By Douglas Lim, Social Media and SEO Professional
Search engine optimization has certainly changed over the years. In the 90’s, it was possible to keyword stuff your on-page SEO and be able to achieve multiple first page listings on Google. But since then, we’ve seen the rise of off-page SEO, or link building, which includes getting back links from various sources. This includes article directories, forums, blog comments, blog networks, social bookmarking and the list goes on.
Then Google came along and changed the whole SEO landscape again with Panda at the start of 2011. Low quality sites with low quality content dropped in the rankings while authoritative sites with original content were pushed up in the rankings.
Now the SEO landscape is changing again with the advent of community engagement (i.e. social media). There were rumblings in the SEO world that Google was going to take into account social media signals as part of their search ranking algorithm. Now, without a doubt, that time has come. SEOMoz surveyed hundreds of the world’s best search marketers in 2011 to present a report on what factors affect SEO the most along with future factors that would have the most impact. You can read the complete SEOMoz report here.
Quite clearly, social media is playing a huge part in the search rankings and will continue to play a bigger part. Alongside this, I’ve found from my own testing of ranking websites, you cannot ignore social media in your SEO strategy. In fact, what we are seeing is that Google are now recognizing that websites ranking at the top which may have thousands of back links need social proof. They need to have had people Facebook like their page, tweet their page, Google +1 their page or share their page on LinkedIn. This is where the human element comes into effect that people can now validate the quality of pages by using social media and sharing it amongst their followers and friends. This is what Google wants. By providing the best search results, more people will continue to use Google as their preferred search engine, and thus Google can continue to make money on their biggest money earner – Adwords.
Now some quick tips to utilize social media in your SEO strategy. First thing, understand that it takes effort! You’re building a brand presence with social media so it’s not set and forget. You need to be doing it daily. Secondly include social media sharing icons on your website for every page. Make it easier for people to share your content by providing this for them. Thirdly, produce great and engaging content that entices people to share your content. Content is king! Fourthly, add your social media links to your brand collateral such as email signatures, flyers, proposals etc. Fifth for a most advanced tip create a viral campaign using video and spread it among your social networks.
We can’t really ignore social media because it’s one of the effective ways of spreading news around the Internet. It’s pretty hard to make things viral without any form of “word-of-mouth,” and I think social media is just that. When you have content that’s well-written and potentially viral, you should really take advantage of social media to spread your content around the Internet.
Thank you for your comment, Gerald, and you make a great point. Social media definitely impacts SEO, but more importantly, the CONTENT is the catalyst for a company’s rebranding, or for a small business or start-up to find success. And I think the author is right to mention the “human” aspect of social media. Visitors now expect quality, engaging content, and not just a bunch of inactive social media sites.
Liqui-Site offers businesses fully-developed, long-term social media marketing strategies, so that social media is by no means an afterthought to their new, well-designed website.
Look forward to your future insights! And when you have a minute, you might be interested in checking out our new Social ROI software and social media options. [https://www.liqui-site.com/Liqui-Site-Social-ROI ]
Cheers!