Archive for the ‘Viral Marketing’ Category
Successful SEO Strategies in a Social Media Marketing
Social Networking
One of the newest SEO techniques being employed world-wide is the use of social networking websites. The reasons for this are obvious: an existing client base where people can be reached based on a number of different criteria age, interests and location to name but a few. But make no mistake, social networking SEO is a time consuming and cumbersome process and may take hours of company time to achieve a satisfactory level of efficacy.
Social networking websites have been around for a number of years, with MySpace, Stumbleupon and Facebook being among the most popular. These websites enable users to sign on and create a profile in which they list their personal stats, interests and activities which their friends (and in some cases, strangers) can then see. New ‘friends’ are added based on the profile owner’s own discretion some merely require a request while others are stricter on this criterion. So how does one go about it then?
Businesses & Social Networking
Much like normal users, businesses can register profiles and publish their details. In itself this doesn’t mean much until the actual ‘networking’ begins. First and foremost among the many social networking tactics is the publication of URLs pointing back toward the company’s website. As social networking websites are in high regard with search engines, this provides for a quality backlink. However this is mainly done on the website’s own social networking page and may, in most cases, only be accessible to those on the website’s friend list.
Most social networking websites provide specific areas where individuals, who are not necessarily on each other’s friend lists, can communicate very much like online forums. These areas are often grouped by industry or category and which has the advantage that all the members of that area share the same interests. Now of course the most desirable thing to do would be to post as many links as possible back to all the most important pages on a company’s website. However this may result in building a bad reputation or, in some cases, banning as well.
Successful SEO Strategies in a Social Networking Environment
The point of social networking SEO, much like all other areas of SEO, is to provide as much useful content as possible to a particular audience. Should the input prove successful, some of the audience members will then follow the link back to the original website and, in some cases, post it on their own websites, thereby generating more backlinks.
Now, when all’s said and done, there is actually only a finite number of people in any given social cyber area and only so many people that can be reached that share the same interests as the business. Does that mean there’s a limit to the success of social networking SEO? The answer would be no.
As one company has the ability to make use of social networking SEO, so will many others, all within the same industry. Where in the real world (or even elsewhere on the internet) these companies wouldn’t necessarily associate with each other, it becomes beneficial to do so in a social networking environment. Not only does this increase the size of the audience, but it also increases the opportunity for posting more links (along with constructive content).
Social Networking is Hard Work
What many people don’t realise is that social networking is in fact hard work. It requires hours of searching for potential ‘friends’ with the same interests, constant interaction with them and others and, of course, supplying as much useful industry related content as possible. It is perhaps for this very reason that many companies employ a third-party SEO specialist to do the job for them.
We’ve not only been in the SEO game for years, but also in a variety of social networking environments. As such we have the ability to combine our experiences to provide our customers with the ultimate SEO solution. For more information, send us an e-mail or give us a call.
