Marketing channels and the teams that manage them must always work together and avoid operating in silos. But sometimes that's easier said than done.
One commonly overlooked partnership is between SEO and social media teams (both organic and paid) and how both teams work together to improve results, performance, ROI, and most importantly, In particular, how can you maximize your connection with your customers?
Each channel has a lot to offer to the others. All of this is usually revealed through performance once the connection is established and the partnership begins.
Here are 13 ways SEO and social media teams can work together to drive better results.
1. Synergy
Team synergy goes a long way in everything you do, especially when it comes to speaking to your brand’s target audience.
Consistent messaging, language, and perspective in all marketing efforts can help large teams achieve the goals they are working towards (assuming these teams are on the same page) ).
Your voice and tone, keyword usage, and general branding should be consistent, and it's an easy (and relatively low-cost) way to collaborate as an SEO and social media manager.
Make it an important goal to meet with someone from your social media and SEO teams to ensure you get the most out of everything from your images to your messaging. This overarching theme is important to remember along with each of the remaining tips on how teams work together.
2. Keyword targeting
Brands have keywords that describe who they are, what they do, the problems they solve, and the products and services they offer. Consistency is very important when it comes to keywords, the topics and ideas associated with them, and how you use them. Viewers aren't used to these connections. Viewers are counting on them.
Intent and other connections tied to keywords and SEO help social media understand it better.
Enhance your social media messages with keyword research based on SEO best practices.
Leverage your social media audience and engagement to better understand your customers and their most important needs.
3. Profile optimization
Keywords play a big role in searches, but not just in search engines.
People search social media using keywords just like search engines. And while social media algorithms may not be as sophisticated as Google's, they still provide useful search features that people use every day.
That’s why it’s so important to efficiently optimize all of your business’ social media profiles.
Content from social networks is also indexed by search engines.
However, properly optimizing your profile is about more than just keywords.
Ensuring accuracy and consistency of NAP (organization name, address, phone number) among other input fields available on social platforms helps connect these profiles to your brand and what it does. .
4. Improved visibility
Publishing social media content that appears prominently in search results increases traffic, engagement, and backlinks.
Additionally, more than 60% of Instagram users research products and services on the platform before making a purchase, helping them discover products and services at the right time, when people may not yet realize that brands matter. They claim to access products and services.
A social media calendar that is planned and created with SEO built in can help you achieve goals that are usually related to branding and engagement. However, you can also increase the visibility of your quality content in organic search.
Powerful social signals, powered by recency and relevance, drive popular and timely social media posts (and linked content) to the top of relevant search pages when the content satisfies the query. Also useful.
5. Better planning and content delivery
SEO typically tends to work closely with content teams to develop the right topics and keywords to leverage, but what about social media teams?
There's no better team to distribute quality content to the right people.
The pipeline and pace of content planned, created, and published will likely increase. Working with a social media expert to get your content in front of you at the right time can make a big difference.
Different people hang out in different places. And customers are everywhere.
Social media gives us the opportunity to converse with different audiences on different platforms.
SEO helps you know what to say, how to say it, and which data points are most important. Social media does this in real time. Together, we have great possibilities.
Share high-quality published topics and opinions from your brand across social media channels, leverage recency and user behavior signals to power your SEO efforts, and reach your audience targets at multiple stages.
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7. User feedback and social listening
A great way to find out what your audience is interested in is to listen.
Brands try customer surveys, mailers, and even cold calls to best understand what their current and potential customers think, want, and care about.
This data is incorporated into and used to guide many of your marketing strategies. But without feedback and insights from social media, an important part of your strategy is missing.
People on social media are expressing mediocre opinions everywhere. Companies should devour that feedback if it has any impact on their business or customers.
Listen to what your fans and followers have to say. What words is your audience using? Is it consistent with your internal brand thinking? Are there new keywords trending in this space? Perhaps your social media team is using these will help answer many of your questions.
SEO insights about these new keywords, such as search volume, geographic and demographic details, and intent, will also help your social team know. Let's work together and take advantage of it.
Learn more: Feedback optimization: A user-first approach to SEO
8. Frequently asked questions
FAQ pages can be a gold mine for organic traffic and help users get the answers they need.
And there's no better way to ensure you're answering the questions that matter than by listening to people's questions on social media.
They may not always be polite (or spell correctly), but there's a lot to learn from listening to your social media audience.
Do you always see the same questions being asked over and over again? These are the things that matter most to your audience, so do a good job of explaining the answers sooner and more often. It shows that there is a need.
Combined with organic traffic data and social media insights, almost any brand can identify the 10 most important questions their customers ask on a regular basis.
9. Maximize performance
It's clear that the ultimate goal of marketing is to improve performance and drive conversions.
Effective collaboration between SEO and social media always helps to achieve this.
Social media profiles and the content they publish will benefit from this collaboration for a variety of reasons, but we expect to see improved traffic and engagement metrics.
You can also expect to see an increase in overall traffic flow across different channels and page growth metrics on social media.
All of the other 12 ways listed in this article for leveraging social media and SEO in tandem should help you maximize your performance.
10. Relevance signals
What you say on social media matters in many ways.
Recurring themes connect with your brand through relevance signals. It's clearly important to talk about what's important to your brand (and its customers) while keeping a safe distance from sensitive or controversial topics.
These important connections on the web are built through branding, which is heavily influenced by SEO efforts and a company's daily operations.
If you sell outdoor furniture and are talking about outdoor living, furniture materials, seating styles, backyard aesthetics, your audience won't be caught off guard by this and will actually want to stay informed in the future. You will trust it.
And your authority shines when you speak about what you know. The main goal of SEO is to build real authority.
Use social media to further enhance these authority-building efforts. You'll probably gain a decent following and maybe even have some fun in the process.
11. Partnerships and backlinks
As individuals, brands can build relationships with customers and brand associates, and social media also provides opportunities to build relationships with other like-minded brands.
This can even mean the possibility of collaborating with other brands on products and services, and thus gaining backlinks that further strengthen your high-quality connections related to your industry.
SEO can help you identify the most valuable partners. Social media helps make it very easy to build these connections.
We also know that nofollow links have their own value within a healthy backlink profile, and that social media sites build large numbers of nofollow links, more than other websites.
12. PR and brand reputation
The most often overlooked opportunity with social media is the ability to express reality and let your brand shine, rather than trying to be too formal.
Too many brands miss the mark by trying to be different for fear of backlash and rejection.
This shouldn't be seen as a scary situation, but rather as an opportunity for brands to show who they truly are.
SEO is how reputation begins and is built. Social media is a way to show off your reputation on a regular basis.
Regular communication between these teams keeps your entire brand aligned and you're always alerted to PR issues and opportunities as they arise.
Social media offers brands a unique opportunity to engage with customers, stay socially conscious, and mitigate potential damage by actively engaging with key communities.
Dig deeper: How SEO and digital PR can maximize brand awareness
13. Content Ideas
This is the backbone of the best SEO and social media collaboration, and it benefits both parties tremendously.
SEO data has long been exhaustive and has helped us identify what works well and what doesn't on a website. Social media has provided useful data to enhance this over the last few years and is getting better every day.
Use as much data as possible to drive decisions that lead to better content creation. Then leverage that content using social media.
While much of SEO data relies on third-party tools and tracking platforms, social media platforms rely on people and their conversations. If you're not listening (or reading) what's being said, you might be missing the most important thing.
The opinions expressed in this article are those of the guest author and not necessarily those of Search Engine Land. Staff authors are listed here.