Social media marketing for an E-commerce online business

 
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Social media is not only about fun and games with attractive filters and reels allowing you to document the more cheerful parts of your lives. When used correctly and by an expert, social media has the potential to not just be a direct money earner, it can also become an important way to boost your SEO strategy. Yes, let that sink in for just a bit. In our blog on how to build a successful brand strategy, we took you through the importance of social media as an integral factor in ensuring that your brand is recognized. In this blog, we’ll be telling you the “why’s” and “how’s” of social media, and how powerful of a tool it is, as any when it comes to the new world of digital potential that we are living and working in today.

How will Social Media affect SEO

There’s no beating about the bush with us as you can tell so let’s address the very first question that may have popped into your mind. Yes, it sounds sceptical but social media does have the reach and potential to impact SEO strategies. just not directly. Social media and SEO do not have that much in common for it to directly contribute towards a higher or lower SEO ranking. However, the links that are constantly shared via social media platforms go a long way to increase brand exposure and visibility. This adds up to your search engine optimization value through not one but six different directions:

1.      Widespread distribution of content

2.      Larger lifespan for your social posts

3.      Improved online visibility and higher organic traffic

4.      Increased brand recognition

5.      Enhanced brand reputation

6.      Higher local search engine optimization boost

While content that you may share regularly on social media will not be counted towards helping you achieve a better SEO ranking, when people, in turn, admire and further share your content, it sends SEO signals which indicate that your posts may be useful to a specific target market.

The multitude of shares, likes, and comments that your posts may receive across social media platforms send vital indicators to Google and other search engines which are then used to improve the ranking of your website. This proves that while there is no direct causal link between the two, social media can have a positive effect indirectly on your SEO rankings.

Best Social Media Platforms for SEO

Most digital marketers still only see social media as a place to run either paid ads or then to organically boost their visibility for their brand. They are often absolutely astonished when they get relevant leads from popular networking platforms as compared to the tried and tested [and often failed] methods to acquire new forms of business. But social media platforms often throw up credible leads and search queries and this is because social platforms are also equipped with very robust search engine functionalities which also enable them to function as very credible search engines. Having said this there are some social media platforms that will do better for your SEO rankings:

LinkedIn

This professional network is rated by several to be the top lead generation platform across social media for B2B marketers. A staggering 62% of global B2B leads come from LinkedIn. It is little wonder then that LinkedIn is considered to be the content marketing hub for 94% of B2B marketers with almost 90% of them using it for lead generation.

Using LinkedIn to boost your SEO effort is ideal because the platform will help you get found and seen via your search results. Just by packing your profile with all the right keywords and also strategically enhancing relevant search terms within the content via headings, you are allowing for the LinkedIn search algorithm to push your website up the ranking charts.

Medium

Medium is a great social media platform to harness especially if you believe that not enough of your target audience is realizing the full potential of your content on your own blog or web pages. Medium allows users to publish all kinds of blog content not restricted to personal stories, republished articles, repurposing content, and of course original content as well.

The platform also helps you reach a broader audience that may have never known of you or come to your web pages otherwise. Google’s search engine ranking pages are filled with several top-rated articles from mediums over a varied number of searches providing great visibility, competitive keywords, and high search volumes to name a few benefits. Medium has a unique visitor audience of almost 154 million visitors every month to go with their total of 258 million visitors giving you and your SEO effort loads of visibility.

Facebook

If it were a country on its own it would be the most populated country in the world. How often have we heard this analogy to describe Facebook and its power to connect people across the most populated and remote corners of the globe? Facebook by far, is easily the top social media platform present today with over a staggering 20 billion visits every month.

Social media experts believe that Google crawls and indexes links on Facebook. This means it is of great advantage for users to share and post a varied range of content while also distribute links to your blog and share posts for maximum traction.

Google and other search engine bots then can go through the content that you share on Facebook and with each share, like, and comment, your content will become more popular and hence also raise your SEO quality.

Instagram

Instagram is all about optics which means that if you have a product that looks great and appealing visually, this is the ideal platform for you. A forecast in 2020 predicts that there will be a staggering 1.2 billion Instagram users worldwide by the year 2023.

Instagram’s branding possibilities are infinite across several different industries from pet products to fashion brands allowing for you to be truly creative. By continuedly placing new links in the Instagram bio of your brand page, you allow Google to elevate your page rankings. This also helps to highlight specific products and events. 

Twitter

Twitter like Facebook is a massive social media platform which like Facebook has incredible potential when used correctly to improve your SEO effort. Twitter pioneered the use of hashtags and hashtags to help people find tweeted content quickly and specifically which makes it a targeted medium as well. This has amazing effects of helping to build both brand recognition as well as expediently increase traffic.

The key is to tweet your content often so that you can attract users and drive more and more traffic to your blog and website. Once again, the likes, shares, and comments received act as powerful social signals which Google then uses to enhance website rankings.

Pinterest

Pinterest has an understated following as far as social media is concerned but is an ideal platform to enhance your SEO effort. Several marketers globally and across the industry, especially where the visual medium is more pronounced, depend solely on Pinterest search traffic to maximize leads and grow business. Like a lot of the other platforms mentioned, Pinterest also doubles up as a search engine website.

Users tend to conduct over 2 billion searches per month on Pinterest with over 97% of them being unbranded. This means that Pinterest users show a willingness to interact with companies that have not been considered.

Each month, 600 million visual searches occur on the site with over 73% of users visiting Pinterest because it is entertaining and helpful. In another staggering statistic, 70% of users seek inspiration to influence purchasing decisions, in contrast to 17% of Facebook users. It is these numbers that tell you why Pinterest is an ideal platform to boost your SEO marketing strategy.

Quora

Quora can be an absolute goldmine and a hidden treasure for SEO. This is because users are always asking valuable questions on varied topics of interest as well as answering these valid questions with pertinent observations. These queries and subsequent answers also typically have keywords embedded in them which are usually searched for by your prospective target audience on Google and other search engines as well.

The platform also allows you to create content and drive valuable, quality traffic back to your website. The interactions on the website also appear on searches for specific keywords. Quora allows you to ask questions and find answers on several different topics such as business advice, day-to-day living hacks, content creation, brainstorming, blog posting ideas, and anything under the sun about new subjects as well.

Social Media Hygiene Practices to Hike SEO rankings

Social media is a completely scientific and algorithm-based entity, and a few hygiene features here and there to enhance its usage tend to yield very good results. Similarly, there are a few things that you can do to ensure a higher SEO ranking as well for your webpage and your blogs.

It always starts with content

Publishing high-quality content is always the first and foremost factor to boost a good SEO strategy as well. SEO as a function continues to evolve because Google bots and search engines are constantly developing newer algorithms to understand user intent and content relevance and quality.

At Google’s end, this is necessary because these hygiene factors enable it to offer its users the most relevant content based on their numerous and voluminous search queries. In the past, marketers and blog writers would stuff a piece with several keywords and it would work to bring up SEO rankings. Now Google pays more attention to the content written which is why it is so important to hire content writers who know what they are writing about in terms of the subject matter instead of filling up a sheet with irrelevant and non-contextual text.

Sharing is Caring…Quite Literally

Social media content is pretty up there not as a vault or a cloud but for user-generated public consumption. This is why it is important then to allow users to easily subscribe to your brand of content and also make it seamless for them to share it onwards. This is what makes content, brands, and people viral and allows them to enjoy their 15 minutes of popularity on social media platforms.

If the intention is for the content to reach several users outside the network of your particular social media platform, it is also essential not to guard your profile with too many restrictive activities. Instead have a pertinent call to action and use the infrastructure provided by the platform such as easy sharing options to encourage users to not just consume your content but also viral it onwards.

Helping others share your relevant content helps the message reach a wider target audience while also boosting brand publicity. Make your content more appealing, engaging, and of course, helpful to your target market by crafting compelling copy. A few key points that could be focused on include headlines and captions, enhancing the use of visual aids, and ensuring the end utility of your content for your prospective target audience.

Platform Profile Optimization

Having the best possible profile on any social media platform is a responsibility that cannot be overlooked. With social media reach being so explosive these days, there is always a possibility for a potential lead to first land on your social media pages before they even find the address to your website. A mediocre, incomplete, or even a boring profile will spell doomsday because the user may not wish to even progress to your website due to overwhelming competition and shorter and shorter attention spans.

One of the many factors that negatively affect social media for SEO is the lack of profile optimization. This negligence is not only causing a loss of market share and reputation but also costing you money. How? Because it prevents the brand from appearing high on searches throughout the internet.

A well-optimized social profile enables the target market and eventual customer to find you easily online and then partake in a transaction with you, fiscal or otherwise. Maintaining consistency across all your mediums and profiles is another important aspect. Do not focus on only one profile if you have a presence on several channels. Align your social profiles with your blog or website and brand message to ensure complete and comprehensive optimization. Google loves an entity where its target audience can quickly and easily find you across all the possible platforms you subscribe to.

V for Visuals

A picture usually speaks a thousand words. In digital parlance, you can take that thousand and raise it by a few thousand more. Pictures are important and they can make or break your SEO effort, because if a profile is deemed unworthy and boring then the chance of it boosting your SEO effort is virtually useless.

Visuals are and will always be an essential aspect of marketing communication. They are the strongest possible content marketing tools and go a long way in establishing the correct brand tone. Adding images to your blog, website and social media posts is also the most efficient way to transmit information to a larger population. The human brain is also wired to process visuals faster and visuals will also transcend the language barrier in every possible way. So, to make the most of images, they need to be properly optimized in usage to increase content popularity on social media and search results.

Conversations for Days

Social media like any other digital medium has its fair share of bots and other such AI-driven technology which tends to put some people of the efficacy and integrity of these platforms. However, what social media does, is bridging the human factor and bring people closer to each other albeit virtually. This is why it is important to be as honest as possible on your platforms because there is simply no greater human virtue than honesty.

Build conversations and through those conversations build solid relationships with your target audience not only to get greater visibility but also to develop a reputation for trustworthy and genuinely good content. This factor alone will help boost your SEO effort significantly because Google and other search engines will notice the painstaking yet organic effort required to build and maintain such an honest network, based purely upon the goodwill of the brand and discerning content creation.

Quantifiable Social Media Marketing

Social media is a proverbial golden goose that will continue to lay golden eggs until you overuse it in terms of consumption. Measuring your social media activities is important because overuse or underuse could potentially harm not just your SEO effort but also your business. You need to have a handle on whether your social media exploits are consistently generating positive returns. Over a period of a few months, consider if you are generating profits from social media, subsequently if you are losing money, what seems to be working for you in terms of content, and more importantly what is not working for you.

The only way to gauge successfully if the social media operation is in fact working for you is to use Google-inspired marketing metrics. For this, it is vital to first set manageable and realistic goals and then work towards achieving them. This will have a positive impact on your social media effort which will indirectly benefit your SEO strategy as well.

Caption your Best

The only other thing that draws immediate attention to your social media content apart from optimized imagery is appropriate and compelling captioning on that imagery. We have already mentioned how time and attention spans are usually low which is why if your captioning is run of the mill and unentertaining, users will soon get bored of your profiles and may even unfollow you in favor of those who are less boring.

These are some of the primary hygiene factors that will allow your social media presence to also improve your SEO effort. Knowing the indirect yet causal link between the two, understanding ideal social media platforms to be present on, and then utilizing these hygiene factors will not only give your brand a pronounced social media presence but will also elevate the chances and rankings of your SEO strategy.

Ensuring that your social media strategy is in sync with your SEO and giving your E-commerce online business maximum traction is a job for the professionals and the experts. AmareSol Global is a digital business consultancy creating innovative change through a team of talented designers, developers, and strategists creating digital experiences for brands and companies around the world. We are continuously fueling growth across constantly changing and advancing digital landscapes, by seeking and formulating newer and better ways to service clientele on a global scale across industries. Look up more about us at www.amaresolglobal.com.

 
 
 
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