Social Media & SEO: Part Two - Optimizing Content

Personalized Searches Are Based on Social Interaction

Social media and SEO factors significantly affect search results today, leading to highly personalized outcomes. For example, Google provides search results based on the keywords you enter, but if you're logged into your Google account, you'll also receive search results specifically relevant to you. These results consider content your friends have found, created, or shared and your location. As a result, integrating your location into your message can be beneficial.

This situation makes it challenging for publishers to focus solely on pure SEO, highlighting the importance of social media optimization. Integrating SEO and social media is crucial for optimal results, with content as the connecting factor.

Content is at The Core of SEO & Social Media Integration

Social Media and SEO have a strong relationship with content. A well-developed content strategy is a foundation for effectively integrating social media and SEO. Whether you're creating content for your website, blog, or social media, understanding the roles content, images, and interaction play in enhancing your content's effectiveness is vital.

All content should:

Reach Your Audience - Determine where your audience is active on social media to avoid wasting time and resources. Then, conduct thorough research to ensure your audience uses the social media platforms you plan to leverage for marketing purposes.

Provide Value - Create content that answers your audience's questions, offers tips and tricks, and provides valuable information. If your content isn't valuable enough for your audience to pay for, they likely won't want to read it.

Have a CTA - Include a call-to-action in every piece of content to guide your audience on what to do next, whether buying, sharing, using, or commenting on your content.

Your content can take various forms, including blog posts, content curation, eBooks, eReports, images, infographics, podcasts, polls & surveys, product reviews, tip sheets, videos, webinars, and white papers.

Re-purpose content and plan for using different content formats on other platforms. Place the main content piece on your primary website or blog, and direct viewers from your social media accounts to your website, which houses all information about your business, products, and services.

To Ensure Success, Optimize Your Content in the Following Ways

Optimizing content involves several factors, such as where you plan to use the content, your target audience, and your content's purpose. In addition, search engine algorithms also play a role in optimizing content.

As Google Search remains the most popular search engine, following Google's guidelines will yield positive results across all search engines. Here are some suggestions:

Use Structured Data - Visit Schema.org and use their schemas, HTML tags, and other code to help you mark up your pages and content. This markup allows search engines to improve the appearance of your search engine results. In addition, the provided code works for many different search engines, not just Google Search, making it easier for people to find your content.

Create a Hook -Develop content with a unique perspective and insight into your subject matter to build a relationship with your audience. This approach will keep your audience interested and encourage them to share your content through interaction.

Create a Strong Author Bio - Create a strong author bio and ensure your content is linked to your website and social media profiles, showcasing your expertise.

Create Timely Content - Incorporate trending topics into your content regularly to attract potential clients, customers, and repeat readers.

Develop Evergreen Content - Craft content without a time limit or expiration date to educate your audience and boost your authority.

Determine Keywords - Research your topic and identify your audience's keywords to find information. Use various tools for keyword research, such as Google Ads Keyword Planner or other keyword research tools. In addition, long-tail keywords can be beneficial for targeting specific search queries.

Curate Content - Optimize your content by collecting, organizing, and cataloging relevant content from other sources and sharing it with your audience. Content curation enhances your SEO by increasing credibility and authority. By sharing content from authority sites, you can boost your rankings. Search engines also favor consistent content creation.

Link Internally - After publishing articles or blog posts on your website, link to other relevant content on your site. Search engines rank individual pages, and using internal links can improve SEO across your entire site.

Create Keyword-focused Headlines - Include keywords in your headlines while ensuring they make sense to readers. The goal is to make readers curious enough to click through and read the content while displaying the headline for relevant searches.

Use Interesting Visuals - Enhance your content with engaging graphics that complement your story. Make sure there's plenty of white space to give readers' eyes a break. Better thumbnail images can lead to more click-throughs.

Optimize Navigation - Use tools like Google Analytics to understand how visitors interact with your website's navigation. Choose clean, modern design over cluttered layouts, and use metrics to improve results.

Include Share Possibilities - Add easy-to-use share links to all your content, from blog posts to sales pages. Encourage your audience to share your content by making it simple and including a call-to-action (CTA).

In Conclusion

Finally, prioritize creating high-quality content. Write or commission unique content specifically targeted at your audience. Remember that real people share your social media content, so it should be as fresh and original as possible. Use content derivatives elsewhere and the original content on your website or blog. Always create content for humans first and search engines second.

Don't miss Part Three of this series, where we discuss combining blogging and social media!