What is Local SEO?
Part 5: Social Media & Local SEO
How Google My Business can help your small business grow.
By JD Hilditch
How Do Social Media & Local SEO Interact?
This is part 5 of our 7 part series on “What is Local SEO?”. We’ve previously gone over the importance of Google My Business listings, covered the technical aspects to look out for when optimizing your website, and the impact reviews have on your business. Here, I’ll focus on how social media signals play a part in your local results and how those impact your website search ranking.
If you have not caught on yet, there are multiple ways in which a business can leverage Local SEO in their favor.
However, in general, social media is not one of the main ways to increase your local search rankings. We will keep this piece nice and short to get you up to speed on what it CAN do.
Primarily, I will focus on the “basics” of optimizing your social profiles so that they remain consistent.
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Every local business should start their social optimizations by ensuring that a business profile is claimed for the following:
Even if you do not plan on using all of these platforms, it is important to claim them so you have control over the information. The last thing you want is for a potential customer to be searching for your business and find inaccurate information or the wrong business.
Another benefit of claiming these social pages is that it allows you to create easy inbound links and citations on your website. By linking your website back to these social sites you are creating connections between your site and other known internet sources.
1. Logo and Cover Photos
2. Brand Consistency
Next up, to ensure that Google will associate your business with each of the social networks, maintain consistency with your business name. For example, if your company name is Voyage Media Works. Each and every social page should have that as your business name. Do not shorten it to “VMW”, “Voyage Media”, or any other short phrase version. These should match your Google My Business page as well.
After that, add in any location data for your business if available. Even just adding a city and state will help localize your page to the surrounding area.
*All your social media profiles should match the information displayed on your Google My Business Profile.
The only social media platform to have an agreement with Google to see into the social platform is Twitter. What this means is that while a strong social media marketing plan is still a key component of your business and in engaging with your customers, it will not create a direct impact on your search rankings.
One of the few ways it might impact your search rankings is by having your social media profile linked to other websites. Since you should have your own website embedded somewhere in your profile this will raise your domain authority (part of Google’s search ranking algorithm) slightly; however, not enough to make a major impact.
*Link to website via Facebook
1. Viral Posts
Now, there is something to say about having a viral social media post and even social media ads that link back to your website. With a viral post, you will most likely get increased traffic to your website and additional links from articles that will increase your domain authority. Social media ads will link back to your website as well. However, keep in mind that this traffic isn’t really occurring organically. (Organic traffic is traffic that you have not paid for and comes from a customer clicking on your website link in the search results.)
Your true focus on social media should be on engaging and interacting with your customers via interesting and useful content. Promotions, polls and conversations that increase the trust in your brand is what social media is built around. You can promote your website on these platforms to a certain extent, but your Local SEO factors will come from different areas.
- Social media does not generally play a role in your local search rankings
- However, it is vital to have these platforms with your correct business information
- Keep branding, links, taglines, and information the same across each platform
- Primarily utilize social media as a way to engage and interact with your customer base
Learn More
Additional parts in the Local SEO for small business series.
- What is Local SEO?
- Local SEO & Google My Business
- How to Optimize your Website for Local Search
- How do Google Review Help My Business?
- Social Media & Local SEO
- Local Citations
- In-bound links – What are they and how to get them
Want to Rank Locally?
Voyage Media Works offers Local SEO services that cover all the topics here. Our team works with businesses to get their listings and website optimized.
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