Most businesses treat SEO and social media as two completely separate jobs… and I get it… the website needs the careful keyword research, a more defined structure, and usually has long-term thinking behind it. Social media, unless it’s well planned out or a campaign, gets a batch of hashtags and a caption written a bit more last minute.
Most businesses treat SEO and social media as two completely separate jobs… and I get it… the website needs the careful keyword research, a more defined structure, and usually has long-term thinking behind it. Social media, unless it’s well planned out or a campaign, gets a batch of hashtags and a caption written a bit more last minute.
But because of how digital platforms have changed over the last 18 months, you can now use your hard researched SEO work from your website, on your socials. And not just ‘you can’, but you should!
Your SEO keywords don’t just influence how Google or search engines understands your website… it increasingly influences how every platform understands you.
Platforms like Instagram are now indexing posts, meaning your industry or topics you talk about can be ‘googled’ and your instagram post will turn up.
Also, with the more advanced algorithms (hear robots) ‘seeing’ our content in a more nuanced way, it isn’t just hashtags that help your posts get seen- they ‘see’ your post as a whole… captions, hashtags, alt text, image content etc.
SEO and social aren't separate systems anymore.
When you strip SEO back to its core, it’s not really about keywords or rankings. What it is really about is using clear, consistent language that helps platforms understand what you do, who it’s for, and when to show it to whom. They help the platforms distribute your website to the right people.
Social platforms are now doing exactly the same thing.
Instagram, TikTok, LinkedIn, even Pinterest… they’re all trying to answer the same question: who is this for, and why should we show it?
They want your audience on the platform for as long as possible, so the more of the ‘right’ content they can serve up, the better it works for everyone,your brand included. Which means the way you think about SEO on your website can, and should, carry through into your social media posts.
Not in a forced way of course- not by stuffing captions with keywords, because that’s just a poor experience for the reader… what I mean is being more intentional about the signals you’re putting out. Doing all you can to help the platforms categorise you, and show you to your ideal client or consumer.
Keywords are really about language consistency.
Your social profiles are part of your search presence too.
It’s not just in your posts though, your social bio is doing more work than most people realise. It’s effectively a mini meta description that you can tailor exactly how you need to- it tells platforms and people what you’re about, who you’re for, and whether they’re in the right place.
Including clear language, relevant keywords, links, and even location details where appropriate isn’t about gaming the system… although you’ll often see digital marketing agencies explaining how the algorithm works and how you can optimise your content, be more data-driven etc. What is important here is about removing ambiguity. When your profile is vague, platforms struggle to categorise you, and the opportunities to help or reach your audience decrease. When it’s clear, everything starts working in the same direction. And the good news is all that SEO keyword research you have, you can reuse on your bios!
Social media is now a discovery engine.
TikTok has made this shift very obvious. We scroll, yes, but we also search. Ten years ago, I might have typed ‘Christmas recipes’ into Google or YouTube. Now I’ll search that same term in TikTok, Instagram, Pinterest, an AI tool… There are SO many more ways that we can search for what content we want, and a whole plethora of formats to consume it in now.
What I mean is social platforms are increasingly used like search engines- especially by younger audiences, though not only them. And crucially, content is no longer distributed primarily based on who follows you. This is a biggie. It’s distributed based on interest, which means the algorithms are constantly learning what they can about us so they can show our content to the right people.
Adam Mosseri, head of Instagram, has been clear that hashtags don’t meaningfully increase reach anymore. Their role now is to help Instagram understand what your content is about- not to push it further. Whereas five years ago Instagram would use hashtags to categorise a post, it now scans your caption, video, images, alt text… building up a picture of what this is and who should see it.
Hashtags haven’t disappeared, but they’re no longer the key strategy- and you can see that reflected in how platforms are using them. Facebook uses fewer, Instagram has reduced the number you can add, Threads allows just one.
Clear language, strong topical focus, watch time, saves, and how people interact with your content matter far more now.
Content themes matter more than individual posts.
If your website ranks well for a particular topic, that’s not an accident. I mean, multiple pages are reinforcing the same ideas, the same language, the same areas of expertise. You’re talking about the same ‘thing’ in different ways.
Social media works in much the same way. When your posts consistently return to related themes and topics, platforms begin to understand your niche. When content jumps around randomly, that picture is much harder to form- they look at individual posts, yes, but they’re also considering the whole.
This is where repurposing your content becomes strategic rather than a shortcut. High-performing blogs, service pages, or anchor content on your website already contain the language and structure that works. Breaking those ideas into social posts helps reinforce the same meaning, in different formats, in different places. The fact that this also makes content creation easier is a happy bonus. 🙂
Your 'one thing' is the thread that holds it together.
Before any of this can work consistently though, it helps to get clear on what I’d call your ‘one thing’… the single idea you want to be known for, the through-line that sits underneath everything you create. Some people see it as an elevator pitch, that one thing you can say that people will remember. It might be how you transform businesses, or how your consultancy supports high-level coaches, whatever that one thing is, it’s how you are hoping to be described by others.
It’s not your tagline exactly, and it’s broader than a single service. It’s more like the answer to ‘what do you want people to think of when they think of you?’ For a web designer who works with service-based businesses, it might be something like ‘websites that help the right clients invest.’ For a business coach, it might be ‘building businesses that don’t rely on burning out to grow.’
Your one thing will then shape your content pillars- the handful of topics you return to again and again. And your content pillars are what give platforms (and people) a consistent picture of who you are and what you stand for. You have different themes and topics you cover, repeatedly, which help people to understand your ‘one thing’.
Your content pillars are the topics you return to again and again… but it’s worth thinking about what job each one is doing, not just what it’s about. Between them, your pillars should be covering a few key questions that any new audience member would have- do I trust this person, do I see the world the way they do, do I understand what they actually do, and do I like them enough to stick around? You might have three pillars or you might have five, and one pillar might be doing two of those jobs at once. That’s fine. The test isn’t whether you have a pillar for each question- it’s whether all four are getting answered somewhere across what you post.
This is actually where SEO and social connect most easily. The keywords you’ve researched for your website are usually pointing at the same ideas as your content pillars- they’re just expressed in search terms rather than content topics. When you can see that connection, using the same language across both stops feeling like extra work and starts feeling like the obvious thing to do.
Every post you create adds another signal- think in terms of layering- every layer you put down gives a signal to the right direction for your audience. And when those signals consistently point back to the same core ideas- your one thing, your pillars, your area of expertise- platforms get better at knowing who to show your content to. So do people too, and over time, that builds up.
Images, accessibility, and the signals you might be missing.
It’s not just about what you say- it’s also about what you show- even if that’s mostly to the systems scanning your posts.
Alt text on social images is often overlooked. It’s primarily there for accessibility, to help visually impaired users understand what an image contains, and I should be extra clear here- that is exactly your motivation for using alt text- for helping your audience see what you’re about when they can’t.
That said, a happy by-product is that it also helps platforms interpret your content. File names, captions, and visuals all contribute to the wider context.
Again, this isn’t about optimisation tricks- keyword stuffing in alt text isn’t appropriate. It’s about reducing friction for the humans and the machines trying to understand your work.
Measuring the ecosystem, not just a snapshot.
One of the more underused advantages of connecting your website and social strategy is that you can actually start to see which ideas are doing the most work… and that tells you a lot more than looking at analytics like likes or reach on a single post ever will.
Tracking which social posts drive people back to your website gives you a window into something more useful than traffic numbers- it shows you what your audience is interested enough in to actually act on- what actually makes them press a button! A post that gets decent engagement but sends nobody anywhere is doing a different job to a post that sends a steady stream of people to a particular blog or service page. Both matter of course, but knowing the difference helps you plan more effectively.
UTM links (these are just small additions to your URLs that help you track where your website visitors came from) can show you which themes resonate, which messages prompted someone to take a next step, and which topics are worth developing further. Those insights can then feed back into your content planning… informing future blog posts, shaping what you talk about on social, and gradually building a clearer picture of what your audience actually wants from you.
It stops feeling like a series of disconnected efforts and starts feeling like a system- where lots of puzzle pieces add up- that gets more informed the longer you run it.
This was never really about SEO.
If I had to explain this to you in a single sentence, it would be this- what all of this is really about is being understood- by the right people, consistently, over time, in all the places you put yourself.
Platforms are constantly trying to interpret meaning- they look at language, visuals, behaviour, and consistency to work out who you are and where you belong. And for founders and business owners who’ve put real thought into their website and their SEO, it’d be a shame for all of that to stop at the homepage.
Your website doesn’t stop working once it launches, your social presence doesn’t exist in isolation either. When the two are reinforcing the same ideas, the same language, the same areas of expertise, you’re not starting from scratch with every post. (Yay!) You’re building something- and the longer it exists, the easier it gets.
About the Author
Shelly Terry is the founder of Sheldon Social, a content and visibility consultancy. She works with founders, leaders, and organisations who have something meaningful to say- helping them build content ecosystems so their website, social presence, and brand voice are all telling the same story, consistently. If this post got you thinking about how joined-up your own content really is, her website is a good place to start: www.sheldon.social
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