Don’t forget your keywords in your Social Media

Most webmasters and (hopefully) all internet marketers know the importance of properly understanding keywords for website ranking, but that nugget of knowledge seems to be forgotten when thinking about and posting on social media channels.

But the keywords are king rule is as equally important in social media, and this is why.

At the moment Google views everything online as if it was a website – in fact in essence that’s all your social channels are.

Take your Twitter account for example – it’s just a page (albeit a long one) of content, same for your Google+, LinkedIn, YouTube and Pinterest accounts etc.

So if Google does see your social streams as a web page element, doesn't it make sense that these also contain your best keywords - just as your web pages do!

So when you post, think carefully about what you want to say and craft them carefully to get your valuable keywords in.

This will ensure that in search these could be more easily picked up by search engines, but also your brilliantly crafted accounts start to show your authority, which will be passed to your website and web pages when you link back to them.

AND like your web pages, please don’t add posts purely to spam your keywords, Google is wise to this trick just as it is with websites and it could lead to a social penalty!

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SEO benefits of Social Media

Most businesses now recognise the fact that social media doesn't necessarily directly lead to a sale, but I know for a fact that it can help that sales process; instead most big businesses now look at social media as having SEO benefits and allowing their website and webpages to gain better rankings than their competitions, but how!

Let’s take a quick look at the benefits that social media could bring your to your SEO.

Social Media in general:

There are a couple of linked reasons why we would want to use social networks in the first place.

1. It allows people to share your information and links with their Friends and Followers 
2. It allows a greater chance for more people to see your brand and your products 
3. You get a spread of profiles and individuals that link back to your site 

Google+:

Specifically Google+ looks good because of the obvious tight integration with Google Search; this benefits you because Google has a good chance of knowing a little about everyone that use its services.

It knows for example if individuals are interested in or an expert in ‘home decor’ or ‘flooring’ because of their Google+ profiles and/or their search patterns and/or their Gmail topics etc – now if you sell flooring and one of these individuals shares or +1’s some of your content (image/URL etc) then Google will naturally believe that your site or specific page is more important than a competitors that hasn't been shared by these interested parties.

Social sites as information hubs:

We also look at social media sites now as information hubs (a bit like mini websites).

If we take the above example about a flooring business and they focus on posting good content about flooring then Google will understand that their Blog, Google+, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn or Pinterest account is about ‘flooring’; and as such any links from it back to that site will generate a little more link juice.

The future of SEO and Social Media:

We (the SEO community) also don’t yet fully understand how Google looks at social engagement (individuals sharing social content), but whether it happens now or in the future, if individuals engage with your social content and brand then it can only benefit ranking.

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