Why Social Media Manager Needs to Know about SEO

A social media manager has to be Jake of all Trades. Apart from having expertise in handling social media platforms, social media managers are also required to have multifaceted expertise in various digital marketing avenues. For instance, developing engaging and search engine-friendly content, carrying out keywords research, and implementing search engine optimization practices. 

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the building block of every successful social media and internet marketing campaign. Having a depth understanding of SEO helps social media managers and brands in many lucrative ways. It allows the managers to gauge the online consumer’s intent and then tailor a more targeted marketing solicitation.  

 

Customer’s intent and SEO are interlinked concepts. However, if social media managers do not bring these pieces of the puzzle altogether in an accurate way, it may bring about no return on investment (ROI). The search engine optimization process begins with the notion— either to sell services and products online or to optimize company and brand websites to attain maximum exposure on the search engine result page. Either way, the main goal of or an SEO-backed social media marketing strategy is to increase user engagement, ramp up impressions, and of course maximize the rate of conversions for the business. 

 

Content Mapping 

 

i)                   Understanding the Keyword Research Process 

ii)                 SEO Role in Creating Targeted Campaigns

iii)              Engaging Content Creation 

iv)               Reach Out to Mobile Users 

v)                 Watch Out for Rivals  and Competition

 

Without further ado, let’s dive in to the content to explain why social media managers need to know about Search Engine Optimization. 

 

1.    Understanding the Keywords Research Process 

 

The journey of search engine optimization begins with keyword research. Careful keyword research allows your business to reach out to the right audience organically. The term keyword is pretty much self-explanatory. Keywords are the words and phrases people come to type into search engine browsers against their queries when they look for solutions. 

 

There were plenty of tools used for conducting keyword research. The most frequently used tool for keyword research is Google Keyword Planner that allows you to find the right money keywords for your brand to increase revenues and awareness. 

 

Keyword research can be tricky at times when there is steep competition. That’s why many businesses usually, hire SEO Services providers for identifying accurate keywords that bring in more traffic, increase conversion rates, and more qualified leads.  

 

While we are at it, let’s dust off the undeniable role of the keyword research process a little more that may allow social media managers to realize the importance of SEO. 

 

·       Keyword Research Role in Identifying Customer’s Intent

 

Customer intent is a widely debated topic among search engine optimization professionals. It tells us about the end-users behaviors, intentions, and motivations when they come to visit a website. 

 

Identification of the end-users motivation is a key factor that leads you to the right audience. Let’s assume, a visitor comes to type in various kinds of quires in the search engine browser bar. For instance “Best SEO Company in Dubai or Best barbershop in Dubai city”, gives the idea that the visitor has arrived with some commercial intents. He may likely purchase the service or product right away or in the soon future.  

 

Keywords with a suffix like best, affordable, cheap etcetera indicate the end-users intentions. Therefore incorporating such keywords and phrases in social media posts, helps turn over more traffic to the company site. Based on the end-users-intent, keywords are further categorized into three classes listed below. 

 

i)                   Informational Intent: Visitors with informational search intents are often looking for seeking some information. We surf the internet with informational intent on daily basis. It could be information related to weather, information about SEO, learning a recipe, or want to read any topic of interest. The search engine knows such intent and directs traffic to the relevant site. 

 

Informational search quires often, but not necessarily, contain suffixes or prefixes like; 

 

·       Information

·       How to

·       Best way to

·       Why and What 

 

ii)                 Transactional Intent: People today buy stuff online and browse the internet to find the best purchase. Visitors with transactional intents are the ones who are likely to make a purchase decision.  

 

Keywords with transactional intent often contain words, For instance

·       Buy

·       Cheap 

·       Deal

·       Discount

·       Product Names

 

iii)              Navigational Intent: People with navigational intents want to visit a specific site, such as Twitter, Facebook. Such visitors on the internet with navigational quires are considered direct traffic. 

 

iv)               Commercial Search Intent: Typically many people plan to make an online purchase in the soon future and come to the internet for doing some research. These people usually add items to carts and wish to purchase later on. Visitors with commercial intent are then usually reached out with remarketing tactics to see if they are to be converted to conversions. 

 

·       Keywords Research Role in Paid Marketing Tools  

 

In paid marketing modules like Pay Per Click (PPC) or Cast per Click (CPC), the keywords research process still sticks around. Mostly paid marketing tactics aim to target specific market segments and keywords having high search volume. If your business provides services locally, keyword research with a tool like Google Keyword Planner helps a lot. It helps social media managers and SEOs to identity which keyword people use the most against the kind of services or products a business offer. 

 

2.   SEO Role in Creating Targeted Campaigns 

While creating content, posts, and marketing campaigns, keyword research comes in very handy. When keywords of high search volume are placed in the content, it helps driving in more traffic, followers, and sales boost. Thus, social media managers need to know how to reach out to target audiences with keywords of high volume against a product or service. 

 

Since SEO is a non-paid marketing technique, however, if you are running paid campaigns, you would still need to take advantage of the keyword research process. 

 

3.   Engaging Content Creation 

The key responsibility of social media managers is to keep the audience engaged and retained them by constantly uploading actionable content and creative posts. Content is the king as they speak, and its effective use can go a long way in the success of every business or brand. Creating engaging content typically includes uniqueness, relevance, and speaking directly to the mind's audience in a creative way that triggers actions at the users-end. 

 

Content can be of many types, such as a written post containing a piece of information, or visual content such as videos, infographics, and pictures. Engaging contents often get viral, increases user engagement, boosts impressions, sales, and increasing awareness. 

 

4.   Reach Out to Mobile Users 

These days, everyone accesses social media platforms and browse the internet on their smartphones and tablets. Whether it is Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter, we all have it installed on smartphones. As per recent stats, more than 60% of people search on their smartphones. From a marketing and SEO perspective, the website has to be mobile devices friendly as well the content must be fully optimized across all devices. Furthermore, it is essential that the brand or company website loads past enough; otherwise it alienates users if the site is not loading quickly. Users usually tend to bounce to other search results on search engine pages when your site speed is lethargic.  

 

As social media manager, you have to be mindful of it so that you don’t miss out on this huge market segment. Content that is not only search engine friendly but also devices-friendly is highly important to keep this big pool of audience engaged.  

 

Furthermore, different marketing tactics are used across various social media platforms for grabbing more visitors. Instagram handlers often incorporate tags and hash-tags to reach their brand voices out to the broader community. 

 

 

5.   Watch Out For Rivals and Competition 

As a savvy SEO and social media manager, it is imperative to do competitors’ analysis and sees what they are up to outrank your business or brand. There are so many SEO tools that allow you to analyze your immediate competitor’s position of strengths and weakness, and reconsider your strategy. Being a social media manager, learning about key SEO tools like MOZ and Ahrefs helps to provide you a clear picture of the competitor’s backlinks, and keywords they rank for. Some other widely used software for SEO professional includes: 

 

·       Google Analytics

·       Google Search Consul 

·       Ubersuggest

·       SEO Profiler 

·       SEO Workers Analysis Tool

·       Woo Rank 

 

As a social media manager and having a sound understanding of SEO best practices as well as the application of SEO tools and software could help to devise a promising growth-led marketing campaign.   

 

Bottom Line 

As a social media manager (SMM), it is important to have in-depth knowledge of search engine optimization and its key role in social media marketing campaigns. 

 

Having a sound understanding of SEO as a social media manager is vital. It allows to create search engine-friendly content and to reach out to the right audience by having a complete understanding of the keyword research technique.  

 

Kicking off with a good understanding of the keywords research process helps social media managers to design more targeted campaigns aimed at ramping up sales and creating awareness and engage the social media community.