Social media as a way to improve search engine rankings is starting to grow in South Africa. Just as many companies are suggesting blogs, widget creation and face book applications as part of a search engine optimisation strategy as there are companies suggesting social media to build and develop relationships. So which is the right answer? SEO or Relationships?
As you can probably guess it is both. But which one should be the driver will depend on your overall web marketing strategy. If you are going to use social media to improve your search engine positions here are a few things to remember:
1) Be honest in your comments on other peoples blogs. Comments for comments sake will not only become tiresome but people will start to see through it and your comments are likely to be either deleted or damaging to your brand.
2) Make sure you add links to the site you are trying to promote. If you are writing a comment to a post on someone else’s blog or on another form of social media, ensure the text you create your link from contains the keyword/phrase some are looking to promote.
3) Make sure the link you post goes through to a landing page on the site you are promoting that contains the same keyword/phrase or at least topic related keywords. For a good indication of what keywords go together in the eyes of Google use the ~ symbol before your search. For example “~social media”, and it will give you an idea of related keywords/phrases.
4) If you are posting from your own blog make sure the keyword/phrase is in the title of your post.
5) For greater weighting make sure the keywords are in bold (or if possible a larger font size).
But bear in mind with all of this that however much you try to manipulate social media to improve your search engine positioning you need to make sure there is a truth behind what you write. Don’t treat the visiting public as mugs as they’ll see straight through you. Passion and belief in what you are writing is worth its wait in gold.
- Mike
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Hi Mike
Can I add something, specially to point 3?
Most blogs still have the no-follow embedded in their templates, which means that Google spiders will read the comment, but won’t pick up on the link itself.
There is a ‘movement’ going on to remove this from templates (some blog software programs make it very hard to do though – like typepad), but those who have removed the no-follow usually have a button: U-comment/I follow on their site.
Karin H. (Keep It Simple Sweetheart, specially in business)
Great point Karin.
Its actually still a bit of a debate out their amongst some SEO people. Maybe because we want to belive a nofollow link still holds some weight or maybe because of little bits of evidence that occasionally pop up to the contrary.
From what I’ve seen Yahoo still follows those links even if Google and MSN say they don’t.
Might be worth a test. Create a new totaly made up word, place it in your blog with a link to a page on your site and see what happens.
Agree to some extent on to using the Social Media, rather than pushing a particular post that you want others to see just post the blog or website. let the reader decide what interests them. Do not push, think this will surely help!!
Hi Moksh,
I must admit that your point is a debate we have within our own team on quite a regular basis. To be natural in ones writing or to push for particular search terms? One could argue there is even an ethical debate to be had about posting for SEO purposes.
Hey Uncle fred
Nice site, very nice…
I am just starting the whole social media thing to try and get some more traffic through my site – good to get some advice from the experts…
Will be back – often