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Elements of Social for SEO

There are two main factors of influence:

Quality of Shares

SEO marketing and social media marketing go hand-in-hand because the goal is to tell Google how great you are. If people are out there sharing your content and spreading the reach further, what does that tell Google?

It tells them people like what you have to offer, and you’re providing great value to people. This is good for Google.

Number of Shares

The secondary social metric is the number of shares. Landing a viral hit is every marketer’s dream, but it is overrated. There are a lot of tips and hacks out there, but the truth is a little simpler: Make awesome content.

That means different things to different people. For example, in the marketing space, I’ve found long-form content almost always outperforms short-form. Now, consider celebrity gossip sites for a second. No one wants to slog through a whole bunch of words. The opposite is almost true here. Their audience wants something succinct with a lot of drama. They want more videos and images with less text.

This is the bread and butter of sites like Buzzfeed and TMZ. They draw you in with these big headlines that make something sound way more exciting than it is. How many people do you think share that without even reading the article?

Probably a lot.

To get shares in the SEO game, you simply need to create awesome content that people like to read, on a site where people are reading. That’s again why I said before how important it is to guest post on sites with an actual readership. If you’re guest posting somewhere with no readers, do you think the post will get any shares?

3 Tips to Improve Your Social Sharing

Here are three tips to get more shares on social media:

  • Create great content: Creating the best quality content is the way to get shares, plain and simple. Google spends plenty of hours and more money than you can fathom preventing people from gaming the system. It’s a simple concept, really. It’s an exchange of value. Everything in business is an exchange of value, and the same goes for SEO marketing. Provide valuable content to Google, and Google will reward you.

 

  • Be consistent: Consistency is extremely important in SEO and social media. If you post once every three months, not only will social media algorithms hate you, there won’t be anyone around to share the content because it’s been so long since your previous post. Posting consistently on social media requires you to have new content to share on a regular basis as well. It all goes full circle.

 

  • Make it easy: There are many plugins to promote social sharing, so you need to use something on your site. If the reader can’t figure out a simple way to share your post on social media, they’ll likely move on.

Google’s EAT Guidelines

As you evaluate your SEO practices, you can analyze what Google uses to train human content evaluators. See, in addition to a massive amount of algorithms, Google employs Quality Raters to improve the search engine experience for everyone.

Google explains in its evaluator guidelines that a high-quality page needs to possess a high level:

  • expertise
  • authority
  • trustworthiness

Or, as this set of guidelines is more commonly known, EAT.

Subjective review of what makes a piece of content display EAT depends on the topic, background of those posting, reputation of the website, and more. 

Though you may not have control over all of the factors from the get-go, keeping EAT in mind as you create content can help ensure your content is headed in that direction. 

4 Tips for Improving Your EAT Score 

  • Do Your Research: This may seem obvious, but the best way to truly portray expertise, authority, and trustworthiness is to share accurate information. Bring in expert interviews or guest posts, when you’re able to. Make sure that the information you are sharing is correct, in context of the topic and for the audience who will be reading it. Doing otherwise is the quickest way to score low with these criteria. 
  • Be Thorough: Now that you’re sure that your information is accurate, you’ll also want to make sure it’s comprehensive. Answering a question with a short or simplistic post can feel dismissive. In order to be seen as an expert, your content needs to leave the reader feeling satisfied and equipped. 

 

  • Speak to What You Know: When you are developing content for your website, stick with what you’re about as a brand. Avoid shiny object syndrome and getting lost in content that isn’t relevant to what your website is about. Sticking to your topic of expertise will help build your reputation as the place to go for information about that. 

 

  • Speak to Your Audience’s Need: On a similar note, you’re only going to be able to build trustworthiness and authority in the mind of a reader if you actually speak to the topic that readers are coming to read. What is it about the topic that they need to know about? What problems can you solve? There’s a difference between being able to speak in-depth on a topic because you know it so well and being able to teach it in ways that feel accessible and relevant. The latter will help readers actually see you as an authority and someone they can trust.

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