Have you ever been out with a friend, and then you run into another friend? You start to introduce your friends, but it turns out they already know each other. Huh, you think to yourself, I would have never guessed they’d get along so well. They seem so different.

That’s social media and SEO. Two friends and cornerstones of any successful digital marketing strategy. And while on the surface it might not seem like they have much in common, they’re actually much more connected than you realize. So, how can you get your social media and SEO to work together to boost your online visibility and amplify your reach? We have a few ideas.

How can you use social media to improve your seo?

Simply having a social media presence and an SEO strategy isn’t enough. If they’re not working together, it’s a lost opportunity. Even though social media and SEO seem like an unlikely pair, when you align them, it turns good marketing into great marketing.

Here are a few simple ways you can leverage your social media channels for better SEO:

Claim and optimize all of your social profiles: Don’t send mixed signals with your social accounts – make sure all of your accounts are under your control, so that when you do send an important message, it gets heard loud and clear.
Create content that gets shared: Duh! OK, easier said than done. But the key is not giving up. Many brands get discouraged when they’re not getting immediate results with social, but it’s important to be persistent. Learn what works best with your audience. It takes time, but once you hit the sweet spot and people start sharing your content, it gets easier (and more fun!)
Add your links in the comments, not the post!: Facebook recently confirmed they’re doing something many people have long suspected: actively suppressing your posts that have links. They and other social media platforms do this because their goal is to keep you on their site as long as possible – and anytime you leave, it will amount to lost revenue for them. So rather than including a link in the body of your post, leave it as the first comment.
Link to other pages – not just your homepage: When opportunities present, be sure to link to other pages with valuable content and high-conversion potential.
Encourage your audience to search for you: Yes, you should link, link, link, but sometimes, you should tell your audience to search for you, too. When someone searches your brand name or a service you offer, then clicks on your link in the SERPs, it increases brand relevancy. So tell your fans to search for you and leave you a review.
Good SEO for video content: Treat a video file like you would an image file for SEO purposes. Name the file with keywords, use alt text, and include keyword-rich content when you post it. This helps search engines understand the content, and makes you more likely to show up in relevant searches.
Respond to reviews on social media platforms: Yes, all of them. Even the negative ones? Especially the negative ones. Online reviews are becoming a more important factor in search. By actively responding to them, you demonstrate that your business is active and works hard to please customers. This is relevant to both search engines and customers.

OK, now that we’ve gone through some easy and practical ways to use social media to elevate your SEO strategy, let’s dive deeper into the history of the two together, and where we think they might be headed in the future.

Has social media always been a factor in seo?

In short, yes.

Google engineers have been asked this question countless times, and their answers over the years are pretty consistent. They say social media links are “nofollow” so they don’t count as backlinks, so they don’t have a direct impact on rankings. However, there’s an expert consensus that social media links have a strong indirect effect because they help you in a few different ways.

For example, when you use your social reach to send an audience to your website, that increases your relevancy.

Another example: When you post a link on social media, it dramatically increases the likelihood that it will get reshared, often on a blog or website, where it will count as a backlink.

Add up the combined cumulative effects, and we believe it’s more than enough to make it worth your while to synergize your social media and SEO.

But the biggest reason you should start making sure your social media and SEO are aligned is what’s to come. Social media is only going to become a much, much bigger part of SEO in the years to come. Now is the time to get a handle on yours, so you can reap the rewards later.
Why is social media becoming a bigger part of SEO? It’s simple. People’s search habits are changing. Younger generations want social media to be part of their search experience. For search engines to continue to be as relevant as they have been, they need to evolve.

Why is social media more important than ever for high-quality SEO?

Google can’t force anyone to use its search engine. If young people want to do more of their searching on social media or with AI chatbots, they will, leaving Google in the dust. But Google is too smart to be left in the dust. They understand what’s happening, and that’s why they’re working to incorporate more AI and social media into their search experience.

Some of the biggest recent developments that are spearheading the increasing importance of social media in SEO include:

Instagram Posts Now Appear in Google Searches

While it might not seem like a huge deal, it is. It’s emblematic of a changing mindset toward what search is. Now that Instagram posts are finally indexable and showing up on SERPs, it’s a clear sign that social will continue to deepen its interconnectedness with search.

Clamping Down on AI Content and Spam Filtering

With the propagation of LLMs like ChatGPT, the floodgates of AI-generated content have been opened. Google and other search engines recognize that while some has value, much of it is useless. That’s why, in a 2024 algorithm update, Google made an immediate move to significantly strengthen its AI-generated content and spam filters.

As AI-generated content becomes even more common, human-generated content will become comparatively rarer and more valuable. And as repositories of human-generated content, social media sites stand to become much stronger search signals.

The Rise of AI and “AIO”

Have you heard of AIO? AIO stands for “Artificial Intelligence Optimization.” In some ways, AIO and SEO use similar tactics. With AIO, an AI search panel will cherry-pick information from relevant sites across a topic to assemble a tailored answer to a specific question that’s being asked. If the AI is being asked for recommendations, it will consider everything from your website to online reviews to social content.

In theory, this will result in more intent-based visitors in the ready-to-buy phase. But if the AI doesn’t have a robust amount of content from your social channels to examine, that’s a missing piece of information, making them less likely to remind you.

Social Media and SEO: Together At Last?

If you run a business, you might have a social media expert running your social channels and an SEO expert handling your SEO.

If so, here’s what we recommend.

Ask your social media and SEO experts to meet and chat about overall strategy and how their disciplines can work together. Traditionally, these two roles have been siloed from each other because they don’t seem to have a lot in common. But they do.

And when your social media and SEO are working together, it turns good digital marketing into great digital marketing.

Need help with your social media, SEO, or both? We’d be happy to help. Give us a call if you have questions, or schedule a quick demo.

How Social Media and SEO Work Together to Boost Your Online Visibility