7 Tips on Combining SEO and Social Media for Small Businesses

According to Google, 76% of people who search for something locally visit a business nearby that same day. How do you get to be the business they visit? One key is to rank highly in their search results.

When it comes to marketing businesses online, SEO is the main strategy for many businesses. However, by combining your SEO and social media marketing, you can get even more bang for your buck. Let’s take a look at how to do it effectively.

1. Consider Your Audience

Most people expect content and services to be personalized to them. Focusing on what they want will give you a better ROI than just randomly creating content. If you learn about your audience, you can create content that is more in line with their interests.

Start by thinking about what pain points your audience has and how you can address them. You should also consider where they hang out online and how they might search online. 

When creating the content itself, consider how your audience talks and engages with content. You want to make sure you are talking to people in their own language to feel more connected to you as a brand.

2. Create a Strategy

Creating a strategy for SEO and social media marketing can make it easier to meet your key goals and reach your audience. But, you need to make sure the goals are aligned so they can work together. 

Do you want people to visit your website or make a purchase? How about following your social media profiles? Determining your key goal can help you figure out what is important and where you should focus your efforts.

Content marketing is a great way to improve your search rankings while also creating shareable content that you can use on social media. Start by performing keyword research to develop a list of topics you can use. Then create a content strategy based on this.

Use a mix of primary and long-tail keywords. You can also create different types of content, including blog posts, infographics, or videos. Just make sure it’s engaging and high quality. Creating new, unique content will also keep it fresh for your audience.

3. Optimize Your Content

To reap the benefits of SEO, your content needs to be optimized to help search engines and potential customers find it. Using your primary and secondary keywords appropriately is a key factor in how SEO works. 

Include the primary keyword in the title, URL, introduction and conclusion, and throughout the body. You should also include it in a header, the meta description, and image alt text. You should sprinkle the secondary keywords naturally throughout the text.

You should also optimize your content for social media. Some social media platforms such as Pinterest and YouTube actually function similarly to search engines. 

All platforms benefit from optimized posts and profiles. You can use the same or similar keywords to help better align your social media and SEO strategies. Using them in strategic ways can help you get the most out of your posts.

4. Encourage Sharing

Adding social media sharing buttons directly to your website can make it easy for people to share your content. Doing this can give Google clues about your social following, which can affect the search rankings of your website and social media profiles.

Google also takes links from other websites to yours into account when ranking websites. When people share your content, you can get some of this benefit. Reaching out to other authoritative websites can also help you get more backlinks.

Working with influencers has become a great way to gain more reach too. You can give them keywords or content that they can use on their own blogs and social media posts. This can then help bring in a larger audience to your own website and social profiles.

5. Optimize Your Images

Images can make your content more memorable on both your website and social media. Many times, social posts with images are more eye-catching and, therefore, shareable than posts without images.

An engaging caption in social media posts can enliven the post and draw followers in. You may want to use a call to action or another way to engage them in the image and the rest of your post.

When adding images to your website, you should also size them appropriately. This will increase page loading speeds, which can be a factor in SEO. You can also use your target keyword in a caption, file name, and image alt text to help search engines see it. 

6. Encourage Engagement

When creating an SEO and social media strategy, getting your audience involved is a key way to get all of the benefits of your strategy. It can also help increase your reach to a new potential audience.

Plus, engagement doesn’t have to be complicated. It can be as simple as asking a question and starting a conversation. Just be sure to reply so your audience knows you are engaged and helpful.

7. Look at the Data

Tracking and reviewing data related to SEO and social media can help you make more informed decisions in the future. You can see which types of social media posts or articles are gaining traffic and how people are finding them and if you should consider paid advertising as well.

This can help you determine what your audience is interested in and how they interact online. It can also give you new ideas for content and keywords that they may find helpful. This can lead to a more effective SEO and social media strategy.

Combine Your SEO and Social Media

Combining your SEO and social media strategies can help you get even more rewards out of your marketing. If you take the time to develop a well-planned strategy, you can have a stronger tool for marketing your small business online.

Contact Red Beard Digital to get started on your online marketing plan today!