All posts tagged link building
5 Ways Social Media Optimization Compliments SEO
We’ve all heard a lot about search engine optimization (SEO) and the impact it can have for business. Having a well crafted and thoughtful SEO campaign can be the difference between running a thriving business or being left behind by your competitors. While the importance of SEO is easy to measure and understand, it’s not as easy to grasp the importance of establishing a complimentary social media optimization campaign (SMO). Social media optimization’s importance to business can be found not only in its ability to reach new audiences and promote content, but in its ability to compliment SEO. Simply put, not having a complimentary social media optimization plan means leaving money on the table. Below are five key ways in which social media optimization can compliment SEO and can help business’s improve search rankings.
1. User Generated Content:
Having active user communities on your site in the form of blogs, forums, or other types of social media allows users to contribute content, including important variations of site specific keywords. User generated content is not only cost effective, but highly prized as a source by search engines. It is organic and often has a higher level of “trust” in online communities, which in turn lends itself to being more credible to search engines.
When engaging with user communities, it’s important for the business’s social manager to become a fixture in the communities the business interacts with. Ideally, the social manager engages in discussion not only to foster goodwill, but to keep content fresh and updated. These conversations in turn help SEO, as quality content is not only engaging but easy to share, and that helps increase search rankings through increased page content and links to your site.
2. Link Building:
Social media is an extremely powerful tool for link building and creating both direct and indirect links. A direct link is created from the platform directly (links in a comments box on a blog, profile links in comments on Facebook, etc) while indirect links are created by bloggers, webmasters, or others who find and share your content indirectly (this can be through other blogs re-posting the content or adding re-shared content to another social medium). Link creation of this manner is essential due to social media’s propensity to spread compelling content in a viral manner. The more links that are cultivated through social media, the more a business will improve its search ranking.
3. Brand Related Search:
New metrics available for social media have determined that an increasing number of brand related searches originate on a social media outlet. These can be a fan page, review, or recommendation made through a friend, and in-turn searched by someone in their social circle. Consumers see these outlets as the new “front window” of a business and use them to take a peek inside the store to see if its worth their time to investigate further. Do their friends like it? Is the business socially responsible? Do they have an interesting product line? Consumer’s are using social media to answer these questions and conduct brand related searches.
4. Ranking:
Search engines rankings are valuing social media more every day. Factors such as comments, ratings, shares and other social metrics determine how valuable the search engines view content across social circles. Google +1 goes even further by tailoring your specific search results based on who in your social circle has “+1’d” the content, and how relevant that reviewer is to you. Therefore, if a friend has “+1’d” a business, your search results for a similar business or product will show that same business much higher in rankings than if they had not “+1’d” the business. Simply put, the more relevant that members of your social circles find the content, the more likely it is to rank highly on your search results. Combining a strategy to encourage customers to share, like, or +1 a business’s content with a solid SEO strategy can greatly increase a businesses search rankings through relatively little work.
5. Reputation Management:
Utilizing as many social media outlets as possible gives you more opportunity to have more of your products on the first page taking up more real estate. Because content taken from social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter, Digg etc. ranks so highly on search engines, it becomes easier for your business to take up more of the first page. Ideally, when a brand is searched, their Facebook, Blog, and Twitter should all rank on the first page along with their home website. Increasing mediums through which a business represents itself online gives it a tremendous opportunity to take up lots of prime real estate on the first page.
While there is tremendous opportunity, there are also many pitfalls that the social media manager needs to be aware of, such as negative sentiment being spread. This reality makes the social media managers job of monitoring conversations even more important. With more channels comes more conversations, and with more conversations the possibility of negative conversations getting out of control increases. The social media manager needs to make sure they stay tuned into their communities and address any negative content swiftly and in an open manner. As positive content and conversations increase, so do search rankings which makes it all the more important to vigilantly manage your businesses reputation via social media.
Search engine optimization continues to evolve and change in a constant attempt to gives consumers the highest quality and most relevant results to a search possible. As consumer habits evolve its important for a business to evolve with them as well to ensure that they retain their current customer base while attracting new customers as well. By adopting a complimentary search engine optimization and social media optimization plans, a business can ensure that they are staying on the cutting edge of consumer trends and demands. Any successful optimization campaign starts with a plan and goals. Keeping the above points in mind when establishing a complimentary optimization plans is key, and by using them as guidelines to establish goals a business can ensure that it stays relevant to its consumers and successful in the long term.
Black Hat vs. White Hat
As mentioned in the previous blog post ?Google Helps the Good Guys?, search engine optimization can attract many unsavory businesses that are trying to make a quick buck through gaming the system. As with anything, in SEO there can be shades of gray as to what is considered ethical. And while the methods used in the DecorMyEyes.com story were definitively not ethical (criminal actually), there are certain practices that are not necessarily de jure illegal, but are certainly considered de facto illegal in terms of the acceptable behavior agreed upon by search engines and Google especially.
In terms of SEO, ?White Hat? and ?Black Hat? have become the popular terminology for separating those practices that are ethical and best for long-term effectiveness, and those that attempt any number of unethical, short-term strategies that risk penalties, respectively. There are several black hat methods that have evolved throughout the history of the SEO, but in terms of David Segal?s excellent NY Times article The Dirty Little Secrets of Search, link schemes are the poster child at the moment.
The crux of the story is that late last year, during the holiday shopping season, JC Penney saw its Google organic search rank rocket to number one when searching for any of the hundreds of its products. Of course, the issue was that while it may be one the largest retailers in the US, it was not the most relevant site for most of these products (it even outranked Samsonite.com itself when searching for ?Samsonite carry on luggage?). Not to get into the specifics of what ranking number one on Google throughout the months of November and December did to JC Penney?s bottom line, but it was likely quite lucrative. And while Google did take minor action during this period, it did not follow up and notice that the rankings were still inordinate.
What caused the high rankings? According to the story, it was irrelevant links back to the JC Penney site. Most of these links were on pages that had either no relevancy whatsoever to the product they linked to at JCPenney.com, or were merely sites with hundreds of links on them maintained for the sole purpose of increasing the PageRank for other sites. Before the story broke, Google was already initiating a change to their search algorithm to account for low PageRanked, spammy sites. As a result, JC Penney results began to drop slightly in early February; however, once their black hat campaign was revealed by the Times, Google manually dropped the average JC Penney position for search terms to 52 by February 10th. None too happy about the bad publicity, to say nothing of practically disappearing from search results, Penney?s also fired its SEO firm SearchDex.
An effective, on-going link building campaign is an essential part of search engine optimization. But it takes dedication to the rules and ethics, as well as a substantial amount of hard work to be done properly. In previous dealings, we?ve observed several link building services in India doing the exact same things that SearchDex was doing for JC Penney, and there are no doubt hundreds all over the world. While they certainly work in the short-term, link schemes and black hat practices aren?t worth the loss of reputation, loss of business, or even the outright banishment from search results as punishment. Proper link building is done over time by connecting to relevant sites, directories, and social networks, and though it takes dedication and patience, attaining a higher PageRank accomplished through white hat methods is much more ethical, effective, and satisfying.
Google Helps the Good Guys
Search engine marketing happened to make front-page news recently as the New York Times ran an expose detailing the illegal practices of online proprietor Vitaly Borker and his gaming of Google?s search algorithm. If you?re not familiar with the story, Mr Borker claims to have used loopholes in Google?s search engine, as well as MasterCard and Visa?s charge-back system, to garner more business through negative responses from customers. Over the past few weeks, the Web has been aflame with discussions over how this could have happened in the first place, as well as how it can be rectified. To Google?s credit, as explained by Amit Singhal in a recent blog post in the immediate aftermath, the search giant has gone to immediate measures to shore up its vaunted search algorithm to more precisely pinpoint and demote those sites which use large volumes of negative postings to raise their search ranking. There seemed to be plenty of blame to go around (i.e. eBay, consumer complaint sites, etc.), and many saw it as an opportunity for some particular Google shaedenfraude, but the problem goes deeper than the search engine itself.
Borker himself theorized that the vast quantity of negative reviews on a variety of online consumer review sites, many highly respected, was what raised his ranking higher. In the original article, one online response to his bilked customers was almost gleefully brazen in his explanation, ?I never had the amount of traffic I have now since my 1st complaint. I am in heaven.? Though there are loopholes that he obviously navigated with success for several months, Google casts some doubt on his simple explanation by countering that even before their revision to their own algorithm, to prevent just such a thing from happening, consumer complaint sites typically included special coding so that bad and/or fraudulent companies would not get higher rankings. It might be reasonable to assume that many times, unfortunately, people are more passionate and willing to post reviews online (especially for something rather innocuous like glasses) when they are livid over having been taken advantage of. What does not seem to be reported as much as the search engine optimization part of this controversy, is that much of Borker?s success, at least according to searchengineland.com?s Byrne Hobart, came from auto-generated spam pages and the fact that DecorMyEyes was frequently linked to by mainstream media sites. Among them? The New York Times.
Less than 20 years after its conception, web commerce can still seem like the wild west, especially after stories such as these. But when shopping for any service or product online, consumers should continue to proceed with caution. As stated above, Less than 20 years after its conception, web commerce can still seem like the wild west, especially after stories such as these. But when shopping for any service or product online, consumers should continue to proceed with caution. As stated above, Google?s response has been laudable, and their consumer rankings of local businesses based on the particular searchers zip code now needs to be extended to online commerce – just for these reasons. As all search engines are becoming more aware of the less-savory uses of link building and search engine optimization, this will thankfully make respected, transparent SEM companies like RSO Consulting and the like more prominent. But, as Mr Singhal himself said, it probably won?t be long before another dastardly business attempts to skirt ethical boundaries and risk imprisonment and loss-of-reputation for a few extra bucks.
