Are you actively using social media and SEO in your marketing mix? If not, you're handing a lot of money over to your competitors. If you are okay with giving other business owners stacks of cash (that could instead be in your pocket), then feel free to stop reading now. However, if you want to find out about an approach that is raking it in for others, then just take a few minutes to read this.
How does SEO benefit your social media plan?
- Increased Readership - Without prospects reading your message, your social media efforts are in vain. Just as a website with no traffic is useless, a social profile with no viewers does nothing for you. SEO integration can help you solve that problem. It's a good idea - and a powerful strategy - to include your social profiles in your SEO plan. You can quickly scale your social presence and readership by leveraging the power of Google's organic rankings. With more readership comes more opportunities to fill your sales funnel.
- Market Trust - Without trust, your prospects will never buy into your message. It's important to pre-frame your sales message in a way that builds trust with your market. Let's say you are trying to close a deal. After your initial proposal, the prospect jumps online to check your reputation (I always check for company reviews before doing business). How much easier do you think it would be to close the deal if you have a strong online presence? Having social profiles, a Yelp profile, a BBB profile (Better Business Bureau), and other credible online properties will help pre-frame you in a favorable way - adding tons of social proof. When you properly SEO your social profiles and other online properties, it adds incredible trust and conversion power to your brand.
How does social media benefit your SEO plan?
- Google Trust - Without this, you're missing out on a lot of business growth. How can you get a little Google love on your side? One way is to interlink all your social properties as much as possible. Send social signals (links from your social properties) to other websites that link back to you. These signals tell Google that there is social activity (people talking) about you. Google has now been developed to understand the relationships between websites. Let's say you have a website, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Pinterest, Yelp, BBB, or any other online profile. Google ties all that together (If properly optimized). Google recognizes all these individual online properties as one company. You are essentially building a web entity. This interconnection can create a Google Trust compounding effect that exponentially increases the power and influence you have with them.
- Additional Traffic - The traffic your social platform gets from your Google presence will build more social traffic that flows back to your website. This increase in traffic also puts Google in your favor; they use traffic as a ranking factor.
- Quicker ROI - [Here is the big takeaway] Google favors authority sites like Facebook and YouTube, and you can piggyback on that trust. Often, the quickest path to a profitable SEO return can be by ranking a social profile. For example, you can create a YouTube video that explains the benefits of your product. This video can direct them to your website with a link where they can buy.
Your ideal social and SEO integration strategy
If I were to build you a search engine marketing plan, the first step I would take is to research your market and look for competitive gaps. These gaps could then be leveraged into profitable opportunities. Based on the engagement power of your digital entity (all the websites and pages within your business profile), I would build out a profit projection timeline starting with the low-hanging fruit all the way up to the most difficult search terms. This way, we are focused on the quickest path to profitability. By getting you money in the door as quickly as possible, I know that you will be in a better position to continue investing your money for greater and greater returns.
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