About the author: Emma-Julie Fox writes for Pitstop Media, a top rated Vancouver SEO company that provides services to businesses across North America. If you would like to invite the author to guest post on your blog please contact www.pitstopmedia.com
Google has implemented a series of algorithm updates since 2011. As a result of these, many businesses have experienced a significantly negative effect on their search rankings. And the drop in rankings didn’t just happen in Google search rankings, but even on the results pages of other search engines. That’s because other search engines typically follow Google’s lead where algorithms are concerned.
Among the most notable change that has occurred as a result of Google’s updates is the importance that’s now being given to social media in terms of online marketing.
Where before a company’s SEO strategy can work independently, developing an SEO strategy is now considered weak, and even flawed, without the social media aspect. There used to be a time when expert SEO services and social media optimizers moved in two different worlds.
That time is now over. These days, it is important for your SEO strategy to go hand-in-hand with your social media campaigns. Here are some of the things you can do to make sure your strategies on both fronts are properly aligned:
- Create Quality Content
Before you even start thinking about how you can make your SEO and social media strategies work together, you’ll have to make sure all of your sites and posts have high-quality content. It is no longer enough to post as much content on your sites as you can or as often as you want.
It is no longer enough to say content is king. High-quality content now reigns supreme.
Even if your Facebook posts and Twitter updates are useful, your followers aren’t likely to appreciate seeing the same message on ten consecutive visits to your pages. That kind of monotony will only succeed in driving followers away.
To keep your content fresh and interesting, you could use the following:
1) Follow industry trends through tools like Google Alerts and create social media posts and blogs on new and interesting developments.
2) Introduce contests and giveways to keep the buzz going around your blog and social media fan pages.
3) Make sure you have good mix of links, videos, pictures and texts in your social media posts, especially Facebook. Edgerank (Facebook’s algorithm) takes user’s interaction preferences into account while creating the order in which feeds are displayed in their accounts. A good mix of video, text and images, improve the chances of your posts showing up on the walls of people with different interaction preferences.
4) Create your own unique social media voice and stick to it. Your social image is an extension of your brand image, so make sure every post that you create resonates with your overall brand message.
5) Solve problems for your fans. The problems could be related directly to your business, or your niche. So, you could give tips on how to make the best use of your products, give DIY widgets, or anything else that you know your target market will find useful.
- Promote the Same Web Pages
As mentioned earlier, your SEO and social media strategies now need to work closely together. Naturally, this involves promoting the same landing pages.
After all, how can you align these two strategies if they’re promoting a different set of landing pages? There’s absolutely no sense in using social media to improve your search rankings if your social media accounts don’t link back to your primary web pages.
Be careful when you link your social media sites to your main pages, though. The recent Google updates include penalties for websites with too many backlinks. What you need to do is choose only the most popular and relevant social media sites and then link those to just a few primary landing pages.
This allows you to successfully drive your main pages to the top of search results pages and avoid getting penalized, since you’re neither spreading your links too thin nor jamming your main pages with backlinks.
For optimum results, be sure to provide a unique description on each social media page, even if the landing page you’re linking to is the same.
Link your social media sites to you main website so as to promote the same web pages
- Take Advantage of YouTube
For sure you know how effective video can be as an online marketing tool. What makes YouTube even more effective is that it allows you to use not just video, but audio and text as well. Interesting and relevant YouTube videos often get shared on other social media sites. And when your videos are linked to your main pages the way your other social media sites are, then they have a good chance of increasing traffic on your company website.
An important point to keep in mind while creating Youtube videos is that you shouldn’t focus too much on promotional content; soft sell is the way to go!
For instance, let’s say you own a Sparkling water brand, you can create Youtube Videos about how to create healthy and yummy cocktails with your brand of sparkling water.
Whatever social media site you choose to use for purposes of online marketing, there’s one thing you need to keep in mind if you really want your social SEO strategy to be successful: They all still start with keywords.
Although the Google algorithm updates no longer make it possible for you to get by on web content crammed with targeted keywords, you still need to make sure your site and fan page content revolves around the most relevant and search-friendly keywords and tag lines.
Among the easiest ways to find effective keywords is to go with the most basic descriptions of what your business is all about. For example, if you’re involved in the fashion industry, then your most obvious keywords would be “fashion,” “apparel,” “clothing,” and “accessories.”
Perhaps the biggest drawback of these keywords is the fact that they’re very common and most of the other business in the fashion industry would likely be using them as well.
Keyword quality is now a lot more important than quantity
Bear in mind that keyword quality depends on two things: the number of people using them in searches and the number of competing sites using them as well. If you can find a set of keywords that are being constantly used in searches, but which only a few of your competitors are using for their online marketing strategy, then you should do your best to take advantage of those keywords.
The good thing is that there are online tools that can assist you in identifying the most valuable keywords, such as Google’s Keyword Tool. All you need to do is type in a specific keyword and the tool will show you other keyword suggestions along with data on the number of users and competitors for each keyword.
Considering the above information, it is clear that to succeed in online marketing these days, you’ll have to strike a good balance between your SEO and social media strategies. Social media is the preferred platform of the times, but traditional SEO techniques are still essential to your overall marketing campaign.
Tags: backlink, Blogging, Blogs, brand, content, Digital media, Emma Julie-Fox, Google, Google Alert, North America, Pitstop Media, SEO, SEO strategy, Social Media, Social Media strategy, video blogging
Great content Emma, I agree that quality content is the key to attracting and retaining customers. By engaging with them and building trust, as well as covering off the areas you have highlighted, gives a great platform for success.
Really good advice with practical tips, excellent.