I recently got into a discussion with a blogger who stated that any kind of social media work was not considered seo. I for one have to disagree with him, rather than email him my complete thoughts I have decided to write about it here.

Search Engine Optimization is what it says. You are optimizing something for search engines, period. This obviously involves the following (in no particular order);

1. Site architecture
2. Code optimization
3. Appropriate tagging
4. Content optimization
5. Keyword research
6. URL structures
7. Internal link structure
8. Link building
9. Redirects
10. Domains
11. Analytics analysis
12. Benchmarking

Now I perform and promote the use of social media campaigns as part of my overall seo strategy because it gets results! The list below includes additions I consider to be social media but what should be considered in an seo strategy.

1. Blog setup (including bookmarking plugins etc)
2. Social Bookmarking
3. Social networks
4. Community activity
5. Link baiting

Basically these additions to an seo strategy would help with optimizing a site for search engines. The blog would provide regular content updates, and the others would provide opportunities to generate natural links that search engines love.

It seems to be that “link building” these days should be considered as “social media” as old link building methods have now become near useless for producing results!

Thanks for the entries guys, not an overwhelming response by any means but thanks for the guys that took the time out to offer a seo tip for 2008. Some really nice tips that shouldn’t be ignored for the coming year. The Top 3 tips each won $10.00 from Seounique to spend on coffee, beer or your website! Please remember to email me at mridout@epictunes.com with your paypal ID’s so I can send over the huge wad!

Tip 1 (Winner) - Join your local Chamber of Commerce, you can get a link from them, plus you meet real people. Remember person to person networking rather than online networking. You may pick up more links from other members and possibly some consulting work. Don’t ignore what’s in your back yard. – Tip by - Lyndon

Tip 2 (Winner) - My tip for 2008. Do a bit of research, and publish posts showing the results and implications of the research. People love #s and stats. It doesn’t have to be complicated … often something simple. EG. Avatar experiment (http://www.searchenginepeople.com/blog/the-avatar-experiment-stunning-vs-cute-vs-guy.html) already performed. Tip by Jeff Quipp

Tip 3 (Winner) - Seriously, my tip would be to get a blog implemented and to take its upkeep seriously. Carve yourself a unique voice within your niche that people will happily return to. This can bring an enormous amount of traffic to your site, and more importantly for the purpose of SEO, if your content is good it will get you loads of naturally formed backlinks. - Tip by – Nick James

Tip 4 - Make all your SEM people build social media profiles for the company while they have down time - When they leave, you get to keep the profiles that can send a lot of traffic/new links to your clients with a couple clicks. Endgame 2008 SEO is going to be about Social Media and link baiting. - Tip by Wignut

Tip 5 - 2008 way of linking besides social and link bait is to find great articles on authority sites. Once you’ve found a great article that is relevant to you/your customer send them a small revision of that article that incorporates your link. Use your savvy persuasion ways and your in. You’ll be surprised how many people don’t mind a little tweaking for a free goodie bag. Good luck SEO’s in 2008! - Tip by Ashley Graham

Tip 6 - My tip for 2008. Make sure your site (or clients site) has plenty of ways for your visitors to promote the site via social media (Digg This! buttons, Add to del.icio.us etc.etc.) and then create “share-able” content. Link-able content and Linkbait is very good, but share-able is going to be better in 2008. – Tip by - John Carcutt

Tip 7 - Don’t waste your time with directory submissions and article submissions. Use link bait and good content to generate natural backlinks. – John Trumbii

Tip 8 - When creating the Title tags for your site make sure your primary targeted keyword is at the beginning of the description for each page, obviously make the page content relevant – By Me!

This is obviously quite a basic point from any experienced seo guru, but for a lot of seo newcomers to the industry there has been a lot less emphasis on the importance of page tags.

Back in the late 90’s and early 00’s these tags were ravaged to death with keyword stuffing and abuse, after various Google algorithm updates they dropped the importance of Meta descriptions and Meta Keywords a considerable amount. What about the title tags though? From my point of view many years ago when I was young and new to the web design industry, title tags were just a method to explain page content with less emphasis on keywords.

Last week I assessed SeoUnique’s title tag for the homepage, I originally set it as:

Seo Recourses Blog | Social Media | Seounique

I followed some basic standards, not making the title contain too many characters, including important keywords and most of all making the title description as relevant as possible to the page content. As I have been busy with my day to day management of clients seo I have neglected to benchmark my own keyword positions. Last week I looked at two phrases that I considered important to rank well in for this blog. The first being “Seo Blog” and the second being “SEM blog” – both phrases perform well according to Google trends and the posts I make should be picked up by people looking for information on those subjects.

I of course looked for my current positions under the terms, I hoped to be listed somewhere in the top 20-30 pages of Google for “Seo Blog” but knew I wouldn’t rank anywhere under “SEM Blog” simply because that term is very rarely listed anywhere on the blog or in backlinks anchor text.

Last Week Positions:

Seo Blog: Page 54 rank 532
Sem Blog: Not in top 1000

Obviously I was disappointed with the results even though I knew in the back of my mind that it was an accurate representation of my efforts. Don’t get me wrong, I perform very well for my blog posts subjects, often making first page top 3 but obviously long tailed keywords don’t drive enough traffic day to day. I looked at my websites content and decided to go for the direct approach, once again giving an accurate representation of the pages content:

Seo Blog | Sem Blog | Seounique

I decided to cut the length even more and just contain the keywords I wanted to perform well in. I waited 5-6 days and once again checked my positions for the phrases:

Seo Blog: Page 18 rank 176
Sem Blog: Page 5 rank 43

Nothing else was changed on the blog at all, only the title tag. These rankings have held for over 4 days so it’s not an “updated content” ranking.

So why has the Google Rankings improved so much?

I should have put “Seo Blog” as my first keyword in the title description because essentially that’s what the site is, it’s the most accurate description of the content listed plus it’s the keyword I wanted to do well in. The second keyword was a gamble because I knew the terms were listed throughout the site on previous posts but rarely did the terms “sem” and “blog” run side by side with each other. I would say that again it’s an accurate description of the site so its justified.

Overall I moved 356 positions for the phrase “Seo blog” and staggering 953 positions for the phrase “sem blog”, I have already seen a natural increase in organic traffic for both terms, so next time someone says to you backlinks, backlinks, backlinks – reply title, title, title!

Stage 1 - Research

The first stage of a successful social media strategy should involve identifying industry related areas of the web that will provide opportunities to create a buzz online for your clients industry. These include looking at niche social bookmarking sites, blogs, forums and social networking sites. You should have records kept on file of what sites work well for which industries, this will save you time in the long run, this file will eventually get very large (trust me!).

Stage 2 – Registrations

Once sites have been identified that meet the projects criteria the long registration process entering clients details in profiles takes place. This will usually involve entering a “homepage” URL, company logo and a brief summary of what the company’s goals are. Any additional promotional material would also be useful to help build up the brand within the different communities.

Stage 3 – Building trust

The key to creating a successful social media strategy is the relationships you build and the trust that you earn. When suggesting sites or information it should not immediately be the clients site or link bait, it should consist of industry related material. Commenting on related blogs, starting forum threads about the industry should also be created. This should be maintained for a period of time before moving on to the next stage. You should take a genuine interest what you comment on and write about, no-one likes a fibber!

Stage 4 – Release link bait

Once there is a level of trust associated with the company profile that is the time when the link bait or urls should be posted. Using this method will ensure that the information that is posted will not be labeled as spam by the various site administrators or site owners. By this time the profiles created will already hold some weight within the various communities which will ensure a level of traffic.

Stage 5 – Generate traffic + links

Once the urls and link bait have been posted this should immediately create incoming traffic to the client’s site or landing page. The secondary goal of such a strategy or possibly primary goal depending on client will be the natural links generated as a result of such a strategy. If like minded users find the link bait interesting then by all accounts they should then bookmark the link on their own social media site, be it a blog, social bookmarking site or forum. This will additionally create more incoming traffic to the site and generate a number of links that will help with the clients search engine positions for selected keywords.

Stages 3, 4 and 5 should be maintained over a longer period of time to keep impacting the search engine results positions. If this is not repeated throughout an extended time period then the increase in search engine positions will only be temporary.

By the way it’s my Birthday today so wohoo to me!

Link Baiting – with the paid links debate clearing up, it’s clear that obvious link purchases will result in penalties to your site. Reciprocal linking holds very little weight too these days so alternatives must be suggested for a link building strategy. I won’t go into exact details of link baiting but even a simple piece of interesting information can result in hundreds of one way links to your website.

Blogs – That’s right, corporate and e-commerce websites should have a blog associated with the business name. It’s 2008 and blogs are bigger and stronger than ever online, creating and managing a blog will open up opportunities for one way links, returning traffic and updated fresh content (“yum yum” says Google). More companies are starting to do this as it’s also a nice experience to offer some sort of relationship to your customers. I know I’d prefer to buy a product from someone I had some degree of trust with, be it through brand recognitions or online relationship – writer to reader.

Social Media – I’ve been blogging about this for a while too so just to cover this briefly. Create profiles on all social media/bookmarking websites and hire someone to manage the accounts all day long. It’s an investment that should be considered for a long term strategy, branding, relationship building and link generation are all positive outcomes from investment.

On site optimization – Still a very important investment from an SEO point of view. Seomoz recently posted a great update on title tags, Meta data and URL structures. All traffic increasing methods and should be maintained to the highest standard.

Analytics and traffic analysis – In my honest opinion you don’t need to fork out for highly priced analytic programs. Google Analytics offers a very comprehensive package for the amazing price of…nothing. An investment should be made into setting up clear goals for your website and then using the data to optimise your site structure and content. An increase in sales or conversions will be a guarantee and a clear understanding of where your traffic originates can help producing domain traffic reports.