SEO and Social Media - A Match Made in Online Heaven

For many companies wanting to grow their presence online, Search Engine Optimisation offers the most effective way to increase traffic, improve rankings and boost sales. Using a range of strategies, including on-site work and link building techniques among other practices, your site will be able to start gaining traction in the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs) over time, as your website’s content, SEO elements and other factors are improved to help you get into the top pages on Search Engines such as Google, Yahoo and Bingo.

What many companies don’t release however is that social media marketing plays an equally important role in improving your website traffic as well as your company’s reputation online. Used with a solid SEO strategy, social media can be an extremely powerful tool that contributes to improved results across the board.

How Social Search has Changed the Way we Find Information

Social search is a buzzword that is often bandied around, but how many of us really understand what it means? Simply put, this term describes the way that web users are changing the way that they find information online. Before the advent of social media, people relied exclusively on Search Engines to find information. This allowed SEO and online searches to boom, and make it possible for companies to reach these web users while they were actively searching for their products.

Today however, users are turning to their social networks to look for information. One of the biggest reasons for this is the trust factor. By asking their extended social networks about restaurants in their city for example, or perhaps a good car wash service in their area, these users are essentially getting recommendations from people who have actually visited the restaurant, or tried the car wash service.

At the same time however, the web user in question will also visit Google to do a search for the service they wish to find. They may check out a few reviews online, as well as a few websites. Taking the advice they have gotten from their social network, along with the information they find online, they are now able to make an informed decision. In this way, social media marketing has a far more personal aspect than traditional search marketing, allowing users to get recommendations to help them make their final choice in which service provider to select.

How Social Media works with Search Engine Optimisation

A healthy combination of social media and Search Engine Optimisation has a number of benefits to companies wanting to grow their presence online. These benefits include the following:

• Backlinks from shared posts, You-tube videos, Facebook updates, Tweets and other shared content via social media networks
• Greater level of exposure across the board, with integrated content across all social channels
• Increased brand recognition and online reputation, as your company develops a ‘face’ and is accessible to more users across multiple social networks
• User-based information sharing, which spreads your content across blogs, forums and other social networks
• Increased traffic from all social media channels, from social network profiles and shared content

To ensure excellent results across the board, online marketing needs to be considered on a holistic basis, combining a range of channels that allow your website the maximum exposure. In this way, SEO and social media marketing are the ideal combination to ensure the ultimate return on investment on your campaigns.