31 Aug Is SEO Changing Because of Social Media?

Social media has changed the way we use the internet forever. It has become a place where people get their news, purchase goods, and interact with one another. For businesses, social media was at first seen as an additional space for advertisements and gaining new customers, but not something that would become as large as it has. Fast forward to now, social media platforms have transformed into a powerful tool that can gain businesses a larger audience and lead to more engagement. While Search Engine Optimization, or SEO, has long been seen as the end-all for generating leads and business via the internet, social media is becoming just as powerful, if not more powerful. Brands and companies aim to go viral with social media posts on platforms like Twitter, TikTok, and Instagram in order to reach their target audience, rather than focusing on using keywords for their content on their website. In this article, we will discuss how SEO is changing because of social media and how your company should shift its SEO strategies to have a stronger social media strategy.

What is SEO?

Search Engine Optimization in its most basic definition is the process of improving your website to increase its visibility when people search for products or services related to your business on search engines like Google and Bing. The more your web pages are visible, the higher you will appear on search results which makes you more likely to receive attention from prospective consumers. These search engines used specialized bots that “crawl” your web pages and index them in a sort of digital library, making them accessible for people who are searching the internet. If your content has relevant keywords to a subject that a person is searching for, your content will be put at the top of their search results.

Is SEO Changing Due to Social Media Platforms?

The simple answer to this question is: there is no simple answer. Is SEO changing? Yes, always. Is it changing solely due to the rise of social media sites? No, not necessarily. SEO is a living, breathing being that is constantly changing and receiving updates to make its processing more precise and weed out people who abuse the search algorithm. Keyword stuffing was one of the easiest ways to get your content to rank on search engines, but that is long in the past and the algorithm will now flag your content and tank your rankings. This forces companies and brands to come up with unique, high-quality content, as well as a strong digital marketing strategy. SEO will always be changing, with an update to the algorithm almost once every day.

Some SEO experts do believe that social media has created a larger shift in how SEO works now, since social platforms are becoming one of the biggest homes to online purchases of products due to more aggressive social media marketing strategies. Advertisements on social media channels like Facebook and Instagram have become a key channel for businesses to sell their goods and services to a specific target audience. Influencers on TikTok and Instagram have a much better chance at driving organic traffic to your business profile due to their status and will help your product or service show up more in search engine algorithms. Now that social media has been integrated with the rest of the internet and how the algorithm listens and pays attention to posts that you like, links that you open, and the words that you talk about in your posts, the SEO efforts have shifted to focus more on what potential customers are doing on social media.

Have you ever noticed that when you search for a product or service on a search engine like Google that you will notice more ads and social media campaigns for that product or similar products when you’re scrolling through Twitter or Instagram? Or that you’ll see a piece of video content on YouTube or TikTok that relates to that good or service? This is exactly how social media is influencing SEO and vice versa. A company is now more focused on their total online visibility through social media accounts rather than solely focusing their efforts on their organic searches or search rankings on Google or Bing.

While social media does not directly have an effect on SEO rankings, social signals like likes, comments, and shares across social channels do have an effect on your online visibility and traffic. Every piece of content that is shared on your social profiles can add to your social media presence and increase the amount of social shares that you get. Having a strong online presence in today’s media world is arguably the best way to maximize your content marketing and digital marketing plans.

Some important questions to ask your marketing team are:

• What do our social media efforts look like?
• How many social posts should we be creating to increase our visibility?
• Are we creating high-quality or low-quality content? How can we improve?
• What is our target market and how can we maximize conversion rates?

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