Published on November 11th, 2018 | by Sunit Nandi

SEO for Social Profiles

For sure, nearly everyone has a social media profile, either on Twitter, Facebook or Pinterest. Besides getting social and exploring fun on your social media account, you can use it to influence your SEO efforts positively. The benefits accrued from this either directly – where more people find your profile and visit your website, or indirectly are of immense significance to your social marketing efforts.

Just to remind you, social media channels have their own internal search engine such as Facebook Graph Search, which hugely relies on the information provided on your social media account profile. Therefore, if your profile is well defined, it will sure engage more with people all around.

Importance of SEO for Social Profiles

Search engine optimization is important for the following reasons;

Social media platforms have their own search engines that rate social media profiles. Users are more likely to click one of the top 5 search results. Take advantage of this and gain more visitors to your website by optimizing your profile.

SEO is good for social promotion of your website. Websites that can be easily found on Google and Yahoo are easier to promote on social platforms such as Facebook and Twitter.

SEO puts you ahead of your competition. For instance, if two websites are promoting the same service or selling the same thing, one with a more optimized profile is likely to have more clients and sales.

That said, below are some of the ways you can optimize two of the most common social media profiles for SEO.

Facebook Profile SEO

Like other websites, the importance of doing SEO for your Facebook profile cannot be ignored. Doing SEO for your Facebook profile not only raises awareness for your online venture but also increases your Google rankings, increases engagement resulting in increased offline sales.

In overall, to succeed in Facebook profile SEO, note the following;

Keep your “About” section to a maximum of 170 characters. In this text, you should include your website link.
Fill in all the required fields including the company mission, description, overview, contact info and basic info. Be sure to include keywords that you want to be associated with your brand when someone is searching online.
Get a good username for your page to get a friendly URL such as facebook.com/pagename
Link your Facebook page to your website
Update your page regularly either by adding posts from your website or sharing interesting posts and images.
Add as many fans as you can. The more the number of people following and sharing your page, the more the exposure of your posts.
Add Facebook like and share buttons to your website.

Twitter Profile SEO

Twitter is a good place to pitch your ideas and find targeted followers. Twitter followers often follow an account specifically because they are interested in the niche. However, many people make the mistake of hiding their identities and expect their accounts to get followers and visitors to their websites.

To have some gain in social media, there is a need to establish some trust between you and other users. The best way to do this is by showing your true identity and sharing interesting and valuable information. Therefore, having a quality photo and a good description makes it easier to get followers. When using Twitter, have in mind the following:

Optimize your title tag – the title tag always appears as follows – <Actual name> (Twitter username). You will need to use the correct anchor text, which is your name in this case to rank better.
Optimize Meta description – meta description may not be a true Google ranking factor but helps in ensuring that people get the right impression about you. Your Twitter bio is your Meta description, and should be optimized effectively.
Build followers, links and PageRank – Twitter automatically link your followers to your profile internally. Having higher-ranking followers can boost your page as well.
Keep a balance between the number of people you follow and those that follow you. Twitter doesn’t allow profiles to follow more than 2000 people with minimal followers.
Tweet frequently. The more you Tweet, the more the engagement rate and subsequent followers.
Twitter is not only about tweeting text. You can also include media items such as videos and photos to your tweets.
Make use of hashtags. Hashtags increase the engagement levels significantly.
Make yourself noticeable by the big players in your niche. To achieve this, follow people who follow them and retweet their messages occasionally.
Don’t overdo it. Just like SEO tools, overdoing this can be damaging to your profile. Whereas it is good to tweet frequently, avoid tweeting the same messages over and over. Try to post creative and useful content.

LinkedIn Profile SEO

LinkedIn has, over time established itself as the mainstream social media for business. Therefore, doing a good LinkedIn SEO is the first step to being discovered by industry professionals. Some of the tips and tricks of successful LinkedIn profile SEO include;

Fill out your profile completely – begin by filling out every field in your profile using descriptive keywords. The more info entered, the more searches you will appear.
Claim a custom URL – after editing your profile, get a nice and easy to remember URL that you can attach on your website or resume. Make sure that you use your full name in the URL.
Use keyword rich job titles – this might seem obvious but using keyword rich job titles can be advantageous. Don’t lie or embellish your achievements but be descriptive on what you have accomplished.
Use keyword rich titles for websites – you can enter a maximum of 3 websites and URLs in your LinkedIn contact information. Therefore, make sure that you use keyword rich anchor text for titles and URLs.
Share status updates regularly – make use of tools such as Hoot suite to update various social networks such as Twitter and Google+ simultaneously. Share your favorite quotes, thoughts and any other content you find on the web.
Maximize your LinkedIn membership – LinkedIn allows for members to join up to 50 LinkedIn groups. Join all the relevant groups, start posting and interacting with people regularly. Doing this will improve your search visibility as well as create new connects.
Blog directly on LinkedIn Pulse – you can post your blogs directly on LinkedIn Pulse. By doing this, your entire first level connections will be notified of the post. These posts are often highly SEO optimized for LinkedIn and Google.

You can apply this for both personal social media profiles and business pages. Making the most of SEO on LinkedIn is a recipe for new audiences, generates leads and build your social profile.

In Conclusion

Whereas there are many factors that negatively impact your SEO for social profile results, an obvious one is not optimizing your social media profile. As a company or business venture, you definitely want more people to find your brand.

By optimizing your profile, posting relevant content and observing all the basic rules of various social media platforms mentioned above, you will be creating multiple doorways for social media enthusiasts to learn about you and your business. Always ensure that your social profile is consistent with your website.

Tags: profiles, SEO, social, social media

About the Author

Sunit Nandi I'm the leader of Techno FAQ. Also an engineering college student with immense interest in science and technology. Other interests include literature, coin collecting, gardening and photography. Always wish to live life like there's no tomorrow.