Does Social Media Impact SEO?

Social media is an essential part of your overall marketing strategy. There has been quite a lot of debate about whether social media affects your advisor website’s SEO rankings, and while it does not directly affect your SEO, it does have a huge impact on the factors that will indirectly affect it. So, if you are looking to rank higher, these are eight of the biggest social media factors that will impact your SEO.

8 Social Media Factors that Will Impact Your SEO

Learn how you can boost your online presence with these key SEO ranking factors in 2021.

1. Drive Traffic to Your Site

Social media is a great way to open your content up to an entirely different audience, ultimately driving more traffic to your advisor site. When you are engaging with others and putting thought-provoking content onto your platforms, then this will help to reach more people as they look to find out more about what you have to offer. If your content is getting shared, then this will reach even more eyes, driving even more traffic.

SouthShore Financial Planning Facebook

SouthShore Financial Planning has included several blog posts on their Facebook page in order to drive visitors to the blog section on their website.

2. Improve Your Content’s Reach

To piggyback off the above point, social media is a great way to improve your content’s reach by sharing any impactful and useful content that you have. At Twenty Over Ten, we try to create blogs every day on both our Twenty Over Ten and Lead Pilot blog pages. We then share those posts on our Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook platforms and occasionally our Instagram page.

In addition to blogs, we also share links to register for upcoming webinars and webinar replays, as this keeps the content at the top of their mind, therefore encouraging more people to sign up.

As far as content goes, try to produce content that speaks to the pain points of your audience while also creating relevant content on timely matters, such as the blog on the newly passed SEC Ad Rule that will affect how RIAs can use testimonials and reviews to market their firm.

New SEC Ad rule

Sharing something like this that can help your audience and is timely is a great way to get more clicks to your content which will lead more people to your website.

3. Boost Your Profile Ranks in Search Engine Results

Your social media profiles help you to rank in search engine results, so they are not only confined to your social media platforms. When someone googles your business, then many times the social profiles will show up on the first page of the search results. If you check out their Facebook or Twitter page, then this will help visitors get a sense of the firm’s personality and the type of services that they offer and how they can help you.

Storybook Financial social media

4. Posting On Social Helps Index Content Quicker

If you post on social media, then this can help index your content quicker. Once you have some new content to publish or you have optimized your content, then make sure you are sharing it across all of your social platforms. If you do this, then Google will get the signal that their bots need to “crawl” your website where they can re-index it.

Try to do this as quickly as possible on all of your social media channels, because the more signals that you can offer Google and the increased number of sources that the new content has, the better.

5. Social Media Affects Your Local SEO

Social media can have a positive impact on your local SEO, which has been even more important as more people have been spending time at home due to the COVID-19 pandemic. By now you know how your NAP-name, address, and phone number of your business play an important role in local search rankings. By keeping this information consistent across your listing and website, it will help you to rank higher, so you should use the same information on your social media profiles, as well. Also, some social media platforms allow you to geo-tag your Stories and posts which can help you to gain more visibility among your local audience and ultimately expand your reach.

Lawrence Financial Planning Instagram

Lawrence Financial Planning is based out of Tampa, so they are having some fun with their Instagram posts and story to cheer on the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in the upcoming Super Bowl. They use several hashtags on the post where they can be found locally, expanding the reach of the firm.

6. Social Media Platforms Serve as Search Engines

Social media platforms can also serve as valuable search engines especially with the robust search capabilities that platforms have. People can discover your:

  • Profile
  • Page
  • Content through the social media search

When typing in the term “Financial Planning,” many terms come up that relate, which include Twenty Over Ten clients, Kelly Financial Planning and Rand Financial Planning, showing the importance of optimizing your profiles for relevant keywords.

Financial Planning on facebook

When you are creating a social media page, make sure that you are using relevant keywords and content that will increase visibility.

7. Social Interaction Data Can Help Improve SEO Content

Marketers should use their brand’s social communities as a sounding board to test different pieces of content. -HARIS KARIM, MAB

When search engines are ranking content, some of the following that they take into account are:

  • Click-through rates
  • Bounce Rate
  • Time spent on the page
  • Time spent on the site

So, when you are trying to see the type of content that will help your site attain more traffic and rank higher, use the social interaction data that you have received in order to create a stronger website plus you can find out the topics that you should be using to create content for your site. It can help you to better determine the type of content that your audience wants to receive based on interactions that you got on your social media platforms.

8. Social Data Can Help to Identify Your Audience

With social media, you can more easily interact with prospects and, in turn, this can help you to identify your audience better. You can start to understand more about what they are looking for, their pain points, online behavior, etc. From there, you can figure out the types of keywords that you should be using in your content to increase visibility and drive more traffic to your site.

While it’s great to continuously create content for your advisor website if you know the types of keywords and content that you should be creating that will help out your specific niche, then this will make a world of difference for your online presence.

Wrapping It Up

We hope that this has helped to show you just how important social media is for your firm’s overall SEO rankings. While social media is fun and has brought people closer and helped them to feel more connected throughout quarantine, it goes beyond that. And remember that strong social media platforms and higher SEO rankings all start with great content, so make sure you are creating social content that connects with your audience and ultimately drives more traffic and qualified leads to your advisor website.

Related: What Do I Post on Social Media to Get Engagement?