The Ascent of Social SEO

“Social is the way our work gets discovered. Content that is truly exceptional, unique, and useful can earn tremendous awareness through social media, and that social amplification often leads to great links, which leads to great rankings.” ~ Rand Fishkin, CEO/Co-Founder, Moz

Social Media and SEO are converging with content marketing to provide new opportunities for companies to gain visibility online. Google uses an algorithm based on the principle that websites with higher traffic and click volume must contain more valuable content. Therefore, from a search engine perspective, backlinks from high-authority websites will provide a strong vote of confidence.

Because Social and SEO work together for the overall benefit of website marketing, it’s important to focus on best practices in both areas. Although some social media sites include ‘no-follow tags’ (breaking the connection between one website and the next) to prevent an onslaught of spammers, there are still many opportunities to leverage Social SEO.

Below we have identified several ways to utilize Social SEO to help drive more organic website traffic and ultimately, increase conversions.

1)  Google Profiles and Authorship: Key content publishers and team members should create a Google+ profile, which can be used for any content authored within all Google platforms. Anchor text (the words that comprise the link) can include search terms and should never include a no-follow tag.

2)  Other Google platforms including Picasa, Gmail, Android, Chrome and Blogger are all highly authoritative sites that can add value from a backlink perspective.

3)  LinkedIn: A company profile should be created, optimized and include links to the company website. LinkedIn is another great opportunity to utilize customized anchor text by selecting “Other” when setting the first website link.

4)  StumbleUpon and Digg are both great channels to distribute content and reach a wider audience. These sites also offer promotion of content based on search terms and other variables.

5)  Yelp is a high authority website and thus a credible backlink. However, comments within Yelp contain no-follow tags.

6)  Four Square provides juicy backlinks, even if check-ins are infrequent

7)  YouTube channels provide links back to the website within the profile page which does not contain a no-follow tag, although comments and links within descriptions are not followed.

8)  Ezine Articles can be another place to submit articles and receive backlinks to the website.

9)  SlideShare, now owned by LinkedIn, is a highly visible way to distribute and share content and increase valuable backlinks.

When building profiles within Google, LinkedIn etc. it is important that the profile is complete and thorough. Make sure that each profile is unique and contains as much detailed information as possible, including relevant keywords.  The more information provided via social profiles, the better chances to increase the search rankings and drive more traffic. For more information or a free SEO or Social Media evaluation please Contact Us today.