Social Media Marketing has become the elephant in the room that everyone is talking about. However, many marketers are having a difficult time grasping how to best leverage off of this innovative tool. Below are some helpful tips on how to best utilize social media to improve SEO through building inbound links and optimizing a corporate blog.
Linking
Inbound links are prime real-estate for Search Engine Optimization and at first glance, social media seems like a great place to squeeze out some extra “link juice”. However, this is often not the case. For those who aren’t familiar, inbound links are one of the most important concepts of SEO. They are defined as links on external websites that redirect to your website and are important because search engines use them to evaluate the usefulness and relevance of your site, ultimately dictating your SERP (Search Engine Result Page) ranking. Links located on highly relevant and popular websites hold the most weight, making uber popular social networking sites the perceived Bentley of inbound links. Unfortunately, many of these sites have recognized the potential for link spamming and have thwarted online marketers with the “No Follow” tag. This cues the search engine not to read it as an inbound link and will not help your SERP ranking. Below is a list of social media sites that don’t have it out for online marketers and allow “do follow” links that will contribute to your inbound links.
Note: To check to see if there is a no follow tag on any inbound link, simply open the page source and search the links on the page to see if they contain the “no follow” attribute that looks like this: <a rel=”nofollow” href=”http://www.example.com/”>Link anchor text here</a>.
- PR URL
- 9 www.slashdot.org
- 8 www.digg.org
- 8 www.mister-wong.com
- 8 www.propeller.com
- 8 www.stumbleupon.com
- 8 www.reddit.com
- 7 del.icio.us
- 7 www.friendfeed.com
- 7 www.furl.net
- 7 www.myblog.com
- 7 www.mixx.com
- 7 Ma.gnolia.com
Blogs
Blogs were our first taste of the social media frenzy to come and still hold a lot of weight in the SEO world. They began as open personal diaries and have morphed into an ideal platform for opinionated people everywhere. Online marketers refuse to be left behind in this revolutionary trend and have embraced the corporate blog as a tool to engage their customers in a more informal arena as well as utilize blogs to improve their search engine rankings. In order to incorporate a blog as part of a SEO strategy, it is important to first decide the goal of the blog. There are three different ways to develop a blog for SEO depending on that goal:
1) Fresh Content Search engines love websites with a lot of information on a specific topic that are regularly updated. By hosting a blog on your site (such as www.mysite.com/blog), you can prove your website’s worth as a regularly updated website rich in relevant content that incorporates important keywords.
2) Inbound Links Another strategy is to create an offsite blog on a blog host (ex: www.blog.mysite.com). Although the blog will not be recognized as added content to your site, an offsite blog can help you build those all-important inbound links discussed earlier. Just make sure to include an appropriate number of links that point back to relevant pages on your website.
3) Join the Blogging Community Lastly, a blog can be used as an incentive to get other bloggers to link to your website. By forming relationships within the blogging community, you can gain valuable inbound links.
Tip: When setting up a corporate blog, be sure to use the correct architecture such as Wordpress, Compendium or Hubspot. Most of the other blog providers have no SEO value.
As social media continues to change and expand, marketers will be there every step of the way trying to determine how to best capitalize on it. Be wary, however, of jumping on the social media bandwagon prematurely. Already several downfalls of this new medium have been discovered. The most glaring fault is the difficulty of measuring ROI. Unlike natural search, it is difficult to measure the direct traffic social media generates for a website. Also, many businesses sell to demographics that have little interest in social media, such as manufacturing industries. So step back and take some time to truly assess the value social media can offer your business, freeing you to channel your efforts purposefully and effectively.