Social Media

Many folks tend to mention social media and SEO in the same breath as a sort of catch-all term without realizing that they are not one and the same. They are, however, complimentary and the former can potentially have strong effects on the latter.

Image: DSM publishing UK

Some SEO DIYers may define the practice of SEO as simply getting site content to match up with keywords in the meta tags portion of their HTML code. However when they try to put that concept into practice they soon find out that it’s not THAT simple. No one really knows the exact algorithm Google uses to rank websites except maybe the people who work at Google HQ. The reason for that is mostly because the Google search algorithm is perpetually in flux and can be thought of as a “work in progress” due to the ever changing nature of the web itself – in fact they make about 400 tweaks a year to their search algorithm. SEO must change with it due to this hard fact and grows to accommodate not only traditional websites but social networking sites, web apps, blogs and so on. I find that many bloggers have a tough time figuring out SEO because their site’s content tends to have a shelf life – so due to the above notion of SEO they either don’t think there’s a point to trying to rank high for the content of a post or just don’t know how to do it.

It almost goes without saying that to be a successful blogger it helps if you use social media tools to help publicize your latest post. It’s not enough to just host your blog on WordPress.com or Blogger/Blogspot, even if there are certain advantages to being part of a built in platform community. A good blogger does not just write for other bloggers but also writes content for the general viewer, so it makes sense to syndicate your blog with Twitter, Facebook, etc. This applies particularly to people who self-host their blogs (although WordPress.org now lets you connect your blog with a wordpress.com account – which is awesome) as they are pretty much on an island if they use the platform out of the box without the built in community aspect of Blogger or WordPress.com. There are all kinds of tactics to get people to read your blog both online and in the physical world, but for this post I will just focus on using SEO to get people to happen by naturally. The great thing is that now with the Google May Day Algorithm change blogs get a fighting chance through great content! That’s right, content is king again, this time for real.

May Day is not a temporary change, its permanent and is independent of Caffeine, but what hasn’t changed about SEO is that search engine spiders still need to find the paths to your site. Remember that Google isn’t the only engine out there (even if it’s the most widely used) and it’s good to think of Bing and Yahoo too. What’s common among all three of the big search engines is that they still look for inbound links to help them find and index your site quicker and with more relevance to searchers. Social media, aside from all its promise and hocus pocus is still actually a great way to increase your SEO because just about every social networking site thrives on links to great content.

So here’s some things you can do for your company or blog that will help get you indexed faster.

Create social networking profiles to secure your brand identity

You probably already have a Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter profile (if you don’t, you’re going to want to fix that) but there are lots of other sites out there that may be more focused in terms of relevance to the content you produce. Each site has a different niche audience and if you’re using social media in the business world, you’re probably looking for that audience. Use Knowem to see just about all the social networks that people use and register your brand name or blog name before someone else does! The great thing is that Knowem will tell you what’s taken and what’s not in each category. Just make sure that you intend to actively use any profile you register or doing so won’t do much for your SEO.

Keywords

keywords are still important within a blog or site but did you know that you can match them up with your status updates on twitter, facebook, youtube and so on? When you write some content think about the one or two main keywords or long-tail key phrases you want your post to represent and use them in your tweets. Hashtags are a great way to do this, but also consider optimizing the permalink of your post to have the same keywords. Works like a charm and gives the search engines a direct path to the good stuff. If your blogging platform (i.e. WordPress, Tumblr) allows you to specify tags, throw those in there. The general rule of thumb is to pick the best 10 keywords and phrases and cut it off there. If you think dumping in 50 keywords will help by virtue of the birdshot principle, you’re in the clouds (see what I did there? *crickets*).

Entice

I’ve been fighting with this for a while. Facebook’s note system allows you to (poorly) import your entire blog into your profile and lets readers read the whole post on their site. While it may sound cool, it’s important to realize that using their note system in that manner out of the box does little for your SEO because, yes you guessed it, they’re getting the web hit, not your blog that you worked so hard on! I’m not saying to avoid syndicating your blog to hugely popular sites like Facebook however. Instead use services like Networked Blogs or connect your blog to Tumblr and it will publish a snippet of your main blog post for you right onto facebook. The great thing is that the link that is generated goes right back to your post and you get the hit while giving search spiders yet another direct path from a high-ranking site to your blog! Bonus tip: You know that Excerpt box under the main window of your post content in WordPress that you ignore? Fill it out with an abstract of your post content! It replaces the full content in RSS feeds when the option to display summaries is selected in Dashboard › Settings › Reading. Send em to your blog so they can see all that great formatting you busted your butt on!

Don’t be Lazy

WP lets you link to existing content in your own blog

I mentioned Caffeine before but failed to explain it. The Google Caffeine algorithm is what google put in place to weed out sites that were static and boring – sorta. That is, Google decided that the most relevant rankings were not just those with the right keywords, but those that were updated frequently in a timely manner. It makes sense – you would rather hear about the most updated information on a subject rather than something antiquated that used to rank well based on old SEO practices. It’s a big reason why Wikipedia often shows up in the top 3 results for a lot of search queries.

For bloggers this is great because blog sites are supposed to be updated frequently so no sweat, right? Well there are more than a few “bloggers” who post maybe once every 2 months or longer and wonder why their SEO sucks. Bottom line you gotta keep up appearances when you blog, so get out there and write something! Also it doesn’t hurt to keep older posts fresh with some internal linking. WordPress’ latest versions allows you to set a link to existing content on your own blog to help keep it all relevant, so use it!

Beyond that…

There are quite a few more wily tips and tricks that can help your site, but I don’t want to inundate you with too much info just yet. What i’ve listed above represents a decent deal of work so try it out and let it all marinate on your site. You should see your site move up a few spots for the targeted subject/keywords you wrote about provided that you give it a little time and that people get clicking. With Google Mayday now a permanent feature in the grand scheme of things, let your content do the talking and just point people in the right direction!