The relationship between social media and search engines

A banner with melanie johnson staring at her phone and laptop with the caption. The relationship between search engines and social media

I recently ran a LinkedIn live with Kelly Drewett from Kaydee Web. Please take a look at the video below, or if you are more of a reader, you can see the highlights in the blog post.

Introduction

I’m a little bit nervous because I haven’t done one of these for a while. Still, we’re here to talk about the relationship between social media and search engines. Kelly Drewett joins me from Kaydee Web to discuss this relationship and its complexities and share some ways you can ensure one supports the other.

For many businesses, social media is seen as separate from their website and website content, mainly if different people are doing different things. However, there are many ways to integrate the two to make them behave and work better together.

The need to do this is being influenced by:

The Importance of Keywords

Keywords are important when it comes to social media and search. Essentially, they are the things you put on your website or blog to help people find you on the internet. Traditionally, these are related to platforms like Google, but they are becoming more prevalent on social media platforms.

If you think about a keyword, you could think of ‘trainers’. That’s one word, and it would be really hard to get your website to rank at number 1 using something like this, as it has a lot of competition. So, what we do is we use phrases, which are multiple words or sentences that people would search for when looking for the types of products and services you offer.

Using these types of phrases helps search engines match you with what people are searching for. These are important, but it is also important to write naturally, think about what your audience wants to hear from you, and then remember to include those keywords or phrases. Ranking in search is important, but you also need to write for a human audience.

When you’re thinking about writing blog posts or writing web, you want to research your key phrases first. So you’re answering people’s questions rather than writing something that you want to write about, and no one is looking for.

Take that key phrase, take your idea, and look at some keyword tools to find out what people are searching for. And then include them in your blog posts and social media content. So, search engines recognise that this person writes and knows a lot about this subject. Over time, this will increase your search ranking. Mentioning certain sectors and locations will also help to improve your ranking.

For example, if you are a human resources consultant, mentioning your sector and the locations you work in will improve your chances of being seen in search rather than just talking about general HR practices. This can be really helpful for smaller local businesses.

Small businesses have traditionally struggled with ranking in competitive industries and were far more likely to be found on social media.

Social Media as a Search Engine

Social media is now increasingly used as a search engine—not just a brand awareness driver. In the old days, sharing a link and pushing people to your website was much easier. Now, link sharing is often penalised by the platforms, as they want to keep you on there.

Keywords are becoming more important on social media and are used in the same way as described above. Therefore, they need to be researched in the same way. This is due to increasingly sophisticated algorithms that scan all of your text and not just the hashtags like they used to.

Keywords are important on social media, but it’s also important to understand users’ behaviour and what people expect to see. You need to show your people are really and that people love your product. This is why we see so many of the bigger brands now featuring real people wearing and using their products.

FAQ and About pages

You need to produce content that validates you, whether it’s testimonials, pictures of people using your product, case studies, pictures of your team, or behind-the-scenes content.

Lots of businesses make the mistake of not having a proper About Page on their website. One that tells the story of your people, combined with a strong FAQ page and other content people want to see, will improve your website content and can be repurposed for social media.

FAQs really help. Incorporate the questions people ask you into your content; people will be searching for this online. Include these on your website and in your social media content. Often, it’s the fun stuff on social media that gets the likes, but things like FAQs will encourage people to take action behind the scenes.

It’s really important to pay attention to what’s going on behind the scenes when it comes to your marketing. Investing in social media and SEO won’t bring you overnight results, and it can be difficult to track the results, but it will help you grow over time, validate your business, and improve sales.

Are blogs still important?

We are seeing a bit of backlash about this at the moment, as over the past few years, there has been a trend to move towards video. But there is still value in producing blogs for small businesses. Text has been valued by humans for thousands of years and will continue to be important.

Humans love information, and producing blog posts will help you rank on search engines. We will always need to use text. Using video and text together is an excellent use of your time and helps the end user.

Research your keyword, create a video for it, embed that video into your website, and create a blog post to accompany it so people have a choice about how they consume the content. You can also create a video from a script of a blog post. This content can be trimmed down into snippers to share on social media and in your email marketing to extend its reach and drive traffic to your website.

Laying a Solid Foundation for your marketing is really important

Understanding and utilising keywords and making your content go further is all well and good, but it’s absolutely crucial to lay a solid foundation for your marketing. So, you:

Review what you have, understand what’s working, build from there, and be consistent—nothing happens overnight. But regularly producing quality content for your website, email, and social media will improve your ranking over time.

If you do just one thing today, Google yourself and see what comes up. You might be surprised at the results. A Google search will help you spot any oversights, see if everything’s working, and find out what people are saying about you.

I hope you found the blog and video useful.

If you would like to learn more about developing a content email marketing strategy to grow your business, you can email me here at melanie@thesussexsocial.co.uk or give us a call on 07811324032.