Integrating Social Media and SEO

Search engines are starting to index the content users create on social media sites – and marketers have got to take advantage. Before engaging in any social marketing tactics, remember that SEO goals must take a back seat to your audience’s experience. Your primary concern when engaging with social media must be addressing customer needs, interacting with your audience and providing good content.

Within those parameters, however, there are many opportunities to use social media to distribute keyword rich content and attract links that can boost your natural search rankings. Here are seven tactics Marketing Sherpa recommend:

1. Optimise social media profiles: Your team does not have control over the design of Facebook fan pages or Twitter feeds. You can, however, control the content on those pages. Make sure all of your social media profiles describe your company using brand keywords and link to your website. Also, use your brand name for your account name whenever possible.

2. Use keywords in status updates: Your primary concern when writing status updates should be to address your audience and improve their experience. But secondarily, you should use keywords that will be indexed by search engines’ real-time search features and build keyword relevance around your social presences. Where possible use trend research to target hot real-time search keywords using tools such as Google Trends and the "trending topics" list on Twitter Search. 

3. Closely coordinate your search and social resources: The people in charge of search and social marketing can benefit from each other’s data and analysis - so make sure the lines of communication are open between the two teams. 

4. Distribute content via social media to build links: Marketers who regularly generate content can use social networks to distribute this content to a broad audience and entice followers to share and publish links. Many websites have recently added tools for sharing content through social networks, email and blogs. Adding these buttons to your pages makes it easier for visitors to share your content with their networks. On-site social media, such as blogs or forums, can also help improve your site’s internal linking strategy.  Also, link your website to your off-site social media presences, and vice versa.

5. Target social news and bookmarking sites: News aggregators and social bookmarking sites, such as Digg and reddit, can generate a rush of traffic and new links for content that receive prominent placement there. These sites allow the community to "vote" on content submitted, and the number of votes dictates the link’s prominence on the site.

6. Protect your online reputation: Reputation management is a search and social issue. Your customers talk about your brand in social media, and potential customers find that information through searches. Those searches might be conducted in a traditional search engine, or they might be done on a social site. When appropriate, reach out to address the complaints and try to resolve the issue on the same page hosting the complaint. That way, visitors who discover a complaint or negative review through search will also see your response.

7. Encourage social networking on your website: Your team can add loads of relevant, indexable content to your sites by hosting social features and fostering an online community there. It takes time to build a rich community that regularly posts to forums and message boards, but you can start small and work your way up. Create a company blog and regularly publishing valuable content and responding provide activity around which an on-site community can form. Allowing comments, ratings and reviews can foster community interaction and generate relevant content. Make sure your content is clearly visible to the spiders by asking vendors and consulting your search experts.  Also, make sure all external links posted are "nofollow," so they provide no search engine value and therefore will be less likely to attract link spammers.

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