{"id":3642,"date":"2021-10-11T20:17:26","date_gmt":"2021-10-11T20:17:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/staging.elixirrdigital.com\/us\/2021\/10\/11\/the-social-landscape-of-seo-a-social-listening-case-study\/"},"modified":"2025-09-30T08:22:29","modified_gmt":"2025-09-30T08:22:29","slug":"the-social-landscape-of-seo-a-social-listening-case-study","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/staging.elixirrdigital.com\/us\/2021\/10\/11\/the-social-landscape-of-seo-a-social-listening-case-study\/","title":{"rendered":"The Social Landscape of SEO \u2013 A Social Listening Case Study"},"content":{"rendered":"

When we\u2019re making strategic decisions, one thing we always look for is more data. Whether a client is looking to launch a product into a new market, understand what channels to promote their offering on, or learn more about how to position themselves against their competitors, all of these decisions can be better made with better data.<\/span><\/p>\n

If you\u2019ve followed our blog or spoken to someone at Coast Digital before, you\u2019ll know we\u2019re always looking at the numbers. From Google Analytics to biometrics<\/a>, we look for ways to get the answers we need to help clients succeed \u2013 or sometimes to help us get our clients asking the right questions. There\u2019s another source of data we have access to, thanks to the right tools and technology, that I\u2019d like to shine a spotlight on.<\/p>\n

Social listening<\/a> is broadly understood as a way to identify brand mentions, share of voice, sentiment towards a given brand or topic, etc. While all of that is true, the sheer volume and depth of information that exists in the social landscape means there is scope to get some really fascinating insights beyond this.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m a big believer in \u2018show, don\u2019t tell\u2019, so that\u2019s what I\u2019m going to do. I\u2019m going to take a topic that\u2019s close to our hearts here at the agency and show you what we can learn through social listening. I\u2019m going to dive into SEO, but remember this could be any topic or brand. I\u2019m going to demonstrate the possibilities \u2013 I\u2019ll leave it to you to think about the kind of questions this could help you answer around your brand, your audience, and your industry.<\/p>\n

The significance of search terms<\/h2>\n

If we\u2019re going to capture the conversation around SEO, we need to think about how people talk about search. This then helps us build a set of keywords we can use to identify relevant social posts to analyse \u2013 in a way, a mirror for what we would do when first building an organic search strategy.<\/p>\n

We start with the obvious, SEO and search engine optimisation<\/a>. We want to capture a broad segment of data that includes regional variation too, so we want to include search engine optimization as well. We also know people talk about organic search and organic traffic, so we\u2019ll pull those in as well.<\/p>\n

When we run this though, we start to see some data that looks like a little odd. One thing we can look at is the brands, products or figures that are being pulled through into the data set, and assess what kinds of trends are making are regular appearances or are flagging up as hyper relevant to our dataset. Interestingly, what we see is a large number of Korean pop culture topics and celebrities.<\/p>\n

Now, it\u2019s not impossible that people that talk about SEO are also big K-drama fans, but it certainly warrants some investigation. What we find is that \u2018Seo\u2019 is Korean name and, most notably, the name of some prominent figures in Korean pop culture, including one that has been involved in some controversy over the last 12 months \u2013 the kind of thing that gets you talked about on social media.<\/p>\n

For reference, I\u2019ve pulled the Wiki snippet from a few searches around these celebrities. While interesting, they\u2019re not relevant to the research we\u2019re doing here.<\/p>\n

\"Seo<\/p>\n

We want to get rid of this data. This is a challenge because it\u2019s a broad topic \u2013 but we can refine our original query to get something more specific to what we want to investigate. To do that, we can add another level to our query \u2013 to only report posts that also mention another relevant term. For example, webpage, reporting, analytics<\/em>, etc.<\/p>\n

Running this amended segment through our tools, for 2021 so far (up until the 30th of September at the time of writing), we end up with a sample of 363k posts \u2013 an average of 9k per week. More than enough to do some interesting research!<\/p>\n

The reason I\u2019m running through this before presenting any findings is, firstly, because I think it\u2019s always good to show your working. But secondly, it illustrates what we can do in this arena. There\u2019s 3 key points from this initial example.<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. We can pull data retroactively<\/strong> \u2013 we\u2019re pulling 9 months of data, whereas social listening can often be seen as a \u2018what\u2019s happening right now\u2019 style of reporting.<\/li>\n
  2. We can identify key trends and brands that are featuring in our dataset<\/strong> \u2013 for better or worse, we can see who or what is present in what we\u2019re analysing, which in turn means\u2026<\/li>\n
  3. We can be flexible with how we pull the data<\/strong> \u2013 since we can see and assess what we\u2019re pulling through, we can make sure we remove irrelevant data. This works the other way too, meaning we can ensure we capture things that might be missing on a first pass.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Now, let\u2019s see what we can find.<\/p>\n

    Posts with the most<\/h2>\n

    A good place to start is with what\u2019s being shared. Users reading or liking a social post are both good engagements, a share (or re-tweet or whatever else it might be called on a given platform) is a step above \u2013 it\u2019s an affirmative action whereby a user finds content so valuable they want to be seen to share it with their own network.<\/p>\n

    When we look at the most shared SEO content on social in 2021, we see a few broad trends.<\/p>\n

      \n
    1. Learning and development<\/li>\n
    2. SEO in demand<\/li>\n
    3. Personal stories<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

      Learning and development<\/h2>\n

      This one maybe shouldn\u2019t come as a surprise \u2013 SEO and the associated community has always been high on learning and knowledge. The three most shared posts around this topic, all on Twitter, are below.<\/p>\n

      \"\" \"Learning-and-development\"<\/p>\n

      \"Learning-and-development-2\"<\/p>\n

      \"Learning-and-development-3\"<\/p>\n

      What can we learn from this?<\/h2>\n

      Length is no barrier to engagement. Two out of these three posts are threads. The post from @hrishiptweets is actually a 29-Tweet thread. The post from @natmeiletic is only a 7-tweet thread, but still fairly \u2018long form\u2019 by Twitter standards.<\/p>\n

      The SEO community have shared these posts over many other shorter, snappier options. This tells us that even in the \u2018micro-blogging\u2019 environment of Twitter, the SEO community is hungry for long-form content.<\/p>\n

      To be good at SEO, you need knowledge and understanding of the field \u2013 so the priority is to get that information, rather than to find a pithy or snappy tweet that sums it up in less characters.<\/p>\n

      Quality resources are held in high regard.<\/h2>\n

      As stated above, we know there\u2019s an appetite for long form content. We can see from the most shared post that a high-quality learning resource is a draw for SEOs.<\/p>\n

      It\u2019s also worth noting this content is described as \u2018good\u2019, \u2018reliable\u2019 and \u2018free\u2019.
      \nWhat all of this tells me is that SEO remains fertile ground for content marketing. Clearly there is a desire for long form, high quality information \u2013 knowledge transfer is driving quality organic engagements in the SEO social landscape, so if I were promoting SEO services that\u2019s what I\u2019d lean into.<\/p>\n

      SEO in demand<\/h2>\n

      There\u2019s been a long running trend of people talking about how \u201cSEO is dead\u201d \u2013 though more often than not it\u2019s something people are responding to, e.g., explaining why that isn\u2019t the case, rather than suggesting this statement is true. If you Google \u201cSEO is dead\u201d, here\u2019s a sample of what you\u2019ll see:<\/p>\n

      \"Is<\/p>\n

      \"Is<\/p>\n

      \"Think<\/p>\n

      Running the phrase \u201cSEO is dead\u201d through our social listening tools, we can only find 508 posts in 2021 so far that feature the phrase.<\/p>\n

      \"3.5<\/p>\n

      While it seems that \u201cSEO is dead\u201d is a self-defeating phrase, with the only people repeating it being those determined to disprove it, it can sometimes feel that in a world of paid search, programmatic display, and social remarketing, that organic search can fall by the wayside.<\/p>\n

      As a result, we see content doing well on social that is focused on demonstrating the value of SEO \u2013 more as a skill than as a service.<\/p>\n

      \"Top\"Skills<\/p>\n

      What this tells us about the social landscape around organic search is that SEOs want to promote the value of their expertise \u2013 that they want to make it clear that SEO is alive and well, and still a vital part of the digital marketing mix.<\/p>\n

      And they\u2019re right to think that, but when we\u2019re promoting SEO or writing content about it, we need to take a positive angle that focuses on the value of organic search to businesses and clients, rather than fighting against the perception of SEO as a dying art. Ironically, it seems the only people perpetuating that idea are those that are trying to defend against it.<\/p>\n

      Personal stories<\/h2>\n

      The crux of social media is the people behind the content, whether that\u2019s proving why their messages should be taken seriously or telling a more relatable human story. After the last 18 months, it should come as no surprise that there are stories that have made a mark even in the SEO community.<\/p>\n

      The single most shared post I found around SEO in 2021 was the following:<\/p>\n

      \"Aaron<\/p>\n

      22.2k re-tweets is on a different order of magnitude to any of the other posts we\u2019ve looked at. Stranger still, it\u2019s for an account with hardly any presence of its own.<\/p>\n

      \"Aaron<\/p>\n

      What this tells us is that the SEO community is passionate and willing to help. It also shows us the power of relatable stories, and that social media can still do what we maybe thought it would do more of when it first emerged \u2013 push out a human story with a positive outcome.<\/p>\n

      Big players<\/h2>\n

      We\u2019ve looked at the individual posts that have driven the most shares, but as mentioned before, there are another 363 thousand or so posts that make up the landscape. The 3 biggest players that have engaged with SEO on social in 2021 are:<\/p>\n

      The Economist<\/strong> \u2013 25 million followers<\/p>\n

      \"The<\/p>\n

      Funny or Die<\/strong> \u2013 13 million followers<\/p>\n

      \"Funny<\/p>\n

      Hootsuite<\/strong> \u2013 7 million followers<\/p>\n

      \"Hootsuite<\/p>\n

      While these are huge social media accounts in terms of their following, they\u2019re not particularly relevant to the world of SEO, though Hootsuite is a good match for broader digital marketing.
      \nWhen I think about SEO, there are certain names that come to mind \u2013 so if we keep going down that list of big accounts that have engaged with SEO, do we find the names we\u2019d expect, like Moz, Search Engine Land and Search Engine Journal?<\/p>\n

      The next highest \u2018marketing adjacent\u2019 account in the list is Clients from Hell<\/a>, which is not the best look when we\u2019re thinking about SEO as a service to be sold!<\/p>\n

      Continuing on, we see the SEMRush blog<\/a>, @Moz on Twitter<\/a> and @googleanalytics on Twitter<\/a>. So some of the names we might expect do feature, though as mentioned before they are blown out of the water by bigger publications wading into the conversation.<\/p>\n

      There are some up and coming accounts in the mix too \u2013 most notably @GainRankSEO<\/a> on Twitter who\u2019d been showing some strong social growth in the first half of 2021. Unfortunately, the account now seems to be dormant and as such engagement has dropped off.<\/p>\n

      \"GainRank<\/p>\n

      Looking at the big players on social gives us insights into the challenges we\u2019ll face if we\u2019re trying to make an impact. This is particularly powerful when looking at trying to break into a new service area or make ground with a new audience \u2013 understanding who is already present in the space not only tells you what you\u2019re up against, but also gives you an early idea of what\u2019s working in that arena.<\/p>\n

      Scratching the surface<\/h2>\n

      There are so many more dimensions we can slice this data up by, but this article is pushing 2,000 words already so I\u2019ll wrap up with some quickfire insights to give you an idea of the scope of what we can find out.<\/p>\n