How Much Effectiveness is Social Media for SEO?
(1) How Much Effectiveness is Social Media for SEO?
(2) Does Social Media affect SEO? Search Engine Optimization?
(3) Do Social Signals Work for SEO?
(4) How Important Are Social Signals to Rank?
(5) Some Value of Displaying Social Share Numbers in SEO
(6) Social Shares Help You Rank Higher in Google Is a Myth!
(7) Can You Rank a Blog Post Purely on Social Signals With No Backlinks?
(8) Do You Do Buying Social Links From Any Influencer Else?
(9) A Social Media Content Strategy for a Niche of Maternity
(10) Is Instagram Good for Backlinking?
(1) How Much Effectiveness is Social Media for SEO?
Christine
Iβm looking for information on link building using social media and how I can effectively use social media to grow our Search Engine Optimization (SEO). This is for a legit online business and Iβm focused primarily on a North American and European audience. Anyone willing to point me to some useful reading? Anything from beginning to expert.
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Peter
Try βThe Art of Social Mediaβ by Guy Kawasaki. Itβs not written from an SEO perspective, of course. Itβs really about optimizing your social media channels and getting the most out of them, but itβs got useful tips on engagement on social. If you can be engaging on social, you can influence your rankings indirectly through all the traffic you send to your site from social posts.
Christine βοΈ
Great! Thank you!
Jay
You can't link build with social media, but you can have strategies for awareness and brand mentions which does help Search Engine Optimization (SEO) somewhat but only for your brand. If you don't have a brand and just have a generic web site⦠social media is not going to get you long lasting results.
Christine βοΈ
Thanks for the reply and info. We are hoping to use social media to better establish and grow our brand. We have a number of things that weβd like to roll out over the next couple of months, so Iβm trying to learn as much as possible so I donβt waste any opportunities. Do mentions have any direct effect or does that solely help awareness and traffic?
Jay
It's not direct, but I believe Google keeps an awareness of brand mention across the major social platforms. There's no way to know absolutely how their algorithm takes it into account, but from what I understand it does help. The problem with social media is that there's no link permanence and individual account values can't be corroborated easily by Google. However, it is a good way to both jump-start awareness as well as garnering opportunities for attracting web links that do matter in the long term.
If you focus on social, your primary efforts will be:
Page creation & maintenance on Facebook. Don't focus on post volume at first, focus on post quality and engagement. Make sure your posts are both attractive and interesting and trigger engagement from anyone seeing the post. This will fuel Facebook to show your page posts to more people more often. Facebook's algorithms are based primarily on engagement.
If your brand/business has a visual angle to it take advantage of Instagram. Again, quality over quantity. Make people stop scrolling to want to look at your photos & like them. Pinterest is OK but doesn't usually drive social value.
Twitter is good if you have truly interesting and unique things to say. All of these social platforms require regular attention, especially early on as you build up a following.
Create a blog and add 2-3 posts to it weekly. Interesting topics, nothing bland. If you Google the topic you want to talk about and 8,000 other sites already have the same article with basically the same information you plan to post - write about something else. Or, if you have a truly distinct spin on a topic then go ahead, but you really need links to it to out-rank those who already have a foothold on the search terms related to the topic.
As you build your main web site, also make sure to always focus on best practices. You don't need an SEO company to tell you what those best practices are, just Google for advice and you will find a million articles. SEO companies are good for helping you determine why you may not be ranking for specific terms, or how to lift your Search Engine Result Pages (SERPs) a little higher, or to review your site to see if you are doing something wrong, or to look at technical stuff that you may not have familiarity with - like sitemap files, micro tagging, link building (the legit kind, don't fall for the mass backlink scams), HTML mark-up, etc.
Christine βοΈ
Thank you for such a thorough response. This is helpful info!
Chris
Social media signals (e.g shares, comments likes on posts that mention your brand/on your page) directly help with Search Engine Optimization (SEO) but it's not a HUGE ranking factor. There's nothing amazing or special that you can genuinely read about. Getting specific ideas to help would be optimal, your business has a lot of viral potential, think voice over (VO) competitions, posting VO work/parodies , I remember the EA sports guy going viral a while back, stuff like that will help you get a lot of mentions and grow your brand. It's all about the content you produce and how normal people will interact with it.
There's a lot of reading you can do out there, but ultimately doing actual SEO would probably help you a lot more, especially if you are targeting business owners.
Christine βοΈ
Thanks for the response and info. Weβve been tossing around some viral video ideas, but you sparked a few new thoughts from my partner.
Doug
Social media, at the moment, helps with traffic and branding if you have a large enough audience and/or wallet. Besides improving dwell rate, it does nothing to βhelpβ with rankings on Search Engine Result Pages (SERPs).
Christine βοΈ
So it sounds like rolling out a well planned social strategy going for brand awareness and traffic is what we should focus on. Thank you!
(2) Does Social Media affect SEO? Search Engine Optimization?
Horia created a poll.
Cheers, everyone!
Here's an interesting thought experiment:
Does social media affect Search Engine Optimization (SEO)?
More specifically, do your social media efforts (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram et. al.) have any impact on organic rankings?
Would love to get everyone's verdict in the poll and your opinions in the comments.
Thank you!
66 votes
15 votes
10 votes
Marty Marionπ Β» Horia
From my viewpoint, if one objective is to generate more searches for keywords or phrases that are important to you, then social media can have a massive impact on stimulating searches⦠and searches result in clicks⦠which definitely impact Search Engine Optimization (SEO)⦠so I would think social media CAN affect SEO, not that it DOES all the time⦠I always like to look at social media strategies as PART of a comprehensive SEO plan.
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Horia
That's a great argument, Marty! So I take it you see the benefits of social media from a "social engineering" point of view, where you create momentum for phrases, which in turn stimulate queries.
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Marty Marionπ Β» Horia
Yes, stimulate intrigue, questions, etc that make people search for the specific subjects (phrases) that are most important to you and make sure your pages are super optimizedβ¦
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Lees Β» Marty Marion
Can you give us an example from the past in which you used this technique? Or is this just a theory?
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Marty Marionπ Β» Lees
Sure. Have used it often. For a big ecommerce lingerie company we did social posts asking men to post their favorite "sexy celebrities" from the 1950s through 1980s. Searches for "sexy + lingerie type" etc went up and so did sales through organic. For a jeans company we asked "how skinny are skinny jeans for men?". Same results. Questions seem to provoke searches.
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Petter
I do believe that some signals are included, but not to the extent that SEO users in general should have a great understanding on how to engage the public etc. there. I believe that SEO users should work with SoMe consultants, but Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a large enough field in itself, so for my part I'm happy to let SoMe consultants take the lead there, and just see how SEO can benefit from it in the ways Marty described above (open to any venue where my clients make more money).
As I see it, there are two main issues with some of the "myths" going around on how social signals has an effect on Search Engine Optimization (SEO):
1: Engagement metrics is not a direct ranking impact. If it was, then the webpages that exists to spin shareable content would win in the Search Engine Result Pages (SERPs), but they don't.
2: Monitoring social media is possible, but it requires a lot of resources - and Google is already tasked with monitoring everything that can be monitored - so dedicating the amount of resources needed to be on top of this makes very little sense when there are so many other signals that aren't as "fleeting" and temporary.
BUT:
Google does tie in Facebook business profiles to businesses, so this might in some way somewhere feed into the algorithm, but from the little research I have done - I have yet to see any correlation between rankings and active, inactive or no business profiles on ie. FB - so if there is a signal there, then as of now it cannot be a strong one. The link from your business profile on FB is nofollow - so after march 1 2020, social media profile link might start to add value. However - visible links (written URL's that goes via redirects with nofollow) may count towards a mention when/if Google picks it up.
Hashtag trends is fairly available, which could make sense for Google to tie into on queries that are fresh (I believe that at least their machine learning algorithm focusing on obtaining meaning to queries ties into this in some form or way - ie. "planking" made no sense before, but then suddenly became a trend - and I believe Google wants to be relevant on such queries and the only way to be that is to stay on top of what queries might mean).
And again, like Marty stated above, Social Media has the ability to provide impact on amount of brand queries as well as other queries. So it is a valuable channel for the client to pursue. But again, I believe that our clients are better off if they have someone who solely focuses on these channels helping there, leaving us SEO users to cooperate with them but at the same time keep our focus on Search Engine Optimization (SEO).
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(3) Do Social Signals Work for SEO?
John
Do Social Signals Work For SEO, Whats Your Opinion?
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Kumar
Yes...do work...do it on proper way..
After publishing new page or post...share it on social media..and do social signals on it..
Also after doing any guest post...do the same...π3
John
βοΈ Great Advice.
Kobi Β» Kumar
what do you mean by social signals?
Kumar Β» Kobi
most powerful social media's...
Twitter - Retweets.
Facebook - Shares.
Pinterest.. - Repins.
Share on all these platforms and do social signals...
Blair
Yes they do work but for me best be Twitter signals overall if they come from popular accounts.
John
βοΈ Really? Do you think Twitter is better, why?
Kumar Β» John
most powerful social media's...
Twitter - Retweets.
Facebook - Shares.
Pinterest.. - Repins.
Share on all and do social signals...
You will see the positive response..π2
Mike
They only work in making your link building look less fake. No direct impact on rankings and I say this after buying 10βs of thousands of signals for numerous web pages.π3
John
βοΈ I Agree and Disagree......I seen someresults but nothing major.π1
Tiwari Β» Mike
It is all about quality and not the quantity. These 5 dollars bot-generated Fiverr social signal gigs are just worthless.
Mike
Iβve compared urls that I built links to with, and without social signals, never saw 1 case where a kw rank improved due to signals. Even on less competitive branded terms. If you know a vendor who can provide a better experience Iβm all ears!
Mike
Nah, Ive used providers βrecommendedβ by notable people in this group and others, never Fiverr...but I might as well have used Fiverr for the results.π1
John βοΈ Β» Tiwari
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Hays
I've seen it work in for time-sensitive queries like events. I had a site ranking in the top 3 positions for a few top keywords after an event/raffle we had got shared a few hundred times and we had over 10,000 post engagements, that brought 7,000 visitors to the page in 3 days from Facebook. So within 24 hours from the post we were ranking for these keywords. 3 years later, after the event we still rank number 1 for our focus keyword which was the item we raffled. This last year's event ranks number 2 for same keyword and similar item.π1π°π
(4) How Important Are Social Signals to Rank?
ArtRos
How important are social signals to rank?
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Roland
They can help in some areas but not a requirement for success. One very useful return from posting on social media is quicker indexing of the site promoted.
Keith
Webpages with a significant amounts of social engagement are likely quality pieces of content that have generated a number of other Google related signals that convinces Google to rank them higher. Doubting the causation to social signals impacting ranking that much as they are so easy to manipulate.
Maggie
it's part of trust and authority within your niche - but Google can tell fake social signals from true engagement. It won't affect your rank negatively if you don't have them, but they help to some extent.
Peter
You can indirectly influence your rankings through traffic to your site from social, so Iβd say put out great content on social (or post links to good website content from social) that gets people wanting to visit your site.
Steve
Hi, it depends on what you mean by social signals, but as long as you mean getting likes/shares/etc for your content then I think it's definitely a positive factor.
Here's a screenshot of a page of mine in the fitness niche:
As you can see it has gathered over 2000 Fb shares and engagements over the years (I think 10k or more but Buzzsome has a 1 year limit to show, anyway⦠) and this page ranks rather well in Google for its target keyword. Granted, I also managed to build a lot of white hat backlinks to it with outreach strategies and the Skyscraper Technique, but
1, even before I started link building to it I saw a nice little upward movement for it in the Search Engine Result Pages (SERPs) after I started getting so many FB shares for it, so I think all those shares definitely sent a positive message to Google.
2, the social shares helped in one more way with Search Engine Optimization (SEO): I displayed a big Social Share Counter box on this page so that when I asked other people to link to it (you know with the outreach Skyscraper link building technique I mentioned earlier) it helped me get a "yes" from more people because they saw how popular the page was already.
So I'd say bottom line: yes, social signals do help a lot with SEO both directly and indirectly.
Steve
P.s.: Unfortunately I got all those thousands of shares back when my site was http and not https, and since I switched to https the social signal counter doesn't really work, that's why I had to rely on Buzzsumo data as proof that you can see for yourself.π°π
(5) Some Value of Displaying Social Share Numbers in SEO
Neil
Is there 'value' in displaying social share numbers - yes or no? (and why)
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Fleming
No not for SEO purposes. It's more to show users that your website gets engagement and has value its more to create user engagement.. Imagine walking past 2 shops one has customers queuing even outside, while the other has no customers whatsoever, which one are you likely to want to go in? Now some people will go to the empty one to avoid the queue however most will want to know what that shop has the other doesn't. Hope that makes sense Neil it did in my head as I wrote it lol
Its also worth noting that a lot of those plugins you can change the number of likes retweets so it doesn't even reflect the real shares etc half the time.
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Neil βοΈ
On my own website I do display the shares which may look great on some urls that get shared a lot 1000+ shares etc BUT - some urls don't get shared and then potentially have the oppositive effect - 'this url has little value' (maybe it has). Also, I do wonder whether displaying what is your website's popular pages - is this giving valuable data to competitors⦠all this, without the effect of slowing down the load time (albeit hopefully minimally).
Fleming
I just see it as a vanity metric who cares if it was shared 1200 times if only 5 read the whole thing and got anything from it? Its kind of like when people go yeah my video was view 10k times but only 4 got past the 30 seconds.
Daine Β» Christopher
is right, it is a vanity metric to a degree.
But, hereβs the thing.
It has value because:
1. Social Proof: It encourages other people to share it, thus expanding your reach, audience, and traffic.
2. It builds authority and credibility. It shows that the piece is popular.
3. It has a hidden SEO benefit, because when conducting link outreach, posts that have been shared a lot convey popularity, and value, in turn helping to increase the chances of gaining a link. People are more inclined to link to popular content.
4. It encourages people to read it more, due to social proof. Social proof is very powerful, psychologically.
5. Social signals MAY play a small part in ranking.
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Neil βοΈ
THAT is my gut feeling - and why I have stuck with itβ¦
Hazi
Social proof.
Fleming
Does it hold much value though? when social proof can be easily manipulated as most plugins you can add the share counts etc?
Daine
Itβs more βperceivedβ value, rather than real value.
Fleming Β» Daine
yeah more a trust signal kind of thing.
Daine Β» Christopher
, yeah, exactly.
Lancaster
Perception is reality and the only reality is the one your visitor chooses to believe when they are on your website.
Micha Β» Daine
Iβd go with on this one, with these additions:
6: each share is a potential batch of new readers, therefore, possible links
7: BuzzSumo recently did a study of over a million datapoints and discovered sharing on social media is half of what it used to be. Whether thatβs an ongoing trend or not, FOMO, likeability, credibility and the βfollow the herdβ effects are all indisputable market persuaders.π°π
(6) Social Shares Help You Rank Higher in Google Is a Myth!
Martin
This guy disappointed me. Are social shares really unimportant in ranking?
Myth #5 Social shares help you rank higher in Google
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Janka
You're disappointed by the truth? ππ½9
Shubham Β» Janka
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Ronald Β» Janka
lol, thats society in general though ππ½1
Fouad
Why being disappointed? I think he explained it very well. ππ½1
Doug
At the moment, there is no evidence to suggest that social shares directly help improve the ranking of a website. To my understanding, it might help with User engagement if itβs compelling content... which would likely help with rankings. (Arguably if itβs compelling content it would likely rank well anyway outside of social shares). Also, it might help get a page indexed that is currently not. Social Likes and Shares are too easy to spam and manipulate. The only thing I could see Google doing in the future is assigning authority or credibility to individuals who share content based on their voice within a certain community/industry... that might be an interesting (albeit somewhat concerning) progression on this topic. ππ½6
Bhati
I have site which get traffic from Google and only links it has are from facebook shares. ππ½3
Owais Β» Bhati
What type content the website shares?
Bhati Β» Owais
viral articles, political, national news. I have multiple sites. ππ½1
Farhat
yup, social share is very important, it helps your URL to indexed and make engagement with the audience, which helps Google bot to understand your content is useful to users. π1
Carl Β» Farhat
agreed i have a 50k sku ecommerce store we get lots of social shares
Kevin
To explain it simply : Bot shares won't help SEO, because it won't drive traffic.
But real human share will benefit to SEO BECAUSE it will drive traffric in the end.
But this is not the number of shares / likes that matters but rather the fact that it drives traffic or no.
In others words, you would better have a 1K shared post that drive 50% traffic than a 20k shared post driving 2% traffic. ππ½4
Smith
There's no evidence that there's SEO traffic because of the social shares.
He is right.
It's the other way. You get more social shares because of your SEO traffic.
And that makes sense. ππ½4
Suraj
Only believe on your experience, there are share only there review.
Toth
They're an indirect factor. Way too easily gamed to be a direct factor, for Google anyhow. ππ½4
Hazra
It certainly doesn't have any impact for info post. Social shares helps to gain more visibility which indirectly increases the chance of getting natural back links. That's it.. ππ½2
Homer
He's wrong. Social shares are social signals, and will affect both indexing and ranking. It won't get you to page one alone, but it will make a difference. ππ½1
Hamid
but you can't say that they are impacting directly to your rankings. ππ½1
Homer Β» Hamid
Yes, because I have had sites move up from page 10 to page 5. They are. ππ½1
Hamid Β» Homer
Great, so how do you monitor that really due to socials this happened?
Homer Β» Hamid
On the sites that this happened on, I only had social signals going to them. The content was also old and had quite jumping around in the SERPS. The site also had no real traffic going to it. I always start link building with social signals only, meaning that there was no other factor.
(7) Can You Rank a Blog Post Purely on Social Signals With No Backlinks?
Lyon
Can you rank a blog post purely on social signals with no backlinks?
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Nabil
It depends on how hard to rank for the keyword yet how powerful and specific your website, last but not the least how's your website's technical Search Engine Optimization (SEO) status.
Arif
If you're not an instant-lover, or you're not in rush, well... yes you can.
but if you are, well this method doesn't suit you.
Roger
You can rank an article with just dummy text and no backlist but, for that to happen, there are certain variables that need to occur and, one of the most important is keyword difficulty/competition.
Oliver
There is absolutely NO evidence that social signals are being used by Google as a direct ranking factor. ππ½1
Tanvir
I think yes .. it depends on the content you have ... like if you have good content and people visit your site from the social site ... and then they create backlink ... then yes you can rank π
Joe
Ive been doing this for 20 years and love the variety of opinions here. In various ways there is a tiny bit of truth to many of them, but Oliver
states the truth. That being said other items on the page will affect the ranking. Social signals alone will do nothing for you. Social signals combined with other things like a great description in the social post or key technical aspects of the page will get additional people to click and visit so while you may think you did it with social signals, it is misleading. No one strategy is good all by itself. That is something Google frowns upon. you need multiple strategies and techniques. Above all you need kickass content which drives traffic and engagement. you might have zero backlinks and crappy technical but if your content rocks, you have people visiting, staying and engaging, Google will still rank you. their priority is the searcher and giving them the best results for their query ππ½1
Jim
Ranked for this, no backlinks bro
Oliver
The website has 130 do-follow referring domains (according to Ahrefs), only ONE internal link (with a keyword-rich anchor text) from the homepage would be more than enough to rank #1 for that keyword, Google still uses PageRank internally.
Your website looks awesome and from what I'm seeing you have a lot of useful content, reviews, case studies, and etc.. ππ½1
Jim Β» Oliver
yeah but in terms of referring domains pointing directly to this page, there's none, so yeah.
(8) Do You Do Buying Social Links From Any Influencer Else?
Olga
Hello! How often do you buy social links or blog posts for your projects?
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Mike
I never buy social links... at least not from an SEO perspective. I might approach someone with a significant following about advertising with them, but that is for the traffic, not any Search Engine Optimization (SEO) benefit.
Not sure what you mean by buying blog posts. If you mean posts for your own site, I regularly pay writers to create content. If you mean guest posts on other sites, I pay for those frequently, but never through anyone selling them as a service. ππ½8
Wren Β» Mike
wow so interesting. How do you go about advertising with someone with a significant following, do you get them to share your product and do they have to declare that it's a paid promotion?
Mike Β» Wren
Depends on the situation and what we are promoting. Sometimes, I might have a client willing to sponsor a YouTube video in exchange for the content creator doing one of those typical 15-30 second pitches you see on a lot of videos. In those cases, a sample of the product or a few products will be sent to them to use in the video. Stuff like that.
It's never a video 100% devoted just to the product or service. Instead we sponsor one of their videos they are already doing.
Wren Β» Mike
ok, so does that mean they don't to say they have been paid for it.
Mike Β» Wren
They will say something like, "this video is sponsored by...."
Wren Β» Mike
ok cool. Cheers for sharing this with me. ππ½1
Singh
It is not a good idea to buy a social link....in a long run it can affect your website very badly ππ½3
Olga βοΈ Β» Singh
how's that?
Singh
The purchased social links are likely bots or inactive accounts, so they won't engage with your posts. This means your posts won't show up on Explore Pages, or on your real audience's newsfeeds. It will also make it hard to measure metrics. ππ½1
Olga βοΈ
mm I see. That's true. Thank you! ππ½1
Singh
Thanks for sharing
Laura
Never. I share my links to my website's own social accounts. If pay-per-lead (ppl) wanna link to my pages or projects they can go ahead, I don't do any "link building" and don't find it necessary.
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(9) A Social Media Content Strategy for a Niche of Maternity
Ammar
Hey SEO Pro's..
I've got a brand with a niche of maternity products.. I'm. regularly posting content on its social media platforms but I don't know why I'm unable to achieve any engagements or likes.. Could any of you experts please let me know what I'm doing wrong if possible please?
Facebook link: https:/facebook.com/mamanmeofficial
Instagram: instagram.com/mamanmeofficial
Any type of help is appreciated, thanks a lot!
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Shetty
You do have a decent number of followers. What about your insights? How many people are you reaching and how many are taking action? Website clicks?
Ammar βοΈ
Its not very good atm even after paid marketing as well..
Dielan
Could be due to the fact you are only targeting consumers in Qatar? Itβs not a very large country
Ammar βοΈ
Tried removing Qatar, same results no effects :S
Lowry
Try to engage your followers. Ask questions, post to articles & ask peoples opinion about them. Post a small fb survey about what baby merch products they want to see on the market.
Eva
Youβre posting too much about your brand and products. Try posting 20% brand/product posts and 80% other. Who is your target audience? What are their challenges and interests? Share posts that solve a problem for them, that they can relate to, that they find useful. Particularly on Facebook, itβs about being social, not selling.
Ammar βοΈ
Tried posting tips - quotes- and stuffs like that but still no effect :s
Eva Β» Ammar
yes, youβve posted tips and quotes but in the caption youβre selling. Itβs the first thing Mums read as they scroll through their feed and they wonβt even read the quote or tip in the image. You donβt have to sell in every post. Also, because you have small numbers, try sharing viral posts from similar parenting pages
Ammar βοΈ
Noted, What are your thoughts on post styling? are they good or do i need to change anything?
Eva Β» Ammar
I think the styling of the image is good. Just a couple of things. 1. This post, for example,
[product image]
I recommend that instead of writing about the business, you explain what this product actually is and how it can help a mum. 2. On Facebook don't use hashtags. 3. Try to limit the posts you have with links to an external website. Facebook likes to keep people on Facebook, not clicking out somewhere else.
This one, for example,
[quote image]
Instead of writing about the business, write something that resonates with a mother, 'Do you feel like you need to keep your eyes open with matchsticks at the moment? Don't worry, babies start to figure out night and day by 3 weeks so (hopefully) you can get a little more sleep.
Remember too, you'll have a different audience on Facebook and Instagram so try to share different content on each.
Try and find a parenting group and ask mums with newborns what their challenges are and craft content around that. For each product you promote, relate it to the mother. What problem can it fix? How can it help them get more sleep? How can it help their baby sleep more? How can it fix their sore back? How can it help with breastfeeding and helping them get more milk? But also, share humor, Facebook users love humor that relates to their situation. With Instagram hashtags, look at what your competitors or similar businesses are using. Click into the hashtags, have a look at the content that is being shared and what's getting the best engagement.
Ammar βοΈ
These info's are gem, thanks a lot!
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Gergo
My opinion: There are different tactics to use for different platform.
Niche website built for organic traffic-turns into product selling, or other monetization methods. IG is not a platform for niche site-building, it is for entertainment! My point is, try to look for user intent perspective. People generally not using IG for finding any product to buy⦠imo.
Another key issue is IG is full of bots, my friend tested and built 6000 followers in 3 months on a personal account with a simple codeβ¦ yes it got banned, but we just wanted to see how far it goesβ¦ I assume your follower base probably full of those bots, commenting, like-ing anything, but its not a real audience with intent to buy. Haven't looked for deeper atm, but there is a huge different building a site and getting 2k traffic and converting into sales, as having as IG account and 2k followersβ¦
Sebastian
Very interested. One very quickly look at the account. What comes first is mind. Is have your content made up by mother's. Join some library mother and baby groups and survey them for what are interested. Than post those on Instagram.π°π
(10) Is Instagram Good for Backlinking?
Mikkel
Is Instagram a good or necessary Backlink?
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Andrei
No, social media links are nofollow and do not pass link juice. Useless for SEO.
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Ethan Β» Andrei
that's not entirely true.The main argument being that social media doesn't directly affect your SEO. However, it does have an impact on the factors that do affect rankings such as traffic, meaning it indirectly affects your rankings. So, it may not directly increase your seo or provide backlinks but it definitely please a role in your seo ranking and should be utilized for best practices.
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Andrei Β» Ethan
sure, but that kind of argument can be made for any type of marketing, including paid ads. You gotta draw the line somewhere and say this is an SEO job and that is something else.
Back to the question at hand, having a genuine, well maintained social media profile is a must for most businesses and will marginally contribute to your search performance. Having a backlinked social media account sitting idle is not going to contribute to your seo.
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Ethan Β» Andrei
true and I see your point there. However, social media plays a massive role indirectly with your SEO. I mean social platforms have there own search engines after all so this plays as another way to provide your company with more traffic to increase SEO.
We all know how important local seo is and you might as well forget about it unless you have a social media presence.
Social profiles will also ranking on Google so if you want to draw a line, then technically your now creating seo for your social profile and ranking on Google with it.
Don't forget about how much content is shared through social media as well
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Andrei Β» Ethan
all good points! Although I think social media is not exactly critical for local seo. Is it? There is GMB and schema and some local directories. Never seen social media on this list.
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Andrei Β» Ethan
I feel like we are arguing, so I wanted to stress that I'm not, this is how I express curiosity. It might come off arguing-ish since my first language is russian π
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Ethan Β» Andrei
I am not arguing either but I am glad that your clarified. I hate how facebook is used so much for that π.
I am curious as well and want to always better my skill and knowledge with SEO. I enjoy general conversations about it.
True, but most if not all of those that rank without social media have been around since the dawn of google. If you take a new company and try to start ranking, it would be much much harder without social media platforms.
If you were to take the same company and start with social media from day one, they are much more likely to start ranking on google faster and higher.
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Swanson Β» Andrei
I treat social media as another directory to update for locations. Will I manage your profile and post for you? No. But I want to make sure that your locations are listed correctly, that the descriptions and contact info is consistent with the rest of your web presence. I tell clients itβs just another channel you can use to present content they are adding for their site.
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Ryan
Let's say you are a taxidermist in a city of 1,000 people. You have one competitor.. All else being the same, your competitor has a website of the same quality as yours.
If you have optimized Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, and let's say you posted 50 posts, my guess is you would be ranking ahead of your competitor.
It's not like an Instagram account will rank you, but in most cases it's common sense to have one, probably worth the 5 mins it takes to set it up. You're establishing your brand online.
Could you go without it, of course.
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Russ
I just don't get why Instagram is so popular lolβ¦
You cannot put links in posts, which just seems daft and pointless⦠So if someone posts something that looks interesting, no way to find out more, you have to Google it for more info.
So no backlink SEO benefit either.
you cannot even share/re-post other people's posts from the app, you have to get another 3rd party app to do that.
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This may satisfy you: Do You Reveal Yourself on Social Media that You are a Site Owner/Founder? Any Risk About it from Competitors, Haters?
