How Social Media Is InfluencingSearch Engine Optimization

How Social Media Is Influencing Search Engine Optimization Today, social media marketing has become a powerful strategy, influencing search engine optimization.

Social Media Optimization
Social media optimization and SEO services complement each other.
While search engine optimization increases your exposure in Google, Yahoo!, and MSN, social media allows you to reach your audience directly.
This slideshow covers the basics of SEO, including how content and inbound links contribute to a site’s organic rankings.
We’ll cover how ongoing content creation and blog marketing are perfect for engaging your audience and encouraging a dialogue.
We’ll also explore how social media marketing builds seamlessly upon SEO services and how you can leverage user generated content (UGC) to expand your search visibility.

Content
When people visit your site, they want to experience something that connects with them, including engaging content that might include white papers, articles, blog posts, videos, customer reviews and thought pieces.
This type of content forms the foundation upon which your company builds market awareness. It is essential for expanding your search engine visibility.
Each piece of content on your site represents an opportunity to attract inbound links. While thematic content has on-site optimization value, it has far more SEO potential through its ability to encourage other site owners to link to it.

Inbound Links
Search engines rank pages based upon their relevance and authority for a given query.
Inbound links are a main parameter used to determine the relevance and authority a site or page has within its competitive landscape.
The number of links pointing to a site, the source of each link, its age, anchor text, and theme of the originating page calculate its contribution.
The more authority your site has, the higher your pages will appear within the organic listings.
It’s important to consider inbound links from the perspective of developing content to generate them.
Optimized link building is a key component of SEO and one of the linchpins of social media marketing.

Content And Blogs Work Together
Because a large portion of the information found online quickly becomes stale, Google, Yahoo!, and Bing place a higher value on fresh content.
Sites periodically updated enjoy a ranking boost over stagnant sites, making blog development and blog marketing core SEO strategies.
A blog built upon a content management system that makes adding content simple and low maintenance eliminates the technical hurdles associated with uploading new articles and videos.
The more fresh content added, the more frequently the search engine spiders visit to give a rankings boost to sites updated regularly.

Blog Marketing Strategies
The most effective content and blog marketing strategies place your business in front of your target audience to encourage a dialogue.
SEO services often place a heavy emphasis on building inbound links through content syndication.
Social media marketing takes a different route, using engaging content and blogs to subtly speak directly to a target audience.
It stimulates conversation about a company and its products, placing a voice on an otherwise dry corporate image and facilitating direct interaction with customers.
Blog marketing strategies help ensure posts are shared with thousands of followers across popular social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter.

Dovetailing With SEO Services
SEO services and social media marketing dovetail due to the way they increase your company’s exposure via content and links.
Search engine optimization lifts your site in the organic listings. While there is branding value, it is focused on driving traffic, leads, and sales for short and long-tail keywords.
Social media marketing leverages the same tools to interact with and influence your audience.
It improves the quality of your customer relationships. It can shape the marketing message your audience receives, also providing a doorway to media coverage.

User Content And Web 2.0
Web 2.0 is designed around the principle that information consumers should have the ability to collaborate or create their own content & voice.
For example, an article can be appended by a reader. A video can be uploaded and shared. Blogs, podcasts, and wikis can be created for a connected audience, commented on and shared amongst like-minded peer groups.
Web 2.0 is a powerful concept for launching community contests, branding campaigns, viral reviews and similar promotional projects.
For example, you might organize a contest where members submit videos highlighting your products. If a video goes viral, it can drive thousands of visitors to your site while the contest itself further cements your brand.

Increasing Brand Participation
Social media marketing influences branding by forming a bridge between you and your audience, through the “pull” marketing concept.
Rather than merely increasing your market’s awareness of your brand through “push” marketing, it influences others to promote your brand for you with their own peer groups
A social media marketing campaign increases your market’s brand participation through the direct interaction you enjoy with your customers, many of whom are centers of influence within other networks.
By interacting with customers on a one-to-one level, you can have enormous effect upon how they perceive your company. When your customers become fans, they tell their friends and acquaintances.

Creating A Strategy
First, identify your audience and where they congregate online.
Second, have a clear understanding about what your audience is trying to accomplish. What do they want and what are their goals?
Third, determine the platforms for building your social media marketing campaign. (Twitter, Facebook, blogs, etc.)
Fourth, build a roadmap that outlines how you’ll reach the centers of influence, topics to cover and the actions needed.
Fifth, identify your own goals for the campaign as well as how you’ll measure your results.
Lastly, create a timeline for the types of fresh content you’ll develop, who’s responsible, & where you’ll distribute it.

Blending Social Media And SEO
This two-pronged approach achieves far more than mere branding and traffic. Search engines are hyper-sensitive to fresh, unique content and optimized backlinks that come from diverse, topically relevant sources. Both concepts allow marketers to capitalize on these trends. When properly executed, success rates are significant.
By leveraging engaging content, blog marketing, and user generated content, you can connect with your audience in ways that influence them to participate in building your brand for you.
While social media marketing and SEO services are individually powerful, merging the two yields far better results.
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How Social Media Is InfluencingSearch Engine Optimization

by ScottGardner on Sep 04, 2009

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