SEO IN A SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

SEO IN A SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

Web professionals interest in search engine optimization (SEO) is matched in intensity on by the excitement surrounding social. media.
The end result of these two Internet marketing endeavors is nearly the same website traffic and brand exposure not to mention stronger customer relationships.

While SEO tends to be more technical (at least itis perceived to be so), social media optimization (SMO) leans more toward developing a process to establish quality relationships where trust and confidence are the aims. It can be argued, however, that the techniques and tactics employed in each practice are universal and interchangeable. It is difficult to deny that tremendous opportunity for profit exists when we employ (or at least think about) common SEO best practices and apply them to our social media world.

 To make the most of the current Web landscape, a formal plan is required -one that provides an understanding of the audience to which you are marketing your products and services, takes into account the quality and quantity content you will need, and establishes measurable goals for the benefit of your business If the horizon from whence you work looks bleak when it comes to either SEO or SMO, fear not-you're about to rocket your website into a new stratosphere the Internet planet it comes down to this:

 SEO in a social media world provides an opportunity to make a more meaningful impact on existing users and prospects than either practice alone, making your enterprise more genuine and providing the ability to explore channels that may have previously seemed walled, inaccessible and alien.

SEO FAILINGS

Most websites struggle with SEO, and it is not just the Internet mom-and-pop SEO technology and service provider Conductor (which calls the likes of NetFlix Progressive Insurance and other notable names as clients) released a research report Search of 500)in searchability and optimization effectiveness Fortune 500 companies.

How did they fare?
Not so well. More than half of the companies had almost no natural search it with their targeted keywords, defined as not ranking within the top 100 natural search results. Sound similar to your own troubles? Only two percent of the domains with the actual companies) showed a significant number their keyword terms in

 The problem is not only that these companies and others are failing in the complex world of SEO. They are now simultaneously seduced by the promise of riches popularity and consumer endearment from participating in social media world The worst part for Web professionals is that regular web users are turning a blind eye to corporate social media and its real-time nature. Online marketing firm OneUp- Webs recent eye-tracking study revealed some interesting findings of real-time and perhaps, in many respects, the impact that "social" has on search results.

 Of the participants in the study, 73 percent had never heard of real-time results, and only a quarter of the consumers cared for the real-time results, compared to 47 percent of the nformation foragers Couple that with recent news that social media may have peaked and you have a perfect storm that is sure to upset the balance of promotions World idea that social is making its way into search rhe so on is to make our brands as con- sistent and value-added as possible wherever consumers interact w iL So how do we apply the SEC principles that we know work for generating com petitive first-page rankings to social media, and vice-versa? In short, it comes down to how content is developed shared But first its necessary to discuss the basics of getting social.

 A common and damaging misconception is that SEO is separate from the marketing strategy a business. the reality, integrating SEO into existing business practices I essential these days, and if you plan on achieving any level of success you will need a formal plan.

TAKE THE RIGHT APPROACH

 Just you wouldn't get in a taxi without knowing your destination, you would not want to promote and position your website (or its underlying business) without a formal strategy When it comes to SEO and SMO, reaching your objectives requires that much attention be paid to the content you provide as to how the broader community will interact with it. Since it is the content that people will ultimately discover and share first, if you are publishing the wrong type content, you will arrive at the wrong destination.

Content Development Developing content-based promotions for our current or prospective audiences requires being familiar with their behavior, those users' preferences and how they will share and publish content within their own network and among the social graph they have established.
 One way is to use social media monitoring software, like that provided by Radian6, to stay on top of conversations and the influencers who initiate them. But you don't need to be a creative genius to come up with innovative ideas for content. Many top e-commerce websites rely strongly on leveraging user-generated content, Amazon.com is an excellent example.

 Notice how strongly they leverage user-generated product reviews and recommendations, allowing them to display unique content for nearly every product, on an ongoing basis. Somewhat similar to expert product reviews, but at the category level, buyers guides formative, unique articles designed to educate potential buyers about particular product cat industries.

What about informational and service-oriented websites?
Nothing works bet than education or information section. Simply add a section to an existing website and publish unique and linkable content related to your company the industry serves

You find when creating content that its eventual success does not always rely on the quality of the content, but how it is presented offering it to users in creative, interesting ways, this, you will need the time to brainstorm.

 Think ways that you could change your user's experiences that would be so interesting helpful that others would want to link to you that with their networks. For example, if your website sold pet toys, perhaps you could determine a pet's personality, display a personality analysis, and recommend toys based on that. Or, a humorous video of a pet playing with sent via a Twitter u a popular toy could be embedded on a social network sent via a Twitter update complete with a description of the product and a link and posted on YouTube ere it can be purchased, of course. as But it's not just the quality its frequency) that matters.

 A study of 2,168 HubSpot customers shows businesses that published at least 5 blog articles in the last 7 days draw 6.9 times more organ search traffic and 1.12 more referral blog at a This finding coincides with common sense: out of large chunks of business-relevant content (one post per weekday), blog readers will likely find something engaging and proceed to learn more about a company

They might even share that content with their peers. As important is that content resonates with a Web audience, it won't mean much if the content does not in some way satisfy the objectives of an enterprise. Those objectives can differ greatly per industry or by the type of site that own r operate, but they are routinely website traffic, brand exposure, inbound generation actual leads and sales, While companies have historically been reliant on to sales, social media requires a different tack. So, alternative objectives and measurements app channel's The role SEO a social media effort are to directly influence discovery social communities or content via search.

For example, search for a popular brand term today is likely you will find YouTube channels, Twitter accounts and Facebook Fan Pages on the first page of search results where negative reviews, complaints and brand squatters once ruled that real estate

What this means is that to succeed with SEO in social media we need to think long and hard about how to distribute content and create a tactical approach user sharing.
 While you can foster the sharing process with tools like Share or AddThis, many companies are turning to Facebook Connect and Google Friend Connect take their communities (as well as the inevitable sharing that goes on with right content) to a different level.
 These solutions, while still new. are being widely adopted and present a noteworthy opportunity to shore up support within an existing network. But what about outside of your own site how do ensure that your message is shared across your social graph in a way that is consistent with the original meaning and intent? Social community platform Awareness

Networks launched some intriguing multi-channel publishing features on its platform which puts content directly social media channels like Facebook, Twitter and others without the manual legwork. often, publishers have great content to share but it needs to be managed like a corporate asset.
 For example, who can access certain social media channels and what kind of content can or should go there? In essence, companies looking to optimize social marketing channels face significant control issues surrounding brand image and messaging across multiple channels.
But perhaps the biggest problem with SMO is measuring the effectiveness of multiple platforms.

 Efforts tend to become "black hole" with no empirical data to make informed business decisions. Therefore, its critical that businesses arm is performing. Should the, for example, outperform Facebook in terms of culture even of analytics to measure how each plat generating traffic and increasing time-on-site, then efforts and perhaps budget should be shifted.
 However, this would not mean that Facebook should be abandoned. Social media is a moving only by watching closely will you know when its time to step up efforts on a different channel.

Keyword Optimization One of SEO's most tried and true practices is the use of keywords to help search engines index content. And it's no different in the social media space.

 Profile descriptions as well as to networks should include and phrases that are directly related to the content user expect find after clicking the link or reading the rest of the update. However, this is not to that updates to be keyword stuffed. Remember that social media is intended to appeal to humans.
That means using keywords mixed with a conversational tone to appeal to both search spiders and people. Anchor text in links must use keywords as well both those links pointing to your website and to other social profiles popular keyword tools will provide information on what users are searching but why reinvent the wheel?

SEM Rush provides content marketers valuable insights into the keyword visibility (organic and paid) for any website. how social be a useful tool to quickly gauge the social presence of a particular keyword or brand name but there are others (of varying levels) such as PostRank, Trackur, Social

Mention, TechnigysM2, and even Google Alert to understand the depth of presence for social media campaigns could prove to be immensely valuable to know what terms and content the competition optimizing. Gathering that data (whether manually or through service) at the start of any optimization process becomes integral not just to SEO efforts but also to SMO campaigns Generating Links SEO's golden child is the incoming link. While one might not think of SMO as a legitimate link-building strategy, the opportunity most certainly there. Start by linking your business' social profiles together, and to your website.

This will help brand dominate the search results for a branded search, as well as give users immediate options as to where they would like to connect with our business But the best opportunity for generating links is your content. Social built on sharing and that means sharing links. While, at this time, links originating from social profiles is not weighted heavily by search engines, that will likely change. The simple fact is that users are spending more time on social media and, as a result, or training more information from these sources.

A bonus is that, invariably, high-quality social content will generate links to your website from outside the social world, too. You can bet that just about every blogger, firm and news source is plugged into social media they are looking for content to publish and to link to from their own sites.

By involving SEO insight in a social media marketing effort vice-versa, marketers, public relations professionals and advertisers can extend the value their promotional investment, Well-optimized social media content marketing efforts can attract new network participants via search and through social networks, and facilitate links to websites directly and indirectly.

 The greatest benefit marketers and advertisers enjoy by thinking SEO when starting social media campaigns are that content exists and is shared-long after campaigns have ended.


HOW DO YOU COMPARE (TO GOOGLE)?

 In early March, Google released its own SEO Report Card an effort to provide the com pays product teams with ideas on how they could improve their products pages using accepted optimization techniques.

The project looked at the main pages of 100 different Google products, measuring them across a dozen common optimization categories.

So how did Google fare?

 Althings considered they could do better. The report card indicated that Google needs some serious work on its search result presentation (title tag format and length description meta tag use, and site links) URLs and redirection, and events on page optimization practices including the use of <hl> tags and alt text Google did receive some satisfactory grades on many practices.

 The optimization suggestions were intended to not only help search engines understand the content of our pages better but also to improve our user's experience when visiting our sites simple steps such as fixing 404s and broken links simple lying choice and providing easier understand titles and snippets for our pages can benefit both users and search engines.


HELPFUL SEO RESEARCH

Website Magazine periodically publishes special reports on a variety of subject matter important to your Internet success. As you might imagine studies on search engine optimized- mention, Over the time often receive the most past few months our editors have addressed important questions in the field of SEO including Website Size.
 Alt Text and Keyword Rich ness domain names, sub-domains folders and page names. Here's what we learned

WEBSITE SIZE

The of a website (the number pages) does not have any direct bearing on how well a website ranks for a particular search term.   http://bitly/9CxcQA ALT TEXT Providing alternate text to images is an important part of on-page optimization, more importantly, provides an opportunity to be with accessibility standards http://bit.ly/4xpROB

KEYWORD RICHNESS: The Cross-engine keyword richness inquiry indicated that those responsible for SEO should definitely name folders not focus on page naming consider keywords in subdomains and opt for keywords in their domains http://bitly/5LoFoB

HAS "SOCIAL PEAKED?



It cannot be argued that social media is the Webs hottest trend. But is this trend really a fad? New data from Compete.com shows that every major social network on the Web lost unique visitors from January to February 2010. A look at the numbers:

Facebook.com:  -4.32%
MySpace.com   -11.52%
Twitter.com:      -9.63%
LinkedIn.com:    -8.3%

Of course, a number of participants on these networks are still too high to ignore. But it would be wise to remember that social media is there to serve businesses, not the other way around

A DIGG RENAISSANCE?

Digg com was one of the original sharing sites, offering users the ability to post and share stories with the community. t could also deliver a deluge of traffic if you knew how to game the system and with a little luck. Falling on hard times in recent years.

 Digg is going a different direction. Hoping to become a pioneer in content curation' Digg plans to provide personal home pages for every user, to help filter rank and sort shared content from across the Web including from Facebook and Twitter As more information is shared at a breakneck pace, many users find themselves steeped in information overload.

 Digg hopes that by providing a system to help the most important and relevant stories rise to the top for individual users (their original goal many years ago) users will come back.