It is impossible to separate social media networks and SEO, as these two digital marketing strategies are deeply interwoven. Both these inbound marketing strategies focus on building a solid online presence that helps in naturally increasing awareness from the target audience to your brand.

That is why having a powerful presence on popular social media platforms directly boosts your search engine results and rankings.

But, how can you maximum  the potential of your social media optimization (SMO) efforts?

Here are top 10 ways SMO techniques can boost your website ranking to increase awareness, online presence,  and lead generation:

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1. Focus on Keywords

To give maximum exposure and online presence to your social networks, you need to align your keywords and social media networks. Keywords play an important role in social media analytics, if you are not optimizing your social media profiles in the right way then you need to devise a better social media strategy.

So, what exactly does it entail?

For starters, you need to smartly structure your keywords and target key phrases into details of your social profiles or social media page such as page name or company info. But add it in a very natural way else you risk looking spammy and promotional. Adding foundation-level keywords into your page, helps you gain visibility in keyword searches on Google's search engine and also rank better within the social media network searches.

To find the best keywords for your brand that improves social media optimization you can use Semrush. You can get relevant keyword ideas for your business and niche. Find Keywords Using SEMrush Now.

2. Use Keywords in Your Social Content

Your social media efforts and search engine optimization of your website are deeply connected to social media analytics and social media optimization. To improve engagement with your social media posts, you need to include relevant keywords in your social media content or posts.

Use carefully selected keywords in your links, posts, and hashtags when sharing content on social platforms. This practice helps you to increase your ranking in the search engine results and also increases awareness and visibility of your brand across multiple social media platforms to a great extent.

Sometimes, a carefully selected hashtagged post can work like magic for social media analytics and makes your social media post more searchable. Again, using relevant keywords and trending hashtags, may help a follower find your profile, more of your similar kind of content, and if they find it engaging they may click through your website directly. So, you cannot afford to ignore keywords when creating your social media networks content.

Find Relevant Keywords Here

3. Share Quality Content

There has been many changes in the Google Algorithm. But one thing that remained constant since the very beginning of search engine optimization and social media optimization is importance of quality content.

To boost your website ranking, social media optimization, and lead generation, you need to consistently produce and share quality content and social media is no different. The content you share on your social channels needs to be high-quality, it should add some value to the readers.

Your posts can be informative, entertaining, educative, but must add some value to your audience and you will notice a great amount of people will be attracted to your brand.

However, to get success with content and search engine optimization, you need to consistently produce great social media content only then you will be able to get your message across, increase awareness, and enjoy good readership.

 

You also need to maintain consistency in posting content and set a fixed frequency of posting. For this, a social media scheduling and posting tool, like the one provided by Semrush, can come in handy for multiple social media platforms

4. Integrate Social into Your Website

To promote your brand, and to boost your online presence, you need to blend together your social media and website. You can fully exploit social media platforms on your company website by following four simple steps.

  • Integrate social sharing buttons on your website, it is the simplest way of integrating your social media profile into your website.
  • Include direct web links to your social media networks from your website and again from your social media profile back to your website. Besides, you can also add an option of social media sharing buttons on your blog posts.
  • Social media sites like Facebook, Google Plus, enjoy a high web authority, so links on these social media platforms are often considered higher-quality links. Even if your social media profile is relatively new, it will start ranking well in the SERP's as Facebook has an overall high authority.
  • Allow users to sign-up or log-in using social media logins. By adding this feature to your website functionality, you can give better user-experience and experience an increase in registration conversions.

website ranking

Pic Courtesy: Hootsuite

5. Grow your Follower Base

If your company maintains a Facebook and Twitter page and you are still struggling to get traffic from these social media networks then probably you need to rethink about your social media marketing strategy. Getting fake likes or requesting friends to make likes is of little to no use for social media optimization. The total number of followers and connections your social media profiles contains have a great influence on your website rankings in search engine results.

Want to know how? Let’s understand with the help of an example:

A company with mere 1000 Twitter followers won't receive the ranking bonus of a renowned brand with above million Twitter followers and Facebook likes.

However, to keep it fair Google has some stringent rules to it, the quality of your followers also matters and buying thousands of proxy followers can do more harm than good to your rankings. So, you need to grow your social media following in an organic way though it is a slow process but effective in the long run.

Again, to grow your network of social media followers organically and enhance search engine optimization, you need to consistently post engaging content in the form of informative articles, useful tips, short & crisp videos, fun facts, and more to keep your audience hooked.

Present your brand uniquely, such as with your cover photo, and use the same voice to update your users regularly. A growing no. of social media followers certainly gives you more visibility on the search engines and improves social media analytics.

Example: Oreo

Oreo is an excellent example of growing a social media follower base by sharing engaging content consistently. Brand exactly knows what can be a huge hit with the audience over social media and always comes up with content that goes viral be it Oreo's daily twist Facebook campaign or their entertaining cookie vs cream videos.

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At present, the brand enjoys a huge following on social media platforms such as above 42 M Facebook fans, 599K Instagram followers, 14M YouTube followers, well they have surely done a commendable job here.

6. Encourage External inbound Links

Another way to use social media to your advantage and improve social media optimization is by encouraging more external sites to link to your content. Further, to gain increased authority in the Google, the more diverse external links you get, better it is.

However, to make it happen, as we mentioned earlier you need to consistently post high-quality and engaging content on your social media channels. Once you start posting content, you also need to rigorously promote your content by sharing it into existing threads and discussion forums.

Doing this exercise maximizes your external link sources and also helps you emerge as an authoritative leader in your domain by enhancing search engine optimization.

7. Optimize Your Posts for Searches

To extend the reach and visibility of your posts on social networks, you need to optimize your posts for search engines. You need a strong anchor for your post to increase its engagement. It can be a well-designed infographic, a video, a link to a detailed case study or an article.

Whatever type of content you select, you need to make a title that is short, descriptive and attention-grabbing. Next, when you share this piece of content, you need to frame your title with text that is well-optimized for a specific type of search. Not sure? Let me explain with an example.

If you have written a detailed blog post on the, “Best Tips for Baking Butter Cookies,” then it is good to frame it with a specific query. Perhaps something like, “Have you ever wondered how to bake butter cookies?” Again, you can also add some seasonal keywords into the title, to climb up the ladder in the Google search engine results.

Example: How to Cook Perfect Steak

Below is a similar example for steak.

website ranking

Further, you can use hashtags relevant to your social media content to promote it in a better way. Hashtags with the above title can be #bakedgoods, #homemadebuttercookies, #bakedbuttercookies, and more.

Moreover, Google also favors most popular social media updates by displaying them in the top sections of its SERPs.

8. Micro-Blogging

Unlike regular blog posts, microblog posts are very small blogs. They are typically a sentence or two in length and are used to share short pieces of information, or links to videos, articles, images or any kind of news updates or tips.

There are many specific microblogging sites as well such as Tumblr, FriendFeed, Posterous, and more.

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Microblogs can be utilized to fuel trending social media posts and boost search rankings.

Want to know the best part?

They can be automatically or manually directed to social media platforms depending on the nature of microblogs.

It helps companies in providing customers with a crisp and steady stream of information and also increases brand awareness. Also, generating quality content consistently gives a lot of exposure to your site and social media profiles on the search results and also grounds for improving your domain authority and search engine optimization.

9. Social Bookmarking

Social bookmarking refers to the submission of website links to social media websites. All submitted links are public and help in social networking and participate in active discussions and more.

If you are thinking that you are probably doing the same on social networks like Facebook, Twitter then let me break the news to you-there are specific sites for this purpose. Sites like Reddit, StumbleUpon, Digg, Bizsugar, Scoopt.it etc are popular social bookmarking sites.

website ranking

The web pages bookmarked on these social websites helps you earn a quality backlink. And as we know, quality backlinks can dramatically help a website in increasing their Google ranking. That is why it is very essential to make social bookmarking a part of your social media optimization strategy.

10. Create Social Content Worthy of Backlinks

Your social media posts have the capability to go viral, they are not limited to only social media networks. They are aggressively being used in articles, blog posts, ebooks, and even in engaging videos and presentations.

So when you create compelling social media content, that other brands or people want to refer, your content, this allows you to gain backlinks to your social media profiles and even website. And this helps you in increasing your authority with the search engines.

FAQs

Q1. What is SMO and how it works?

A. Social media optimization (SMO) refers to a set of tactics used to improve your social media reach, social network engagement, and ultimately direct traffic to your website. This primarily entails the use of analytics to understand what works for your audience and optimizing your social media content accordingly.

SMO also pertains to optimizing your website or blog to make it shareable on social media and get social media traffic to your website.

Q2. Why is SMO important?

A. Social media optimization is important to enhance your social media digital marketing strategy efforts and increase traffic to your website.

SMO can not only help you reach more relevant people on social media and engage your existing audience but can also help improve traffic to your website. Once you gain enough followers on social media, there are many other digital marketing strategy goals that you can achieve.

Q3. What are the best SMO techniques and tips for branding?

A. Here are some of the most effective social media optimization tips to get you started:

  • Use relevant keywords in your bio, post captions, etc.
  • Leverage the power of hashtags to reach more relevant users.
  • Identify and post at the right times to get maximum engagement.
  • Integrate your website with your social media profiles.
  • Do not forget to add a link to your website in your social media bios.
  • Create shareable social media content and make it easy to share.

Q4. What are some SMO tips for Instagram and LinkedIn?

A. For Instagram, people mostly focus on visual content and often forget about the other aspects. So, for Instagram, the most important tip is to use lots of relevant hashtags and optimize for keywords. Also, add your website link in your bio and make all your visual content on the website easily shareable on Instagram.

For LinkedIn, posting at times when your B2B audience is online is crucial. The use of the right keywords is even more important here. Also, join relevant industry groups and post content with backlinks to your website. Use hashtags for all of your content.

Q5. How do I optimize my Facebook profile?

A. Here are a few quick tips to optimize your Facebook profile:

  • Select a cover and display image that represents your brand.
  • Add the link to your website in your information section.
  • Add a relevant CTA button in your profile.
  • Use page tabs to promote different products or services.

Q6. What is the difference between SMO and SMM?

A. Social media marketing (SMM) is simply meant to drive engagement on social media and build your social media presence. Social media optimization (SMO), on the other hand, enhances your social media marketing efforts and also integrates directly with SEO. The ultimate goal of social media optimization is not just to increase social media reach, but to also direct that traffic to your website or blog.

Q7. Which is better SEO or SMO?

A. Search engine optimization (SEO) has a much broader focus than Social media optimization (SMO) as it aims to increase traffic from all sources and improve search engine  rankings. SMO, on the other hand, deals only with directing more traffic from social networks. Both are important, but SEO covers more aspects than SMO.

Ready to Boost Your Website Rankings?

Lastly, there is no doubt that popular social media platforms tie directly to search engine rankings of every website. So, your social media optimization acts as an extension of your SEO practices and greatly impacts your reach, brand identity, popularity and overall online presence.

Have any questions on SMO techniques and related topics? Feel free to ask in the comments section.

35 Comments

  1. My favorite to optimize the post for Google searches because this gives maximum reach.

  2. Thanks for this. It really helped a lot. After reading your tips I tried executing some of them and guess what It really worked.

  3. Jagannath Rawat says:

    Thanks for providing information about boosting the website ranking. It is very useful information for those who want to boost their website ranking.

  4. It’s so easy to simply shove content to social media but this post reminds us how important it is to do some minor tweaks so that your social media as these are an extension of your website.

  5. All the points are very helpful and will surely lead to business growth. The content is very good.

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