To keep up with changes on the SEO landscape and make sure I’m consistently utilizing the most effective techniques on behalf of clients, I read a lot of articles and blog posts about SEO. Most still focus on the same basic areas:
- • Keyword research
- • On-page optimization (content, headings, meta tags)
- • Links (external and internal)
And to be fair, even with all of the changes in search over the past year, those basics remain vitally important to search success. But here are three areas where many companies aren’t realizing the synergistic benefits of coordination with their SEO efforts:
Blogging: given that less than half of companies—both small businesses and the Fortune 500—actively maintain industry blogs, this is an underutilized area for SEO benefit. While there are several benefits of business blogging beyond SEO, the ability of a blog to enhance an organization’s presence in search is substantial. Blogs are a source of fresh content, which search engines love. It’s easier to incorporate new keyword groups, naturally, in a blog post or series of posts than it is to rewrite sections of a corporate website. And blog content is more likely to attract natural links from other sites than is standard marketing copy, as it’s inherently more interesting.
Public Relations (PR): trying to manually build links from high-quality sites is difficult, tedious and time-consuming. But a well-written and optimized press release can generate dozens or even hundreds of links from quality news sites and blogs overnight. First, make sure the press release itself it well-optimized (e.g. keywords used in the title and early in the body copy). Then include text links back to specific pages on your website, e.g. linking a term like records management software back to an informational page devoted to that topic. Finally, use online press release distribution sites to spread your news far and wide.
Social Media: while social media adoption is rapidly increasing, these efforts aren’t always coordinated with SEO or appreciated in terms of search benefits. If a company has a quality Twitter following, its Twitter account is likely to appear in the top five results in branded searches. Links from social bookmarking sites can improve the rank of content-rich pages buried in your site’s navigational structure. The major search engines are increasing incorporating social signals into their search results. And it’s important to recognize that not all search happens on search engines any more; it’s also important to optimize for search within social networks like Facebook and LinkedIn.
By getting different teams working together and integrating these efforts with SEO, enterprises can maximize both the direct effects of strong PR and social media activities as well as increasing their visibility to buyers through search.
Dan E says
I sure wish I knew how to hire a part time expert to manage social media & SEO for a small business.
Tom Pick says
Dan – I think we should talk!
Jeff Yablon says
Nice. Hopefully NOT overlooked, but . . . good advice!
Jeff Yablon
President & CEO
Answer Guy and Virtual VIP Computer Support, Business Change Coaching and SEO Consulting/Search Engine Optimization Services
Brandon says
Dan,
I’m putting together a guide for making sure people don’t get ripped off hiring social media/SEO professionals. There’s a lot of snake oil in this business. If you’re interested, send me an email at Brandon [at] boomajoom dot com. (It’s free and I won’t spam you.)
To the post proper, if the business has an e-commerce store, RDF extensions can really help boost search rankings as well.
James Quincy says
Hi, gerat post very informative, but if you just create links through social networking sites like Facebook, twitter and digg will it give you positive SEO results at all??
Thanks
Tom Pick says
Impact varies by the social bookmarking site. Some are do-follow and definitely help with SEO. Of the ones you mentioned: Digg links were originally do-follow, then they switched to nofollow expect for links that hit the front page. Still, it does get new pages indexed more quickly. Twitter had a relationship with Google where Twitter links really helped with SEO. That recently changed and Twitter links no longer have direct SEO value (at least for now). Facebook links aren’t visible to Google and so don’t help with SEO direclty, but if they lead to you getting other links or more traffic they can still be indirectly beneficial.
James Quincy says
Hi, What about a mirroring site, will a site with exactly the same content as another but different domain name affect SEO ratings negatively or will SEO be as a normal new websites would be?
Alex says
Very informative I will be looking back at this while trying to do my SEO, thanks!