Social media &
3 Tips for Powerfully Connecting SEO and Social Media
Filed under: Guest Posts, Social Media
There’s been a lot of buzz in the second half of 2012 stemming from the idea that SEO is dying. The fact of the matter is that SEO is alive and well, but it is definitely changing. The people that insist on sticking to their old ways are going to be very upset as the 2013 year unfolds. The Penguin patch is already a landmark event in 2012, and while it was apocalyptic and career-ending for some, there are plenty of marketers that thrived in the wake of patch. Early in every Internet marketer’s career, someone should have told them that the only quality that distinguishes an online success story from a sea of failure is their ability to adapt. It’s actually kind of funny to realize that while some people were busy claiming that the sky was falling, there were people out there making six and even seven figures because of the same events that sent so many into panic.
The biggest lesson to take from all of this is that it’s more critical now than ever to closely link all SEO efforts with social media presence. It’s very simple: Google knows that intelligent businesses will be using social media. They also know that checking for a business’s social media activity is just as valuable as their backlinks, on-page SEO and syndicated content presence. Both of these provide perfect synergy, and all businesses, small Internet marketing teams and independent Internet marketers must absolutely consider the following tips in the coming year of SEO, or they will be in for an unpleasant surprise.
Google+ is a Must
In the early days of its growth, Google+ was largely regarded as a waste of time. It was considered secondary to Facebook and a failed project. Google has been closely integrating Google+ into the rest of its services, and with new innovations like Google glass, more people are going to be signing up for Google+ by default. On top of this, Google is always going to prefer that people use their services, so it makes sense that they would give incentives to users that syndicate and release their content on Google+. It’s also worth mentioning that Google Authorship is apparently a new factor in ranking pages, but that’s still fairly unexplored territory. It’s hard to say just how influential it is at this point.
Reinforce Backlinks and Guest Posts with Tweets
Twitter is a massive way for search engines to establish that something is being spread around the Internet. Hashtags and Retweets are easy ways for search engines to identify that something is being well-received, and the big engines are definitely giving brownie points for Twitter activity. All guest posts or other syndicated content links should be Tweeted to followers and preferably retweeted to reinforce the value of the link.
Communicate Regularly
The most important part of social media is activity. If a site is inactive, it’s likely to get washed under the millions upon millions of other pages and links being added each day. There’s only so much that Google can keep up with. Staying active is any easy way for search engines to distinguish that a site is legitimate and is relevant for search results. While pages that aren’t regularly monitored still have presence, this is usually because they don’t have competition with the right combination of syndication and social media association.
Dan is a blogger with a marketing background. He relies on Whoishostingthis.com to get background information on any website.
Posted on: December 12, 2012
Social media has been a great networking opportunity beside SEO. So, including social media on your marketing campaign is better to do. Build your social media presence using namechk.com to examine the username availability and claimbrand.com to get the username.
I’d love to know where the link between social sharing and SEO come from? Apart from a few, now outdated GWT Video by Matt Cutts in 2009/10, the world has changed a lot.
Tweets are marked as nofollow and Google has strongly obeyed this since the firehouse spat.
Is this a reflection of a preference of how Google works or has someone told you this and you strongly believe it?
If you need an asset test: Thousands and thousands of websites have never been tweeted but most Search indices have changed little in 2012. If Social/”New SEO” was as many new prophets proclaimed, then there’d be chaos.
Impact : minimal, less than 0.001%
Great Post, Google is a must because of it’s SEO value.
I disagree with the importance of Google+ at least for now. Most of the ‘tools’ are too confusing and will not be used by our customers. Authorship and Publishership, yes. Forget the rest for now.
Guest posting trend has really shot off in the previous year. But I liked your second point that stresses on building backlinks and guest posting through Twitter, which has not been practiced much by the bloggers till now. Also, this year, use of Google+ will surely rise in the content marketing strategies.