Social SEO: Optimising your channels for maximum reach

Social SEO is how you optimise your social channels and content to expand your reach and visibility in search results.

Each platform has unique best practices, and we're here to guide you through tips, insights, and 'how-tos' tailored to Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook, X, TikTok, and YouTube.

Learn how to effectively use hashtags, keywords, posting schedules, and more, to ensure your content stands out and reaches a broader audience.

For a comprehensive understanding of what Social SEO is, its importance, and essential strategies, don't forget to check out our previous LinkedIn newsletter - '8 things you need to know about Social SEO'.

Optimising Instagram with Social SEO

Use 3-5 Relevant Hashtags in Your Captions

Instagram recommends using #hashtags in your captions.

By incorporating relevant keywords, the platform will understand the context of your content and overall theme, therefore having a higher chance of recommending it to new audiences.

Here are some tips:

• Use hashtags relevant to your target audience.
• Limit your use of hashtags to 3-5 per post for optimal reach.
• Combine well-known and niche hashtags to increase discoverability (ideally one or two popular hashtags and two or three niche hashtags).
• Include hashtags in your caption, not in the comments.

Avoid Watermarks and Logos on Instagram Reels

Instagram is reducing visibility for Reels with watermarks or logos from other social media platforms like TikTok.

Reels with watermarks and logos will be recommended to fewer users, affecting your visibility, and will be ranked negatively.

To avoid this, use original content without these marks and why not get creative with how you incorporate themes across different social channels.

Write keyword-rich alt text

Alt text helps Instagram read and understand the context of your published images and videos.

Including detailed descriptions of your images and videos helps with accessibility, and relevant keywords can help your SEO efforts.

To add alt text:

1. After writing a caption, scroll down and select “Advanced settings”.
2. Under Accessibility, click “Write alt text” and add a detailed description, including your keywords.

Use subtitles and tag your location

Instagram has auto-generated captions, which is great for accessibility, but using subtitles also means your target keywords will appear onscreen which benefits you when Insta is trying to identify how to rank your content.

Tagging your location can make your content appear on Instagram Maps, aiding local business searches, and giving you extra visibility.

Find the right days and times to post

Posting when your followers are most active will organically increase the visibility of your post.

According to CoSchedule, the best times for B2C businesses to post on Instagram are:

Top five best hours: 9:00am, 8:00am, 10:00am, 12:00pm, and 3:00pm

Worst five hours: 2:00am, 3:00 am, 4:00 am, 11:00 pm, and 5:00am

Top three best days: Wednesdays, Fridays, and Tuesdays

Top three worst days: Sundays, Saturdays, and Thursdays

However, this will, of course, depend on your followers - you know their behaviour and patterns better than anyone.

With the detailed analytics features on Instagram, you can identify a posting schedule that works best for you.

Optimising LinkedIn with Social SEO

Apply SEO best practices to your ‘About’ Section

The keywords you use in the ‘About’ Section will be key in attracting the right people through search.

With relevant keywords in mind, generate an engaging overview that incorporates everything users/followers may want to find out.

For example:

1. A brief introduction to your business, describing who you are.
2. What products/services do you offer?
3. What makes your brand different?
4. What future do you aim to create and how?

Or if it's for your personal profile:

1. What's your mission and what are you interested in?
2. What industry experience, expertise, skills and education do you have?
3. What's your current role?
4. What are your accomplishments?
5. What's your proudest achievement?

Post SEO-driven long-form content

LinkedIn is boosting the visibility of articles and newsletters by incorporating extra updates and features to encourage more users to create their own.

According to the platform, there has been a 59% increase in the number of users publishing newsletter articles and a 47% increase in engagement on newsletters.

These articles and newsletters are also crawled by search engines, so this is a key consideration when drafting content and it's important to feed in as many relevant keywords as possible.

It's also worth noting - long-form and SEO-driven content has a higher chance of showing up in searches.

Optimising Facebook with Social SEO

Use SEO-driven keywords

The key to Facebook SEO is to optimise your company page with relevant keywords to make your page easier to find in search results.

It also makes your business appear more credible and trustworthy.

Try to incorporate keywords in your:

• Company name (if possible)
• URL
• About section
• Social posts

Here are some additional ways you can use social SEO on Facebook

• Add accurate contact info to increase the chances of your page appearing for local searches.
• Post regularly to show that your page is active and encourage engagement.
• Post diverse content such as text, images, videos and Facebook Lives to keep followers interested.
• Encourage positive reviews as they appear in the search results.

Optimising X with Social SEO

Incorporate relevant keywords

When it comes to optimising your presence on X and boosting your visibility in search results, integrating relevant keywords is crucial.

Start by completing thorough keyword research to identify terms and phrases that your audience is likely to search for. You can then implement these into your wider strategy, incorporating these keywords into your posts, hashtags, and alt text.

Premium users can also leverage the 4,000-word character limit. Don't feel that you have to use this to the max every time, but the extra headroom allows you to provide more detailed descriptions and explanations within your posts, giving you more room to naturally include relevant keywords and provide valuable content to your audience.

Post high-quality content

The X search algorithm places a lot of focus on engagement making it essential to consistently post high-quality content that users will resonate and interact with.

To stand out on X, focus on creating content that adds value to your audience's feed.

This includes sharing informative articles, captivating visuals, entertaining videos, and engaging polls to increase your engagement rates.

Optimising TikTok with Social SEO

Keywords are 'key'

According to Google's internal 2022 data, over 40% of users use TikTok as a search engine, and all of the information you include in a TikTok video can affect its ranking, including captions, hashtags and music.

TikTok favours videos containing relevant keywords in their titles and descriptions, and videos that cover trending topics.

If you can, you should say your keyword out loud within the video itself in the first five seconds to get TikTok's attention and include it as an in-text overlay on the screen.

Saying your keyword aloud means it’s also included in the automatically generated closed captions - increasing your visibility further.

Jump on trends

Create content using trending sounds, styles, and filters.

Explore different trend types and experiment with what your audience might enjoy.

Track your success by using insights and media monitoring tools to identify what type of content your audience engages with the most.

Create sharable content

TikTok's algorithm prioritises content based on user preferences and engagement rather than followers or popularity so your content always has a chance of going viral.

You should create videos that encourage users to favourite and share your videos as these are key user interactions which will help boost your profile visibility.

Your audience will be more likely to favourite and share certain types of content, so take the time to experiment with it.

Optimising YouTube with Social SEO

Add a transcript

A quick win for YouTube SEO is to add a transcript.

Transcripts are crawlable, meaning you can increase the chance of ranking on YouTube for specific keywords.

By doing this, you're also making your videos more accessible, providing a better user experience for everyone.

Use keywords wherever you can

Some top tips to do this are:

• Incorporate your primary keyword or phrase into the name of your video file - i.e. Social-SEO-Tips.mov).
• Include keywords in the title - i.e. How to implement Social SEO into your social media strategy).
• Say your keywords out loud in the video and turn on the captions.

Quick tips to support your SEO

Investing time in your social media profiles can yield BIG SEO BENEFITS.

Remember to:

• Fill out your social profiles with as many details as possible.
• Integrate keywords into your profile and posts.
• Point links back to your site.
• Post high-quality content that people want to see on their feeds.

These simple yet effective strategies will help boost your visibility online and drive more traffic to your website.

Let us know if you have any more social SEO tips that have worked for you in the comments!