Social Media Marketing and SEO: A Winning Combination

Social media marketing to reach your target audience can be challenging for businesses seeking to expand their online presence. Many social media professionals desire an ideal “hack” to boost their company’s online presence, reach a particular audience segment, or drive visitors to their website. Many businesses also rely on search engine optimization (SEO) principles in crafting their content, hoping that getting the right mix will boost their search presence and enable potential customers to reach them.

Many successful businesses have integrated SEO principles into their social media marketing efforts, strengthening their online presence towards effective audience engagement and lead generation. Integrating “social media SEO” practices is a critical, underused step in online marketing that can lead to great results.

Social media SEO focuses on social media content to make your brand more available on social media and search engines. Although social media performance is not a ranking factor on search engines like Google and Bing, pages that are shared more frequently on social media move higher in search rankings. Social media SEO practices can increase video views/completions.

Integrating SEO practices has a direct impact on your organization’s social media marketing efforts, including:

Increasing unique traffic to your website, driving unique visits and potential customer conversions

Strengthening your organization’s online presence by making it more “findable” via search engines

Improving your local rankings as well as your overall presence within search results and

Enhance online media engagement through keyword and search phrase integration throughout your organization’s content.

Although the process may sound daunting, you can easily integrate social media SEO principles into your online marketing efforts. With some research and consistency, you can strengthen your organization’s presence, engage a wider audience, and drive unique customer traffic to your website.

Integrating SEO principles into your social media marketing efforts can appear daunting, but it consists of various smaller steps that can lead to greater effectiveness. Like social media management, integrating SEO into your online channels can be done on a minimal budget yet provides numerous rewards.

Keyword research is a necessary first step for any search optimization effort. Whether this is an initial effort or based on previous work, performing keyword research and identifying search phrases gives any organization a critical advantage when integrating social media SEO. From there, social media managers and content creators can perform smaller tasks that can drive overall search presence:

Optimizing current channels for SEO – Whether you simply rely on social media or integrate other channels such as video, optimizing your channels for SEO can make your business more easily discoverable.

Adding a social sharing button to your website – Although seemingly obvious, making your web content sharable allows for much wider distribution, providing an entryway for new users via social media.

Integrating keywords into “alt text” on social media graphics – With channels like Twitter, Instagram, and Bluesky encouraging the use of alternate text (or “alt text”) within social media graphics for greater accessibility, social media managers have a unique opportunity to strengthen search presence by integrating keywords into these tags.

Integrating keywords into video titles and descriptions – Since YouTube is the second largest search engine behind Google (which owns YouTube), social media managers integrating keywords into video titles and descriptions can enhance a synergistic opportunity between the two channels. (Keyword mentions within the video can also provide an advantage).

Tag locations when appropriate – For small to medium-sized businesses, location tagging can enhance search presence within a set geographic area, increasing engagement with specific communities.

Social media SEO, or integrating search optimization practices into social media marketing, enhances overall search presence and drives increased traffic.

Gordon Dymowski is a B2B social media consultant and copywriter working with small to medium-sized businesses around audience engagement, lead generation, and driving revenues. Gordon has assisted various organizations in social media strategy, engagement, and analytics with a specific focus on healthcare, technology, and mission-driven ventures. He is also a fiction writer who has written for various independent publishers.