Social Media and SEO Together for Success
Social media and SEO need to be integrated to succeed in your search engine optimization. That is the future of SEO!
SEO used to be a relativity simple process; good use of keywords on the page and in the anchor text of inbound links, good content for users to read and this combined usually lead to good rankings. These factors are still important but search engines are moving to use a site’s branding, visitor behavior, and social participation to define rankings.
What Does It Mean?
With the Panda update from Google a few months back Google started to include the behavior of users and the popularity of the brand. The result is that social media and SEO are looked at by the search engines to rank well.
Some of the factors to rank well now are:
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- To rank well in your niche you have to be a leading brand in your niche – Branding
- To continue to grow your rank search engines need to like what they find on your site – Behavior
- The last thing you need is participation by you and your social media community – Social
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So now you need good keywords, good linking strategy, strong brand, great behavior, and strong social participation. What it means is user engagement is the core of your SEO in the future.
Branding
So how can you build your brand online? Here are some factors to improve your brand in your new social media and seo process.
- Brand mentions, shares and participation in social media
- Brand mentions and links on high-ranking sites
- Searches with your Brand and Domain Names
Behavior
User behavior now becomes important in your SEO. To most this was always important; just getting traffic is not what most website owners want. They want visitors to stay, learn, consume and share the content that is produced. So behavior is not a new factor, it just has more bearing in your search engine rankings.
Behavior is hard to control and the only real solution is to continue to provide quality content that users will read and share in social media and other channels.
Some factors to watch for:
- Time spent on your site after doing a search
- Your site’s bounce rate
- Bounce rate from you site back to the search engine
- Your visitor’s time on site
- Number of return visitors
Social Media
Social media and SEO must be part of a whole strategy now more than ever. The level of participation by you and your community is fast becoming a major factor in your search engine rankings.
Likes, tweets, +1s and mentions might improve chances of:
- Links in social media being found and used by search engines
- Sharing content with friends or contacts who then mentions that content
- +1s from friends or contacts can signal Google the relevance for your page on that specific search query
Social Media and SEO have now become a process that must be approached together. Your traditional seo practices will continue to be important, but you must include your social media strategy alongside. One without the other will be like a chocolate chip cookie without chocolate chips. (Sorry it’s close to Christmas and I eating too much baking)
That is the new Social Media and SEO!
