There is no doubt that SEO and social media are inseparable. If you are working so hard to optimize your site for the search engines but you are neglecting social media, you are doing almost nothing. With the popularity of these sites, you can be sure that it is where the majority of people are. In addition to that, search engines seem inclined towards ranking websites that have a strong presence on social media higher than those that do not. So, how can you tap into this to increase your traffic? Here is exactly how to do it.

Use keywords in your social media posts

When posting on these platforms, it is important to optimize your stories. There are sites that allow you to post long stories while others will limit you to just a few characters. Regardless of the size of text that you are allowed, it is important to include keywords in them. What happens when you do this is that you send signals to the search engines and as a result, your site ranks higher. Here are some of the befits of doing this;

·         It costs you almost nothing to do so

·         It is a faster way to rank your site than any other that you can think of

·         The sites will automatically show your posts in the categories where the keywords fall

In the event that you are not sure of the keywords that you should use, you can use some of the tools available online. These tools can generate keywords for free and show you the competition around. You, however, should be careful not to stuff your posts with the keywords. If your readers notice that all you want is to showcase something, they will not bother to look at your posts anymore. It can be a devastating experience especially if your aim was to market a product or service.

Use social media share buttons on your websites

This is where many people go wrong. Having a website that is totally detached from your social media account is a wrong decision. For what purpose do you run a page on social media when you do not want to link it to your site? The best thing is that these platforms can automatically insert share buttons on your site if you allow it. This way, anyone on your site can click though to your social media page and vice versa. This is an easy way of creating external bound as well as incoming links to your sites.

One of the advantages of doing this is that when your people share the content from your site across social media, it goes viral. It is a powerful technique that leading SEO companies use to get traffic to their sites, for free. For instance, you write a post that everyone likes then one person who gets to your site likes it and shares it. Their followers follow suit and do the same. This goes on and on until your article is all over the internet and everyone is talking about it. On your part, you only did the work of creating the post and uploading on your website; that is all.

Increase your following on social media

You need to increase your following in order to deliver your message to as many people as possible. Remember that not everyone who follows you will buy from you or join the course that you are trying to advertise. You, therefore, should have many people following you so that the number of those who will eventually buy from you also grows. You can increase your following through a number of ways including word of mouth and advertising.

There are people who resort to buying social media likes. Although this is a quick and easy way to increase your popularity, you need to be cautious. Buying likes does not always guarantee success. You might have a million people following you yet none is even interested in what you are doing. The best way to do this would be to look for likes that are real and which relate to your agenda. For instance, you can specify that you need likes from a specific geographical area or who are in a specific profession. The good thing is that there always are reliable companies that sell these likes.

Post often and engage your audience

Your audience on social media should be engaged all the time. Give them a reason to always want to be on your page. If you post once and disappear, you probably will lose them. Some of them will assume that you are not serious and so, they will start overlooking your posts. Remember that one of your objectives is to get a lot of comments on your posts because it is the best way to tell the search engines that your page is popular. Posting daily will help a lot.

You also should post the type of things that your audience wants to see. Do not just post anything that comes to your mind because it could even work against you. Engage them by asking them some questions that they really want to answer. Reply to their comments to keep them engaged so that every chance they get, they want to visits your page and see what you have been up to. You can start a discussion, a poll, a competition or just anything else that will keep people glued to your page. It also would be good if you are kind enough to also comment on their posts too.

To wrap it up, the power of social media when it comes to search engine optimization cannot be ignored. With billions of people online at every given instance, there is no other source for traffic that this. However, it is important to note that unless you do it right, you will not enjoy the good results that you so much want. Social media can easily bring you down if you misuse it because the backlash is always harsh.

Bio

SEO consultant Paul Edwards helps SEO companies to use the best approaches so as to achieve the best results by ranking their sites at the top.