A lot has been written about the impact of social media on SEO, specifically related to the increase in visibility of sites through the syndication of content via social media channels such as on blogs, and via sites like Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. While there has been much discussion of social media and the role of syndication, there’s been little discussion of specific tactics in which you can use social media programs to improve the underlying metrics of a good SEO program by doing things like boosting inbound links and number of pages indexed, and making improvements in anchor text.
Below are five tactics that can help your SEO program by using social media. We hope you find them useful. Please feel free to comment below.
- Train your social media team, or lead, on SEO.
In small organizations, the SEO and social teams are often the same people-so aligning the two groups is quite easy! But if you are in a larger organization and have multiple groups working on these different channels, it is important that your social media crew has a clear idea of the importance of links, anchor text, content on pages, and other critical SEO issues. Since they are creating content and interacting with other groups on a regular basis, they need to be on the lookout for not only conversation opportunities, but also SEO opportunities. If you are using a third-party ad agency for your social media marketing, make sure that they also have a solid understanding of SEO. - Make sure your SEO and Social Media teams are synched on keywords and pages.
Now that your social media team is trained on SEO, make sure that the social media team has a list of your focus SEO keywords and key pages for ranking. This is important to ensure that they are monitoring these keywords online (in addition to listening for mentions of your brand and services) as well as using the keywords in comments, posts, and link text. The key SEO pages, tuned for specific keywords, should be a first choice when linking back to the site so that not all inbound links go to your homepage. Including the focus keyword in the anchor text link back to the site is critical for improved rank on those terms.
(note: Optify can help you analyze and track those with our Pages and Keywords Applications. You will be able to see what pages and keywords are performing the best and how they are linked together. - Fill out profile pages completely.
You should think of the profiles on any social media network as an extension of your website. The same care that you put into crafting the right text, placements, and links on your site should go into these profiles. In an audit of one of our client’s social media programs, the person responsible for posting to a well-known blog had an opportunity to fill out a profile page when she created the company’s account. That profile page included a “websites” section where posters could post favorite links and garner back links. But our audit showed that the client missed that opportunity.
***bonus tip*** In your LinkedIn profile, edit the websites section and use “other” instead of “My Blog: or “My Company.” This will let you display the actual URL instead of hiding it behind a “My Blog” title and aid further in SEO. - Include tracking parameters in destination links.
If using a shortened URL service like Bit.ly to post links in Twitter or other site, be sure to include a tracking parameter in the destination link. So, instead of putting in http://www.optify.net use http://www.optify.net?optify_r=twitter where optify_r= is the tracking parameter. Every website analytics program (Optify, Google Analytics, Ominiture, Webtrends, etc.) has a way of tracking campaigns and by using these parameters, you will get better information on traffic sources and where you are being successful. - Optimize the meta data around your videos for SEO.
Search engines are getting closer to indexing the translated voice text in videos and there are technical things you can do like adding external text files to help (more on this in a later post). In the near term, you should use focus keywords in the following areas of the video so that if and when the video propagates across the web, the keywords will go with it:- Title of video: include at least one good focus keyword in the title
- Video description: Most video sites let you add a description of the video, and you should use this space as you would a meta-description tag.
- Tags associated with video: Wherever you can add or edit tags for the video, do so with the focus list of keywords at hand.
- File name of video: This is an overlooked element you should not neglect because it is “crawlable” by the search spiders and another possible boost to your SEO.
- Optimize the link on your site to the video: Instead of placing “Click Here” for viewers to watch a video on your site, use a more full description like “Click Here for SEO Video Optimization Tips” as the link anchor text to make the link keyword rich.
- If the video is posted on your site, optimize all of the core tags and placements (Title tag, H1, Meta’s, etc.) on the page for the video.
We hope these tips get you thinking more tactically about the impact your social media program can have on SEO. Feel free to comment and add your own tips below.
