Contrary to popular belief, social media does have a connection with SEO, although not directly. That is why seasoned marketers are investing heavily in social media marketing. But what are the best social media practices for improving your SEO marketing effort?

Below, you will learn seven practical social media marketing tips on how to improve SEO with social media.

Whatever action you make towards improving your social media efforts should correspond with your SEO objective. That way, you don't lose traffic from either side. To find success using social media for SEO, you shouldn't ignore these successful social media and SEO tips.

1. Publish High-Quality Content

SEO has continued to evolve, and search marketing is not what it used to be. Google bots and search engine algorithms have developed to understand user intent and content relevance and quality.

These factors enable Google to offer users the most relevant content based on their search query. In other words, keyword stuffing is of the past, and quality content reigns supreme. For this reason, make your blog content perform well on social media and SEO by creating well-researched and helpful content — make this a priority.

Quantity vs. Quality

Don't be in a hurry to publish blog posts every other day. Instead, take the time to research your materials and produce in-depth copies that connect with your readers. One of the best ways to create quality content is to understand your ideal reader. 

Get into their shoes and understand their needs (and pain points). Also, reworking old blog content is a fantastic way of producing quality. Get your best-performing blog posts and add more valuable data to spike engagement on social media. This strategy can also help you get more social signals that will improve your SEO. 

Also, look for under-performing blog posts and give them a face-lift. Follow the same process as you would your best-performing blogs. If the content is not doing well, the best approach is to add more valuable materials using skyscraper techniques.

The Skyscraper Techniques

The skyscraper technique is a content creation strategy that transforms your posts into link-worth materials. The concept of a skyscraper content strategy is to ensure that your articles perform better and outrank your competitors. 

Such blog posts come with more value for the reader and more keyword variations that rank on search engines. The content will have the capability to rank for different keyword terms. And since it has more value, it will attract quality backlinks.

How the Skyscraper Technique Works

Primarily, you should apply these three fundamental steps:

1. Search for a blog post that performs well on search with a considerable amount of backlinks
2. Create similar content, but make yours even way better than the original (in length, thoroughness, and more up-to-date)
3. Find marketers who linked to the original piece of content and reach out to them to link to your updated version.

Since marketers found the original content useful and linked to it, they are more likely to also link to your content.

So get to work, optimize your content using:

1. Relevant keyword terms
2. The right visual materials, and 
3. Make it more up-to-date than your competitors content by adding more helpful materials 

These components will help you to improve your social media SEO.

Why Is the Skyscraper Techniques so Important?

Brain Dean of Backlinko reveals the values of implementing the skyscraper content marketing strategy. After applying this blogging tip to his post about "Google's 200 Ranking Factors," his traffic numbers doubled in only two weeks.

Besides, inbound links to the article increased significantly at at the same time.

The Benefits of Skyscraper Techniques 

Some incredible benefits of the skyscraper techniques include:

• Produces helpful content that adds value to your readers.
• Improves blog engagement.
• Increases social media shares.
• Helps gain more blog comments.
• It can add more quality backlinks.
• Increases your brand recognition.
• Boosts brand reputation and authority.

Producing such articles takes hard work, but the result justifies the means. So, go to work, and it will pay off big time!

2. Make Sharing Your Content Easy for Users

People use social media for various reasons. But for marketers, it is mainly to reach more consumers with their brand message. Reaching more people helps grow your brand awareness and generate leads.

But how can you get your message out if your followers cannot easily share it? That is where making content sharing easy for users comes in handy. With all the vital elements in place, such as social share buttons and compelling calls-to-action, readers will share your content.

Having those components on your blog encourages social sharing, which will effectively increase your reach. Also, when you post on social media sites, use calls-to-action to help your followers reshare your posts.

Helping others share relevant or valuable content helps your message reach a broader audience and boosts brand publicity. Keep in mind that a call to action is not all there is to make your content shareable. Ensure your content is share-worthy.? Make it more appealing, engaging, and of course, helpful to your target market.

• Craft compelling headlines and or captions.
• Use appealing visuals.
• Ensure the content is useful to your social audience.

Users will have no choice but to share your posts with friends and followers.

3. Optimize Your Social Media Profiles

Most potential clients will examine your social media profiles before reaching out to you – they need to get a feel for who you and what you do. When you are writing a proposal or applying for a job, HR and hiring managers will often ask you to include your social profiles for the same reasons.

Furthermore, several would-be connections will also check your profile page before reaching out to you. Some will look you up on Google as well. Therefore, ask yourself:

1. How compelling is my profile? 
2. Does it have all the secret ingredients that will attract the right people?
3. When people search for my name, will it appear on Google?

One of the many factors that negatively affect social media for SEO is the lack of profile optimization. This negligence is costing you money as it prevents you or your brand from appearing on searches throughout the web. A well-optimized social profile enables your target market and eventual customers to find you online. However, you must regularly maintain consistency across channels. It means that your social profiles must align with your blog or website and brand message. Thus, your audience can quickly find you across different marketing platforms. Google loves it.

4. Optimize Your Images for SEO and Social

Visuals are an essential aspect of marketing communication. They are incredible content marketing tools since they help in developing your brand tone. Also, adding images in your blog and social media posts is the most efficient way to transmit information. 

The human brain can process visual materials faster — that is why more people respond quickly to visual content than text materials. Studies have found that our brain can process about 36,000 images 60,000 times faster than other types of content.

Moreover, the brain can retain 80% of the visuals it processes, in contrast to only 20% of text content.

So, to make the most of images, you need to optimize them to increase your content popularity on social media and search results. If you optimize visuals correctly, they can play a vital part in improving your SEO campaign.

Here is How to Optimize Your Images for SEO

Before you include any visual to your blog posts, you should maximize your content for Google by doing the following:

• Use the appropriate file name for your image (relevant keywords separated by dashes, not a file name given by a camera or a stock photo site).
• Select the right image format —  speed matters. 
• Make sure the images are responsive.
• Reduce the file size to make it load faster.
• Create compelling captions with keywords.
• Add your keywords in alt text and title text (don't stuff; the alt text must make sense for those that use screen readers).
• Include image structured data.

Also, for social media, quality photos are the key to increased engagement for your posts. So, choose top-quality images and optimize them well. You can read this article for more on how to optimize your photos.

5. Build Relationships Through Active Conversations

One of the best ways to increase engagement on your social accounts is to build relationships (brand-customer alliance). Relationships foster trust and establish credibility. They also help you understand your target buyer, their needs, and the pains they are struggling to solve.

So, when they sense that you have an interest in their struggles, it becomes easier for them to engage with you. And the best place for such interactions is social media. You can interact with them via social groups, forums, and marketing profiles.

You don't have to wait for your marketing persona to come to you. Take the initiative and strike up a conversation with your audience. 

• Ask relevant questions to know how and what they are thinking about your brand.
• Ask for their thoughts about your latest blog post.
• Look for questions they might have asked on the platform and provide helpful answers.
• Respond to user's comments.
• Create a poll to understand what they would like to read next on your blog.

These are a few ways to start conversations that produce positive results and build long-term relationships. These discussions are essential for improving your SEO because you offer useful information and, at the same time, establish your expertise in your industry.

As a result, you will increase engagement, grow your followers, and improve other social media signals that Google uses to rank your site.

6. Evaluate Your Social Media Marketing Operations

Do you measure your social media activities? If you are not, you could be harming your business. Your marketing success relies heavily on quantifying your performance to understand how your effort is working out for you.

You need to know whether your social media marketing exploits are generating positive ROIs. Consider the following; over the past few months:

• Are you making profits from your social activities?
• Do you feel that you are wasting your time on nothing while on social media?
• Are you losing money?
• Can you identify what is working for you on social platforms?
• What marketing tactics can you avoid, and what to improve?

You cannot make sure you are successful if you do not measure your marketing metrics. So, define your social media marketing goals and evaluate them accordingly. It helps you grow your social media and improve SEO.

Also, analyzing your performance results enables you to make better marketing decisions — you can channel your efforts in the right direction. In consequence, develop a social media strategy, set attainable goals, and how to measure them. It gives you a focus on how to use social media to improve SEO.

7. Craft Compelling Social Media Post Captions

Whatever business or industry you are involved in, content plays a crucial role in your marketing strategy. And the best content pieces are those that center around or incorporate storytelling.

Why is storytelling so essential and useful as a marketing tool?

In one of Semrush's Twitter chats, experts explain why storytelling is so essential and why it should be part of your marketing strategy. Please, find expert comments on the subject below.

In response to why storytelling is import to your business, Brian Fanzo said:

“I believe the future of marketing is relatability, especially in our noisy digital world. And to be relatable, you must be authentic and engaged. There's no better way to do that than telling a story!”You can read the recap of this chat in this article by Melissa Fach to learn:

• The steps to take when creating a marketing storytelling strategy,
• Critical questions to gather for your stories,
• Available forms of storytelling for your business, and
• Resources for successful business storytelling.

Thus, you need to invest in your post captions to make them compelling enough to engage users. Use enticing story snippets to hook your target market and make them click and share your posts with their tribe. Also, as your goal is to improve SEO using social media, ensure to add your focus keywords and related keyword terms within the captions. Depending on the social platform you choose, if there is a title section for your posts, include keywords there also.

Furthermore, use relevant hashtags where necessary and optimize your content well according to each social media platform. Also, use active voice to strengthen your copy. These activities help in improving your social media and SEO

Wrapping Up Social Media for SEO Ranking Techniques

At this point, I believe you have learned how to use social media for SEO. A sustainable social media strategy enables you to improve SEO and rank higher on search results. While there are several ways to score your SEO using social media best practices, the seven pointers above will set you up if applied correctly.

Understanding these social media tips is essential, but implementing them to your marketing content on social media is even more crucial. What is more? Keep testing your performance to see areas to improve.

We found this content on semrush.com written by Moss Clement and wanted to highlight some of the excellent points made!