SEO And Social Media

One of the hottest trends in content marketing over the past few years has been search engine optimization (SEO) and Social Media.  The idea that you can produce content that makes Google want to favor you has been nothing short of revolutionary, honestly, when it comes to marketing It has transformed the nature of marketing in ways that are still being discovered, I think. 

At the same time, social media has taken off, and it, too, has impacted the world of marketing. The power of social connections and relationship marketing has also been nothing short of revolutionary.

But for the longest time – both SEO and social media have been treated as separate things. Sure, people have talked about how they impact each other, but still in a way that treats them as two different pieces of the marketing equation

What if we looked at them differently?  Because I think when you get down to it, they are so intertwined that separating them is difficult, not to mention foolish. 

Here's what I think. There are a lot of people who get that social media affects your SEO. What is less understood or discussed is the reality that you can actually specifically leverage your social media in order to boost your SEO!  This is the very technique that has been used at Assist Social Media to land many articles on page 1 of Google. 

 Actually – even the word "both" is limiting in this case.  Both suggests it's only a two-way relationship between the elements of SEO and social media. But honestly – I think that it's multi-dimensional…like the World Wide Web itself  Relationships between elements are complex and go many different directions. 

How to Leverage Your Social Media For Search Optimization

Do you have influence on social media?  How do you go about using it and truly leveraging it to give yourself an SEO boost? 

 When SEO was first getting started, one of the key things you could do was to get strong backlinks from authoritative sites.  This is still useful, but it's not the only kind of connection you should be going for by far!!!

 You've got to be using your social media connections; Assist Social Media, has been doing this from the get go!  This is how we have grown so quickly to be as well regarded as we are, and we're just so amazed and blessed by the power of quality engagement! There are some amazing people in the Social Media talent pool! 

 When you use your connections, we mean you need to be connecting with and developing relationships with the power players in your field, commenting, share heavily, and so much more.  

 Now – just a word of caution – you'll notice I said engage. Let's just say right up front that it doesn't mean you go join the groups facilitated by the big power players and then program your Hootsuite or other automatic posting program to spew out links to your articles to all of your groups, hoping that someone might open and share your content.

There's a word for that all right, and that's called spam.  It's a quick and easy way to get yourself booted out of influential groups, de-friended by the power players, and essentially ignored by your niche.  We've seen it happen – it's not pretty.

The other piece of using your social media to boost your SEO is that you still have to have quality content marketing. Pauline Magnusson, our Diva of SEO Content Marketing, is passionate about the power of solid content that is easily understood and used.  Without quality content – on your blog, your social media platforms, etc., all the social media and SEO in the world just won't help you!  Hate to tell you, but that's just how it is. 

The  connections between Social Media and your SEO are so important that we are going to go platform by platform over the next few weeks and give specific tips on how to leverage your social media for an SEO boost. 

How are you leveraging Social Media to boost your SEO? Does this make sense to you?  What questions do you have about social media and your search engine ranking?  Leave a comment – we want to make the complex simple for you!

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