@tjrobertson52

If you do anything on social media, Google just dropped the most important announcement of 2026. For the first time ever, you're gonna be able to see actual data about how your social media posts performed on Google Search. You'll be able to see exactly what people typed into Google before your social media post appeared, where your post ranked in the search results, and how many people clicked through.

This is all coming to Google Search Console in the next week. Google Search Console has always been by far the best data source for SEO, and now we're finally getting it for social. But TJ, why would I care about how my social media posts are performing in Google?

I'll tell you why. First of all, the traffic you get from Google is the highest value traffic you can get. It's people who are currently searching for exactly what you're talking about.

If you're a brand, this is often someone specifically searching for the product or service you sell. And you can probably get a lot more traffic from search than you think. You just haven't been focusing on SEO on social.

But here's the thing, neither have your competitors, which means there's almost no competition. We've been optimizing our social media posts and our client social media posts for search and often get a large percentage of our traffic from search, even on brand new channels. But up until now, we've been doing it all completely blind.

Now that we'll be able to see the exact searches people are typing into Google before our social media posts appear, the terms where we were at the bottom of page one or the top of page two, and if only we were a little more optimized, we'd be getting a ton of traffic. There are going to be some real opportunities to increase how much traffic we get from search, and I'll explain how

we'd be getting a ton of traffic. There are going to be some real opportunities to increase how much traffic we get from search, and I'll explain how to do that in a second. But that's not even the main reason you should be excited about this.

The main reason is that social media posts can influence AI responses. But before you can influence AI responses, you have to show up in a search engine. So any data that helps you more reliably show up in search engines is also gonna help you more reliably influence AI responses.

Specifically, getting the AI to recommend your brand instead of your competitors. All of this is rolling out this week, so let me explain how to set it up and then how you can use that data to rank better. Go to Google Search Console and then in the top left choose Add a property.

Once this is set up, in addition to being able to connect your website, you will also be able to connect your Instagram, X, TikTok, and YouTube account. By the way, if you haven't yet connected your website domain, do that first. Once connected, you'll be able to see which posts are showing up in search, but more importantly, what people were typing in the search before those posts appeared.

And for each query, you'll be able to see how many clicks your post got and how many impressions. An impression just means you showed up in the result set, whether or not someone clicked on it. And even though clicks is what we ultimately care about, impressions is what's gonna give you the most information.

Even if you're ranking too low to get a significant amount of clicks, getting an impression means you are ranking for that term. And if you're getting a lot of impressions but not a lot of clicks, it means if you were just ranking a bit better, you would be getting a lot of clicks. Tak

you're getting a lot of impressions but not a lot of clicks, it means if you were just ranking a bit better, you would be getting a lot of clicks. Take note of the types of terms you're getting a lot of impressions for. These are the first terms you want to optimize for.

They're your biggest opportunities. You can either optimize whatever existing post is already getting those impressions, or just make a new post. Optimize for those terms.

Google is already telling you they trust your channel for this term. But how do you optimize for a term on social media? It's easy.

You just put that term at the front of your title, caption, or tweet. That's it. Do that and you'll be doing social media SEO better than 99% of people.