You might be thinking that Facebook and Twitter do not drive enough sales and because of that, you shouldn’t focus on gaining much traffic from them. You are wrong. Why? Google and Bing are now using that data to determine where your website should rank.
And this isn’t something new. SEO experts who really test things out have been using this technique for months to rank on page 1.
It was in 2010 when Matt Cutts released a video in which he confirmed that social signals do play a role in influencing your organic rankings.
Fast forward to today, and people still have no clue how they can leverage social signals to rank their website higher.
But the more important question is, “Why suddenly social signals have become so important?”
Why Are Social Signals Improving Rankings?
There are 2 sides to that question.
One is that social signals make things real. Google wants to make sure that it is showing the most relevant and enjoyable websites in its search results. And so it ensures that by checking out the social signals. Because if people are already liking and sharing that website, chances are that the users searching will also like that website.
The other side is that it makes things harder for people to manipulate search engines. It is true that Google wants to show only the best results up there. But it also wants to make sure that it is not easy to just get up there. The harder it is to rank higher, the lesser amount of people will be there trying to manipulate the search results.
At the end of the day, it all boils down to this: if your website is able to be found by people, and you are getting linked by people, then you will see yourself rank higher than your competitors.
Because your website looks much more natural than others. And it is much more healthy because Google has the data that proves that people are loving your website.
Now that you have gained a deeper understanding of why social signals are important, let’s dive into the steps you should be taking to take complete advantage of this opportunity.
Improving Your Search Rankings Through Social Signals
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Use Relevant Keywords in Your Profiles
Before you start receiving traffic through social media and start ranking higher, you need to first make sure that people are able to find you. And that is the reason why you want to use relevant keywords in your social profiles so that you attract people who are interested in what you are talking about.
That will let them share and engage with you on social media.
How do you do that?
Simple.
You need to include keywords in your headlines, bios, and summaries on all of your social media profiles.
So the next time someone searches on Twitter, Facebook, etc. they will see your profile up in those results as well.
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Add Captions That Include Keywords
Yes, that is a thing.
Your followers will obviously be able to see what you post, but you also want your content to be visible to someone who is not your follower.
You do that by including relevant keywords in your posts and captions. Not only that, you can also use these keywords as hashtags. That will make it easier to discover your posts.
Let’s say you post something that is related to SEO. You also want to use SEO has a hashtag in the caption/post as well.
The key here is using relevant keywords as hashtags to further expand your audience.
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Always Have a Call-to-Action In Your Posts
If you are sharing content on social media, make sure that you are adding a call-to-action in your posts. You want people to click through and visit your website. So tell them to do so. That way they will be creating more social signals and also engaging with your content on your website.
There are people who would click on your links without even having to tell them. But most people need that little nudge to get them to click on your link.
But do make sure that you are not writing an entire sales pitch to get them to click through. Remember, it needs to be short and precise.
In most situations, a single sentence will be more than enough. And then you can just add your call-to-action, like “check out the link” or “click here.”
You are also not just limited to those 2 things. You can also ask them to like, share and comment on your posts.
But make sure that you are not confusing the people about what you want them to do.
Short and simple is the key here, which leads me to my next point.
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Do Not Use Too Many Words
The attention span of people on social media is very low. So it is best if you stick with either a photo or video instead of text. Even if you just write some text on an image and post it, that image will still get more attention than if you just write a caption or a text-only post.
AdEspresso analyzed more than 37,000 ads on Facebook and found out that the best performing headlines only had 5 words. And ad posts that performed the best had less than 14 words. And if there were link descriptions, they can be slightly longer, but no longer than 18 words for optimal performance.
There are definitely other factors that can influence the performance of an ad. But if there’s one thing that this study proves, is that the lesser amount of words you use, the better your chances are of having a winning ad.
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Using the Right Words Can Improve The Number of Clicks
By now you might have already realized that if you are using fewer words, then the words that you choose are important. And your words can have a direct effect on the ad performance as well. In the same study done by AdEspresso, they found that there are certain words that performed better than others.
It doesn’t matter if you are sharing the exact same thing. The way you say it can have a huge impact on whether or not people accept that information or not.
The study found that posts/ads that contained words like “you,” “free,” “because,” “instantly,” etc. performed better than the posts that did not contain those words.
So if you are looking for more social signals, make sure that you are using these words in your headlines, descriptions and captions. Obviously, you do not have to use all of those words in a single post. Just use it naturally whenever you think it will be best.
Conclusion
By now you have a very clear idea of what you should be doing to persuade people to click on your posts on social media and engage with your content. You also realized how important it is to properly optimize your social media profiles to get found for relevant topics.
Last but not least, you should know that it is will take some time and testing to start seeing incremental results. And once you get in the groove, you will know exactly what type of posts you should share, at what time and on what day.
After that, it is all just a matter of consistency and maintaining the quality of your content. And before you know it, you will be seeing your website rank on page 1.
