Facebook and SEO – How They Work Together to Work For You

People who regularly use the Internet do not only use one online channel, and neither should your online marketing. It’s why we regularly advocate multiple channels within the range of management services we offer here at SponsoredLinX, but in addition to this, there are special links between these different channels which your business can leverage for maximum impact. You can read about the relationship between Google AdWords and SEO here, but for now we want to help you discover the connection between social media and SEO.

First and foremost, highly active social media profiles appear in search engine rankings. True to Google’s algorithms, there is no discrimination here, so if you are highly active on Twitter in comparison to LinkedIn, you can bet that your Twitter profile ranks higher than your LinkedIn profile. As mentioned in a previous blog post here, taking up as much space on the first Search Engine Result Page (SERP) on Google is a top priority for your business. The more social media profiles your business can get on the first Google SERP, the better off you will be. It will result in a higher Click-Through-Rate (CTR) and higher Brand Awareness.

Social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Google+ also have high domain authority, so links found on social media profiles are usually calculated as high quality. While these links are nofollow links, they still provide enormous value to your business marketing goals. They provide valuable referral traffic to your website, which can funnel to leads and conversions, and they go a long way to building your business’s brand as an industry authority!

Search functions exist within social media platforms and act as search engines too. Who can tell how big these search engines will grow in the future, but with Facebook’s new artificial intelligence personal assistant ‘M’ integrated in Facebook Messenger, your business’s data on Facebook could be used in a myriad of ways to connect customers with your business. Keywords on social media matter too. Search functions within social media platforms are looking for content, pages, profiles and groups which match a keyword search. So when you post in social media, make sure your post centres around a specific theme and keyword so that you rank when it counts. Remember, just how something you might have done five years ago for SEO will get you penalised today, the risk of not actively being on social media today could harm your SEO efforts in the future.

The much reported collaboration between Google and Twitter further increases the link between SEO and social media, because Google will now start searching Twitter for new content. Google also shows tweets in real-time, which means that Google has access to Twitter data. This also means it is imperative that you use hashtags everywhere! Your content is instantly connected with a global and online conversation simply through the use of that hashtag! If you are savvy in your use of trending hashtags and topics, which are also relevant to your business, then this is again, another avenue for customers to find you because of the link between social and SEO.

According to Hootsuite blogger Kristina Cisnero, “… in addition to determining your credibility based on how many people link back to you, Google also considers your social media influence. How this is determined is based on many different factors that include relevance, reach, and resonance”. Relevance refers to the topic being discussed and how this relates to your business. Reach refers to how many people can possibly be exposed to the content, and resonance refers to how many people actively engage with the content.

Google has previously mentioned that, “sharing is an obvious validation of quality”, so increasing your following on your social media platforms goes a long way in aiding your content being shared. If you can find ‘influencers’ in your industry to start a positive online conversation with, your likelihood of them sharing your content increases. Influencers are notable people within your industry who possess a high level of authority in their field of expertise. They’re important because people listen to them and trust their expert opinion. They are likely to have a blog or website which ranks highly on the first Google SERP which means you know they are deemed authentic and credible by Google. If you can get them to link to your website, and if you can get them to link to your business in their social media accounts, then the potential online traffic you can attract will grow.

When we talk about the importance of Facebook for your business, we simply can’t escape talking about ‘social media’ as a whole. Of course, there are particular social media platforms which are seen as more popular than others, such as Facebook and Instagram, but they all count when it comes to the relationship between Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) and social media. For an effective online marketing strategy, only utilising one online channel is short-sighted and narrow-minded. It’s why we would like to invite you to our Optimise Webinar, ‘Facebook Revenue Raisers for Your Business’, for which you can register here. On Wednesday 23^rd September at 10:30 am AEST, our very own SponsoredLinX Facebook expert, Lachlan Dann, will be presenting just how Facebook and SEO can benefit your bottom line. So visit our website or call us on 1300 859 600 today to learn more.

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