SEO and Social Media Marketing: A Winning Combo for SMBs?

SEO and Social Media Marketing A winning combo for Small Medium Businesses

From a logical standpoint, it’s difficult to see SEO and social media marketing in the same boat. Search marketing is more inclined towards keywords and algorithm, while social is, well, social.

But apparently, these two can be integrated to make the most out of content creation, distribution and discovery, particularly for small to midsized businesses (SMBs) that aspire to increase their online presence.

According to an Ascend2 report:

  • The most effective SEO tactics for top performers are creating original content (55% vs. 33%), updating website content (43% vs. 42%) and keyword management (42% vs. 29%).
  • The most difficult SEO tactics for those with inferior strategies are external link building (40%), creating original content (40%), keyword management (35%) and social media integration (34%).
  • The most useful metrics for tracking and analyzing SEO performance, across the board, are conversion rate, website visitor traffic and trends, engagement, and search rankings by keyword.

It’s clear that SEO and social media integration is a must. However, it’s also one of the most difficult challenges for businesses to overcome. If you’re looking to increase conversion rate, engagement and improve your overall SEO efforts, consider taking these 4 steps towards a more social media integrated SEO strategy as outlined by Erica Bell, social media specialist, in a Business.com post:

  1. Identify themes in SEO performance and social media engagement. Dig in to your analytics for what keywords and phrases are doing well in driving social media and search engine traffic. Look for where overlaps take place and pay attention to any current trends or themes taking place.
  2. Define your keywords and cross-apply insights. Google Analytics, your webmaster tools, and any social insights you have can help you define what keywords your business should be focusing on right now and in the near future. Those trends and themes you identified in the first step can help you determine what words to go after for search engine and social media optimization.
  3. Develop an SEO and social sharing optimized content strategy. Your content marketing strategy, from production to distribution, needs to consider both the SEO value and the social engagement potential of piece. Don’t neglect either area.
  4. Ensure your optimized content can be found and easily socially shared. Each piece of content that your produce for SEO should be able to be easily shared. Include social widgets and buttons so your audience, readers and website visitors can share your content with a click.

Read the full post at The Moz Blog