How Do I Optimize My Businesses' Social Media Profiles For Search Engines?

Typically, when people consider SEO, they immediately think about how to ensure their website ranks well in the search engine results pages (SERPS). While this is certainly of the utmost importance, many companies overlook the importance of optimizing social media profiles for search engines. After all, if your team puts in a significant amount of time crafting posts, you want them to be found. In a Kissmetrics blog post, "5 Things You Need To Know About Social Media and SEO" the author wrote that "Social channels can feel more personal than webpages, and they're a great way to get a sense of a company's personality off the bat" (Source).  In fact when people are researching a company they don't know much about, they typically goes to their social accounts, so if "a social account shows up at the top of the search results, they are  just as likely to click on it as they would be to click on their website.

This post provides an overview for how you can make sure your company's Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn profiles are properly optimized for search.

Basic Optimization For Facebook

Facebook continue to be an important area of focus for many company's social media marketing efforts. Companies still overlook the basics of optimizing their Facebook page, even though the process is relatively straightforward. First, make sure that you include your official company name for the main name of your Facebook page, as search engines will inevitably pull the main name as the page title tag. Additionally, the "About" area of your Facebook page acts as the meta description for your page, so it will appear in search results directly below the page name. This is an ideal opportunity to describe your page with some targeted keywords (although you only have roughly 140 characters to get your point across). Finally, it's important that you work in target keywords for each of your new posts, although you certainly don't want to go overboard.

Optimizing A Twitter Profile

Twitter is another widely used (by individuals and businesses) but rarely optimized social media platform. Again it's pretty simple to optimize your profile, as you should mainly focus on the page title tag (your Twitter name), meta description (your Twitter's bio section). Additionally, you can add a link to your website,following the bio section, which is important if you want to drive traffic to your fledgling site. Again, it's important to to work in the use of targeted keywords, though not at the expense of your message.

There are a few other steps to take to make sure your tweets are optimized as well. For instance, when you are tweeting a link that you hope will be retweeted, it's important that you keep the description as short as possible. The simple reason behind this is that in search engine results, the heading only fits a small part of the tweet (approximately 30-40 characters) Therefore, it's crucial to place your keywords at the beginning of your tweet so that it's not cut off by Google's search summary.

Increase LinkedIn SERP Visibility

LinkedIn has experienced massive growth in the past decade, transforming into a network where professionals communicated and do business online. Ultimately, your LinkedIn presence, like your businesses' website, represents your brand.

One of the most essential ways to improve your company's position on LinkedIn's search results is to fill out your profile completely, as this will give LinkedIn further opportunities to identify search-related keywords in your profile. If you are unsure of whether or not you have filled out your profile completely, there's no need to worry, as LinkedIn provides a useful tracker in each profile that shows how much you have completed (on a percentage basis).

The posts on your company LinkedIn will show up in search results, whether it's web search or searches performed on LinkedIn. Fortunately, if you have optimized your website correctly, you have already identified your target keywords. Reuse some of that research, but also keep in mind that here may be keywords that are more relevant for users on LinkedIn. For instance, since LinkedIn users are more sophisticated than users on other social media channels (this isn't an attack), you may want to target keywords that are more industry-specific. Remember: similar to the principles of organic search, authentic and original high quality content reigns supreme. 

If you have any specific questions regarding best practices for optimizing company social media profiles, feel free to contact us, as we would be happy to assist you.