Social Media SEO: 11 Ways To Optimise SEO Using Social Media
Is social media SEO really a thing, and should I be giving it more of a focus?
We already know that social media marketing is excellent for brand awareness, engagement, website referrals, and, when done right, low-cost conversions.
But what if I were to tell you that a carefully thought-out social media strategy could also leverage your SEO strategy?
Every word you tweet, every hashtag you post, and every YouTube video you share could lead to reaching every SEO dream for your business or marketing campaign.
The link between social media and SEO hasn’t always been clear-cut. Some argue about the impact social media can have on search engine rankings, while others are adamant that their Facebook profile is the key to their website’s success.
The question is? How do you optimise your SEO strategy using Social Media?
The fact is, along the consumer path to purchase, SEO is never quite enough. In all sales, not one channel is enough. An integrated, multi-level approach is always the most effective.
So, let’s deep dive into making sure your social media content is doing the very best it can to optimise your search ranking on engines such as Google.
Why SEO matters
Search has shifted massively since this post first went live. People still ‘Google’ things, but they also search inside TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, Reddit, and AI tools such as ChatGPT and Perplexity (and more). For younger users, TikTok and Instagram beat Google for food, travel, and lifestyle questions, while AI bots handle how-to queries and research. TikTok, once an endless scroll of mindless video, is now a major search engine.
That means SEO now extends across platforms. You need content that ranks in Google, content that answers questions inside social apps, and content that appears in AI summaries. Social media sits in the middle of all that as a ‘discovery’ landing point. Social media now surfaces inside Google itself. TikTok clips, Instagram posts, YouTube Shorts, X threads, and Reddit posts sit on page one for a growing share of queries. When your brand owns those results, you occupy far more real estate than a simple blue link. This does not come from raw like counts. It comes from content that matches search intent, earns embeds and links, and keeps people watching, reading, and sharing.
Let’s, for a second, imagine you’re new to the SEO party, and search optimisation makes as much sense as a marmite pasty.
Search Engine Optimisation is how you ensure your website pages show up in major search engines, such as Google, Bing & Yahoo. As SEO experts, we work to increase your organic visibility in the serps (Search Engine Results Pages) and increase your website traffic through many factors.
Estimates put Google at well over 8.5 billion searches per day, roughly 100,000 searches each second.
A growing share of those searches now end on the SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages) because AI Overviews, featured snippets, and other ‘rich’ results answer the question without a click.
Making sure your site comes up at the right time for the right people is the name of the game.
Can social media SEO affect Google’s ranking?
Social media now surfaces inside Google itself. TikTok clips, Instagram posts, YouTube Shorts, X threads, and Reddit posts sit on page one for a growing share of queries. When your brand owns those results, you occupy far more real estate than a simple blue link.
How high you appear in search results is determined by many ranking factors, with engines such as Google regularly crawling sites to assess relevance to your audience.
So, does social media impact how high your website ranks on Google?
The short, boring answer is no.
The longer, more complicated, but WAY more exciting answer is, yeah, it kind of does.
Though social media doesn’t directly influence Google ranking, active social profiles and engaging content do positively affect SEO.
Confused? Let’s dig a bit deeper.
Though Google confirms that social media is NOT a ranking factor, there is plenty of evidence that social signals – especially comments and shares – do affect a website’s ranking.
Lots of social activity often pairs with stronger rankings because shared content earns more links, more branded searches, and better engagement, so social activity works through classic SEO signals rather than just likes or follower counts.
This makes sense on many levels:
- Your content is being shared, increasing visibility (in SEO, links & visibility are key)
- Your social media includes quality backlinks to low bounce rate pages, such as blogs.
- Your social profiles are driving many clicks through to your site, thus increasing traffic.
- Increased brand recognition and reputation are driving more organic search traffic.
- Your content is bossing a hashtag (especially if you created it) and mirrors keywords you rank higher on your website too.
- Localised, micro-influencer social media engagement is boosting local SEO
- Continual sharing (in the case of viral) extends the lifespan of blog posts.
One point to remember: though Google is the kingpin of search (dominating at least 2/3 of search engine activity), other search engines, such as Bing, DO include social media as a direct ranking factor for SEO.
Bing’s guidance and independent testing both point to social engagement as a ranking signal for Bing. There is a smaller role than links and content depth, but it has a more direct influence on rank than Google.
Why Social Media is Not Ranked on Google
Why doesn’t Google consider social media profiles from Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, or Twitter when ranking a site?
As any good SEO expert knows, there are many ‘cheat’ practices worth avoiding when trying to rank high on Google.
The fact is, Google excludes follower and share counts as direct ranking factors and focuses on how people interact with pages across your website when ranking them. This is because we are now in a world where likes and follows can simply be bought.
Social media activity is also incredibly prolific with content; it’s simply impractical to imagine any search engine can keep track fast enough of how often you Tweet; on Instagram alone, there are 95 million posts daily! Pretty sure Google ain’t got time for that kind of crawling!
Truly, though, search engines crawl only a slice of social content due to platform restrictions, login walls, and sheer volume, so they have to rely on public content rather than every single Story or Reel out there.
How a Social Media SEO approach works
So, as we have found, social media – whilst not necessarily being ranked by Google directly – can improve your SEO through quality backlinks, increased brand awareness and making your content go further for longer.
This is largely down to 3 factors:
- Social Media IS Indexed
So, as we have found, social media – whilst not necessarily being ranked by Google directly – can improve your SEO through quality backlinks, increased brand awareness, and making your content go further for longer.
This is largely down to 3 factors:
- Social Media IS Indexed
Ok, we’ve established that search engines cannot keep track of every social media post. Facebook and other social posts appear for a large chunk of queries, and as of the 2026 rewrite, Google just started indexing Instagram pro accounts and will pull Reels and posts into web results.
Google also pulls public content from platforms such as YouTube, X, Reddit, TikTok, Facebook, and Instagram straight into search results, so social posts themselves often sit next to your site for brand and topic searches. So if you haven’t posted in ages, maybe it’s time to update!
To be honest, it’s messy, and there’s a lot of junk, but that leaves room for opportunity, right?
It will, however, index content that is super relevant to a search query, shared extensively, or referenced by many other profiles and websites.
Yes, that’s a tall order for your organic loo roll campaign, but it’s great to know if your super-soft loo roll video goes viral, your SEO will feel the hit too!
2. Social Media DOES build authority
Again, we know that building a successful business is more than just driving visitors to our website and waiting for the sales/bookings to roll in.
If search engines deem your site high value, you are considered to have authority. Whether you have a particular niche or are hyper-focused with your keywords, your quality social media content supports your SEO by proving you walk your talk.
Consistent social publishing that shows experience, expertise, and real humans behind the brand supports the E-E-A-T signals Google cares about on your main site, especially when other sites are linking back to you.
Again, this is a beautiful balance of visibility and backlinks. The more your content is viewed, shared and mentioned, the stronger your authority.
3. Social media brings the HUMAN into SEO
At this point it seems prudent to mention the robot in the room. AI summaries are still new, and often garbage. A good site structure can help you appear in those Gen AI searches.
AI summaries in Google now pull from a mix of web pages, news sites, and social content. Brands with strong communities, clear POV, and visible expertise gain more cited mentions, which feeds authority for your website overall.
We are geeks, yes. We love apps and stats and handy hacks that turn sad SEO into spectacular SEO!
But all the keywords and backlinks worldwide won’t cut the mustard unless a human-centric approach to digital marketing also supports it.
Bringing brand love, meaningful cross-business connections, and producing social media content that gets people genuinely talking (and sharing!) drives the RIGHT audience to your website faster than someone searching one of your keywords might.
Eleven ways to Optimise SEO using Social Media
Create to share
If you want your social media to increase your SEO ranking, create content with this goal in mind. Create eye-catching, thought-provoking, shareable content with quality links to increase visibility! Actively ask for shares in your content CTA is obvious but often missed. You are more likely to receive shares when you ask for them!
Posts that include a clear request for shares tend to win more reach than those that stay passive, especially on Reels, TikTok, and LinkedIn.
Optimise your bio
Ensure your social media profile copy is consistent across all platforms and carefully thought out to utilise keywords. Use hashtags sparingly on profiles such as X.
On Insta, utilise tools like Linktree, Beacons, or your own link hub page to keep key links in one place. Great when links in post don’t work. Social platforms want you on their sites not off them.
X’s own guidance and third-party studies now lean toward one or two relevant hashtags per post; posts without hashtags still travel via recommendations and content is now considered so don’t rely on a load of hashtags.
Keep social media content regular.
Know your platform and keep a regular, consistent content stream flowing. That means keeping fast-paced social like Twitter or Instagram stories posted several times a day, whilst Linkedin is updated a few times a week.
Think about format. Stories, Shorts, Reels, and TikToks get bigger reach. LinkedIn and long-form threads gain more when each post earns saves, comments, and returning visitors. Regular posting still matters, but depth and consistency across months move SEO outcomes.
Integrate your SEO strategy with your Social Strategy
Whatever your business size – whether you have a team of marketing magicians or are managing it all single-handled, make sure all strategies are talking. If your SEO goal this quarter is to drive sales for your new wooden-handled loo brush, build your social plan around all the ways you talk about a wooden-handled loo brush.
Simply put, every word uttered by your brand, whether it’s a website or an Instagram post, should be moving you toward the same outcome.
SEO Keywords and Hashtags
As mentioned above, when choosing your hashtags, marry them up with keywords already existing in your SEO plan. Treat hashtags like internal index labels for each platform. They help discovery inside TikTok, Instagram, X, and LinkedIn. The SEO lift comes when those posts send engaged visitors, links, and brand searches to your site. They aren’t keyword backlinks.
On TikTok and Instagram, captions, on-screen text, and spoken keywords drive search more than big hashtag lists
Keep it local
Google knows the importance of locality. After all, when looking for real-life service, we almost always want something on our doorstep. A Google My Business profile is an SEO must for any bricks and mortar or locally operated business.
Build a local element to your social media. Mention and engage with other local businesses, use your location in hashtags, tag your site in posts, and, if you are a brick-and-mortar business, encourage your customers to check in when they visit or buy things from you.
Make it move
Using video content posted on big SEO-friendly sites like YouTube will leverage your social media content on search engines. Shorts now rank alongside long-form video and web pages for many queries, so clips that answer specific questions often show up directly in Google search as well as inside YouTube
Build a Social media feed into your website.
We all know it’s crucial to build your website structure for SEO. Social should not be forgotten here.
A live social media feed not only teases web visitors into your community (thus aiding in building brand love and engagement). If you have the right website markup, Google can read social feeds like a regular HTML page of a website, so there is an opportunity for improving your ranking in the process.
- Smash Balloon is the one of the best social media feeds plugin for WordPress. It’s easy to use and offers powerful features to show social content on your website.
Avoid treating a social feed as a replacement for blog posts. Search still prefers well-structured, on-page content for most competitive queries. Let your social work as freshness and proof of activity.
This is a mega pro for those of you who don’t have lots of time for regular blog posting, as the social feed essentially keeps your website flowing with ‘new’ content.
Build community & conversation around SEO.
I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again, folks! Social media is only effective when you make it social. Just in the same way, SEO is a fluid process of regular check-ins, so too, social media can’t simply be scheduled.
Be present. Engage in conversation, follow the heck out of your SEO keyword hashtags, be the first to arrive when your area of work is trending, and don’t be afraid to start interesting debates that get people chatting. By being active on social media, you can make the keywords you rank highest on something people are actively searching for.
Brand-led conversations around topics and keywords help you dominate social search surfaces such as TikTok search, Instagram Explore, Reddit threads, and YouTube comments, which then feed brand searches and link opportunities.
Team up with micro-influencers
Bah, I’m a bit of a Scrooge regarding influencers; it’s true. Despite time and time again seeing brands succeed on social with a bit of help from the latest non-celeb or sports personality, it can sometimes feel icky if a partnership seems paid for.
After all, we’re a pretty down-to-earth bunch and like to keep it accurate.
That being said, I do LOVE meaningful team-ups with micro-influencers – those bossing it in our area of expertise with an organically engaged audience and a great authority on search.
As we have seen above, authority and relevant backlinking underpin the key to improving your SEO with social media. So, what better way to do that than guest blogs, joint giveaways, featured Podcasts, or simply asking your peers to share relevant content with their audience?
As it is often known, social marketing is simply a free and audience-focused approach that benefits all involved and builds actual authority for your brand.
Tip: Use your SEO keywords as hashtag searches on profiles like Twitter and Instagram to find those dominating your area, then delve deeper into the smaller influencers (usually with 800-2500 followers) to find the micro-influencers.
Prioritise creators whose content already ranks in social search for your topics. Their videos and posts often show in the top results on TikTok and Instagram before any web page appears.
Optimise for social search across TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, and X
Search bars inside social apps now act like mini-search engines. Think about captions, on-screen text, spoken words, and alt text like title tags and H1s on your website.
Use the phrases people actually type into TikTok and Instagram, then use these exact phrases in short videos, carousels, and threads.
Feed AI answer engines with proof and clarity
Google’s AI Overviews, Bing Copilot, ChatGPT, Perplexity and a myriad of new similar tools pull information directly from web pages, social posts, and creator content.
When those connect directly to in-depth pages on your site, you increase your chances of both citation and click when users move from a summary to a trusted source. Use social content as that layer of proof that you do exactly what it says on the tin.
“In 2026, the line between ‘social’ and ‘SEO’ looks thin. Social posts rank in Google. Short-form video outranks blog posts for plenty of queries. Meanwhile, AI products are busy sraping and summarising everything.
So the best strategy is to: decide the questions you want to address, build answers on your site, then flood (or trickle, whatever floats your boat) social channels with human, on-brand content that points back to those themes. Phew!
I know what you’re thinking. If only a digital marketing agency could take on my SEO and social media for an integrated approach!
We can audit your website and social media, suggest changes or take on managing it all so you can get back to running your business the way you do best.
