What is social SEO?
What exactly is social SEO?
At CTI we’ve just released a new guide to social SEO. So it seems like a good time for a little explainer post.
Yes, we’re well aware that explainer posts like these are a little old fashioned (Google isn’t sending a tsunami of traffic to generic explainer blog posts any more), however in this case, the term is relatively new and its definition has changed over the last few years. So, we thought an explainer was in order.
We define social SEO as:
The process of optimising social media content for visibility in search results, both on the social platform itself, and off-platform in search engines and AI citations.
— Definition of 'social SEO'
When it was coined (pre ChatGPT launch), the term ‘social SEO’ referred exclusively to optimising for in-platform search (i.e. social search).
The idea was that Gen Z consumers were abandoning Google and heading to TikTok, to find anything from the best local brunch spot to their next holiday destination. And brands were rushing to adapt to this behaviour.
However, since 2023 – particularly as LLM-powered assistants have increasingly drawn on social content to build their answers – Google search and AI mentions / citations have also become a target for so-called social SEO.
This has been evident in our own client work at CTI Digital. One Instagram Reel built around a genuine non-branded customer question generated more than 56,000 Google Search impressions in 28 days, including more than 18,000 impressions from a single non-branded product keyword.
Social SEO is not all that dissimilar to regular SEO (minus a lot of the technical work), in that it involves a conscious effort by the marketer to adapt their content (including posts, profiles, captions and so on) so that their brands may be found by people demonstrating intent.
In fact, social SEO has brought about a renaissance in what used to be called SEO PR – the idea that talk about the brand across the wider web (whether by third-party publications or social media) will help search efforts. But whereas the goal used to be backlinks, now it is citations and mentions.
The wider context for CTI’s new report is how social media is influencing purchase journeys. A 2025 YouGov poll found that two-thirds (66%) of Gen Z use social media to research brands. Social is now more than just a publishing or awareness channel. It plays a central role in discovery, research and decision-making. People use social media to find brands, compare products, and try (vicariously) before they buy.
And, of course (in the real world), our search habits aren’t only confined to brand names. People are searching for answers.
Content marketing manager at CTI, Ben is a writer and editor with 15 years experience in the marketing industry.