Social Media and SEO

Over the last year as sites like Twitter, Facebook and now Google+ become more and more popular its has had an effect on the way Google ranks websites and what the SEO process looks like. Not so long ago SEO was the science of combining the right keywords with unique content and making sure your on-site factors were up to speed. Then you moved offsite and built up good backlinks from all sorts of places. Always building a steady stream of backlinks and your ranking would rise. Today we have the social media factor to consider. You have to be active socially to get Googles respect and rankings. Here is my small business guide for social media that doesn’t take up your whole day.

Twitter

This one is essential to your online sucsess. Create a profile and don’t stress about making it look amazing. Use one of the preset themes and put your company logo or even better a photo of your face so that your profile has a real voice. If you are the tinkering type you can add a custom background. If you go this route try to include your website address and maybe your phone number here. Then you will want to start tweeting. Tweet once a day and talk about what is happenoing in your business. Maybe you have a sale on for a product, maybe a new product or service has just been added or you can tell about the color options of your top selling product. Keep it light and focused on what your customers want to know about your business. Once a while, but not too often, throw a personal antidote in there to show you are human. Try to avoid telling people what you had for lunch but you can tell them what the popular song around the office is. Make sure to include links to your products or your webpage time to time.

Facebook

This is an extension on to what you are already doing on Twitter. Set up a business page not a profile. Noone wants to be friends with a business. They want to like it and stay upto date. I will write a follow up post about how to effectively setup a business facebook page later on. Post an update once a day, it can be the same as your twitter post. Facebook has the luxury of adding photos to posts and I suggest you use it. Users are more likely to read and click on things when they see a picture. Show them that new product!

Your website

I always suggest that you include a “like” button, “tweet” button and +1 button on your site. I also suggest a spot on the home page that displays your latest tweet or two. This really helps your SEO and the customer experience. From an SEO standpoint, don’t worry so much about the amount of followers or likes you have on your profiles. They will get built up over time. Your updates are public and people do see them wether they are followers or not. Not everyone want to get your updates all the time but they do like to stop by and see what you have to say more often then you think. Be social and update once a day. It only takes a few minutes and the benefits are increasing all the time. Speaking of social we just launched our own social media seo tool that’s free and easy to use. Check it out: www.faseeo.com