enewton@brightedge.com

M Posted 6 years 9 months ago

t 9 min read

SEO for social media can play a powerful role in building a brand’s online presence. Although the links from social media are typically no-follow, they can benefit brands throughout the buyer’s journey in a variety of ways. With two billion users across the various platforms worldwide, the potential for engaging prospective customers is significant.

Namely, social media platforms can help build reputation and awareness, which are key to top-of-the-funnel engagement and can help with SEO indicators. The platforms can also help brands control their appearance on the SERP for branded searches. This benefits them at the mid-funnel and end-of-funnel stages. Finally, social media drives traffic back to the company’s site, which benefits engagement and SEO metrics throughout the sales funnel. 

Here is how you can use your SEO for social media strategy to build expertise in SEO and drive engagement and conversions throughout your sales funnel. 

SEO for social media at the top of the funnel

Your focus at the beginning of the buyer’s journey is on building brand awareness and recognition. Customers during this phase remain most interested in educating themselves on their pain points and potential solutions. Therefore, their searches revolve around educational queries such as ‘how-to’ pieces.

Social benefits SEO through topic generation

Use SEO for social media to uncover common topics and questions people have about your industry and your product. Look for the conversations that pop up among your prospective customers and use these topics to guide some of the pieces you develop. As you create this important content, you can then promote to your prospects through social media, driving traffic and recognition for your brand.

This method of topic research also makes it easy to find emerging trends and popular topics. Creating content for these talking points will help you get out in front of the competition, which in turn will help you achieve high rankings on the SERP.

Social benefits SEO through building brand interest

You can also use SEO for social media to build a strong brand following by regularly posting and tweeting. Using the platforms often will increase the recognition your brand receives and encourages people to follow you.

Try to post to your platforms several times a day, but be aware that different platforms move at different rates. Twitter for example, requires more regular posting than LinkedIn. If this seems burdensome, there are various apps that you can load with multiple days of post that will automatically send out the tweet at the designated day and time. 

You can also use WordPress plugins and tools to connect your blog to your Twitter account and automatically send a tweet whenever you publish a new blog post. 

In addition to promoting new content, you can also use the platforms to regularly share your evergreen content. This can increase your positive social signals for these pieces and increase the traffic to the pages receive. High traffic and engagement rates will in turn improve your SEO for social media and SEO reports.

To build interest in your account, post about interesting trends within your industry. Stay on top of news and engage with your customers about topics of interest for them. Do not be afraid to post articles that come from other sources if you think they would provide value for your followers.

Social media is not an advertising platform, it is a water cooler where customers want to converse and find interesting information. You want to engage personally with customers and demonstrate that you have their best interests in mind. Building engagement for your account will in turn build the prospect list you can send to your site through interesting content and increase your overall authority on the web.

Actively engage with others through your account as well. Follow other companies and influencers and interact with their tweets and posts. Use popular hashtags and converse about topics that others are interested in. Use hashtags for major conferences and industry events to build your community.

As you create your posts, also remember to use images, as Facebook posts with images receive 2.3 times the amount of engagement. Customers are visually driven and tend to appreciate visual posts more than plain text.

Social media and the appearance of the SERP

At this stage of the funnel, you also do not want to neglect the important impact SEO for social media can have on the SERP itself. Know the type of queries that Google pulls posts from Twitter and YouTube onto the SERP. Optimizing content for these types of queries will increase your chances of having a tweet or video featured. This would boost your appearance as an industry expert. 

Remember that Google has recently made changes to limit the number of times a particular domain appears on the SERP, so these types of universal results can offer great opportunities to build your online presence.

SEO for Social Media for the mid-funnel

When customers reach the mid-way point of the buyer’s journey, they begin to consider their options for resolving their pain points. During this stage, they tend to make more branded searches. They want to see what sets you apart from the competition and why your solution deserves their consideration.

Social media and branding on the SERP

Social media, including Twitter, can play an important role here. When prospective customers do a Google search of a major brand like Macy’s, for example, you’ll notice on the front page of the SERP, Macy’s Twitter stream pops up under the website information. This tweet carousel takes up vertical space on the results page and pushes down any potentially negative information while increasing brand visibility.

Optimizing your brand’s Twitter feed, therefore, by conscientiously tweeting about important trends and thought leadership ideas can also influence the impression you make through branded searches. Maintain a strong presence on this platform to take full advantage of this impact.

Social media and mid-funnel content topics

You can also continue to use SEO for social media to let you know what customers search for during the mid-funnel stages. Customers at this stage of the buyer’s journey often want to compare you to the competition, so look for insight about keywords people use for comparison purposes, the types of comparisons people want to see, and what the favorable reviews say about you in comparison to others in your industry. When you understand why existing customers prefer you to the competition, it becomes easier to create content that emphasizes these points.

Throughout your strategy, continue to use SEO for social media to promote content that clearly sets you apart from the crowd. Demonstrate thought leadership, promote case studies that articulate the incredible results people have seen, and otherwise help prospective customers understand what makes you different.

SEO for Social Media at the bottom of the funnel

As customers get close to conversion at the end of the buyer’s journey, use social media to emphasize the personal side of your business. Nurture personal relationships with your prospective customers. Answer their questions through the social media channels and encourage them to engage directly with the sales team.

You can also use social media to promote common bottom-of-funnel content, such as local demonstrations and coupons. Drive traffic back to your site, along with conversions, by promoting posts letting customers know the purchase bonuses available to them. 

SEO for social media will empower you to drive traffic and engagement to these important deals. Increasing their visibility will boost SEO and help persuade potential customers.

Social media can be a powerful driver for organizations interested in building their SERP and marketing touches throughout the buyer’s journey. Consider how social platforms can boost engagement and optimization efforts throughout the stages of the journey and how it can be used to build leads and encourage conversions moving forward.

enewton@brightedge.com

M Posted 6 years 9 months ago

t 9 min read

As Google works to match users with the site that will provide them with the best possible results for their query, they also listen to the complaints and suggestions from users. The search engine has said that they understand the frustration users feel when they search for a topic and receive results that list several different pages within the same domain.

Consider, for example, the results you receive when you type in something related to jobs, health, or reviews of local businesses. Chances are, you will receive multiple results from Indeed.com, WebMD, and Yelp, respectively.

To combat this complaint, Google has announced that they will work to diversify the results they show on the SERP by limiting the number of times that a particular domain can appear in the search results for a particular query.

We wanted to discuss this update with our community to help everyone understand how this change might impact them.

What this update will do

Let’s first explore what precisely the update will do. Google reports that they will look at the domain of a website and limit the number of times it can appear for a particular search to two for most queries. For queries where Google thinks customers might appreciate receiving more than one results from a particular domain, the domain will appear more often.

Google also says that it will treat subdomains as a part of the standard domain. At the same time, at least as of their announcement, Google had not yet limited the number of times a particular company could appear in results if they had different geographic domains. For example, as of the roll-out, users could still see Indeed.com, Indeed.co.uk, and ca.Indeed.com all appearing within the same search results.

The search engine giant also notes that this change will only impact the main results. This means it will not impact snippets, images, videos, or other types of search results that might appear within universal searches.

The search engine also emphasizes that this update will need regular improvements, although it has completely rolled out. Users may still find errors in how the results appear, but Google says they will work on improving the results moving forward.

How does this update impact users

For users who had more than one page ranking for queries

For sites who have built up strong domains that dominate search results for key searches, this announcement might have been greeted with groans. It is true that those who once had multiple search results may find that their traffic and rankings on the pages in question will decrease.

We recommend that anyone who had multiple results appear for a single query use the BrightEdge platform to monitor their traffic and rankings on these key pages to see how the change might impact their results. See if you can determine which pages Google leaves on the search results and which ones they have bumped off.

If you do have pages that have been bumped off your top rankings with this update, look for other ways to leverage the material of the bumped page. You might consider:

• Optimizing the content for a related keyword to try and earn rankings on another keyword
• Building the piece out further and turning it into a gated item that you can send people to as your CTA from the highly ranked piece
• Shifting the piece to a more internal emphasis, linking to it from within your site to encourage engagement and having your sales team send it to interested prospects.

If you have international domains

Although right now Google still displays sites from the same company even if they have different geographical domains, that might change in the future. Therefore, brands should not rely on this permanently.

If you run multiple sites for different geographic locations, you want to make sure your hreflang tags are working properly. You do not want your country-specific site to get knocked off the front page in favor of your .com page.

If you struggled to rank when you often had to compete against major domains

We have written in the past about brands who have struggled to rank when going head-to-head with dominant domains, such as WebMD. Now these limits have provided these other domains a chance to improve rank.

To look for and capitalize on new opportunities, you will want to use BrightEdge to look for any chances to improve your rankings. Use Recommendations to make sure your ‘striking distance’ pages are fully optimized and ready to move up to the first page. Use BrightEdge Page Reports and Keyword Reports to monitor your rankings and traffic to see if you start to get jumps indicating you have used this update to your advantage.

Making sure your brand still shines on the SERP

Having multiple pages appear on the SERP for a single query provides powerful branding and traffic opportunities. Customers know that you are an authority within the field and that they can trust what you have to say.

Also keep in mind that this change only impacts the core results. That means image, video, and snippets will not change. To build your brand, use BrightEdge Data Cube to look for opportunities to optimize your content for these alternate types of universal results. Including quality images, videos, and optimizing material to improve your chances of appearing in a Quick Answer snippet will all make it easier for you to have multiple appearances on the SERP.

Google’s efforts to increase site diversity, like all updates, will hurt some sites while giving others a boost. Understanding how to best position yourself in the face of these changes, however, can help you achieve the best possible results.

enewton@brightedge.com

M Posted 6 years 9 months ago

t 9 min read

Google recently announced some changes to their mobile SERP layout that are intended to make it easier for customers to recognize the branding of different sites and determine which pages they want to engage with. Read more about SERPs and the primary SERP elements.

Although the change might not be as dramatic as some other Google layout updates, it may have an impact on how organizations optimize their branding for mobile devices. It gives organizations the opportunity to catch users’ eyes immediately through images that appear at the top of each result, and every site should take advantage of this change.

What this mobile SERP change will mean

Google has explained that this change will place the URL and a small icon at the top of each result. The search engine giant expects that the placement of these features will make it easier for those browsing the SERP to know where the information comes from. This should help users determine easier which sites they want to explore.

How this impacts site owners

With the URL and small icon at the top of the search results, this provides site owners with a good opportunity for branding. Images naturally catch the eyes of users, which is why Twitter posts with images see 35% more retweets than those without.

With your image featured at the top of your result, it will catch the eyes of prospective visitors. It will also make it easier for these users to remember your site when it appears in multiple searches they make. This will improve brand recognition.

Google has also said that this new layout will make it easier for them to add more action buttons and search result cards in the future. If they proceed with this plan, it may provide more opportunities for customers to contact you or make a purchase from you directly from the mobile SERP. Optimizing product listings and meta descriptions with this potential in mind may help brands get in front of these future potential changes.

When you look at the new mobile SERP, it also appears as though ads are now a little harder to distinguish from organic results. All that distinguishes them is the placement of a small ‘AD’ label before the URL. This might increase the opportunities for brands to boost clicks and traffic through PPC, particularly on high-value queries.

How site owners can choose the image that appears with their organic results

For brands, the placement of the small icon with the URL at the top of the search results presents the greatest opportunity for improving branding. Therefore, organizations should pay close attention to how they select their image and ensuring that it has been set up properly to avoid missing out on this space.

To begin, carefully choose a favicon that properly represents your brand and will be memorable for users. People who see it should be able to quickly identify the brand, which will help them recognize your organization as they encounter it in different situations.

Google warns site owners that this image should not be suggestive, inappropriate, or contain any hate symbols. Failure to abide by this guideline will result in the favicon being removed and a default icon taking its place.

The favicon should also be a square with a size that is a multiple of 48. For example, it can be 48 px by 48 px, 96 px by 96 px, and so on.

Keep in mind also that not all image types are visible on all types of browsers. To ensure that your favicon can be seen on all of the browsers, use ICO, PNG, or GIF (not animated GIF) images. If you do not want to use any of these, JPEG would be the next best solution, as the only browser that does not support this type is Internet Explorer.

Once you select a favicon to use, keep your selection consistent. Do not regularly change it as this can hamper your branding efforts. Customers will not be able to recognize your organization as quickly, and Google might not see the change immediately.

Here are the instructions from Google for adding your favicon:

How our community should optimize for Google mobile changes

To ensure that your brand remains fully optimized for the opportunities this change presents, we recommend the following steps.

1. Carefully select your favicon and set it up following the steps and guidelines outlined above. This image offers you an excellent chance for branding and should not be passed over.
2. Test how your page results appear on mobile devices to ensure that you have followed the steps properly.
3. Use BrightEdge to monitor your clicks and traffic to see how the image placement impacts your site results.
4. Make sure your URLs are properly optimized to contain proper keywords so that when they appear at the top of the search result, they look appealing for customers.
5. Continue to take advantage of PPC for queries you struggle to rank for.
6. Optimize your product listings, site descriptions, and markup so that your website is ready should Google add more search result cards or action buttons to the SERP in the future.

Google continues to look for ways to create a superior search experience for users. As the SERP changes, brands need to pay close attention to ensure that they take advantage of each opportunity presented. The opportunities from branding here should not be passed over by any organization.