It’s 2025, and we’re still having this conversation. You’ve got your SEO team, or maybe just one person, totally focused on Google rankings and technical stuff. Then over in another corner, you have the social media manager, who is generally worried about engagement rates and what meme is trending this week. They normally don’t even have lunch together.
It’s a setup a lot of businesses have. A setup that’s kind of broken. The thinking goes that one is for search bots and the other is for people. But the line between those two worlds has gotten so blurry, it’s basically gone. It is time that we started thinking about how these two big pieces of digital marketing can actually work together, instead of just co-existing.
Why SEO and Social Media Are Still Treated Like Different Things
For a long time, the jobs were very separate. SEO was a dark art. It was all about keywords, meta tags, and backlinks that you’d get from weird directories. You could be good at SEO without ever talking to a real customer. It was a very technical game, and some of it was just about tricking the system.
Social media was the opposite. It was all about being human. It was about community management and making pretty pictures. The metrics were likes, shares, comments. Stuff that felt good but was hard to connect to a sale. So you had the tech nerds and the cool kids and they stayed in their own lanes.
The tools were different. The language was different. And the goals, at least on the surface, seemed completely different too. One team reported on keyword positions. The other reported on follower growth. There wasn’t much overlap, you know? So they never really had a reason to collaborate on anything.
The Messy, Real Connection Between Them
So, things have changed quite a bit. Search engines got a whole lot smarter. They started to care more about what real people think. And social media platforms became massive search engines in their own right. People now search on TikTok and Instagram just as much as they do on Google for certain things.
The connection isn’t a straight line. It’s not like getting 100 retweets will automatically push your website to page one. It’s a bit more tangled than that, it is considered to be a background factor. It’s more of an indirect relationship, where one helps the other out in some pretty important ways.
Do Social Signals Really Matter Anymore?
This is the big old debate. Google has said for years that likes and shares aren’t a direct ranking factor. And that’s probably true. But it’s not the whole story, not by a long shot. Think about it like this.
More Eyeballs on Your Stuff: When your blog post gets shared a bunch on LinkedIn or X (what we still sometimes call Twitter), more people see it. This is just a fact.
Chance for Links: Some of those people who see it might have their own blogs or websites. If they like your content, they might link to it. And those backlinks? Those are a huge deal for SEO.
Brand Awareness: When people see your brand name over and over on social media, they start to remember you. They might even search for your brand name directly on Google. Search engines like it when people are looking for you specifically.
So while a “like” isn’t a “vote” for your search ranking, the activity around your content on social platforms creates opportunities for real SEO wins. It gets the ball rolling.
Finding What People Are Yapping About
SEO pros spend tons of time on keyword research tools. And those are great. But they’re also very sterile. They tell you what people are typing into a search bar, but not how they’re talking about it. Or why they’re searching for it.
Social media is basically one giant, messy focus group happening 24/7.
You can see the exact questions people are asking in Facebook groups.
You can see the slang and the casual words people use in TikTok comments.
You can see the problems people are complaining about on X threads.
This is gold. You can take these real-world phrases and questions and build your content around them. Your blog posts and web pages will sound more human and will actually match what people want. It’s a way to find topics before they even show up in the keyword tools.
Making Your SEO and Social Media Actually Talk
Okay, so knowing they help each other is one thing. Actually making it happen is another. It usually means you have to get people to change how they work. Which is typically not easy. But here are some practical things that really get the job done.
You need to start making content that is built for both from the very beginning. Instead of writing a super dry, 2,000-word blog post and then just throwing a link on Facebook, think differently. Maybe that blog post could have a really cool infographic inside it.
The infographic is perfect for Pinterest and Instagram. The key stats from the post can be turned into a carousel post. A quote from it can be a simple text image. You’re giving your social media person a lot more to work with, which means more shares and more traffic back to the original post.
Also, think about your brand’s voice. It’s weird if your website is all formal and corporate, but your Instagram is full of memes and jokes. People need to feel like they’re talking to the same company. Your SEO content and your social content should feel like they come from the same brain.
Your Social Profiles Are Part of Your Search Results
This is something that a lot of people are still sleeping on in 2025. Go and search for your own brand name on Google. What do you see? You’ll probably see your website first. But right below that, you’ll probably see a link to your X profile, your LinkedIn company page, your Facebook page, and your YouTube channel.
All of these are results on the first page of Google. They are part of what people see when they look you up. This is a massive opportunity. It is a thing that allows you to control more of what people see.
You need to make sure those profiles are filled out completely. Use keywords in your social media bios. Make sure your business name, address, and phone number are consistent everywhere. This isn’t just good for social media; it’s good for your local SEO too. It makes your whole online presence look more legitimate to search engines.
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Key Takeaways
Stop thinking of SEO and social media as separate jobs. They are two parts of the same machine.
Social media activity doesn’t directly boost your rank, but it creates the conditions for better SEO by increasing visibility and the chance for backlinks.
Use social media as a real-time research tool to find out how your customers talk and what they actually care about.
Build your content from the start to be shareable on social platforms, not just optimized for a search engine.
Your social media profiles are a huge part of your brand’s search results. Make sure they are optimized and consistent.
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Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
1. So do likes and shares on Facebook help my Google ranking?
Not directly, no. Google doesn’t really look at that. But, when lots of people share your stuff, it sends more visitors to your site and increases the chance that another website will link to you. Those things absolutely help your Google ranking.
2. Which social media platform is the best one for SEO?
It totally depends on your business. If you’re a visual brand, Pinterest and Instagram can drive a lot of traffic. If you’re in B2B, LinkedIn is probably your best bet for getting your content in front of other professionals who might link to it. YouTube is also huge, since it’s the world’s second-largest search engine.
3. How can I use social media to find keywords for my blog?
Just listen. Join Facebook or Reddit groups related to your industry. Look at the questions people ask. Pay attention to the language they use. Search for hashtags on Instagram or TikTok and see what conversations are happening in the comments. Those are your keywords.
4. Should my SEO and social media people be on the same team?
In a perfect world, yes. Or at the very least, they need to have regular meetings and shared goals. The social media manager needs to know what the SEO team is targeting, and the SEO team needs to know what content is performing best on social. Communication is the key.
5. Is it enough to just post links to my blog on my social media?
No, that’s the bare minimum. You have to give people a reason to click. Use an interesting image, ask a question, pull out a surprising statistic from the article. You need to sell the click. Just dropping a link is lazy and normally doesn’t work very well.
