SMO (Social Media Optimization) is an important factor in your internet search rankings. This strategy is often overlooked by many companies, even though it can help increase your position within the search rankings.
In social media, there are two important search engines you have to optimize for:
- The search function within each social network
- Google search
When you optimize for either search environment, there are some direct and indirect benefits. The direct benefit is simply more people finding your profile and connecting with you and visiting your website. The indirect benefit is from an extra link pointing to your website from your profile.
Here are some quick tips on how to make the most of your SMO efforts.
- Integrate Social into your Website
Social sharing tools should be integrated in your site architecture. Include direct web links to your social media channels from your website and from your social profiles back to your website. You can also add social media sharing buttons to individual blog posts.
Links on social media are often considered higher-quality links because social sites have a high web authority. Even if your Facebook page is brand new, it’s likely to rank well in the SERP’s because of Facebook’s overall high authority.
- Consistency is Key to SMO
Creating your social profile seems like a simple task, yet it’s one of the first areas where businesses tend to fall short. Fill out the profile information 100%. Search engines tend to favor profiles with complete information available. It also creates a more professional cohesive experience for others in your network, so all the contact information in your social profiles should be exactly the same as they are on your website.
- Align SEO keywords and Social Media
If you want to maximize exposure of your social media profiles, keywords play a very strong role. In fact, if you’re not optimizing your profiles correctly, you’re leaving money on the table for your competitors. Structure your keywords and target key phrases into your social profiles in a natural, non-spammy way. If you can effectively use your keyword or phrase in your profile or page name, it will help it rank better in keyword searches on Google and within the social network search itself.
- Use Keywords in Your Posts
Keywords are important for your website, blog content, and ad campaigns, so it should come as no surprise that keywords matter with your social content, too. This also helps keep your content relevant to your target audience.
- Be Social on Social Media
It’s called SOCIAL media for reason, duh! Social signals are an important factor in SEO because search engines look at social signals and factor in how often you’re posting, how many people interact with you, and if there are social sharing elements available to website visitors. Brands often forget that the purpose of these platforms is to build relationships. It’s not a set and forget type of medium. Get out there and participate in conversations, follow your customer base, and share helpful content from both your website and other relevant sites.
- Use Branded Cover Images.
I can’t stress the importance of always putting your best foot forward and staying on brand. The cover image is typically the first thing a user sees when he or she visits your page, and you want to give them a good impression. Use this opportunity to convey your brand messaging to your current and prospective followers/customers. Use recommended size guides for each platform to ensure that your cover image is formatted and displayed correctly, and always use professional images that are relevant and memorable.
- Stay in Control
Lastly, never allow employees to use a personal e-mail address to create or manage your brand social media accounts. Always use a company controlled e-mail account. You can’t optimize an account you no longer have access to due to employee turnover.
Social media can be one of your greatest assets for improving your site’s organic search results if properly utilized. Following these 7 steps will help you make the most of your optimization efforts.
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One thing that we can do in social media is to reach out to influential people in our niche.
Thanks for the tips.Which is the best social media to be targeted in 2016 for business to business sales?
linkedin
Thanks For good article
Great content! Looks like theres about 30 More I need to Check out! But if you Run a blog or webpage an Need More Real web traffic
good tips and great article . thanks for sharing..
keep on and good luck
we can grab more traffic through social medias but creating more followers is an head ache.
We can also include using hash (#) tag in the posts as it is an important thing now and helps in finding what is trending on the internet.
I agree with this article, The purpose of SMO is to use social media to increase traffic to a website. This may incorporate RSS feeds, social news and bookmarking sites, video and blogging sites, as well as social networking sites, such as Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Tumblr, Pinterest, Instagram etc. Utilizing SMO on a website essentially means that the website and its content should be optimized so that the content from the site should easily shareable on social media.
Thanks for sharing this informative blog. I totally agree with this blog. If SMO is done in a right way it can surely help you getting ranked on search engines.
I totally agree with consistency. Sometime we are just too excited to go out and market yet we do not check our social media profiles for completeness.
You are absolutely right, Social Media plays an important role in achieving great SEO results. Thank you for your valuable stuff.
One thing that we can do in social media is to reach out to influential people in our niche.
Facebook should not be an island independent of other channels. You must invest in strategies that take into account tools and platforms of ‘connection’ of social networks . The goal is that your company page can conquer the mountain of optimizing social networks .
Hi There! When we talk about SMO, do we consider Influencers too?
Thanks Raquelle for Sharing this article. But i suggest one point to add, we should add same profile info (like name, address, bio etc..) for each and every social media. Because easy to find for Client or etc..It is important when we creating a profile.
Thanks you so much for this article. The question that I want to ask is that what social platform would be ideal for promoting luxury items?
Thanks for this posts. I have a question for you. What is the exact difference between SMO and SMM? Which is the best way to grow natural traffic to my business Page using SMO?