I met Brandon this summer at Social Capital. He’s a wealth of information and I’m thrilled that he’s agreed to do a guest series on the blog about social SEO. Enjoy!
Brandon is a consultant, business marketing grad, strategist, house music junkie, avid reader, speaker, and coffee fiend. He likes to make and break stuff, currently working in the Light Apps division at Corel and the CEO of his own start-up Incentify.
You can find him @BrandonWaselnuk
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Many people have heard of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) especially when starting a new business/blog/website (or all of the above) but not many know how easy it can be to get started with SEO.
The focus of this post is to look at Social Media and how it can affect your SEO positively with easy techniques anyone can use to get a little extra out of their content and efforts.
There are four main sections that we’ll take a look at:
- Basic SEO principles
- Facebook Posts
- Video
In order to give you a portable asset I’ve built a power point presentation you can download at the bottom of the post with all of the content.
Basic SEO Principles
Starting with the absolute basics is always the best way to get your head in the SEO game. What most of you probably intuitively know is: in social media people share content that is awesome. So the more awesome you can put into your content, the more likely it’ll get shard, leading to increased SEO for the source you linked back to.
What some of you might not know is this quick list on some easy SEO tips.
Linking in posts
When you reference a book in your post, link to that book, the more outbound links you have the better your SEO according to Google. Remember though, you don’t want to send your potential clients/readers away from your site too often, so use sparingly and always make the link open in a new window.
Using tags effectively
When you finish a post you can always add tags to it that help others know what it’s about. This is also catalogued by Google and used when people search something with those keywords you used as tags. Remember that ‘stuffing’ (adding fake keywords you know are being searched) actually reduces your SEO, so don’t tag Justin Bieber randomly! Unless, you know, you’re actually writing about him.
Use a Site Tree for ‘crawling’
When you develop a website you have the ability of keeping an accessible site tree for users to navigate around with rather than just letting them browse via buttons. It’s really good idea to have it for more than just your readers though, Google spiders crawl site trees far more easily than without which actually ups your SEO.
Use Keyword (Google trends will help you!)
Identifying the keywords that your target audience is using is a pretty big endeavour (and a whole series of blog posts on its own) but if you have some then try to make sure you use them throughout your web pages. Just be really careful not to overload on them, if you pass a certain threshold (sources say that’s anywhere from 6%-15% of this word existing compared to other words) your SEO decreases as Google thinks you’re cheating.
Use keywords in Page Titles and URL links
If you have one keyword that’s the most searched, its best if that’s included directly in the Page title and URL link. Imagine you’re writing a post on a new iPhone App, you would want iPhone and App in your URL as it’s an incredibly highly searched term compared to ‘pumpkin’ or ‘cell phone’ for example.
Use phrases and words people will search for
Something that’s difficult to think of at first is: “How will a potential reader find my site?” I could bet they aren’t typing in your name (unless you’re doing marketing around that) but more than likely searching on your area of expertise, that’s where you want your keywords to be so that they can find you. Example: I’m a business strategist and really love helping clients make strategic plans from social media to product launches. It’s rare that someone will Google Brandon Waselnuk as I’m young and just starting my career. I know though that they are probably searching “Benchmarks for Product Roadmaps” so I should author a post around that and fill it with other great keywords!
That’s all for now
It’s a heavy set of information I’ve just brain dumped on you and you’re probably itching to try out some of the tips and tricks. So at this point I’ll recommend you download the slide deck and at your leisure read through the rest of the content.
You can also check back about a week from now and I’ll have written on the next major topic, Facebook Posts and SEO.
Before you go though, let me know if you like this format in the comments, and as always if you have any questions I’d be happy to answer them.
