Social Media Optimization -Shifting The Landscape Of Search Engine Marketing
Social media optimization (SMO) is an necessary ingredient within your SEO campaigns. Years ago, social networking sites were little more than an oddity. Today, several of them have received huge ranking authority from the top search engines. If you are not leveling them to increase your exposure and communicate with your niche audience, your search engine positions are susceptible to your competitors. In this article, we’ll describe the influence that social media optimization is currently having on search marketing. We’ll also give you the rules of engagement for executing an effective SMO campaign. We’ll explain what SEO social media is, and the benefit of hiring an experienced SEO consultant to spearhead your social media optimization labors.
The Affect Of Social Media Optimization On Search Marketing
Search marketing has always relied upon exposure in the search engines to push targeted traffic. For years, gaining that exposure was based exclusively upon the development of your site and generating links pointing to your site. Both are still important today. However, social media optimization has shifted the landscape of search engine marketing.
Google once maintained several dissimilar search platforms for blogs, videos, news, and similar types of ‘social’ content. Each functioned as a separate search engine with its own set of natural listings. A few years ago, Google blended the listings from each platform into a system called Universal Search. Bing and Yahoo have since included similar systems. Universal Search is now used as the primary index. That means blogs, videos, and news have been included into the natural listings, pushing many sites off the first page. This is one of the reasons social media optimization has become a significant piece of search.
Another thing that has influenced search marketing is the increased ranking authority given to Facebook, Myspace, Twitter, and similar sites. These too, have quickly gained control of a important amount of search territory.
Social media optimization conserve your current natural listings while helping you to gain even more search exposure. By using blogs, videos, and social media sites such as Twitter and Facebook, you can capture a greater number of organic positions.
Your Social Media Optimization Campaign: Rules of Engagement
There are several rules of engagement for launching and executing a social media optimisation campaign. If you pay no attention to them, your SMO efforts will be far less effective than otherwise.
First, you should do everything probable to encourage your audience to link to your site. Integrating a blog is precious because your content can continually be updated, attracting faithful readers. Encourage readers to bookmark, tag and ‘Tweet’ your blog posts by installing a button plug-in.
Second, link copiously as a resource for your visitors. Social media optimization is reliant on assisting others achieve what they’re trying to do. Once you engage your audience, help them find the resources they require by linking to them. Eventually, your site will become regarded as a resource hub, which will help you draw inbound links. That’s a very important component of SEO.
Third, you must be able to recognize your market. Social media optimization relies upon the relations you establish with niche communities. You require to properly target them in order to engage them and generate content. This is true whether you’re engaging them through YouTube, Twitter, LinkedIn, or your blog.
Fourth, put together tracking tools to measure and check the success of your social media optimization campaign. Track mentions of your site and company. Watch your site’s progress in the natural listings for your main keywords. Generate linking reports showing inbound links pointing to your domain and specific pages. Tracking your metrics is crucial in order to decide whether your SMO campaign is effective.
SEO Social Media Optimization Explained
Each of the rudiments of a social media optimization campaign that we have described thus far fit together seamlessly with SEO. The ongoing content creation, tagging and bookmarking, attracting inbound links by being a resource for your audience – these are necessary for pushing your website higher in the search engines’ listings. SEO social media optimization leverages a new set of tools to achieve the same goal as SEO: more exposure for your site on Google, Yahoo, and Bing. The challenge is knowing how to use these tools efficiently.
The days of launching a basic SEO campaign within a competitive space and watching your site rise in the search engines’ results are long gone. SEO has become far more multifaceted than it was a few short years ago. This is why many companies have made the resolution to hire an SEO consultant. Social media optimization has transformed SEO from a comparatively straightforward strategy into a complicated science. Having an experienced hand at the wheel helps to navigate the unsure terrain.
If you want to increase your exposure in the search engines’ listings, consider social media optimization a main concern.