Social Media Optimization

I have been trying to coin a new term I call "Social Media Optimization" or SMO. SMO represents what I feel is the 4th leg of organic search engine optimization, and one of the most important and easily executed.

This chart from blogjournalistics.com by Jeremy Porter is fitting for this topic, as it shows the power of social media influence.

The first Search Engine Optimization (SEO) leg is "on-page" optimization, such as: site structure, HTML navigation, breadcrumb navigation, keywords, HTML text, Meta and Alt-Tags, keyword placement, selection, density and proximity, keyword anchor tags, Title-Tags, above the fold HTML, RSS feed, on-page newsroom with RSS feed, sign-up and opt-in forms, site map, URL and file names, user reviews, etc. etc.

The second SEO leg is "off-page" optimization such as: inbound link building strategy, click-through popularity, web directories, Digg, Wikipedia, and and search engine submissions.

The third SEO leg is driving direct URL type-in traffic using traditional and offline marketing, collateral and PR, as well as online pay for inclusion and pay per click to create traffic, possibly inbound links, bookmarking, and leveraging viral marketing widgets such as "Share This" (assuming you have a good sight designed to leverage the traffic).

And the fourth leg is social media optimization (SMO), and I include blogs and forums in this category since a blog usually incorporates and encourages unique, current, two-way, less formal communication. Your social media channels should have widgets and links that drive traffic back to your site, as well as RSS feeds and viral marketing tools like "Share This" wherever possible. Also, include hypertext links linking to appropriate pages in your web site within your body text when using Twitter, blogs, etc. where possible and appropriate.

The world is connected to through social media channels, and search engines love social media tools, so why not use them to connect the world to your site.

Remember, spiders love fresh unique content, and that's what social media, newsrooms and blogs are all about. So use them, leverage them, and tie it all together for better overall SEO results.

As the web space becomes more competitive and crowded, you need to be thinking well beyond your site alone, and leverage every possible avenue and touch point to promote your site and index your keywords with the search engines.

How to Market with SlideShare

SlideShare can be used effectively as a powerful marketing tool if you execute these basic tips:

1. Place your name and/or company name in the slide title that you enter into the title bar after you upload it, or before. For example: "Integrated Marketing Strategies--Duane Sprague." This will optimize your name in the search engines, just like placing a title tag on each of your web pages.
   
2. Break your large presentation into into several smaller snackable presentations. Each one treated like a chapter in the larger theme. Make each presentation a stand-alone with it's own title, subject, and keywords. This gives you several smaller presentations to optimize for on more targeted and specific keywords, which casts a much wider net on the web. Think of it as creating several specialized micro sites.
3. Create your ebooks in PowerPoint or Keynote and convert to PPT, and then export them to PDF and post on the web as it's own domain, plus post it as a PPT file on SlideShare. This allows your ebook to serve double duty.
   
4. Place links to your SlideShare channel on every blog and site and social media channel you have.
   
5. Blogger and SlideShare both have very easy Widgets that allow you to plug your SlideShare channel into your blog post using an RSS feed for automatic updating.
   
6. Use as many appropriate keywords in the SlideShare keyword bar as you can. Think of this as meta-keywords on your site.
   
7. Write a good and focused description of your presentation. Think of this as your meta-description tags.
   
8. You can easily embed a video from YouTube into any one of your slides once it's imported. Very cool!
9. Publish often.
   
10. Use a eye grabbing graphic or image on your title page. It's just like creating an effective ad. You need to entice your audience.
    
11. Use a provocative or attention getting title. Or state a big benefit. But ALWAYS speak the truth and don't deceive.
    
12. Use the last slide or two to provide your bio, contact info, links, call to action, offer, tagline or unique selling proposition.
13. Provide great value, information, tips, how to, insights, etc. The more you can help or inform people, the more traffic you will get.
14. Create your company brochure/presentation in PPT and post on SlideShare.
15. Blog and Twitter about your new SlideShare presentations, and provide a link directly to them by cutting and pasting the URL.

If you have any other ideas, please share them with me. Happy Sharing!

Many times I have advocated the importance of using a variety of social media channels as a search visibility strategy for your targeted keywords, because it works.

I have successfully used LinkedIn, Facebook, SlideShare, YouTube, Squidoo, Twitter, Blogger, WordPress and others to generate top of the fold page one search placement.

Recently I have conducted an extensive test to see which tools are more search friendly and timely for providing search placement for my name. Here are the results in terms of best to worst search visibility over a 72 hour period for an individual name:

1. Zoom Info
2. LinkedIn
3. WordPress blog
4. SlideShare
5. Squidoo
6. Blogger blog
7. YouTube

I prefer WordPress over Blogger because it provides an automatic XML site map submission to Google every time a post is made. It works well and it works fast. WordPress is also far more flexible and customizable. You can do virtually anything with it.

Blogger on the other hand is a lot easier and faster to set-up. I have also found that if you host a Blogger blog on your own URL it will be crawled almost as fast as WordPress.

SlideShare appears to be more effective at creating instant and higher search visibility than YouTube. I have also taken note that with 13 advertising videos on YouTube vs. 15 advertising slide presentations on SlideShare, the videos received 114 downloads in a week compared to 1,556 slide downloads, and the videos had a 3 day head start.

The "Conversation Prism" represents the multitude of conversation channels, but it also represents the many opportunities for search visibility, idea exchange and concept proliferation. Social media channels therefore really serve multiple purposes, and are the perfect enhancement to an online integrated marketing strategy.

For a full size version see the source: http://theconversationprism.com/1280

Keyword Placement in Title Tag

Although copy in meta-tag description and meta keywords have less relevance in SEO these days due to the abuse of keyword stuffing, the proper keywords in the Title-Tag is still critical for SEO visibility based on the need to match user search words and phrases with the appropriate web pages. This chart is provided by SEOMOZ.org and provides great insights into the placement keywords.

In fact, it has been said by many SEO experts and authors that the Title-Tag id THE most important piece of meta-data on the page. The search engines typically give the most weight to the meta-data in the Title-Tag.

The above graph represents the weight given by Google to the keywords (no more than 2 per title/page) and their position (far left) in the Title-Tag.

Collectively, meta-data (title-tag, description attribute, and keywords) is still important for SEO, about 15% of total on-page and off-page weight when combined with matching and supportive HTML page text, so don't ignore it.

Increasing Your Search Visibility

The best method of increasing the search engine visibility of your web site or your brand, is to engage in a multi-front campaign.

This may include utilizing as many of the social media channels as you can, including YouTube for videos and commercials, SlideShare for documents and PowerPoint presentations, Squidoo for a very fast and easy web page, a blog or two on Word Press for versatility or Blogger if you like simple and fast, and Twitter for a micro blog. Also look at social and professional networking sites like LinkedIn, Plaxo, Spoke, Zoominfo, Xing and Facebook. All with links back to your main site of course.

A must have is an online newsroom with an RSS feed for publishing and distributing all your news releases and announcements. May I suggest NewsCactus as a very low cost and easy solution. These are very SEO friendly tools.

And don't forget about specialized micro sites, ebooks and white papers on their own dedicated URL, and lots of on-page copy and anchor text optimized with your keywords.

And the obvious, but so often overlooked, Title, Description and Keyword Meta Tags that are written custom for each and every page. The Meta Tags musty be highly focused and specific, and based on the topic, the one or two keywords used, and the content in each page. Not to mention brief but descriptive Alt Tags for each and every image and photograph, assuming the images support or explain the product or the benefits.

I see so many sites these days that are built in frames that have no meta data, or they have the same meta data for every page. This is a highly unprofessional and lazy way to build a site.

Google Off-Page SEO

Google SEO is a convoluted affair. These days SEO includes 3 main components; on-page, off-page, and social media optimization.

This post is going to cover just the highlights of off-page SEO for Google.

By looking at the chart from SEOBlog.com, it's clearly evident that inbound links from other sites into yours are a critical component to the Google ranking algorithms, of which there are over 100.

But inbound links are not all created equal. Google ranks the quality of the inbound link based on the quality of the site in terms of subject or keyword authority, and traffic to the site and the page where the link resides (22% of weight), and the relevancy of the linking text used, known as "anchor text" (20% of weight).

In other words, if the site in which the link comes from is a higher traffic site and/or page than yours, and the anchor text in the link matches exactly the keyword or phrase that is in your meta tags for your title page, keywords and page description, you have a very high ranking link.

You also want your URL owned for at least 5 years in advance, and hosted by a reputable company. These are indicators that you are not a spammer or illegitimate (25% of weight).

So there is 67% of your SEO weight. And that's just the beginning. Because Google changes its algorithms monthly, and the on-page and social media optimization is also very important to be seen in a crowded field.