Is it possible to apply SEO best practices within social media to improve my results on these platforms? In this article, we address some doubts and myths surrounding the possibility of doing SEO for Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube.
Most internet searches begin in a browser or a search engine like Google, Bing, Yahoo, among others. However, with the significant relevance that social media platforms have gained today, there has been talk of the possibility of conducting searches on these digital spaces.
Is it really possible to manage SEO on these social platforms? In this article, we discuss this possibility on Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube. Keep reading to find out!
Let's resolve a dilemma: Can content optimization and best practices on Instagram and Facebook be considered SEO?
To answer this, let's start by defining what SEO is. SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization, which means optimization for search engines.
In a previous article, Blas Giffuni defined SEO as the digital marketing practice that allows brands and individuals to constantly increase the number and quality of organic visits to a website through search engines.
This is achieved by generating and presenting precise content to the right person at the right time, all with the aim of improving a website's positioning and appearing in the first search results for users.
Therefore, when it comes to platforms like Instagram and Facebook, it's not possible to talk about SEO because these are social networks and not search engines.
While both Facebook and Instagram have their own algorithms and there are a set of best practices that can be developed within the social network to try to increase the likelihood of being found by users and receiving greater visibility, these best practices cannot be properly termed as SEO because they are not optimization strategies for search engines, and there is no documentation to support or validate them.
Some of the best practices that can be implemented on Instagram that could potentially influence the reach of profiles and their posts include:
Optimizing the profile: includes using keywords in the main name and username. Also, include other secondary keywords, hashtags, and the link to your website in the biography description. Finally, make sure to use an eye-catching and attractive profile picture.
Using hashtags and keywords in the captions of your posts.
Taking advantage of alternative text to describe your posts: this feature has been recently added to Instagram and it's important to complete it because it allows the social network's algorithm to easily identify what your content is about and also helps visually impaired users get a description of the images.
Using geotags or geolocation in your posts: Instagram displays search results for its users based on the nearest geographical location.
Now, while there are some general recommendations for increasing reach on Instagram and Facebook, there is no official guide from the social network itself specifying best practices and steps to follow to improve metrics, performance, and effectiveness within them.
Many of these tips and suggestions come from 'social media gurus' and self-proclaimed experts. However, none of them directly emerge from the primary source, which is Facebook.
In contrast, when it comes to SEO, there are multiple official guides and documents offered directly by search engines, i.e., the most reliable source possible. For example, Google offers webmasters, developers, and business owners a wealth of online resources where they can find lists of best practices, step-by-step content, etc.
Therefore, we affirm that with SEO, there is a certain level of openness and transparency regarding how to use it to our advantage and benefit from it.
Additionally, SEO is a tool or discipline that is entirely objective, aiming to achieve long-term results. We say it's an objective discipline because it's measurable, quantifiable, and allows for projections of resources, income, and growth. This way, hypotheses and propositions can be corroborated, and achievements can be attributed to specific actions.
The same cannot be said for social media best practices, which tend to be more subjective.
SEO on YouTube
The case of YouTube is completely different from that of Facebook and Instagram. Because YouTube, in addition to being a social network, is also considered the second largest search engine in the world after Google. For this reason, it's possible to talk about SEO on YouTube.
Furthermore, YouTube is part of the Google family and one of the platforms with the highest growth in terms of video publishing on the Internet. Therefore, YouTube adopts the same search intelligence and has the same mission as Google: to offer the best experience for the user.
Precisely because of the large volume of videos on this platform, they had to develop an algorithm with which, like any other search engine, they want to deliver content that responds as specifically as possible to user queries.
In other words, YouTube wants to show users the videos they need, just when they need them.
To achieve this, they have developed options within the platform so that each user can optimize the content at the time of its publication and thus provide greater context about what the videos are about.
However, many times people think that by publishing a video on YouTube, the only step they should follow is to give it a simple title, without even thinking much about it.
But there are other fundamental steps that must be followed to optimize the SEO of videos on YouTube:
Edit the file name using keywords.
Write a good video title including keywords.
Optimize the video description so that it's descriptive, attractive, provides context about what it's about, and includes keywords. It's also possible to include hashtags within the descriptions.
Similarly, timestamps can be implemented to direct the viewer to specific content within the video, especially in longer ones.
Insert tags (labels) into the video so that YouTube identifies the topics of the content, indexes it correctly, and can recommend related videos.
Provide transcripts and add subtitles to the videos. This transcription can be done manually or using the YouTube closed caption tool that facilitates this work. However, we suggest reviewing, editing, and adjusting this automatic transcription to avoid spelling and writing errors. Additionally, besides adding subtitles, you can use the transcription text in the video description to provide more information to your audience and make the content more accessible to those who cannot hear the audio.
Upload a custom thumbnail image that is eye-catching, provides context about the video content, and generates curiosity, thus increasing the likelihood of users clicking on it.
The above is important because, to understand what a video is about, YouTube needs us to provide context and explain why it's useful for users.
Therefore, YouTube, unlike other social networks, has this structured data within its content and being part of the Google company, has integration between both platforms. For this reason, when you search on Google, the search engine also presents video content from YouTube.
Although, as we discussed in a previous article, Google is making agreements to index videos from social networks like TikTok and Instagram as well.
3 SEO recommendations for your YouTube videos
First tip: pre-production of a video is much more important than production and post-production.
This means that, before making a video, it's extremely important to define what the objective you want to achieve with it is, and then, you must think about who the audience is and why that content will be useful to them.
Having a deep understanding of your target audience will allow you to create scripts, narratives, or stories that resonate with your user persona, allowing you to create content that relates to their values, desires, and needs.
Also, it's equally important to have the objective well defined, so you don't waste your time and resources creating videos that won't help you grow your business.
Making long videos may require more production and editing, and therefore a greater investment. So, before you start, make sure you are clear about why you are doing it.
Second tip: when you publish your video on YouTube, take the time to write a good description. This text should provide information about what the video is about as descriptively as possible.
Answer the following questions: why and for what purpose did you make the video? Why should someone watch the video? What things are interesting and what findings did you find?
The description is essential for positioning because it will give context to the search engine, allowing the platform's algorithm to identify what is in the video content. That's why it's important to include the keywords that encompass the topics covered.
Third tip: finally, try to have a 360° strategy for your YouTube videos. That is, have clarity about how you are going to use and disseminate the videos you create and publish on YouTube.
Creating a video just for the sake of creating a video is not worth it. You must use and make the most of that content, which will surely take you time and effort.
Therefore, take advantage of this material and use it on your website, in your email marketing, in your blog, and on your social networks. That is, distribute it through all the channels of your brand or business to have greater visibility and reach.
Conclusion:
While social networks like Instagram and Facebook have internal search systems, these platforms are not considered search engines, so it's not possible to call the best practices developed within them SEO.
Additionally, with no official documentation outlining the parameters of what should and should not be done, optimizing profiles on these social networks becomes subjective and difficult to measure and quantify.
On the other hand, YouTube, in addition to being a social network, has all the algorithmic logic of a search engine. In fact, it's the second most used search engine in the world after Google.
Therefore, on this platform, it is possible to do SEO, and there are a set of best practices that, if followed correctly, will increase the likelihood that your videos will appear in the results, both from YouTube itself and from Google's SERPs.
We hope that these clarifications and tips are useful to you when managing your brand's social networks, and we invite you to continue reading our blog to learn more about search engine optimization.
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