Most business owners are now aware of how social media marketing can boost their sales. But did you know it can also really help your SEO?

Don’t neglect the opportunity to use your social media content to improve your website’s search engine rankings. Why? Because for one thing, your competition is doing SEO to their social media, right at this very moment!

Here are 7 tactics you can implement to your social media marketing, that will certainly help long-term with your SEO too.

#1. Increase Your Social Media Followers

You may be wondering “How is this going to help my SEO?”. Search engines such as Google and Bing look at social signals when ranking websites in their SERPs. Most social networks allow you to publish content directly from your website – blogs, pages, images, etc. When your followers share your posts in their profile, it will create a backlink to your website. The higher the number of shares and engagements (likes, comments, etc.) those posts generate, the bigger the chance Google will boost your website in their organic search engine results pages.

The more followers you have increases the probability that someone will share your posts. However, do not buy followers, because then you are simply purchasing fake accounts – bots- who are never going to buy anything from you. Even worse, some of them may be owned by hackers who will try to get into your site and wreck it just for the heck of it.

Instead, start by creating a strategy for truly “WOW!” social media content. Even if you only post a couple of times a week, you want content that is highly shareable. So that when people see it, they share it and their friends engage with it. Some of their friends will eventually follow you as well. See? That’s how you attract more followers.

#2. Optimize Your Social Media Posts

When you do this, you are making it possible for your target audience to find your social media posts a lot easier. Yes, it is best if you can optimize every post. You’ll want to do things such as name your photos and videos by exactly what they are. Ensure your audience knows exactly what the content you are sharing is, and what they can expect if they click on the links of your social media posts.

#3. Use Keywords

This is a very simple way to start using SEO in your social media on a regular basis. It is ideal if you can add the keywords in titles of whatever you are posting, so the post will be much more easily found and searchable. Do also use the keywords within the text of the post and do try to include hashtags that have the keywords. Remember that lots of people search via social media by hashtags, so they will find your content this way and it’s a great way to attract new followers.

#4. Always Do Keyword Research

It can be tempting to simply add keywords to your social media posts, but you want to be certain that you’ve picked out the most effective ones. Doing a bit of keyword research ahead of time can save you a lot of headaches and hassle. Besides, the more you do it, the better you get at it and the quicker time it takes you too!

#5. Connect With Influencers

Now, this is a very popular social media tactic, to connect with some of the well-known social media influencers, to see if they will re-post what you are sharing or if they will try your products. Did you realize that this is actually fantastic for your SEO? Sit down and make a list of the top 30 social media influencers for each social media channel that your company has an account with. Then start to reach out to them. While not everyone will agree to your request, it might surprise you that quite a few of them will. This will certainly grow your social reach and improve your SEO too.

#6. Encourage Social Shares & Hashtags

A very simple way to do this is just to tell people at the end of your posts “share this with your friends” or “share this today!”. Telling people to share a post reminds them to do so and a lot of them will do it.

You’ll also want to use hashtags, which in some ways on social media are quite like keywords for this type of media. Because people can search a social media channel by hashtags to see what content there mentions that hashtag. Including them will help you attract new followers and then they will become new customers.

#7. Add Links in Your Social Media Posts

This is an excellent social media tactic. Always do add a link that you think will interest your followers – ideally something that connects directly to your company website – with each social media post. These links do increase your SEO clout. Do remember to be thoughtful when choosing what to link. If you add in links that do not make sense to the post, while at first people may click on them, they will soon realize that the links are not as helpful as they would hope they are. So, they will stop clicking. Then you lose out on a potential customers. Therefore, even if you get an SEO “boost” – you are neglecting your top priority, which is attracting new business for your company.

Social media offers many opportunities. Including SEO tactics can only help you to be more successful with your social media. Fortunately, a lot of these can be done quickly and efficiently. If you are busy running a company, hiring an SEO expert to manage your social media may be the most practical thing, to ensure successful and profitable results.