks to improve their SEO strategies. And you, have you already used social networks to boost the natural referencing of your site? Do not hesitate to tell us about your experience in this area.
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