All About Social Media
Web professionals’ interest in search engine optimization (SEO) is matched in intensity only 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 it is perceived to be so), social media optimization (SMO) leans more toward developing a process to establish quality relationships where trust and confidence are the aim. It can be argued, however, that the techniques and tactics employed in each practice are universal and interchangeable. It is difficult to deny that a tremendous opportunity for profit exists when we employ (or at least think about) common SEO best practices and apply them within 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 of content you will need, and establishes measurable goals for the benefit of your business.
SEO FAILINGS
Most websites struggle with SEO, and it is not just the Internet mom-and-pops. SEO technology and service provider Conductor (which calls the likes of NetFlix, Progressive Insurance and other notable names as clients) released a research report (Natural Search Trends of the Fortune 500) in mid-February that detailed search visibility and optimization effectiveness of Fortune 500 companies. How did they fare? Not so well. More than half of the companies had almost no natural search visibility 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 surveyed (those associated with the actual companies) showed a significant number of their keyword terms in the top results.
TAKE THE RIGHT APPROACH
Just as 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 as 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 of 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, are buyer’s guides — informative, unique articles designed to educate potential buyers about particular product categories or industries.
Multi-channel SMO
The role of SEO in a social media effort is to directly influence discovery of social communities or content via search. For example, search for a popular brand term today and it 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 a social media world, we need to think long and hard about how to distribute content and create a tactical approach to user sharing. While you can foster the sharing process with tools like ShareThis or AddThis, many companies are turning to Facebook Connect and Google Friend Connect to take their communities (as well as the inevitable sharing that goes on with the 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 you ensure that your message is shared across your social graph in a way that is consistent with the original meaning and intent?
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 and content, as well as updates to networks, should include keywords and phrases that are directly related to the content a user can expect to find after clicking a link, or reading the rest of the update. However, this is not to suggest that updates are 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.
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