What effect do you think your website has on your social media marketing strategy? If you haven’t optimized your site for social, you haven’t done everything you can to optimize social media engagement. Without a prime social media strategy that includes your website and content marketing efforts, you miss out on traffic, SEO value, and a healthy lead funnel. Here’s a crash course in how your website should complement your SMM strategy.
Why prioritize social media optimization on your website?
Google algorithms are updated frequently, which creates more advanced content discovery. Social media shares naturally create higher website traffic, but as search engines evolve, social media engagement becomes increasingly valuable for search rank. So, a social-friendly website is a critical element for online success.
A website that isn’t fully-optimized for social runs the risk of losing traffic, SEO value, and search rank to competitors in the same niche. The use of a social-friendly website, along with the right tools and add-ons, eliminates that risk.
What makes a website “social-friendly?”
There are specific elements that make a website social-friendly:
- Responsiveness
- Social media sharing buttons
- Page follow buttons
- Schema markup for rich pins
- Customizable meta descriptions
- Featured images
- Social media commenting
- Social media registration/ login
Creating a social-friendly website
Your website theme should allow you to access and/ or add all of these features. You can build your own or install a pre-built theme inside your content management system (CMS). Using a trusted, responsive, customizable, social-ready theme will eliminate the need for excessive coding and advanced alterations to the structure of your site.
With social-ready themes, you will be able to easily add the elements required for optimization. So, choose a regularly updated theme hosted on a dependable CMS that will simplify the process.
TIP: Before making a decision, look into which social media add-ons and tools are available with the system(s) you’re considering.
Once you’ve setup your website, it’s time to enhance it for the ultimate social media experience. If you’re not a web developer or a search engine optimization professional, you may not know the meanings of some of the above terms. Fortunately, the information age presents us with a solution for nearly every problem. Where social media integration is concerned, add-ons and plugins are your solution.
#Hashtags?! On your website? Yes.
Most people still believe that hashtags are only for social media posts. This is false. Including hashtags in your meta descriptions and image alt text on your social optimized website pages has it’s perks; if you do this, search engine snippets and automated social posts will include them. Effectively leveraging hashtags within your website actually increases your odds of ranking with search engines.
This is where to use hashtags within your website:
- On page titles
- Within your content
- In page descriptions
- In image alt text
Test out your own #hashtag techniques to see what works for your brand.
Be Ready to Sell On-Site and via Your Social Media Platforms
In 2018, you don’t just use social media to generate traffic – you can actually sell products through Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram, and more. One of the simplest ways to make sure you can streamline sales without losing track of your product stock is through an inventory management app. Be sure to choose one that integrates with the social commerce channels you plan on using.
Conclusion
Now you know why it’s crucial to optimize your website for social. Use a social-friendly theme and add the necessary elements for optimization. Make sure you research your available options before choosing new software or tools for your site. Use hashtags to improve your search engine and social media results. Do you have any other social media optimization tips to add to this list? Share them in the comments.
Author’s Bio:
Ashley Kimler currently works with the superstar team at Heroic Search in Tulsa as a content marketing sorceress writer. She is certified in New Media Communications, Inbound Marketing, and SEO 2.0, and has a decade of hands-on experience with online business promotions. If you are interested in her future adventures, follow @ashleykimler on Twitter.