Marketing channels and the teams that manage them must constantly collaborate and avoid operating in silos. But sometimes that’s easier said than done.
An often overlooked partnership is between SEO and social media teams, both organic and paid, and how they can work together to maximize output, performance, ROI, and most importantly, connections with the customers.
There is much that each channel can offer the other. All of this is usually evident through performance once that connection is made and a partnership is initiated.
Here are 13 ways SEO and social media teams can work together to produce improved results:
1. Synergy
Team synergy goes a long way in everything you do, especially when you’re trying to speak to a brand’s target audience.
Consistent messaging, language, and perspective across all marketing initiatives help achieve the goals the larger team is working to achieve (assuming those teams are on the same page).
Voice and tone, keyword usage, and overall branding need to be consistent, and collaborating as social media and SEO managers is an easy (and relatively inexpensive) way to do this.
Make it a critical goal to meet with your counterparts on the SEO or social media team to ensure you’re maximizing everything from your image to your messaging. This overarching theme is critical to remember with each of the remaining tips on how teams can work together.
2. Targeting by keyword
Brands have keywords that represent who they are, what they do, the problems they solve, and the products and services they offer. Consistency is very important to your keywords (and related topics and ideas) and how they are used. Your audience is not naive to these connections. Your audience trusts them.
Intent and other connections tied to keywords and SEO can help social networks understand this better.
Use SEO best practice keyword research to strengthen your social media messaging.
Use your social media audiences and engagements to better understand your customers and the needs that matter most to them.
3. Optimization of profiles
Keywords go a long way in search and this is not just for search engines.
People use keywords to search on social media just like they do on search engines. And while social media algorithms may not be as sophisticated as Google’s, they still provide useful search features that people rely on every day.
That’s why it’s so important to efficiently optimize all of your company’s social media profiles.
Social networks also have their content indexed in search engines.
However, properly optimizing a profile goes beyond keywords.
Ensuring accuracy and consistency of NAP (organization name, address and phone number) among the other input fields available on social platforms helps connect these profiles to your brand and line of business.
4. Improved visibility
Posting social media content prominently in search results will increase traffic, engagement and backlinks.
And, with more than 60% of Instagram users claiming that they research products and services on the platform before buying, that they are presented at the right time for products and services when people are not yet familiar with a brand is critical.
Social media calendars that are planned and crafted with SEO infused in them help achieve goals that are typically related to branding and engagement. However, they can also drive quality content to higher visibility in organic search.
Strong social signals reinforced by recency and relevance will also help push popular and timely social media posts (and linked content) to the top of relevant search pages when that content satisfies a query.
5. Better planning and distribution of content
Typically, the SEO is more likely to work closely with the content team to develop the right topics and keywords to capitalize on, but what about the social media team?
There is no better team to help distribute quality content to the right people.
There is likely to be an increasing pipeline and cadence for content being planned, created and published; collaborating with social media specialists to see content at the right time could make all the difference.
Different people hang out in different places. And your customers are everywhere.
Social media gives us the opportunity to engage in conversations across multiple platforms with different audiences.
SEO helps us know what to talk about, how to say it, and which data points are most important. Social media does this in real time. Together, there is massive potential.
Share the quality topics and opinions your brand posts on social media channels and leverage signals of recency and user behavior to boost SEO efforts and reach multi-stage audience goals.
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7. User feedback and social listening
A great way to learn what your audience cares about is by listening.
Brands try customer surveys, emails and even cold calls to better understand what their current and potential customers think, want and care about.
This data is fed into the marketing strategy and used to guide much of it. But, without social media feedback and insights, an important part of the strategy will be absent.
People on social media express their mediocre opinions at every corner; companies should swallow these comments if they affect their business or customers in any way.
Listen to your fans and followers. What language does your audience use? Is it in line with the brand’s internal thinking? Are there new trending keywords in the space? Chances are, the social media team can help the SEO team answer many of these questions.
SEO statistics (search volume, geographic and demographic details, intent, etc.) about these new keywords would also be helpful for the social team to know. Collaborate and capitalize.
Go Deeper: Feedback Optimization: A User-Centric Approach to SEO
8. Frequently asked questions
FAQ pages can be a goldmine for organic traffic and helping users get the answers they need.
And there aren’t many better ways to make sure you’re answering important questions than by listening to what people are asking on social media.
They may not always be polite (or even accurately written), but there’s a lot to be learned from listening to your social media audience.
Do you constantly see the same questions being asked over and over again? These are indicators that these are the most important things to your audience and that you need to do a better job of explaining the answers earlier and more often.
Using organic traffic data along with social media insights, almost any brand could identify the top 10 questions customers ask on a regular basis.
9. Maximize performance
It goes without saying that the ultimate goal of marketing is to improve performance and generate conversions.
SEO and social media working together effectively will always help achieve this.
Social media profiles and the content they publish benefit from this collaboration for a number of reasons, but you should expect an improvement in traffic and engagement metrics.
You can also expect an increase in overall traffic flow through various channels and social media page growth metrics.
The dozen other ways listed in this article on ways to collaborate and leverage social media and SEO together should help you achieve maximum performance.
10. Signals of relevance
What you say on social media is important in several ways.
Recurring themes connect to your brand through relevance signals. Obviously, it’s important to talk about things that matter to your brand (and your customers), while also keeping a safe distance from sensitive or controversial topics.
These critical connections across the web are built through branding, which is heavily impacted by SEO initiatives and day-to-day business operations.
If you sell outdoor furniture and talk about outdoor living, furniture materials, seating styles, and backyard aesthetics, chances are your audience won’t be surprised by it and will actually rely on it to inform – them in the future.
And when you speak what you know, your authority shines through. The main goal of SEO is to build real authority.
Use social media to further amplify these authority building initiatives. You’ll probably get a decent following and probably even have some fun along the way.
11. Associations and backlinks
Brands can build relationships with customers and brand allies as individuals, and social media also offers the opportunity to build relationships with other like-minded brands.
This potentially even means collaborating with other brands on products and services, and in turn acquiring backlinks that will further strengthen those high-quality, industry-relevant connections.
SEO will help identify the most valuable partners. Social media will help make these connections much easier.
We also know that nofollow links have their own value within a healthy backlink profile and social media sites build more of them than any other website in massive amounts.
12. PR and brand reputation
The most overlooked opportunity in social media is the ability to be real and let your brand shine instead of being too buttoned up to do anything.
Too many brands miss the mark in an attempt to be something they are not for fear of backlash or rejection.
This should not be seen as a scary situation, but rather an opportunity to show who the brand really is.
SEO is where reputation starts and how it is built. Social media is the vehicle to demonstrate this reputation on a regular basis.
Regular communication between these teams keeps the brand aligned and alert whenever an issue or PR opportunity arises.
Social media offers brands a unique opportunity to engage with customers and mitigate potential damage by remaining socially aware and actively engaging in key communities.
Dig deeper: How SEO and digital PR can drive maximum brand visibility
13. Content ideas
This is the backbone of the best SEO and social media partnerships, and both parties benefit immensely.
SEO data has long been comprehensive and useful in identifying what is and isn’t working well on a website. Social media has been providing useful data to improve this for the past few years, and it’s getting better every day.
Use as much data as possible to drive decisions that lead to creating good content. Then use social media to leverage that content.
A lot of SEO data is based on third-party tracking tools and platforms, but social media platforms are based on people and their conversations. If you’re not listening (or reading) what’s being said, you’re likely to miss what matters most.
The views expressed in this article are those of the guest author and not necessarily Search Engine Land. Staff authors are listed here.
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