SEO benefits of Social Media

Most businesses now recognise the fact that social media doesn't necessarily directly lead to a sale, but I know for a fact that it can help that sales process; instead most big businesses now look at social media as having SEO benefits and allowing their website and webpages to gain better rankings than their competitions, but how!

Let’s take a quick look at the benefits that social media could bring your to your SEO.

Social Media in general:

There are a couple of linked reasons why we would want to use social networks in the first place.

1. It allows people to share your information and links with their Friends and Followers 
2. It allows a greater chance for more people to see your brand and your products 
3. You get a spread of profiles and individuals that link back to your site 

Google+:

Specifically Google+ looks good because of the obvious tight integration with Google Search; this benefits you because Google has a good chance of knowing a little about everyone that use its services.

It knows for example if individuals are interested in or an expert in ‘home decor’ or ‘flooring’ because of their Google+ profiles and/or their search patterns and/or their Gmail topics etc – now if you sell flooring and one of these individuals shares or +1’s some of your content (image/URL etc) then Google will naturally believe that your site or specific page is more important than a competitors that hasn't been shared by these interested parties.

Social sites as information hubs:

We also look at social media sites now as information hubs (a bit like mini websites).

If we take the above example about a flooring business and they focus on posting good content about flooring then Google will understand that their Blog, Google+, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn or Pinterest account is about ‘flooring’; and as such any links from it back to that site will generate a little more link juice.

The future of SEO and Social Media:

We (the SEO community) also don’t yet fully understand how Google looks at social engagement (individuals sharing social content), but whether it happens now or in the future, if individuals engage with your social content and brand then it can only benefit ranking.

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Get Engaged, Socially Engaged!

Without a shadow of a doubt, a business that is socially engaged online will always get more business than the ones that aren’t; even if they only generate a little more traffic, it’s traffic that they wouldn’t have got otherwise.

But social engagement is more than just generating traffic; it’s also about learning from your market, having conversations with buyers and potential buyers, building a relationship with them, and maybe - just maybe, helping your search engine rankings along the way.

So how does a business become socially engaged?

Here are 6 great ways to become socially engaged.


Do things differently

Think differently – your website might be absolutely professional to the core (as it should be), but social engagement is about having a conversation with your market, and being 100% corporate isn’t always the best policy.

Try relaxing your grasp on corporate speak a little, try having a little fun, talk to your audience in the relaxed way that I’m sure many of them will want to be talked to.

Be prepared to take a well thought-out risk – this will enable you to test and learn. Digital media is ever changing, as a business you need to be flexible and nimble to keep up with it.


Earn your way (by listening)

Listen in social media is really important – remember you’re using social channels to have conversations (not just sell your products and services), so listening must play its part.

Millions of people might be talking about your business, your brand or products and services that you supply; you need to listen to what they are saying so that you can respond correctly (and timely).

Great insights from your market will help you create better value for your market, and therefore better value for your business.


Make social a culture

Don’t make the mistake of sitting one person at a computer and ask them to do social media as well as their current work. Make social a cultural shift within your business by recruiting staff into social roles, report on their activity at least monthly so that everyone inside the business see’s the activity been undertaken and the benefits that are being generated.


Be big and bold

When you start off in social media, it’s easy to fall into the trap that you think no-one is listening and no-one is interested in what you have to say, but they are.

Be bold, talk about topics that are not only important to you as a business but also what is important to your audience. If you provide credit cards or bank accounts then be bold and discuss debt; if you sell mortgages talk about the problem of not been able to keep up with repayments; if you sell software then help people to understand what might happen if that software fails – be brave, be bold.


Creation and Curation

It’s not always about posting topics that you have created in-house or starting your own discussions; sometimes it’s important to comment on other’s work, maybe other similar businesses. Content can come from many different sources, look and listening to what’s outside of your business to see which of it can help you to engage with your market and get the conversation going.


Internal Collaboration

As already alluded to, Social media is a huge role for just one person in a decent sized business; but it is also true that social media is bigger than just one department. Call upon your colleagues in Sales, Customer Services and Support to help facilitate content, topics and discussions; these teams can help provide real-time insights as to what’s important to talk about.


None of this happens overnight, but if you are starting your social engagement journey, consider these points and getting you towards your end game will become much easier.

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Is guest blogging really dead as Matt Cutts suggests?

Matt Cutts recently mentioned on his blog suggesting that guest blogging (the practice of providing a blog post to a site with the ultimate aim of getting a link back to your website) was dead.

In his post he actually says

“Okay, I’m calling it: if you’re using guest blogging as a way to gain links in 2014, you should probably stop. Why? Because over time it’s become a more and more spammy practice and if you’re doing a lot of guest blogging then you’re hanging out with really bad company.”

Is he 100% right in what he says? Well yes he is.

Managing the number of company blogs that I have in my time you do get a lot of emails from people you've never heard of offering to write a post for your blog and in return all they want is a dofollow link back to their website – this in itself is against Google Webmaster Guidelines.

The point from Matt is that it’s becoming increasingly popular for spam bloggers to request some space on blog to help spread the news about their product/service and get that valuable link back to their site.

They claim that they’ll provide you with 100% original fresh content – where the likelihood is that they will write one blog post and spin it in numerous ways so that in reality very little changes for each different blog.

The point is IF you undertake this sort of strategy to get post in other peoples blogs then you are now doomed to failure.

Google are going after these spam bloggers that are trying to game their system by getting links whilst adding little or no value to blogs. They are after the spam bloggers that automate their blogging or just spin weak content.

Blogging for business is about adding value to your audience; guest blogging is still a valid part of the online marketing mix, but it should never be the whole story.

Guest blogging as an audience building strategy is still incredibly useful and does work. Provide genuine blog posts to one or two blogs that match your audience requirements exactly; write with the intention of adding value to the blog owner’s readers and not with the intention of getting a link back to your site.

If you do want a link back to your site then ensure that the link is directed to a page that provides additional highly relevant content to the reader.

Internet marketing is a people business - you need to speak and communicate to people through what you say and the information you provide.

Think about building relationships with bloggers and your audience.  

Adding true value with guest post – this will NEVER died.

Guest blogging with the right intention will work.

Matt Cutts is not wrong, listen to what he’s saying and add value to your guest blogs, don’t just access other peoples audience to get backlinks.

BTW, if anyone wants to guest blog here, just ask ... I might just say yes!

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