SEO has grown beyond the straightforward process of keyword research, on-page optimization, and link building. It now encompasses complex strategies, including social listening.
These tactics enable your brand to stay on top of market trends and potential customers’ preferences to remain competitive. While they primarily impact social media marketing, they can also enhance your overall SEO strategy to improve search engine rankings.
Here, we’ll define social listening and discover how to unlock the SEO potential of social listening strategies.
Understanding social listening
Social listening is the process of proactively monitoring and analyzing online conversations and interactions that take place on social media channels. It helps you gain valuable insights into your brand and know industry trends, competitors, or topics.
Unlike social media monitoring, it’s not just about reacting to mentions of your brand and answering comments on social media channels. It’s about understanding these conversations’ full context, sentiment, and patterns, so you can improve marketing strategies and campaigns.
Social listening is important for market research as it helps you understand the needs of your target audience in real time, enabling you to make more informed decisions.
Implementing AI-powered social listening into your social media strategy allows you to better understand your target audience’s pains, needs, and opinions. You can also use the AI to monitor competitor strategies and enhance your social media presence. It helps you connect the dots between online conversations and make data-driven decisions using social media analytics for your SEO efforts.
With the data you collect, you can:
- Manage negative sentiments and customer feedback
- Improve search engine rankings
- Improve customer relationships
- Build customer loyalty
- And more
“Social listening is a powerful tool in a brand’s toolbelt. It’s not just about data and analytics but goes deeper than that. It hits an emotion”, said Shea Farates, a Digital Media Strategist.
She shared an experience she had as an example of great social listening on LinkedIn.
Image Source: LinkedIn
“Combine your SEO keyword research with social listening and buyer’s language. You quickly get deeper insight into the topics and intent of the words”, said Adrienne Barnes, a Market Research consultant.
Image Source: Twitter
Social listening strategies to improve SEO
Here are four strategies to implement now to boost your SEO and stay ahead of your competition.
1. Find brand mentions and build links
Most organizations today use social listening as a part of their current social media marketing strategy.
In fact, research shows most people see social listening as a valuable marketing tool, and over 82 percent view it as a key planning element. 
Image Source: Social Media Today
That’s because social listening works wonders in terms of digital marketing strategy.
Social listening tools for businesses help you find unlinked social media mentions and turn them into backlinks for your website.
Because link building is a core SEO strategy, it’s important that you address all such opportunities. When you find a mention of your brand, product, or content on social media without a link, reach out to the account holder and request a link be added to the post.
Remember to always be tactful and professional in communications. If appropriate, you can offer a link exchange and post on your social media account(s), mentioning their content, product, or social media handle, complete with and link.
Turning these brand mentions into links will boost your SEO, website authority, and online visibility. Link exchanges will do the same for your partners. Win-win.
2. Monitor new links to your site
Once you’ve addressed non-linked mentions, it’s time to look for (and keep track of) linked mentions.
Modern link building means identifying where and how quality backlinks are built. Understanding the dos and don’ts of link building is important since black-hat tactics can have serious consequences for your SEO.
With social media monitoring and social listening, you can find new links anywhere in real time.
To find new links, use your chosen social media monitoring tool to search your brand name, URL, blog topic, product name, or other relevant information.
You can also search for mentions on social media posts from social media platforms (e.g., X, Facebook, Instagram, etc). Still, your goal for backlinks should be from industry peers and authoritative sites.
3. Explore guest blogging
Guest blogging is a great link-building strategy. It’s been around for ages and, when done right, is still an excellent way to acquire backlinks and reach a large audience.
The greatest challenges of guest blogging are time investment and finding the right opportunities. However, social media listening can help with both.
To find blogs in your industry, enter relevant keywords into the tool and let the AI do the heavy lifting. Do the same to find influencers on social media platforms with an active presence who discuss your industry.
Use the information gathered by the social listening tool to help you decide which blogs and influencers are the best fit for your brand. Then, all that’s left is to reach out and start a conversation.
4. Keep an eye on competitors
All the strategies above can also be used to monitor your competitors and their SEO strategies, successes, and gaps. You can then use this information to direct and improve your efforts and SEO strategy.
Keep things simple. Use your competitors’ brand names and URLs to complete the strategies you used for your own social media listening procedures:
- Find brand mentions and build links
- Monitor new links
- Guest blogging
Create alerts in your social media listening tool for your top competitors so you’ll remain aware of their progress compared to your own.
Final words
Social listening is full of possibilities, and social listening tools make the job easier. It’s a crucial ingredient in the recipe for a successful business.
Actionable insights can lead to transformative changes that help you build an online presence and connect with your target audience on a deeper level. Social listening is one of the best ways to acquire truly actionable insights.
When you combine social media listening with appropriate SEO techniques, you can expect exceptional results.
