Social Media and SEO are like Jamaica and Reggae music, you can’t have one without the other, and both are intertwined to give maximum effect. The focus and central aim of both online marketing strategies is aimed at building positive brand identity that attracts visitors. If you know anything about social media, then you should understand it relies heavily on visibility and high quality content. Like bees to honey, these birds of a feature flock together; laboring away at SEO can more than double you social media reach and likewise your presence across the social media platforms can gravely improve your search rankings.
If you are like most social media marketers or business owners who wonder away at the effectiveness of online marketing, here are 5 social media practices that will enlighten your day and successfully boost your SEO.

1) Grow your followership

Let’s face it, the amount of followers, connections and fans linked to your social profiles do make a difference. If a company has a total of two hundred (200) page likes on Facebook and two hundred (200) followers on Twitter, obviously the bigger corporation with over two million (2) page likes and 2 million Twitter Followers will rank higher in search results. But there are rules to this process, so don’t waste your money buying page likes and followers because although it looks good on the outside, in the factual mix of things this move won’t do much to help your SEO efforts. Google can detect the quality of followers on your company profiles, so instead of buying followers, it’s best to spend time and effort building organic followership and yes it’s time consuming but in the long run it will pay off. The key to gaining organic followers is by being unique and consistent. Post useful articles, helpful tips, open inquiries, and general discussion items, then follow up with your users by engaging in direct conversations. By directly engaging your consumers you are building and retaining a sizable, interactive following which will encourage current followers to return and help build your authority for new, potential followers.

2) Influence Social Sharing

Search engines like Google rewards the kind act of sharing. The deed of someone/variable validating your content ranks high in the court of SEO and drums up cause for a small improvement in your domain authority. Simply put, if you get 100 people to like and share your Facebook posts, it’s all rainbows and sunshine, the more the merrier because likes, shares, retweets etc. all fill the basket to increase your domain authority.
At this point, you might be wondering, what’s the best way to unearth or increase social sharing? Well, there are a few things you can do, for example, running a contest that rewards the user who gets the most friends to like and share your page/ posts. The key here is to know your audience and choose a prize that will spark interest and participation. The wheel never stops turning; more likes and shares equals more new friends and followers, more new followers equals more shares and more shares results in improved SEO.

3) Optimize your posts for searches

The main ingredient in this step is content, which in most cases you already have so let’s get right to it. Firstly, understand that this tip is a trip down the lane of temporary success, which is not bad if it’s achieved consistently. Google favours popular social media updates in the upper sections on its Serps (i.e a listing of results returned by a search engine in response to a keyword query). To be successful you must ensure your posts are crafted to suit the occasion and to snatch that opportunity to ride the highway bus to SEO success. So you have the content in the form of an article , you now need to anchor your posts. To do so you may use an info graphic, a video or a link to the full article. Your next move is to title your anchor accurately and descriptively but importantly, when posting ensure that title of your post is framed to register for a specific search. For example, if you put together a comprehensive article on brewing Coffee, your title could be framed to read “Have you been struggling to brew the perfect pot of Coffee?”
Throwing a few seasonal key words into the mix could also help to maximize your chances of coming up in search results.

4) Optimize local posts

Every brand wants international appeal and the internet provides the perfect playing ground to seize those opportunities. However, locally augmenting your posts can have meaningful impact on your SEO. By engaging in the local community, you are likely to send authority signals to major search engines. You can do this in a multiple of ways, the first is by centering your updates around your company’s involvement in a local event; when your company participates in a trade show, festival, fair or other events, be sure to capture those moments through photography and videography. Utilize those photos and videos to make interactive posts by inviting the local populace to comment. The second is by engaging other local brands on the different social networking. Both reinforces your participation in the community, and makes you more visible in local searches.

5) Link Building

Link building or the use of external inbound links is taken into account as a key factor by search engines to determine the quality and appeal on your site i.e whether other websites classifies your website a quality source of information. Links are mainly achieved by developing original content followed by the sharing of that content across social media. social media serves simply as a broadcast channel; links to your content on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, YouTube and other social networks help the search engines understand what websites are credible and should be ranked for specific keyword phrases. For example, a link that is tweeted a hundred (100) times will have higher visibility when compared to a link that has (0) retweets. Search engines assume it is better content because many have decided to share it with their social networks.
These tips if used effectively creates a superb recipe for improved social media and SEO presence. Without a doubt it the post simmers on one basic principle; giving users the best experience possible. The better the experience, the higher Google is going to rank you. But if you have any doubt about the results or you just don’t have the time, sign up for Interlinc’s Social Media Management and SEO
optimization packages.

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