There’s a synergy between social media marketing and search engine optimization (SEO). They’re both organic, inbound strategies that focus on creating an appealing identity to naturally entice visitors.

Social media is more focused on content quality and brand presence. If you double your SEO efforts, you strengthen your social media reach. Similarly, a robust social media presence significantly improves your search rankings.

Not sure how these two aspects overlap? Here are seven ways social media strategies can boost your SEO.

1. Social channels drive targeted traffic

Social media helps drive targeted traffic directly to your site. Your target audience is on social media. You can look for them based on what they talk about. You can also find relevant demographic data associated with your followers’ profiles.

Niche brands with a target market already have a huge advantage. Use social media to find people, solve their problems, or offer solutions — whatever they may be.

Moreover, social media allows the public to search for your new content and click through to your site. This is because your posts show up primarily on the feeds of people who are interested in your product or what you have to offer. Therefore, the traffic you get is well-targeted.

2. Social media helps content promotion

Social media boosts your rankings via content promotion. Since one of social media’s primary functions is sharing, leverage that. It’s an excellent way to engage people across various social media networks. Connect through videos, live streaming, photos, and/or other types of content.

Although the links from social shares don’t have the same SEO value as backlinks from authoritative sites, they still boost onsite engagement and reduce bounce rates. Think of it this way: If you’re constantly producing killer content, the kind that engages people, it sends positive signals to search engines.

On the other hand, if users land on your page and bounce (leave) immediately, then your content may not be useful. This behavior sends signals to search engines your content wouldn’t be a good result for that search.

Again, there’s no better way to improve the authority of your site than with a high-quality experience. Social media gives another platform to deliver great content.

3. Social media helps boost brand awareness

Social media provides an excellent opportunity to market your business or brand to thousands of people around the world in a click of a button.

There’s no limit to location, demographic, or type of user that your brand can reach. Every time someone shares your posts, your reach becomes larger. For instance, if your tweet is shared by 20 people with 500 followers, then up to 10,000 people can see your post.

This tactic is also excellent tool to grow brand awareness since it gives you direct access to your target audience. This is especially true when you publish relevant content, reply to comments and queries, and participate in conversations in your community to build brand awareness.

Moreover, paid options like ads and sponsored posts provide an excellent opportunity to reach a broader, targeted audience.

4. Social media enables local engagement

Social media platforms provide a great opportunity to engage with local communities. Over time, doing so sends local-specific authority signals to search engines like Google.

This is possible in different ways. However, the two most popular ways are to use social media to show your involvement with the events in your community and to interact with local brands on various social media channels.

Whenever you are involved in local events, take compelling photos and videos. Then, publish a post and detail your experience. Make it enticing enough to encourage people to engage.

If you have a blog, create local content relevant to your audience. Moreover, if you’re a local business, prioritize local SEO. Social media can be a powerful tool to attract local visitors to your website. It sends positive signals to search engines.

Alternatively, you can also find local brands in your area with the same values and beliefs as you. Collaborate with them: share each other’s updates, promote each other’s posts on social media, and guest blog on each other’s websites.

5. Social media helps build domain authority

Your website’s authority grows over time. It happens if/when you continue to publish high-quality content and gain relevant backlinks. If the type of content you publish is what your audience seeks, you will earn backlinks over time. The other sites are essentially endorsing you to search engines.

To build backlinks, don’t ignore social media. Why? A good amount of content is distributed on social media. Therefore, your authority and influence on social media sites have a significant impact on your level of authority.

6. Social media positively affects Google indexing

Publishing the right type of content on a regular basis can have a significant impact on your overall marketing campaigns. Also, when that content is crawled on and indexed by search engines, things get even better. Your site can get indexed a lot quicker because how search engines treat social media.

So, if your blog post is gaining a lot of traction on Facebook or Twitter, it will be indexed faster when people search for such content on search engines like Google, too.

Because of the social factor, search engines can find your posts easily. If your post goes viral on Facebook, the effects can be felt in search engines as well.

7. Social media helps you measure your SEO efforts

If you want to know if your social media and SEO efforts are paying off, measure your progress. Whatever your marketing goals are, you’ll gain better results in the long run by leveraging social for search.

Be sure to properly track and measure your results to keep tabs on what’s working and what isn’t. After all, the last thing you want is to have your efforts go to waste.

Try to improve the right metrics, no matter what your goal is. It’s crucial to measure the metrics that are helpful to you. Be clear about your actions first, and know how you will measure them. That will take away any guesswork on your part so you can focus your attention on the data. It will give you the best insights to move forward.

Over to You

Social media might not be a direct ranking factor in SEO. However, ignoring it is a huge mistake. For your online marketing efforts to succeed, you need a strategy that accounts for everything and prioritizes all your opportunities.

You’d be doing yourself a disservice if you neglect to learn how one affects the other. Overall, social media helps you promote your content and brand. It not only boosts your organic search results, but it offers a host of other benefits that you can tap into as well.

Now that you have these tips in mind, it’s a lot easier to both manage your social media strategy and enhance your SEO. As a result, you’ll achieve better results over time.

Author Bio: John Vuong is the sole owner of Local SEO Search Inc. John’s mission is to help local business owners improve their online influence so they can dominate their industry. Using his business acumen and innate understanding of the local business landscape, John also writes blogs on customized SEO campaigns that are based on the clients’ needs.