Social Media Best Practices from an SEO Professional

Best Practice #1. Create Unique Posts  Instead of posting someone else’s news or update on your Company’s Social Media account, create your own blog/article and post that to your Social Media account.

I see this all the time, Company A will post an update that they see on the news that mentions their industry.   An update like this is what I call the lazy update.  Don’t get me wrong, I’m guilty of this as well but I’m not paid as a Social Media Professional.  It’s easy to update Social Media with a news update but the issue with this is that it doesn’t do anything for your brand or visibility.  If you create an inhouse article that mentions the news and how it affects your company or industry, think of how much more influential that blog post would be.  If you write articles that resonate with Users even better because that would increase the likelihood of Social Media shares and likes.

How does this help your online visibility?

• New Content: Search Engines like new content so by writing a new blog post or article you are effectively providing new content.  Obviously the content needs to be well written, unique, provide insight to your users and most importantly, have all the elements of E.A.T. (Expertise, Authority, Trust) 
• New Links: SEO is about 3 things:  Content, Links, and Technical SEO.  When you post something on Social Media, what happens?  You could possibly, inadvertently create a backlink.  Granted, social media links are predominantly nofollow links but in the right target market, your content could be shared and shared and linked to from other online sources.
• Increase of User Metrics: There are other metrics to consider like time on site, CTR (click-through rates), and Bounce rates.

Best Practice #2. Share every page of your Website Every page on your website should be shared and shareable on Social Media, with an intro that makes sense or with a message that resonates.  Instead of looking for things to post, look at your website’s pages — if your website is optimized both for Search Engines and Users, there is no reason for you not to post pages on your Social Media accounts. You can also gauge if you need to update a web page’s content if it’s no longer relevant.   So make sure your website’s pages are all current, relevant, and shareable.

How does this help with your SEO?

• New Links: Same as above, when you share a page, you could potentially creating more links pointing to that page.  The more shares and the bigger the audience, the higher the chances of other online sources picking it up and linking to it. It’s always good to have links pointing to all web pages.
• Increase of Visitor Engagement: When you share a page on Social Media, if presented well, will get click-throughs.  It’s always good for your website to have visitors on a page — even better if it has engagements.  The more visits, the longer the visits, the more shares, and likes — the better for your Online Visibility.

Best Practice #3.  Curate Evergreen Content that can be shared regularly.  All Websites have content that’s evergreen.  Content that never gets old and can be posted again and again.  Know what these pages are on your website and create a strategy of sharing them:  ie Know what day and time of day to post your content and more importantly, know your audience.

How does this benefit your SEO?

• More unique visitors:  Not everyone logs onto Social Media at the same time, on the same date.  By sharing evergreen content regularly, you are increasing the chances of more Users seeing it.
• Increase of User Engagement:  Same as the reason above

These are my top recommendations for your Social Media channel to work cohesively with your Optimization efforts.  If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to get in touch.