Social media has fundamentally changed how communicate, collaborate, and share information online. Crucially, for SEO specialists, it’s also opened the door to a brand new way of building high-value links to bolster the presence of businesses to wider audiences.
The relationship between social media and link building is only getting stronger, and with an estimated 5.04 billion social network users worldwide, it’s long become an invaluable place to grow your presence online.
Unlocking the Value of Link Building
Link-building has long positioned itself as a core element of search engine optimisation (SEO) and focuses on generating valuable backlinks from website to website to drive traffic and increase a site’s reputation in the eyes of search engines like Google.
For link builders, it’s important to increase the number of quality and relevant backlinks to their website. This acts as a virtual endorsement from other sites and indirectly informs Google that the content posted is valuable to its audience.
However, getting websites to organically link back to your content can be difficult. After all, how can you tell a reputable platform that your content is worth linking to?
This is where social media enters the fray. Social platforms are, by definition, places where SEOs can interact with key industry players and influential figures and form valuable bonds that can see content reach far further than ever before.
But how can you optimise your social media link-building? Let’s take a look at 5 ways you can become a link-building superstar:
1. Unlock Your Niche via Social Listening
Social listening is a strategy that helps brands to research, or ‘listen in’, on what their target audience and other businesses in their niche are discussing online. But how can it help to build high-value links?
For website owners, it’s important to build relevant and high-quality backlinks, but where can you find them? Social listening can help here by allowing SEO specialists to monitor social media channels, blogs, forums, and other online platforms to find invaluable insights and unmentioned feedback surrounding their brand, competitors, or wider industry.
Crucially, it’s also possible to discover other businesses operating in your niche and to build relationships with other brands and influencers.
This process can be arduous, but enlisting the help of a skilled backlink building agency is particularly useful for SMEs to build high-value connections without having to resort to time-consuming social listening practices.
For brands that have the time to invest in social listening, the search function of social media networks is often a great tool to begin your journey. Platforms like TikTok also include popular search suggestions to access higher volumes of content.
In the example above, the term ‘booksellers’ has been queried on the platform, and we can see that a popular hashtag, ‘BookTok’ has been recommended as a term that ‘others searched for’.
Exploring the term ‘BookTok’ further, we can see that content posted alongside the hashtag can gain many millions of views, and opens the door to both key influencers and companies to outreach and successful content ideas to leverage for your own account.
This process can be used and adapted to many different social media networks, and can also help you shape your company’s online presence by looking for untagged brand mentions.
2. Build Connections Through Newsjacking
Newsjacking is an excellent way of pouncing on a trending topic or emerging news story and using it to build connections online.
If you’re not already utilising newsjacking as part of your social media strategy, you’re missing out on showcasing your industry expertise to a far greater audience that is more likely to be actively engaged with the topic you’re covering.
One effective example of newsjacking can be found in a recent Google Maps post on X, which used the 2024 solar eclipse as a way of promoting its product, prompting 32.8k impressions along the way.
X, formerly known as Twitter, is a great platform for newsjacking because of its microblogging format and the ease with which viral content can be accessed through the site’s ‘Explore’ feature.
If you’re looking to build backlinks through newsjacking, look for breaking news stories that are either relevant to your industry or could be repurposed to add relevance to your brand. By sharing your thoughts or discussing events with other reputable accounts on the platform, you can build your authority and forge a connection between your account and others online.
3. Always Share Your Website’s Content to Your Socials
For many startups and SMEs, the time-intensive nature of content creation can see great copy become isolated by only appearing on its host website.
It can also be difficult to share content across an ever-growing array of social networks, however, there’s a growing range of social media management tools that businesses can tap into to streamline this process.
The beauty of modern social media is that your content creation doesn’t have to be limited to articles or multimedia content that’s designed to be shared throughout your industry (although this remains a highly favored approach by search engines).
Platforms like LinkedIn have allowed articles to be enriched by contributors, who can add their thoughts and insights into the topics being discussed.
Insightful contributions can be supported with likes, and adding your thoughts to popular articles can really open the door to new valuable connections and backlinks to your other content.
As we can see from the example above, even uploading blog posts to platforms that aren’t typically recognised as a copy-friendly platform like Instagram can drive a significant number of impressions.
Crucially, sharing your blog posts throughout social media is a link-building win-win. The content already exists, and search engines place a high value on this particular strategy of building one-way backlinks.
Publishing on platforms like LinkedIn, Reddit, Tumblr, and Quora can be excellent for earning valuable backlinks, but expanding your reach to wider audiences on different platforms can also be effective and great for building engagement.
4. Sliding into DMs to Build Links
The concept of sliding into the DMs of a relevant editor, content director, or influencer in your industry niche may seem alien to some link builders, but it can actually offer a great direct form of contact in order to network and secure valuable link-for-link agreements and guest post opportunities.
Social media networks are great for outreaching because your prospects are only ever one click away from your profile and can view your audience, the quality of your content, and assess the overall value of your proposition in an instant–rather than having to track you down and manually ascertain whether you can enrich their own brand.
Many social media platforms make it possible to send messages to outreach prospects without them having to follow you first. However, some profiles limit the number of users who can message them. It’s for this reason that you should invest more time in building your profile and audience online, and this can help you to attract more industry-relevant followers who could be an excellent prospect for link-building.
You could even build connections by replying to prospects and offering your insights as comments on their posts–helping you to network effectively while growing your online presence.
5. Build Your Community
On a similar note, it makes the world of difference when you look to conduct your link-building on a social media platform where you’ve already built a strong presence and loyal followers.
How can you leverage an active online audience for link-building? First, you should look to engage directly with your followers.
These engagements can be conducted in many different ways. One effective approach is through user-generated content. This allows you to repost or share their posts or multimedia content on social media in a way that drives greater engagement.
Interacting directly with your community doesn’t have to be formal, and major brands like McDonald’s regularly adopts a more frivolous approach to their social media content that generates stronger levels of interaction.
Be sure to respond to the better comments you receive, answer questions, engage with feedback, and even consider offering opportunities to interact through polls, contests, or giveaways to drive your engagement and increase your industry visibility.
These approaches can all help you to become a stronger presence and improve the performance of your social media posts by delivering more consistent levels of engagement.
Building a Sustainable Social Strategy
At the core of your social media link-building strategy should be a sustainable approach that you can refine over time.
Building a presence online can be time-consuming, and social networks are unforgiving environments for many brands that consistently fail to gauge their audience profile and what they typically respond to.
With a little social listening and prior research, you can embark upon a streamlined but efficient social media link-building strategy that continues to win you valuable connections long into the future.
Social media is a powerful tool for generating those all-important backlinks and with the right strategy behind you, it’s possible to bolster your SEO credentials in a truly effective way.