Marrying SEO & Hashtag Strategy: Simple Tips to Maximize your Content for the Long Term
If a tree falls in the woods, but no one is around to hear it... You know how this one goes! For the digital age, we find ourselves asking: if a post goes live, but hasn’t been optimized, does it make an impact?
Without optimized content, you’re pretty much shouting into the void. But how can you cross-optimize? Hot take: hashtags are the SEO strategy of the social media world, and they don’t stop there. If you’re not syncing your SEO keywords with your social media hashtags, you may as well be setting your content adrift.
Let’s do a quick refresher: SEO keywords are phrases that describe your content and align with queries your audience might be searching for. Using keywords to optimize your content shows Google that your content is relevant to readers searching for those queries. Similarly, hashtags help increase your social media content exposure by showing your post to users searching for that subject. See the similarity?
This is also a good time to remind you that your Instagram is just as much a webpage as your website, meaning applying SEO strategy to your social pages ensures that Google also applies those pages to its index when suggesting your content to its users.
Creating a consistent 360 strategy has a lot to do with voice, and voice is reliant on what kinds of words you’re using. It’s easier than you think to marry your SEO and hashtag strategies- as easy as sitting down at your keyboard! If you’ve thought about your personal brand (or your company’s brand), you likely already have a series of keywords or buzzwords that connect back to your core values. Researching keywords that match these values can include discovering monthly search volume, audience trends, and new forms of content for implementing these words.
To add hashtag strategy to the mix, look to the analytics side of your social pages to discover the audience for the same keywords. For instance, if your brand focuses on delivering fresh flowers directly from your phone, you might head over to Instagram to discover hashtags like #freshflowersdelivered and #onlineflowerdeliveryservices. Look for the average number of monthly posts, types of content under those hashtags, and types of accounts- are these potential customers or competitors?
We recommend refreshing this process every few months to track your progress and discover new hashtags and keywords that fit your brand direction!
Ultimately, you’ll reap benefits in two ways: you’ll establish a clear brand voice and ethos, one that clearly communicates its goods, services, and values; you’ll also communicate those same values to your search engines to ensure your content isn’t falling on deaf ears.
Here are some of our favorite tips for putting this synced SEO-Hashtag strategy to action:
Cross-reference your SEO audit and hashtag strategy
Use your keyword research to inform new hashtag batches for social posts. Keep batches of hashtags and keywords handy for easy use in your blogs, social captions, and alt text.
Use SEO keywords and copy in your social captions
Reusing copy will save you a lot of time and energy! Shorten passages from your blogs and site content and incorporate keywords and phrases to maximize the exposure of your content.
Use alt text in social posts like Instagram to insert even more keywords
Alt-text is an up-and-coming secret social media tip to help boost your post’s exposure. Spoiler alert: you’re already using alt text in your blog posts! When you go to publish on social, select “Advanced Settings” and add your keywords to the text box to describe the image and increase its indexing capabilities.
Link back and forth from social to site and vice versa
Cross-promotion can help with your SEO ranking as well as your exposure. Be sure to add links to your bio to site content, as well as link your social posts on your webpage.
Marrying SEO and hashtag strategies isn’t so difficult- in fact, these simple tips should save you time and maximize your output in the long term!