Why Social Media SEO Is A Thing In 2024

Forget the old-school SEO tactics like keyword stuffing and basic link building. Now, it’s all about mastering the social media scene, where a viral cat video can skyrocket your brand’s visibility faster than you can say the word ‘trending.’

But now, with AI ruling the roost online, it’s not just about catching eyes; it’s about impressing the bots too. Social media SEO has become a big deal, and it’s something everyone from TikTok influencers to small business owners needs to get on board with.

In this article, we’re diving into the what, why, and how of social media SEO in 2024. We’re talking about making your social channels not just visible, but unmissable.

Quick Takeaways

• Social media SEO boosts your online presence and drives organic traffic, enhancing brand reputation and audience engagement. 

• Creating a rich content mass educates AI models, ensuring your brand’s relevance and visibility in AI-driven searches.  

• Sharing quality content on social media increases visibility, drives traffic, and generates backlinks, indirectly boosting search rankings. 

• Future-proofing social media SEO involves staying updated with trends, optimizing for voice search, focusing on video content, leveraging AI for personalization, and using analytics for informed strategy adjustments.

What Exactly Is Social Media SEO?

It’s no secret that social media is one of the best places to reach your target audience. But how can marketers effectively find and communicate with their audience members via content? The answer: social media SEO.

Image Source: WebFX

Social media SEO is all about optimizing your social media profiles and content to increase your visibility and drive organic traffic.

Simple, right? Not necessarily! With social media’s ever-changing algorithms and elusive engagement metrics, perfecting your social media SEO strategy can feel like a game of cat and mouse.

But, once you nail down a successful strategy, you’ll see:

• Increased in website traffic
• Enhanced online presence
• Better brand reputation
• More engagement
• Meaningful relationships with your audience

So, while the tangible benefits of social media SEO can take a bit of effort to achieve, all your hard work will pay off in the long run. Not to mention, you don’t really have a choice anymore. Here’s why:

Why Social Media SEO Is More Important Than Ever

AI is taking over the world. Just kidding, it’s not – but it is changing search as we know it. Instead of creating content that educates just our audiences and SERPs, now we need to educate AI language models, too.

The most effective way to do this is by building something called “content mass”. By building your brand’s content mass with a dense arsenal of ungated web content, AI bots will know your brand and recommend you to users.

Since 90% of Americans use social media, we recommend you take advantage of social media SEO to keep your brand in front of its audience. Fine-tune your content marketing strategy and create content that performs well on every marketing channel to stay relevant.

How Social Media Supports SEO

Your brand’s social media has a direct impact on the factors that influence search rankings, making it an important player in driving quality traffic to your website.

When you publish high-quality content that resonates with your target audience, they become advocates for your brand. And naturally, your audience reads and shares your articles with their friends and followers.

The content you share on social media can take various forms, as long as it captivates your readers. Some of our favorite examples of traffic and social share-driving content are:

• Blog posts
• Videos
• Infographics
• Podcasts

Although, if you don’t distribute your high-quality content effectively, your content won’t have the impact you need it to.

That’s where social media comes in. When you share your posts, your audience amplifies your content by further sharing it, ultimately:

• Increases your visibility
• Improving traffic
• Generating backlinks

These social signals let Google know that your site’s content is top notch. In turn, these signals can indirectly enhance your search rankings.

Image Source: Mark Copy AI

Moral of the story: sharing content on social media is essential to regularly capturing your audience’s attention, boosting social shares, and supporting SEO.

Social Media SEO Tips For Every Channel

Here’s the inside scoop on making your presence known in the world of social media SEO.

Instagram

• Optimize your profile with keywords. Sprinkle keywords into your name, handle, bio, and location (if relevant), too.
• Feature keywords and hashtags into your captions. No need to hide them in the comments anymore. Including keywords and hashtags in your captions will boost your content’s visibility on search pages.
• Include alt-text. Not only does alt-text make your visual content more accessible, but it also helps Instagram understand exactly what your content is all about. This means your posts can show up when people search for relevant topics. Double win!
• Don’t forget subtitles. While Instagram has auto-generated captions for accessibility, adding subtitles means your target keyword gets some onscreen spotlight.
• Tag your location. By tagging your location, your content can be featured on Instagram Maps, which serves as a local business search.

Image Source: Business Today

YouTube

• Get savvy with your video file name. Use your primary keyword phrase as the file name. For instance, let’s say your keyword is “DIY potholder,” you can name your video file “DIY-potholder.mov”
• Craft a captivating title. Incorporate your primary keyword phrase into the title, but make it a more descriptive version that people are likely to type into the YouTube search bar. For example, “How to Crochet a DIY Potholder.” This way, your title aligns with search intent.
• Description domination with keywords. Utilize keywords in the video description, especially within the first two lines that are visible without clicking the “more” option. Make sure to include your primary keyword and, if possible, sprinkle in a secondary keyword or two, without going overboard and sounding like a keyword stuffing enthusiast.
• Speak it out loud and caption it. Say your keywords in the video itself, making sure they are spoken at some point. Additionally, turn on captions in YouTube Studio. This way, your keywords appear both audibly and visually, optimizing accessibility and SEO.
• Embrace the power of how-to videos. If you want to attract search-driven views, focus on creating how-to videos. These types of videos tend to perform exceptionally well in search results. Other video types typically gain more views from the home page, suggested videos, or playlists.
• Tags? Not a big deal. According to YouTube, tags don’t hold significant weight in search rankings. They are primarily used to address common misspellings or variations, such as “DIY” vs. “DYI.” So, don’t stress too much about tags.

TikTok

• Level up your profile with keywords. Add relevant keywords to your TikTok user profile to boost the SEO power of your entire account.
• Double the impact with your main keyword. Make your TikTok a sensation by not only including keywords in your video’s in-text overlay, but also by saying it out loud. This means your keyword gets a triple dose of exposure—it’s included in the in-text overlay, spoken in the video, and captured in the automatically generated closed captions.
• Feature keywords and hashtags in your video description. Be sure to include relevant keywords and hashtags in your video’s description (or caption). Focus more on relevant keywords for improved TikTok SEO to help your content get discovered.

Video Source: Hootsuite Labs

Facebook

• Use keywords on your Facebook page. Incorporate your main keyword into your Page title and vanity URL, About section, and description.
• Feature your business address. If it’s relevant to your business, add your address to your profile. This inclusion enables your Page to be included in local search results, boosting its visibility among local audiences.
• Expand with location pages. If you have multiple physical locations, create dedicated location pages for each one. This strategy increases the chances of all your locations appearing in local search results, maximizing your reach.
• Post with keywords. When crafting posts and photo captions, weave in relevant keywords naturally. By using language that flows, you can include the most important keyword in each post, enhancing its SEO impact.
• Don’t forget alt-text! Include specific and descriptive alt-text for all of your images. This helps Facebook understand the content of your posts, improving their relevance and visibility.

X (Previously known as Twitter)

• Unleash the power of keywords. Incorporate your main keyword in your X name, handle, and bio. This strategic placement ensures that your profile aligns with relevant searches and grabs the attention of your target audience.
• Craft tweets that pack a punch. Make the most of X’s limited character count by including relevant keywords and hashtags in your tweets. Use them wisely and organically to maintain value and readability for your readers.
• Alt-text for extra SEO. When sharing images in your tweets, go the extra mile and alt-text that includes your relevant keywords (if applicable to the image). This alt-text not only enhances accessibility for visually impaired users, but also signals to search engines the content of your image.

Leveraging Visual Content for Social Media SEO

Leveraging visual content in social media is like having an SEO superpower. It’s about making your content not just seen, but also shared, liked, and remembered. And in the digital marketing world, that’s the name of the game.

In the battle for your audience’s attention, a well-placed image, a captivating video, or a clever infographic could be your secret weapon. In fact, it’s so important that almost half of marketers included visuals in 50% or more of their content in 2023.

Image Source: Venngage

So clearly, visual content is the emperor of all things digital marketing.

Why Visuals?

Nobody has the time to wade through a swamp of text. Our brains are wired to process visuals 60,000 times faster than text. That’s like comparing the speed of a snail to a Ferrari. Visuals are the express lane to your audience’s hearts and minds.

The SEO Magic of Visuals

When you pepper your social media with eye-catching visuals, you’re not just sprucing up your feed. You’re boosting your SEO game.

Visuals drive engagement, and engagement is SEO gold. Likes, shares, comments – these are the breadcrumbs that lead search engines right to your content.

Optimizing Your Visuals

Don’t just throw in any old image. Use relevant, high-quality images and don’t forget those alt-texts and file names. They should guide search engines through the relevance of your content.

Video

We can’t forget videos. If a picture is worth a thousand words, a video is worth a million. Video marketing can skyrocket your engagement rates, making your content more likely to be shared and, therefore, more visible.

Infographics

Infographics are the unsung heroes of visual content. They turn complex info into easy-to-digest visuals. Plus, they’re shareable, which means more eyes on your content.

Future-Proofing Your Social Media SEO Strategy

In the world of digital marketing, staying ahead means constantly adapting your social media SEO strategy. Here’s a straightforward approach to make sure your strategy stays effective and relevant.

Embrace Emerging Trends and Technologies

Staying informed about the latest trends and technologies is crucial. This includes understanding:

• New social media platforms
• Algorithm updates
• Emerging tech like AI and machine learning

These advancements can significantly impact how content is discovered and consumed. By staying informed, you can adjust your strategy to leverage these changes effectively.

Optimize for Voice Search

Voice search is becoming increasingly prevalent. To optimize for this, focus on natural language and conversational keywords. People tend to use more casual and question-based queries when using voice search. Incorporating these into your content can improve your visibility in voice search results.

Focus on Video Content

Video content continues to dominate social media. But remember, it’s not just about creating videos; it’s about creating valuable and informative content.

Educational videos, how-to guides, and informative pieces tend to engage audiences more effectively, increasing the likelihood of shares and interactions, which are beneficial for SEO.

Utilize AI for Enhanced Personalization

AI can analyze user data to create more personalized content experiences. By leveraging AI tools, you can tailor your content to meet the specific needs and interests of your audience, leading to higher engagement rates.

Prioritize Engagement

Engagement remains a key factor in social media SEO. Create content that encourages interaction, such as shares, comments, and likes. High engagement rates signal to social media algorithms that your content is valuable, increasing its visibility.

Diversify Your Content Across Platforms

Different platforms cater to different audiences and content types. Tailoring your content to each platform’s unique audience and format can improve engagement and reach. This diversification also protects your strategy against changes in any single platform.

Leverage Analytics for Insightful Strategy Adjustments

Analytics provide valuable insights into what’s working and what isn’t. Regularly review your analytics to understand your audience’s behavior and preferences. This data should inform your content strategy, helping you to make more effective decisions.

Boost Your Social Media SEO Today

Mastering social media SEO is a necessity in today’s digital marketing playbook. It’s about smartly blending visual content, adapting to new trends, and personalizing with AI to keep your audience hooked.

By focusing on these strategies, you’re not just playing the game; you’re leading it. Keep it simple, stay adaptable, and always aim to resonate with your audience. That’s how you turn your social media efforts into SEO gold.

Ready to boost your social media SEO? Check out our SEO Blog Writing Service or schedule a quick consultation to learn more about how Marketing Insider Group can help you earn more leads for your business.