Let’s settle the debate once and for all – social signals are beneficial. They help you perform better in the SERPs, drive traffic to your website, and attract potential leads.
This happens because search engines consider social signals as votes of trust, authority, and reliability. If your social signals are positive, your organic rankings will go up, and vice versa.
With that said, you might be wondering what you can do to improve your social signals? To help you out, I’ll reveal the secret to improving social media signals in this article. Let’s start with understanding social signals.
What are social signals?
Social Signals is a collective term for the brand’s presence, engagement, and reputation on social media platforms. They are generated when an active social media user interacts with a post by liking/disliking, commenting, or sharing/retweeting it.
For different platforms, the social signals are different:
- Twitter: retweets, likes, quotes, and conversations.
- Facebook: likes, comments, and shares.
- YouTube: views, thumbs up, and comments.
- Instagram: comments, likes, shares, followers, reposts.
- LinkedIn: connections, links, and references.
- Pinterest: pins, views, and comments.
Image source: 99signals.com.
Based on the user’s activity, they get classified into positive or negative. Dead social media handles or handles with lots of dislikes give negative social signals to the search engines. On the contrary, active social media accounts with regular posts and happy users send positive ones.
If your social media posts receive appreciation, they will positively impact your website’s search rankings. The reason is simple. It helps search engines assess your trustworthiness and authority among the people.
So, to get the most out of your SEO efforts, you must improve your social signals.
Recommended for you: 6 Types of Content to Stay Away when Building a Corporate Social Media Brand.
Top 6 ways to up your SEO game with social signals
I will walk you through the tips thoroughly, but first, you need to analyze your site’s SEO performance.
Rankwatch offers a free website analyzer tool to help you assess if your website is SEO-optimized or not. It will show you all the SEO errors related to your site so that you can easily fix them. In fact, you can also get an overview of your social presence using the tool.
You just need to enter the website URL and the tool will give you a comprehensive report, which can also be exported as a PDF, in under a minute.
Once everything is on-point, you can go ahead and work on your social signals. Let the learning begin!
1. Optimize your social media profile
All set with the website but confused about how to go about your social media profile. Worry not, I got your back, mate. To find out how you can set up a kickass social media profile, follow the given steps:
Step 1: Make your content and brand’s identity available to everyone; choose the option of going ‘public’ with the account.
Step 2: Place a high-quality PNG or JPG image file as your profile picture. Mostly, people use their existing logo as their profile picture.
Step 3: Write a bio that describes it all about your brand and business.
P.S: Adding relevant keywords can help your target audience find you in search.
Step 4: Lead your visitors to your headquarters by adding the link to your website.
Step 5: Come up with an extraordinary brand hashtag. It works like a keyword for social media platforms.
Example: #shareacoke by Coca-cola; #WantAnR8 by Audi; etc.
Image source: Twitter.com.
Now, let’s learn about the fuel which keeps this machine running: Quality Content.
2. Opt for quality content
They can severely impact your social signals and SEO performance.
Therefore, you should focus on posting high-quality, informative content that engages the audience well.
Here’s are a few tips on posting quality content:
- Select appropriate content format.
- Use unique, eye-catchy visuals or graphics.
- Post short and aesthetically appealing videos.
- Write compelling captions for your posts.
- Research and use hashtags related to your business.
- Stream live sessions with other industry professionals.
- Pick an appropriate time for each post.
- Host giveaways and contests.
To streamline your ideas and posts, you can create a social media content calendar. It will help you ensure that your posts are quality and performance-oriented.
But only creating and publishing quality content is not enough. You need to engage with your audience to get desired results.
You may like: Top 10 Best Free Social Media Marketing Tools for Startups.
3. Engage with your audience
The first thing on your mind would be: what can you do to maintain the buzz?
For starters, give your audience something they can relate to, engage with, and share among their peers.
Since there are millions of trending topics out there, you can create niche-based content in sync with the ongoing trends.
If it is relatable, it is more likely to generate engagement.
Here are a few other ways to keep your audience engaged:
1. Share your latest blog. Link it in your bio (wherever possible) and share it across your handles. It should be your go-to instinct.
2. React to likes, comments, shares. Reply to the comments and retweet unique user-generated content. Be a human to them, not a bot.
3. Build a community. Make your audience feel like an insider. Introduce them to your company’s culture, tell them about your big and small achievements via posts or stories.
4. Go live and interact. Organize live sessions to communicate and educate your followers.
5. Use the stories feature smartly. Put up Q&A, polls, and surveys on your stories. These little sessions allow a company to have a conversation with their audience, and it helps in identifying their view.
When you’ve generated engagement on your social handles, your social signals start improving. To take it a step further, you can collaborate with influencers.
4. Leverage influencer outreach
Before we take a head start in influencer marketing, you might want to know which platform is the most suitable channel for leveraging influencer outreach.
Well, it’s Instagram and YouTube!
Image source: bigcommerce.com.
If you wish to start influencer outreach and use it to improve your social signals, here’s what you need to:
First: Identify the right influencer with the help of BuzzSumo.
Secondly: Calculate their engagement rate with Phlanx.
Thirdly: Create a standard pitch mail to collaborate and share it with the shortlisted creators.
Here’s an example of it:
Image source: blog.inzpire.me.
Step 4: Keep track of your influencer’s activity with the help of an excel sheet.
Step 5: Evaluate the progress report and the result of the whole campaign.
The major benefit of collaborating with an influencer is reaching their ‘religious followers’, who are already interested in your niche.
So, more audience is pulled to your content. You drive more social engagement and generate more social signals, which help you improve your site’s SEO.
5. Add social plugins to your blog
Users can always copy-paste the URL of the specific web page on social media (to share it with others), but they might avoid it.
Social plugins on your website make it quicker and easier for users to share your content on various social media platforms.
Thus, it allows users to engage with your blogs and content instantly. Also, if users forget that they can share the content, these plugins drop in as a reminder.
Therefore, you should use it to benefit your website. It will help you encourage social shares and amplify your content’s reach.
When people start interacting with the shared post or even visit your website to have a closer look at what is shared, your social signals strengthen.
Here are some free tools to help you evaluate your website’s traffic via social media:
6. Encourage customers to leave reviews
Online users know that you exist but what will give them an immediate validation of your brand’s credibility? Customer reviews!
Almost 68% of consumers prefer it, and reviews are also considered a key search ranking factor.
Although not everyone is inclined to do so, what will be your next move to motivate a customer to leave a positive review?
Image source: blog.walls.io.
First, you will send them a thank you message that you are grateful to the buyer because they are shopping from your brand.
Secondly, you can add a link where the customer rates your store’s services in the same text.
Third, turn your reviews into social media posts.
Here, the communication can take place via text or email, whatever is feasible for you. Looks pretty easy, right!
You may also like: Social Media Marketing Solutions Driving Towards $41.6B Led by Video.
Conclusion
Social signals are all about your social media posts’ likes, shares, comments, views, etc.
You need to build the best social media strategy, give your followers content that informs, educates, entertains, and stimulates curiosity.
With that, you’ll generate lots of social signals, a high engagement rate, and better search rankings.
Before you leave, let me know in the comments: According to you, what else can improve a site’s social signals for SEO?
