Social media is a great tool for businesses. It has revolutionized the way we market businesses. It can be more budget-friendly, and any type of business can utilize social media. The effectiveness of a social media marketing strategy relies on how it is implemented. If done well, social media can increase your website rank in search engine results.
It is also easy to make mistakes with your social media presence which will have a negative impact on your SEO. Fortunately, social media also makes it easier to correct mistakes and get back on the right path.
The Importance of Social Media Marketing
Social media is the biggest tool nowadays for establishing your brand, engaging with your audience, and driving sales. It is an essential part of your overall business marketing strategy. Through social media you can have a direct link to your customers and target audience, allowing you to drive sales.
How did it become this way? According to the 2018 Global Digital reports from “We Are Social and Hootsuite”, there are currently over four billion people worldwide using the internet each month. Yes, billion. This is over half of the world’s total population. The internet is a massive, worldwide platform that businesses should, and perhaps need, to take advantage of. With this many users, it is important for businesses to use SEO to boost their website rank- allowing their site to be among the first to pop up in a search result.
In social media marketing, there is no such thing as waiting and hoping that you will suddenly have increased website traffic. Marketing your business successfully on social media must be strategized and then effectively implemented. A lot of startup businesses and small businesses underestimate the power social media has and how it affects their SEO.
Businesses more familiar with social media marketing can also be making mistakes as well. As mentioned previously, mistakes on social media involving SEO can be easily corrected. What SEO mistakes are you making?
Not Properly Branding on Social Media
You can cause a negative impact on your SEO by not utilizing social media as a branding tool. Businesses can use social media to expand their reach, interact with their audience, spread content, and give their brand a voice. Another great benefit is that your activities on social media can improve your ROI.
Your audience is likely to favor your link over another on the basis that they recognize you when you invest in your brand. Link back to your sites whenever you have the opportunity. You can also put keywords in your bios on your platforms (which you should keep updated) to increase your SEO. Google will be able to categorize your business, and your customers will be able to understand what your business is about at a glance.
You are Focused on Follower Counts
The amount of followers you have does not correlate to your search rankings or success. This is mostly because Google does not categorize platforms such as Facebook and Twitter as social sites, but rather as regular websites. Some followers are also not going to be customers nor do they fit into your target audience. Many accounts are bot profiles while others follow accounts in hopes of gaining followers in return.
The best way to boost your rankings is to shift your focus from acquiring followers towards producing quality content to distribute to your target audience. Organically building a following of people in your target audience will boost your search rankings through their involvement with your posts.
Not Enough Quality Content
It can be easy to be slow with content on social media platforms if you have a few different ones to manage. Posting consistent, high-quality content is key for your business and SEO. To effectively do this, you need to adapt your content for each platform. Some platforms require visuals to draw in attention, such as Instagram, while a platform like Twitter needs a concise but engaging brief to get clicks.
Do not just throw content together because you haven’t posted in a while. Google is an expert at recognizing good content versus content your audience is not looking for. Marketers can’t just add a bunch of keywords into the content and expect it to do well. Google will not boost your content simply based on keywords, but by the content surrounding the keywords.
Your Keywords are Not Relevant
A common misconception is that using general keywords will appeal to a broader scope of people; this is not true. First, you need to narrow in on a specific audience. Who is your ideal target audience? Ask yourself some defining questions about your target audience:
- Do you want to reach males, females, or both?
- Where do they reside? Do you need to zero in on a certain region, state, city?
- What are their biggest issues? Why are they researching your keywords?
- What is their educational background?
- What are their wants and needs?
Keywords that you choose need to be relevant to your buyer persona- the ideal person created by answering the questions. To increase your SEO, it is better to use what is called long-tail keywords. This consists of three to four words that create a keyword phrase. It is extremely specific to what your business and what you are selling. There are also programs available that will monitor how relevant keywords are performing so you can have better insight into your keyword metrics.
You Don’t Have Share Buttons
Let’s say a customer is viewing a well-written piece of content on your site and they want to pass it along to someone else. If there is no share button or it involves a complicated process, then that person will be deterred from doing so. You want to have easily accessed share buttons on articles and web pages. This will increase the number of interactions on that web page which correlates with a boost in your page ranking.
