SEO and Social Media: Causation or Correlation? - Firuze's Bite Size Marketing News

SEO Fundamentals Room: Importance of Being Social

Last week in Marketing Club – SEO Fundamentals Room Jan 4, 2022, we focused on the “Community” aspect of Search Engine Optimization

00:08:00 Rob asked moderators

1 – “Is there any relationship between Social Media and SEO? What’s your experience?”

00:12:56 From Rob to Bob

2 – How does social media help us in our relationship with search engines?

00:28:40 Rob Bertholf to Heather

3 – What are your thoughts on SEO and social media?

00:32:36 Rob Bertholf

Let’s discuss causation versus correlation between SEO and social media. Causation means: Your content’s higher rankings on social media do not cause higher rankings on Search Engines. However, the higher the engagement and social shares and the higher the web pages ranking on social media, the higher the possibility of ranking higher on Google SERPs. There is a correlation between SEO and social media, but social media is not a direct ranking factor.

4 – From a technical perspective, do we need to know anything specific about amplifying your content on social media?

00:45:45 Rob Bertholf to Adam

5 – Adam, do you have thoughts about it?

6 – Has anyone tested the WordPress site page speed before and after “Google Web Stories”? Have you seen any impact?

01:05:40 Rob Bertholf

The idea of indexation

7 – Do you have thoughts on what’s the flow for social media links?

Club House Room Information

1 – “Is there any relationship between Social Media and SEO? What’s your experience?”

00:08:14 Kyla Herbes

Kyla has been using SEO and social media in tandem for nine years. She had created a community on social media by engaging with her audience (followers) and continuing the conversation back and forth through the use of social media. This enables her to drive traffic from her social media accounts to her website.

00:09:30 Joshua Monge

Some of the aspects of SEO is transferable to social media. The keywords, key tags, descriptions, or page titles in SEO are also essential for social media platforms.

00:10:05 Kyla Herbes

Each social media platform, such as Facebook, Pinterest, ING, Twitter or Tick Tock, all use their versions of SEO on their platforms.

In Instagram, your handle name (@houseofhipstersblog), title, name descriptions are part of the SEO of Instagram. Lately, ING has its own mini search engine. When you type a keyword into the ING search box like “interior design”, it no longer brings a name, an account name, or #interior design hashtag; instead, it’s a keyword. When you search with this keyword, it also feeds you with the related keywords for “interior design.”

00:13:07 Bob Clark

There are two facets. The first part is search optimization and ranking in the social media platforms, and the second part is SEO within search engines. For example, Pinterest is maybe the more extensive search engine than Facebook or Instagram. Pinterest does not work like a search engine.

Bob considers Social Media’s relation with the search engines in two chunks. The first chunk is social media platforms’ importance in creating “Authority” (the more links you receive from the social media channels to your website, the better your chances of being ranked higher by Google.)

The second is the power of “Shares”. Once your post is shared on social media, Google takes this as a significant signal to rank you higher. Social media is all about building authority, acknowledgement of your brand and shares.

YouTube is another massive search engine that SEO plays a role.

00:15:15 Rob Bertholf

If we look at how content could be shared, social media is one of the first destinations to go. Writing content and publishing it on your blog is not enough for SEO. After posting it, you need to share it on LinkedIn, Twitter, Pinterest or if it’s relevant to Reddit. Whichever social media platform has the right community (friends or followers) for your piece of content, you should share it on all those platforms. Moreover, you also engage in conversations with your community on those platforms, which will carry the buzz.

00:16:00 Joshua Monge

With content creation strategy and SEO, you can:

Build credibility for your website
Discover keywords, concepts and ideas and create posts for those keywords and concepts to test the engagement and shares, which will help you find the best keywords, topics, images, or ideas.

00:17:35 Firuze Gokce

She talks about her experience in the power of forums. Ten years ago, before the social media frenzy kicked off, her company’s novice software was discovered and discussed on multiple forums. This allowed their product to build credibility and trust with their brand name, translating into Google search results. In brief, forum discussions created brand demand and brand demand projected to Google search results.

Another example is a Turkish nonprofit that she cofounded. After the nonprofit was established, she started to create awareness and brand recognition campaigns in social media and the nonprofit received traffic to their site.

00:19:32 Jon Muranko

He agrees with what was said by the mods so far. He addresses the significant power of YouTube and the use of content in different formats depending on the platform. In a nutshell, to receive the powerful outcomes

Have a YouTube Channel,
Place all your social media profiles into YouTube Channel. This way, YouTube is connected to other social media platforms.
Embed your video into the website. He helped a client prepare a video and embedded it on their website. The video does not slow down the website when the web page opens because it’s a pop-up video.
Always twit your blog posts or videos into Twitter.
Pinterest is another powerful platform to use to strengthen your SEO.
Don’t focus only on links and shares but also consider the engagement.
1. Can you start a conversation with your followers?
2. Can you make people click on the “Call to Action” that you want them to click, such as an email subscription, a lead, a call, or buy something?
3. Understand at what point your social media presence, messaging or call to action matches the customer journey.
4. Map your social media user funnel/content with revenue.
5. Ultimately, everything is connected to conversions. Whatever we do, we do it for increasing conversions.

00:25:00 Rob Bertholf

If you start a new project or have a new client, the first thing to do is to create or check all the social media accounts. Even if you do not use some of them, you should still claim all those accounts with your brand handle name. This is particularly critical to prevent any wrongdoing by others and protect your brand name.

00:25:40 Joshua Monge

Claiming all your social media handle names is also essential for mitigating a business risk if your social media accounts will be taken by others and used in harm’s way.

00:26:20 Rob Bertholf

There is a difference between having a “Domain Authority” and a “Page Authority”. When you send a twit, it does not impact the domain authority. The main thing about social media is creating signals which will lay the foundation for Google to rank your website. The value of community is massive in building relationships, SEO signals, awareness, credibility, authority, engagement, traffic and conversion.

00:28:40 Rob Bertholf to Heather

What are your thoughts on SEO and social media?

Your website, social media accounts or any digital asset are a compilation of your virtual real estate on the web. The interconnection and traffic among your website and other social media channels help your SEO. She is approaching web presence from the perspective of Curation and Creation. Unfortunately, many people are not using the curation approach, enabling you to push your social media identity on curation sites like Reddit. Besides, you can also curate your website by inviting people to write guest posts on your blog or share valuable posts or twits created by other people. https://blog.hootsuite.com/beginners-guide-to-content-curation/ All those touchpoints cover your digital existence like a blanket as your omnipresence on the web.

Utilizing your branded hashtag on every social media channel, website or newsletter is an effective strategy. When sharing your content, don’t forget to add your links. Did you know that on Facebook Reels, links are clickable in the comment section? If you utilize this opportunity, that can help your ranking on Google. Besides, Google now indexes short video formats from Instagram Reels, Facebook Reels, and Tick Tock.

00:32:36 Rob Bertholf

4 – From a technical perspective, do we need to know anything specific about amplifying your content on social media?

00:33:38 Karin Tierney

Karin has seen excellent results by sharing content on social media. She deliberately used Facebook posts, and her aim was not to get her content to be shared; instead, she wanted to create comments and discussions. That strategy brought excellent results for her ranking. Google receives the engagement signals from social media and ranks her higher.

00:34:58 Kyla Herbes

This is her story: A while ago, there were articles on Forbes and Washington Post titled “Skinny Jeans are Out”.She also checked out the “skinny jeans are out” topic on Tick Tock. There were also posts on Tick Tock. So, she researched it and then published a short blog post on her blog. She wrote on Gen Z saying that Millennials and Gen X are out of style with their skinny jeans. That post has received tons of traffic and started a huge discussion and massive sharing among Moms in Mom forums or Babysitter forums: Here is her catchy title “Hey Moms, Skinny Jeans are Out”. The conversation has lasted for a month, and it’s continuing to bring her site traffic.

00:36:50 Arjun

He’s helping his customers understand the power of SEO, social media, smart speakers, and voice search. Especially “Google Web Stories” (https://stories.google/showcase/) has many great features embedded in it such as meta information, linking and graphic slide shows. Google only allows it to be used by sites that have AMP standards. If your site supports the AMP Web standards, you can go to https://wp.stories.google and get the free WordPress plugin for creating “Google Web Stories” (https://wordpress.org/plugins/web-stories/). It is directly linked to your domain. Therefore, it has its own ranking element as opposed to Google Business Profile, where the user engages with your content on Google Search.

00:39:55 Kyla Herbes

Kyla uses “Google Web Stories”, and she has seen a tremendous increase in her site’s traffic. Previously, Google allowed “Google Web Stories” to be used as stand-alone. However, recently they decided to let you use or embed it in your blog. If you go to your Google Search Console, you can find the section on AMP to set up your “Google Web Stories.”

00:41:05 Arjun

Arjun’s startup is developing a product for scheduling Google Web Stories. The tool creates backlinks, graphics and stories based on purchase data from Shopify or Wocommerce shopping websites, and it can automatically develop Stories based on your transactions. He would like to receive feedback from the room whenever it’s in Beta.

00:41:48 Bob Clark

There is another side for “Google Web Stories” that we should be careful of. Google is famous for creating a product and later tossing it away. Unfortunately, that’s what happened with AMP pages and Google. Therefore, “Google Web Stories” can be discontinued soon. It’s crucial to be careful because creating content for Google Stories takes time. It might not be a problem for you if you have a team, but if you are a solo entrepreneur, it’s essential to check in pros and cons of creating Google Web Stories. He saw many disappointments in the food and restaurant sector.

00:43:03 Joshua Monge

He wants to reemphasize Bob’s point: Whatever you do, always aim to achieve solid SEO fundamentals because trends can come and go. And there is no one silver bullet to make it all. Therefore, always be careful in what you are doing.

00:43:55 Rob Bertholf

Always focus on what you will achieve and which tools or platforms will help you be successful. Work on all your fundamentals first. Once you’ve completed them, you can niche down other opportunities.

00:45:45 Rob Berthol to Adam

“Adam, do you have thoughts about it?

00:46:00 Adam

Social media is an attention-seeking environment. However, Adam’s goal is to buildup relationships on social media and later drive them into his funnel. He doesn’t like to do anything spammy. Therefore, thinking about link strategy clearly and setting social media engagement as part of this strategy is critical for him. He also found Reddit as a powerful tool.

00:48:35 Rob Bertholf

“Hey, Kyla, what’re your thoughts on this topic?”

00:43:40 Kyla Herbes

There is another aspect of the traffic coming from different social media channels. By looking at the analytics, you can see which social media channels bring more engagement to your content and how much time has been spent on your site. By looking at this data, you can prioritize conversions according to the data. Every social media channel has different impacts on your content.

6 – Has anyone tested the WordPress site page speed before and after “Google Web Stories”? Have you seen any impact?

00:50:40 Bob Clark

Unfortunately, it made the site speed worse when we first tried. Google’s plugin also did not work well. However, Bob hasn’t tried it recently.

00:50:15 Kyla Herbes

Her experience is very positive. She did not see anything that made her site upload slowly.

00:52:40 Rob Bertholf,

“Hey Sebastien, do you have any thoughts on it?”

00:52:46 Sebastien

He wanted to remind the room that hashtags are working differently on every social media platform. When you create a unique hashtag, it does not always bring too much traffic. (https://sparkgrowth.com/hashtag/) Moreover, “Google Web Stories” would have the same faith as what happened to “Linkedin Stories”. (Linkedin Stories just discontinued)

00:54:59 Nikki

She recommends using Canva when creating visuals because you can use the same format you have created on Canva for different platforms. Making minor changes will be enough. That way, you do not spend too much time creating content for other channels.

01:05:40 Rob Bertholf

The idea of indexation

Do you have thoughts on what’s the flow for social media links?

1:06:15 Karin Tierney

This is what happened: She had created interlinks in one of her client’s websites, but she did not use the Google Search Console. After three months later, she found out that the site wasn’t indexed by Google yet. Then she made a Facebook page, and suddenly her site gets on the top three at Google SERPs. Besides, her Facebook page has also been shared by the people, which boosted her position. She is optimistic about ranking on SERPs with Facebook Groups, backlinks and shares. In terms of indexation, she posts her content on almost every social media platform that’s relevant because those posts help her site’s get indexed.

01:07:10 Rob Bertholf

When you create content as soon as it’s published, start sharing it on social media channels.

Rob also explained his approach for repurposing content, specifically on content duplication. Make sure that your site has been indexed before you start repurposing your content such as Medium or Linkedin (by sharing a large piece of your content) because if Google hasn’t indexed you, then Google will identify the post on the medium or Linkedin as the main post and your post as the duplicate (copied) one.

01:10:10 Joshua explains his strategy as:

If you write about a list type of post such as “10 Best Articles in Medium”, you can share the first three items on LinkedIn and point the rest of the List items in the blog post by giving the link. Later you can share the last three things of your List on Medium by providing a link to let them read the rest of the List from your website.

“SEO feeds the content creation strategy”. Then you pieced out to social channels.

01:11:00 Karin Tierney

She likes to repurpose content: her team created a YouTube video, transcribed it, and turned it into a blog post. The next thing they do is get the memorable or noteworthy quotes or punchlines from the video and use it as tweeter posts.

01:11:59 Heather

Another thing that you can do with a blog post is to create a “Top 5 Tips” post—generating short videos with the punch lines from the blog—afterwards posting that video to Instagram Reels, Facebook Reels and Tick Tock. Suddenly you find yourself ranked for short videos at the SERPs.

01:12:58 Rob Bertholf

After directing traffic from social media channels, our goal is to create a relevant “Call to Action” to drive them into our sales funnel and convert them as our customers or clients. However, Linkedin or other social media channels do not allow us to place a “Call to Action”. They only enable us to use a website link.

01:13:55 Joshua Monge

In many instances, social media is the direct competitor by attracting the eyeballs and keeping people spending time on their platform. Therefore, it’s not easy to drive people from Social Media posts to your site.

01:14:15 Sebastien

That’s the problem. Back in the days when you published a post on LinkedIn, the link could be clicked up to 70%. However, now the only way to achieve dragging traffic to your site is through “Featured Links” or “Featured Articles”. If you use carousels on linked, people can download your PDF. When you have embedded links in your PDF, you can easily drag the audience to take the actions you want them to take. (https://designbuffs.com/blog/linkedin-carousel-posts/)

01:15:18 Heather

You need to experiment with all the formats and capabilities and use a clear call to action that serves to benefit your sales funnel. The links on Instagram posts are not clickable, but links on ING Stories are clickable. If you use ING post to tell people, “Hey, you can click this content on My Stories”,. With the right call to action from the ING post to your Stories, you can make people click on the link in your stories and land on your website. You can also create clickable links through Facebook Reels or Comments.

01:16:00 Karin Tierney

When people repurpose content, one thing that annoys her is when the content shared is the same on every social media channel.

01:16:40 Sebastien

Sebastien was sending the same content on ING and Tick Tock. Unfortunately, he got disappointing results. Now he’s repurposing content by following each channel’s distinct best practices. Because Instagram has a different vibe (emotional and elegant) and Tick Tock users have disparate expectations from a post (like having more fun), please remember that when repurposing your content think about your topic and the social media channels that you’re using.

01:18:20 Carol

Test the effectiveness of the social media channel that you are posting. Many small business owners have limited bandwidth and cannot go and post on every social media channel. Always measure the results such as click-through rates (CTR), conversion rates, return over marketing budget (ROM) or return over investment (ROI). Only post to the social media channels that bring you the highest returns. “Know your audience, know your market and know your analytics.”

01:19:12 Kyla Herbes

“And know the platform”:

Google has all your information

Tick Tock is a place to teach

YouTube Shorts are for teaching short form

YouTube videos are for teaching long-form

Instagram is for a lot of prettiness or esthetic

Pinterest is where you want to discover a place to travel, find a recipe, or come up with home décor ideas.

When repurposing your content, think about the topic that you’ll repurpose, send your post to the relevant social media platforms and curate your content in a way that best suits each platform that you’re posting.

Looking forward to seeing you at our next discussion!

Let’s continue our conversation and let me help you understand your website