SEO

In our previous post, Get Found on Social Media – Part 3 – SEO, we continued our series on how you can make it easier for people to find your social media efforts and talked about basic Search Engine Optimization techniques. In this post, we take a look an emerging trend – Real-Time Social Search – can help get you found on social media.

Real-Time Social Search

As the social computing phenomenon gains momentum, search engine experts are increasingly talking about the growing importance of real-time search, or social search, by which they mean search that can tell you what’s happening on social media sites. Google recently revamped their search to add a real-time component, and has reached agreements to index Twitter[1] and Facebook[2] content.

Some pundits worry that the primacy of traditional search engines like Google, and the cottage SEO industry they support, may be threatened by the rise of social search, wherein recommendations and referrals from within social networking communities outpaces the referrals from Google, et al.

For example, after the 2009 Oscars, celebrity gossip blogger Perez Hilton recorded a single-day high of 13.9 million page views, and the site’s top traffic source was Facebook.[3] So what, you say? Well, Google is generally the top referrer for pretty much any site — the undisputed king. That Facebook dethroned King Google as the top referrer for a popular site was big news, and demonstrates the changing nature of search.

Google itself recognizes this trend, and has introduced social search features to its traditional search listings, as we discussed in the post Advanced Google Searching for Social Media. To summarize from that post, if you belong to the popular social media sites, and if Google can identify you (by you logging in to one of their services, like Google Docs, for example), you may be presented with search results ranked based on information from your social network.

In our previous post, Get Found on Social Media – Part 2, we continued our series on how you can make it easier for people to find your social media efforts. In this post, we take a look at how Search Engine Optimization (SEO) can help get you found on social media.

Search Engine Optimization

It shouldn’t be news to you that Google is most often the top way users find Websites. Your site will probably be no different. So you need to make sure that Google can find you and that when they do, they categorize you properly, and rank you highly.

The art and science of ensuring high placement on Google and other search engines is known as Search Engine Optimization (SEO). A related technique known as Search Engine Marketing (SEM) encompasses SEO and also adds online advertising on Google and other search engines. We talked about advanced Google usage to find your community in the post Advanced Google Searching for Social Media. Now let’s turn that idea — finding interesting people using keyword searches — around: How can you be found via keyword searches? That’s what SEO is all about.

The basic goal of SEO is to ensure that when people use search words that are relevant to what you do they find you on the first page of search results. This is generally done, at least in part, by selecting a set of keywords that are highly relevant to your site, and then optimize your site to feature these keywords. We led you through this exercise in the post Partner and Cross-Promote on Social Media.

There are lots of SEO consultants out there that will guarantee first page placement, and some are quite good, while others haven’t a clue, so it’s best to have a basic understanding of SEO before you consider using one.

All of them do some combination of the following SEO techniques. We only scratch the surface of a very deep subject here, but many of these techniques you can do yourself without high-priced consultants.

We’re indebted to a very fine post on ClickZ by P.J. Fusco[1] for much of the structure and material in this list. It’s one of the most concise and comprehensive lists of SEO techniques we’ve read.

• Optimize Title Tags
  The title of a page is the part that shows at the very top of your browser window. It’s the part that is above the toolbar. It must describe the purpose of the page and it should also identify your site.The title tag of every page should begin with a uniquely optimal keyword phrase and end with consistent branding, such as the name of your business, or the name of the site.The words at the beginning of the title tag have more prominence and weight than the words at the end. The target length for title tags should be 65 characters (with spaces). The major engines recognize and index title tags beyond 120 characters, but only 65 characters are visible in the search results.
• Ensure Each Page Has a Theme
  Just as you were taught in school that every paragraph needs a topic sentence, so each Webpage needs a topic, or a theme. This helps the search engine categorize your page correctly. If you’re tempted to dump all sorts of marginally-related information onto your yard-long pages, the search engines aren’t going to like you.
• Optimize Heading Tags
  Second to the title tag, the <h1> is the most prominent location to accentuate your keywords. If you’re not familiar with the HTML <h1>, or heading, tag, it’s generally the first and largest heading on the page. It often is the title of a post or a section of a Website.There should be only one <h1> heading tag on a page, and like the title tag, it should begin with the optimal keyword phrase. Additional <h2> and <h3> tags, which denote secondary and tertiary heading tags, should help complement the targeted theme of each page. Unlike <h1> tags, there can be more than one <h2> or <h3> tags per page.
• Optimize Body Copy
  The text of each page should contain introductory copy or a summary of the page text. Body copy should consist of at least three sentences with a minimum of 150 words. You should try to mention your target keywords as many times as you can in your body copy, without becoming annoying or unreadable. The general rule is to try for four mentions of a keyword per page. Of course if you have a set of 10 keywords, the result could be gibberish, so here’s where the art comes in.
• Create a Meta Description
  A meta description is an invisible page component that is part of the HTML page header. You see it only when your page shows up in search results. Each page should have a meta description even though having one won’t improve rankings in the search engines. The major search engines ignore the meta description for the purposes of indexing your page. Having a good meta description can, however, increase the likelihood of users clicking on search results.Meta descriptions should be unique to each page and should contain no more than 265 characters. Typically, however, only the first 150 characters (including spaces) are displayed in the search engine results pages, so the meta description should include the relevant keyword phrases and end with a call to action.
• Create Meta Keywords
  Meta keywords, like the meta description, are invisible parts of the HTML page header. They are lists of words that the page author think are important to describe the content of the page.Google and Bing pay no attention to meta keywords. Yahoo only reviews meta keywords for misspellings that might affect their indexing of the page. You should insert three or four keywords per page, ensuring that the words are pulled from the page. If they’re not, don’t bother producing keywords at all. Nonetheless, don’t make meta keywords a critical part of your keyword strategy.
• Optimize Alternative Attributes
  You may have seen descriptions pop up when you run your mouse over a graphic or a link on a Webpage. These are known as alternative attributes, or alt tags for short. Create keyword-rich alt tags for all graphics and images. Also create mouse-over text[2] for any links on the page.
• Optimize Videos
  If you are embedding videos on your Webpage, follow conventional title tag and meta data standards as already outlined. Embed one video per page and organize video content around the structures of your pages, sections, and the site.If you are using a YouTube channel for hosting videos, ensure that you optimize the following YouTube fields using your keywords:
  • Title
  • Description
  • Tags

There are plenty of other aspects of SEO beyond optimizing your site and its content. One very popular and effective technique is to increase the number and quality of the inbound links to your site.

An inbound link is when another site links to you. Google assigns a rank to all sites, and if a more-highly-ranked site links to your site, it confers some of its rank — its prestige — to your site. Plus, the more inbound links you have, in general, the more highly you will rank. And the more highly your site ranks, the more highly placed it will be on Google search results. Google takes a dim view of such site and may penalize you for linking to them.

A common way to increase a site’s rank is to run an inbound link campaign. This involves contacting other, highly-ranked sites, and asking them if they’ll link to you. It can be tedious, but it can also be quite rewarding. Beware of those who want to link to you in return for a reciprocal link. Be sure the requesting site is reputable and not what is known as a link farm — a site that exists to try to game the Google system so that they’ll get increased ad revenue.

As we’ve said, SEO and SEM are very deep and complex topics and you really may need a consultant to move much beyond the advice we’ve given here. Just be careful of too-good-to-be-true claims. It generally costs hundreds or thousands of dollars per month to stay on top of search engine results. Those who claim to be able to do this for you for less may not be able to deliver.

There are few absolutes in the world of SEO, but one of them is that as soon as someone figures out how to game the search engines, they’ll change their ranking techniques, and perhaps penalize previously-effective SEO techniques.

[1] Fusco’s Site Redesign SEO Considerations for 2010: bit.ly/d5VTjh

[2] You’ve seen mouseover text when you’ve moved the cursor over a link on a page, and popped up a little description.

In our previous post, Aim to Influence on Social Media, we explored what you can do with your social media community. In this post we take a look at leveraging your partners to promote your social media efforts.

Source: The World Wide Meme

Partner and Cross-Promote

Partnering is even more important and effective online than it is offline. By choosing the right strategic partners, you can leverage others’ traffic and followers and attract them to your community. You can also increase your prestige by associating with the right online leaders, creating a halo effect by borrowing their influence.

Social media is a good way to find new partners and create partnerships. In his 2012 Social Media Marketing Industry Report,[1] Michael A. Stelzner reported that 56 percent of those who invested 6 to 10 hours per week over a few months with social media marketing found new partnerships.

The benefits of having online partners can be great. You can multiply your efforts and mutually enhance each other’s success. You can offer a more compelling value to your community. You can benefit by associating with a partner, sharing in each other’s prestige and reputation. Perhaps more importantly, by partnering with a larger or more established online business, you can reinforce your own legitimacy and community standing.

Prospect for Partners

There are many ways to find potential partners using online media. We recommend that, after you’ve established some goals for having a partner, you use the following procedure:

• Determine the important keywords for your business
  What are the first words that come to mind when you think about your business and your products? Write them down. Now put yourself in your community’s shoes. What words would they use to find you? Add them to the list. Organize the list into primary keywords — those that you think most people would associate with your product category — and long tail keywords — those that may have meaning, but are more peripheral. (Incidentally, you’ll probably want to use this list in your Search Engine Marketing (SEM) efforts.)
• Search and see who controls the keywords
  Plug your primary keywords into Google. Who comes up on the first page? Assuming it’s not you, note the organizations and make a list of their names. Explore their Websites to determine how they might fit as a partner. Assign a 1 to 100 score based on their likelihood and desirability. Do the same for your long tail keywords. Then prioritize your list and use the top words in your content and to search for partners. Prioritize the resulting partner list and use it to make contacts.
• Check sponsored results
  While doing your Google research, also take note of any AdWords ads you see. AdWords are those text ads that appear to the right of search results on Google. There may also be some sponsored results at the top. Evaluate the organizations behind these ads and adjust their scores.
• Create a list of the influential blogs/forums
  Using your lists, search for blogs and forums that deal with your product category. You can use BlogSearch.com [2] or the various tools we’ve previously discussed. From the number of comments, tweets, or other measures of influence, create a list of influential bloggers and forums.
• Listen to the blogs/forums
  Find out what people are saying about the organizations on your partner prospect list. If your prospects are participating, even better. You can start to engage with them on these sites. Research your prospects by finding out what social media sites they frequent.

Using this process, you’ve created a partner prospect list and been able to prioritize it. Now you can start to engage with these partners online, and draw them into a relationship. Start by commenting on their blogs or other posts and gradually introduce yourself that way.

[1] Stelzner’s 2012 Social Media Marketing Industry Report: bit.ly/JPUHwN

[2] BlogSearch.com