Can an SEO company help with social media SEO?
Yes, with the parts where social media and search overlap: making your profiles complete and consistent so they serve people who search for your name, connecting those profiles to your website in a way Google can read, optimizing content for the search built into platforms such as YouTube, and producing content worth linking to. What an SEO company does not automatically do is run your social media marketing, and what it should not do is promise that likes or followers will raise your Google rankings.
Two things the phrase can mean
“Social media SEO” is used for two different jobs. One is using social platforms to support your visibility in Google. The other is optimizing your content so it is found through search inside the platforms themselves. Some SEO companies do both, some only the first, and the difference matters when you compare proposals. Ask which one is being offered.
Likes, followers, and Google rankings
Be cautious when a company says that buying followers or chasing shares will lift your Google rankings, and ask it to show you where Google says so. The connection that can hold is indirect: content that more people see has more chances to be cited and linked from other websites, and it is links and mentions on those sites, not the share counts, that an SEO company works with.
Connecting your profiles to your website
When someone searches for your business by name, your profiles on social platforms can appear among the results, so they should carry the same name, address, phone number, and description as your website. An SEO company can also tell Google which profiles belong to you. Google’s documentation on Organization structured data describes the sameAs property as “The URL of a page on another website with additional information about your organization, if applicable”, giving as an example “a URL to your organization’s profile page on a social media or review site”. Listing your official profiles there states, in markup on your own site, which profiles are yours.
Search inside the platforms
YouTube has its own search system, which YouTube’s explanation of how YouTube search works describes in terms of relevance, engagement, and quality, so optimizing videos there is a discipline of its own. A company that offers search work inside platforms should say plainly which platforms it covers.
Where social media marketing is separate work
Planning a posting calendar, designing posts, writing captions, replying to comments and messages, building a community, and running paid social campaigns are social media marketing. They draw on different skills and tools from SEO. Some agencies offer both under one contract; if you need that work, confirm it is in the written scope and priced, rather than assuming it comes with an SEO package.