HOW SOCIAL MEDIA IMPACTS SEO? a publication by
Authors Written by Sarah Bundy, Founder & CEO of All Inclusive Marketing, is an award winning leader in the performance marketing space. Sarah drives the vision and direction of AIM and actively contributes to the advancement of the performance marketing industry through education, training, effective leadership and strategic planning. @svbundy Sarah teaches at The School of Internet Marketing and the Online Marketing Institute, speaks at industry shows such as Online Marketing Summit, Affiliate Summit and Performance Marketing Insights and writes for periodicals such as Small Business Trends, ReveNews, and FeedFront Magazine. Strategy & Design by Julia Stanescu, who drives Business Strategy & Development at All Inclusive Marketing. Julia s passion lies in identifying companies needs and challenges to create smart solutions that achieve desired results. Julia identified the need for many companies to increase the number of customers and their engagement through social media campaigns, that many businesses have. This need often comes from limited time, resources, tools, connections or expertise. This ebook was created to help address those needs and bring to live more active, successful affiliate marketing programs. @juliastanescu 2
Foreword Does your Social Media Strategy goes hand in hand with SEO? Incorporating a strong SEO strategy into the design of a Social Media Plan can greatly improve its chances of success. There are three big elements that contribute to your SEO Strategy and create a foundation and structure that will support a high ranking site for a long time to come: Content, Back Links and SocialMedia. Whether you re having an SEO consultant or simply relying doing your own strategy in-house, you ll want to take advantage of the insights we put together in this ebook. This ebook will help you to: Is this ebook useful for me or my business? Intermediate Level Find Blog Post Topics and Keywords Opportunities Understand How Blogs Attract Links Build Effective Blog Posts Understand Links Effect on Social Media Learn How YouTube and Facebook Open Graph Affects your SEO 3
Table of Contents In this ebook you ll explore Find Blog Post Topics and Keywords Opportunities / p. 06 Understand How Blogs Attract Links /p. 07 Build Effective Blog Posts /p. 08 Links Effect on Social Media /p.09 How YouTube and Facebook Open Graph Affects SEO /p. 10 Key takeaways /p. 11 4
Incorporating a Strong SEO Strategy into Your Social Media Plan 5
Find Blog Post Topics and Keywords Opportunities Does your next Blog Post matter? next blog post Blog posts are pages of content that can be focused on new keyword opportunities or reinforce existing targets. Blog posts topics are not constrained by current site architecture and they provide excellent internal link opportunities. New blog posts create new pages that slightly increase Page Rank. Too many blogs are under-utilized for internal linking purposes. This should be leveraged more (ie: If you mention dog food, link back to your dog food page on your site). Make sure you include your main navigation template on all your pages if you have 1000 2000 blog posts of pages of content and you don t have your global navigation in place, you could be missing out on tons of SEO opportunity. 6
Understand How Blogs Attract Links Bloggers have a high propensity to link to 3rd party sites in comparison to web masters that do not. Blog posts are typically more timely in nature and are focused on current events. Blog post are most effective from an SEO perspective when they have keyword focused internal links to relevant pages that target high priority keywords. Bloggers have personal relationships with other bloggers which increase the propensity to receive a link. The more personal relationships a blogger has with authoritative authors in their industry, the greater chance of receiving a meaningful link for any piece of content. Guest blogging is one of the most effective link building exercises that also benefits your brand and authority. 7
Build Effective Blog Posts Imbed Landing Pages Comments on Blogs SEO s Best Practices Ensure Blogging teams understand what pages target high priority keywords. Consistently imbed relevant preferred landing pages for your site into blog posts Use your standard site navigation template for all blog pages. Make sure you have a link to your blog in your global navigation template and that blogs post are optimized for SEO, especially page titles. Train bloggers on SEO best practices so they can optimize content as it is created. Make back links a metric that bloggers are rewarded for. Ensure that bloggers spend some time each week reading and commenting on target blogs to establish relationships Create blog posts that offer an opinion or point of view on popular blog posts from other authors. Add compelling infographics to important blog posts. 8
Links Effect on Social Media Social media networks attract links by marketing good content to target audiences. The more friends and followers you have that share an interest in the content you are producing, the more potential links your content will receive when it s shared through those channels. It s not about the quantity, it s about the QUALITY of these links and posts that count. Focus on the people and opening communications, building relationships with individuals this will have more impact than anything else. The more relationships you have with people in your space, the better. Take an avid interest in what people in your space are doing. Offer thoughtful feedback and responses on their blog posts. Give them something of value to them. The value of the bloggers is not just based on the content they write, it s in the relationships and networks of people they influence in the space. Most links found in social networks are rel=nofollw and do not boost regular search rankings. Occasionally profile links will be counted. 9
How YouTube and Facebook Open Graph Affects SEO YouTube Facebook Open Graph Search YouTube is the second largest search engine in the world. Include the essential keywords in the title of your video and link back to them from your main site. Top listings in YouTube can drive considerable traffic. YouTube thumbnails also appear in regular Google/Bing search results. Number of views you have, number of embeds you have will impact how well they rank Facebook Open Graph Search is the new searching functionality that allows you to search Facebook profiles / pages. Currently focused on people and places. Facebook Meta Tags for Open Graph can be implemented. How usage varies from regular Google/Bing search remains to be seen Facebook Open Graph search is still in Beta. Incorporate these into your search strategy. 10
Takeaways Keywords & Blog Topics Always research and use keywords and topics that score big in Google Search or your Google Analytics. Keyword research is a fundamental part of online marketing of all kinds. Keywords are the actual language people are using when they think about those topics, which provides you with insight on how to engage with them via your blog. BackLinks Building quality backlinks is extremely important to Search Engine Optimization, and because of their importance, it should be very high on your priority list in your SEO efforts.. Use tools to help you with link builder campaigns. Backlink Builder Tool and Domain Stats Tool are just a few. Social Media Have a platform strategy. Spend your time online cultivating some platforms that generates social activity and connects to your business goals beyond SEO. Be everywhere might not bring you the best results. 11
Looking to find in real-time the most influential bloggers, magazines or potential customers using Social Media? We develop top-of-the-line Social Media strategies and management programs using the power of AIM s Social Tool Suite. You can search by specific keywords relevant to your business and cross check prospective content writers. The tool help you to identify your competitors Social Media Strategies, who they are working with and even see who is discussing about your brand as it happens. In addition, as your Social Media channels grow, you can optimize and speed-up engagement on your posts, simply by leveraging this tool. By using the AIM Social Tool Suite, you can instantly search keywords and find relevant blogs, news, articles, videos, images and any other popular content type across the major social networks globally. You can identify in real time, the most influential content marketers in strategic verticals for you to engage with and help grow your business. 12
Get AIM s Social Tool Suite Drive more ROI to your business by improving your Social Media Campaigns AIM s Social Tool Suite comes with a helpful hand, to help you find bloggers and the most influential people from Social Media that matter most for your business. AIM s Social Tool Suite will allow you to monitor and respond to every social interaction in real time. Filter and engage with the best bloggers you need to help you grow your business right away. Instantly find leads and real people that are searching for your products/services on the spot. Click Here to Request a Free Demo 13
Driving Performance Marketing All Inclusive Marketing is a full service digital marketing agency delivering strategic experience driven results. We ve been driving performance marketing since 2009 through Innovation, Leadership, and Ethical Business Practices. www.allinclusivemarketing.com AIM s award winning experts help businesses around the world increase profitable sales and exposure through strategic digital marketing. AIM s goal is, and will forever be, to Delight, Innovate, Grow and Give Back. 14