26 Sept 2024
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Boost Your Social Media Visibility: SEO Strategies for Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, & Pinterest
Search engine optimisation (SEO) has existed since the dawn of search engines themselves. As soon as website owners realised they could optimise their content to outrank competitors, the race to the top of search results began.
As the internet, and later, social media—evolved, SEO best practices evolved along with it.
Initially, the average social media user was not concerned with SEO when creating content or accounts. The SEO specialists focused more on optimising websites, as social media was less commercially driven, and businesses concentrated their marketing budgets on improving their Google and Bing rankings, which were seen as critical for success.
However, in recent years, SEO has increasingly integrated social media strategies. Suddenly, SEO for social media has become mainstream for business, creator, AND personal accounts. It's no longer the domain of experts alone—it's being discussed and applied in Reels, Shorts, carousels, and even on platforms like Threads.
If you're not already leveraging social SEO, now is the time to catch up as it's quickly becoming an essential part of any successful digital marketing strategy. This blog post will cover optimisation basics for Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Pinterest.
But first, an introduction to SEO & related terms.
What is SEO? Right. SEO stands for search engine optimisation. It’s the act of optimising content so that it ranks higher on any given search engine. Each search engine weighs keywords, backlinks, reviews, etc. differently so it’s important to understand what those are when developing an “SEO strategy”.
The goal of SEO is to improve a website's visibility and ranking in search engine results pages (SERPs). The objective is to attract more organic (non-paid) traffic by aligning the website's content, structure, and technical elements with the ranking algorithms of search engines like Google.
Two important concepts in this context are Domain Authority (DA) and Authority Score (AS):
Domain Authority (DA): This is a score (on a 100-point scale) developed by Moz that predicts how well a website will rank on search engines. Higher DA indicates a stronger website with more potential to rank higher. Optimising for SEO involves building backlinks from reputable sites (those with relatively high DA/AS scores), creating high-quality content, and ensuring the website has a solid technical foundation, which in turn increases the site's DA.
Authority Score (AS): This score, provided by tools like SEMrush, reflects a website’s overall quality and SEO strength based on several factors, including traffic, backlinks, and the overall trustworthiness of the site. A higher AS means a website is more likely to rank well in SERPs. Improving AS involves enhancing both the quality and quantity of backlinks, ensuring proper keyword usage, and maintaining a strong user experience.
Both DA and AS are used to measure the SEO strength of a website. The ultimate goal of SEO is to optimise these and other factors to improve rankings, increase visibility, and drive organic traffic, leading to better conversions and business growth. At House of Five Studio, we look at both DA and AS when building keyword and competitor strategies.
What is meant by “keywords”? Everyone and their mom talks about keywords on social media, but what is that referring to?
Keywords aren’t just a random list of words vaguely related to your industry, speciality, offering, etc. Keywords, also referred to as keyphrases, are words and phrases used in online content that help search engines find a website. You should have a concise list of priority keywords you’re targeting at any given time, including brand keywords.
You can determine these priority keywords using a keyword researching tool like our favourite, SemRush (try their keyword researching tool here for free). To determine which keywords to target, you should be looking at monthly search volume (MSV), keyword difficulty (KD), keyword intent (KI), and which keywords are being targeted by your competitors.
Keywords without strategy and KPIs won’t do much for you.
Now that we’ve explored DA and AS in relation to website SEO, you may be asking: what are we optimising when it comes to social media accounts and content? Unlike websites, social media profiles aren’t ranked on search engines by DA and AS. Instead, optimisation focuses on aligning with each platform’s specific algorithm.
With that in mind, we'll now shift our attention to social SEO and how these platform-specific algorithms impact your visibility across social networks.
Let’s breakdown best practice according to social media platform.
1. Facebook
The first thing you can and should do on any social media platform is optimise your profile. Similar to other platforms, on Facebook you should incorporate keywords into your profile description. You should also include a link to your website home page.
Use SEO-friendly descriptions. Similar to your bio, when crafting posts, include relevant keywords, especially for product or blog promotions. But do not keyword stuff! Search engines know when you’re adding too many variations of one keyword to a piece of short form content. So when incorporating keywords into content, read it and see if it flows naturally.
Engage with visual content. Generally, video content drives more engagement, which improves organic reach. So you should be posting video content AND engaging with it. That doesn’t mean you should toss out static and scrolling content. It means you need to determine what type of visual content engages your audience specifically and push that.
Leverage Facebook groups. Last but not least, join and engage in relevant groups to extend visibility. This is also an excellent way to establish industry authority.
2. Instagram
Hashtags! There is a HUGE debate on Instagram at the moment on the relevance of hashtags. Creators are pushing for social media users to throw them out and replace them with plain text keywords.
Guys, hashtags ARE keywords. They’re keywords following a hash mark. If you toss out hashtags, your throwing away potential reach. Hashtags were created for reach purposes and Meta has confirmed in their creator courses in recent months that their purpose hasn’t changed.
I don’t know who needs to hear this, but just because not using hashtags worked for one or two creators with viral content, does not mean it will work for you. This applies to just about anything, any trend, on social media.
Though hashtags aren’t out, they have changed in terms of best practice. When Instagram first gained popularity, you could add top ranking hashtags like #tbt and #selfiesunday to your post to reach a wider audience. Now, hashtags are about relevancy. Use post-relevant and industry-specific hashtags to increase discoverability.
Alt Text: Use Instagram’s alt text feature to describe your images for search engines. This applies to any search engine really but we don’t see enough creators and businesses using this feature on Instagram.
Not only is it more inclusive and engaging to a wider audience, search engines read your alt-text looking for keywords.
Engaging captions: Write SEO-friendly captions with keywords that resonate with your audience. There is no best practice, in regard to SEO, in terms of caption length. You’ll need to determine what works for you based on Instagram’s personalised professional dashboard feature.
Reels: At the moment, video content gets prioritised by Instagram's algorithm. You should focus on optimising their descriptions with relevant keywords. That’s really all you can do for Reels in terms of SEO.
3. LinkedIn
Keyword Optimisation: If you’re an individual, incorporate industry-specific keywords in your profile summary and job title. If you’re a business, do the same for your business profile.
You should also be incorporating keywords into your posts and comments. On LinkedIn, it’s your first three hashtags in any post that are weighted most heavily, so make those count.
Article Posts: Publish articles on LinkedIn using targeted keywords to rank well in searches. If given the opportunity, contribute to LinkedIn’s expert articles using your priority keywords.
Engage in Groups: Participate in niche groups where relevant discussions occur, driving traffic to your profile and website.
4. Pinterest
Keyword-Rich Descriptions: Again! Optimise pin descriptions with relevant keywords, and use clear, concise text that describes your content or product. Hashtags are less important on Pinterest. If you choose to include them in captions, limit them to your top keywords.
Alt Text: Include keywords in the alt text when uploading images to make them more discoverable.
Rich Pins: Use rich pins to display metadata directly on the pin, which provides extra context to users and improves SEO.
These practices will help enhance your visibility across platforms while driving organic traffic back to your site. Each platform’s SEO strategy varies slightly, but consistency and optimisation across your profiles are crucial.
If SEO isn't your thing, don't worry! There are plenty of professionals out there, like us, who can do the job. Whether you're after an SEO audit of your site or ad campaigns or you are ready to work on your keyword strategy, we're here to help.
