How To Catch Organic Traffic To eCommerce Websites With Social Media

Recently social networks have gained the same importance for website’s promotion as the searching system Google had before. Nowadays you can use various methods of promotion: group and search promotion in social media, Google Adwords with all its extensions, Instagram, Pinterest, Twitter and many more. Very often people spend more time in social networks and even use them to search for information, that’s why social media profile promotion can help you get a bunch of valuable traffic.

Linking in Facebook

Currently Facebook has the option to add website links to the profile page. The link should be added into short description, otherwise nobody will see it. Facebook pages, designed for local businesses, do not allow placing this kind of link, as they have a separate section for location and address information. If it is possible to optimize the short description, it will look like this:

Facebook can bring your business up to 1/3 of all website traffic. It depends on the quantity and activity of your fans as well as on your part of work: account optimization, social media engagement and Facebook advertising.

On the diagram below you can see the percentage of fans finally reaching your Facebook page from organic search:

Image source: blog.bufferapp.com/facebook-reach-strategies

According to this research only 6% of the whole relevant audience will see your business page from organic. Only some months ago almost a half of your fans had the opportunity to see your website in Google search. However due to recent Facebook financial policy it focuses mostly on advertising.

Summing up, here are some tips for ecommerce websites helpful to improve search visibility of their social media profiles:

1. Develop the account structure and dedicate much space for your website links in short description. It makes your website easily found from the front page of your profile.
2. Increase the number of your fans by using social media channels. It will magnify the number of people that will come to your page from search engines. Use Facebook Ads for engaging visitors. It means follow Facebook policy and increase the wideness of your audience.

Twitter Links

Twitter is a perfect method in the business plan of your ecommerce website promotion. The traffic driven from Twitter mostly depends on the quality and consistency of your tweets. It is always better to avoid retweets (repost of your tweet by other users) and make tweets as short as possible (preferably 120 characters). Otherwise links inside the tweets will be lost.

First of all, you should make yourself seen and heard in order to draw the attention of your potential customers to your brand. The most useful thing in Twitter is a search function that allows you to find what people are discussing at this very moment. And you can always place your actual tweets in the right place and in the right way.

Twitter gives you plenty of opportunities to be visible in organic search. It helps to add your website link in the website field of your profile. However this link is not shown up throughout the whole Twitter. While performing search for businesses on Twitter you will see it in the 160 character profile bio. That’s why in order to let customers see the link to your website you should put it into the profile.

So your Twitter organic strategy might be the following:

1. Put website links into the Twitter profile. It allows customers to see your website data while performing the search.
2. Watch the tweets you leave and the links inside them. Avoid extremely long tweets. It allows keeping important links into your Twitter profile.
3. Choose the best moment for twitter engagement in real time. It helps to find the most relevant and active audience.

Google+ linking

Google+ has a user base of 300 million of keen users and offers a lot of possibilities to show great visual and textual content. Google+ gives preference to the websites that constantly improve and renew their textual and visual content on Google+.

The best direct method to lift your Google+ rankings in organic search is basically to get more followers. Because if someone’s following you on Google+ there is fairly more probability for him to find your page in Google search results.

At the picture below we investigate search results of a specific page. It ranks position 2 in personalized organic results, but only position 12 when an incognito search is done. The thing is that most users search while logged in, that’s why personalization is quite important.

General tips to get more organic from Google+:

1. Generate new textual and visual content constantly. You have more chances to be seen by Google.
2. Make engagement of new followers. It will certainly improve your results in a personalized search.
3. Put links into reviews on your Google Local page. These links will definitely be indexed and will increase the ranking power of the website.
4. Use Google Local associated with Google+. It favors to website categorization into local search.
5. Use structured citations on your Google+ page. It makes your website domain authority more valuable for Google. The quantity as well as the quality of these citations matters.
6. Put keywords into title and description of your Google+ profile (the same is for Google Local). Your rankings on these keywords will grew and drag more traffic.
7. Put the Company name, address and other information on your Google+ profile. This step will help acquire brand traffic.

Appear in search results with Pinterest

Pinterest is a second searching platform gathering more than 70 million people. Optimizing Pinterest is a right way to boost search organic traffic to your ecommerce website. Many of modern businesses try to up to date their Pinterest page fast as it certainly drags traffic from search engines.

Take a look at a business Pinterest page well-ranked in Google organic search for topic-related keywords.

Using Pinterest is easy, interesting and effective for promotion while more and more users prefer visual information over the textual one. By following the steps below you will perfectly charge your Pinterest pages with new insights and, as a consequence, more followers and higher Google rankings.

1. Use all possible insights that Pinterest can offer you. Link other social networks to Pinterest profile. It will engage your Facebook, Google+ and other followers into the Pinterest activity of your business.
2. Group your boards wisely: use all types of information you propose and organize the boarding. In such a way people will quickly reach the topics they need.
3. Enrich your pins accordingly: implement product pins, article pins, place pins e t.c.
4. Provide your Pinterest account with SEO optimization. Optimize the title of your board as well as pin ALTs using relevant keywords. Put a link to your business in Pinterest profile description.
5. Be active and engaging throughout Pinterest network. Customers will most likely react on your messages within their boards and follow you. People like to be noticed and heard about.

Instagram can drag organic traffic too!

Instagram can offer a range of possibilities to promote your business online. Nowadays it is one of the friendliest platforms generating frequent interaction among users.

Usually it takes time to accumulate followers and reach a decent level of popularity in Instagram. First of all you should always be in line with other businesses, investigate news and fancy things other Instagram users do in order to be heard and seen.

There’s no direct correlation with promoting the Instagram page and going up on Google search page. Usually when it comes to organic traffic many factors are important.

Here are 10 musts of using Instagram for businesses:

Infographic courtesy of: techwyse.

1. Enclose new content and carry out an overall Instagram engagement. As people constantly look at your new fancy photos, even the roughest ones will be interested in your page. Photos should be high-quality, enticing and unique with lots of relative hashtags.
2. Be innovative: find new ways to engage followers. Organize curious contests, quizzes or other activities. In that way people will remember your page vividly and certainly come back to seek for new interactive stuff.
3. Be responsive: like and share other people’s photos, engage people to hashtag you.
4. Sometimes you may browse through the accounts of your competitors and make friends with them. Instagram can help you a lot to talk about your business as much as you can. The base of effectiveness is the quality of visualization, frequency and innovation.
5. Watch your competitors to learn from their work. Make friends with your competitors as the greatest things are born in mutual cooperation.

About author.

Daria Kizilova, Senior Online Marketing Analyst and Project Manager at Promodo company, is an experienced and enthusiastic specialist dealing with eCommerce and content website optimization projects in different niches. Daria's expertise includes on-site optimization, search engine promotion, PPC management and social media marketing.