Social Media Stategies and SEO

There is no way I can do justice to such a complex subject in a short post but let me give you the bird’s eye view on how social media can support SEO (Search Engine Optimization – i.e. getting your site in a good position in google and other search engines, but mainly google because it still dominates the search market).

I have been working helping clients improve their search engine rankings for several years now. It’s not an easy thing to do. There is a lot of planning, and then a great deal of detailed, dare I say nitpicking, work involved. And even then, nothing is guaranteed.

Easy to understand products and services generally have a great deal of competition on important keywords. Search for “hotels Vancouver” and you’ll get 7,940,000 results. Most searchers will only look at the first half of the first page. If you don’t believe me, next time you’re doing a search for something, see how far you go down the page of results. So, if your search term is that popular, there are some things you can do to move yourself up the rank. They take a great deal of work and time. I don’t want to go into those things in this post since it’s about social media.

Some products defy categorization into logical and frequently searched keywords or phrases. You’d think these niche market items would make it easier to compete for keywords but this is often not the case. Sometimes there is simply not enough data to make it possible to determine what terms people will use to search for a particular product or service.

So, how can social media help in this situation? Let me give you a quick outline of a plan that will increase your chances of reaching your intended audience.

1. Go looking into various social media to find people interested in your topic. Make ‘friends’.

2. Contribute your expertise to these discussions.

3. Set up a blog where you can post useful information and develop a following of people interested in the topic. You will be found more easily in blogsearch.google.com than in the regular google search.

4. Develop a group of people that you follow on Twitter and have them follow you. Once you have followers, you can post short links to your interesting blog posts about topics of interest to your audience.

5. Consider advertising on some of the social network sites. Social network advertising allows you to pinpoint your exact customer demographic and advertise only to them. It’s a cost effective way to get to your prospective customers.

Many people now go to various of the social media sites that I described in earlier posts to search for information. They often find the peer recommended information more useful than the general information found through search engines.

Next week I’ll go into more depth on strategy.