Social Media for SEO
How to Use Social Media for SEO
Not only is social media the hottest topic around most days, but it’s also become essential for SEO. Have you put social media to work for you? If not, it’s time to create your profiles, network, create a conversation, share interesting news, and integrate them with your website using buttons, widgets, or social media sharing tools. Plus, you’ll want to make sure all of your staff on the various sites are connected to the company. Right now there are a handful of essential social media sites that you’ll want to start with and a few others that may be helpful depending on your line of business.
Not convinced all this effort is really worth it?
There are three main reasons that the time and effort required to maintain your social media is worth it: 1) it increases traffic, 2) increased traffic powers SEO, and 3) increased traffic increases brand recognition. Let’s take a moment and look at the how and whys of these three.
1. Social media increases traffic.
We’re talking about the sheer volume of traffic rather than quality traffic. There is an inherent value to having a higher volume of traffic, plus it’s useful for ad impressions and building relationships with people who ordinarily wouldn’t have visited your site. While this may not do much for your conversion rate, it does increase your reach exponentially, which in turn increases the chances that your next marketing campaign will be able to generate the links that make the difference between being first or 125th on Google for your chosen terms.
2. Increased traffic from social media powers SEO.
Organic SEO depends on a social presence and social traffic directly, and indirectly. Getting to the top of the SERPs is all about quality links and social mentions. It’s not enough anymore to just create new blog content and hope that people will find it and like it. By creating your own network of social channels, you have more distribution points to place your messages and a larger audience that is actively listening to them. This in turn increases the number of incoming links with valuable link anchor text and social mentions your message receives. Before you know it, you find yourself in the top ten on Google and conversions are rocking. Is that worth spending 2-3 hours on social media every day? I think so.
3. Increased traffic from social media increases brand recognition.
Building brand recognition is a long-term strategy, not one that results in quick ROI. Spending time on social media should be seen as a marketing investment in brand recognition and/or reinforcement. Building brand recognition requires people receive numerous exposures over a significant period of time. The conversion of a portion of your new audience will occur somewhere down the road. In particular, social media provides a more cost-effective method of brand recognition building than other traditional methods for new, small, or niche businesses.
Hopefully, I’ve made a believer out of you! Now…
Ready, Set, Go!
- LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com – Create a company page and then network! Make sure to list important products! Use the code provided by LinkedIn to add a button to your site.
- FaceBook – https://www.facebook.com – Create a Page and then network! Plugin options for WordPress sites include Simple Facebook Connect and the basic Facebook code that can be accessed when you create your page.
- Twitter – https://twitter.com/ . Create an ID, find some people/companies to follow, and start tweeting. You can get a real handle on automating your tweets using free tools like Hootsuite, Buffer, or StackRoll. WordPress plugin options include Tweetmeme, Tweet This, Wicket Twitter Widget, etc.
- Slideshare – https://www.slideshare.net/– Share presentations, documents, and professional videos with potentially interested professionals. Link your account to your LinkedIn account and your slides will show up in an app on your profile.
- YouTube – https://www.youtube.com/ – Where you can post manufacturing videos, product demos, sales presentations, etc., and then embed them into your site. The WordPress YouTube Embed plugin may prove helpful or you can use the code provided by the site.
- Social Media Sharing – Add in a social media sharing plugin so that visitors can share their finds with colleagues and friends. Plugin options include:
- Social Media Feather https://wordpress.org/plugins/social-media-feather/
- SumoMe https://wordpress.org/plugins-wp/sumome/
More WordPress Plugins for SEO
- Add to Any: Share/Bookmark/Email Buttons – Help people share, bookmark, and email your posts & pages using any service, such as Facebook, Twitter, Google, StumbleUpon, Digg, and many more.
- Simple Share Buttons Adder: A simple plugin that enables you to add share buttons to all of your posts and/or pages.
- Facebook Like Button: Make it easy for your visitors to show Facebook love with this simple little button. A must-have for sure!
- Twitter Goodies: Twitter offers numerous widgets and opportunities for you to engage your visitors while also growing your Twitter community. Create a widget with your tweets. Or create a widget that displays a search term or hashtag. It’s a great way to share the buzz as your community grows!
Categories:Website Design & Development, WordPress
