2015 Website SEO Guide for Businesses (2015)
Social Media
Social media can be a fantastic way to interact with your customers in real time, but before you invest a lot of time and / or energy into this, check out how your competitors are doing first.
Social media is way that people can “vote” for your business. Social signals are starting to help websites gain higher rankings in search engines and will continue to do so.
When you participate in social networks, do so naturally. Build up your network and please don’t be tempted to buy fake followers. If search engines aren’t already picking up on this, they will soon.
SEO and Social networks work hand in hand. When you publish high quality content on your website and share it on social media, your followers will like, share, tweet or +1 your content. This helps search engines figure out what content is of a higher quality than others.
Ensure that the content on your website is easy to share by having social network buttons clearly visible for people to click on and share.
Yes, there are still some people in the Digital Marketing industry that say social media has nothing to do with SEO, but they are wrong. The ultimate goal of SEO is to have more people visiting your website and if your website is being shared on Social Networks then more people are visiting your website. Then they’re sharing this content with their friends, bringing in even more visitors.
There are lots of other business owners who are on Social Networks who are looking for great content to share on their own websites, blogs and social media pages. When they see something they like, they will share it and possibly provide a link back to your website. While links aren’t as important as they used to be, they are still a factor in search engine rankings.
Even if you don’t get a link back to your website, the mention of your brand, which Google calls co-citation will be considered a “Brand Signal”. Social media can take brand signals to a whole new level.
Social media helps search engines understand what is popular on the internet and more importantly, what is credible and what isn’t.
SEO isn’t just for search engines. All social media networks have their own search engine built in and they are getting more powerful all the time. Facebook has started that their own search engine has over 100,000 ranking factors.
Keep in mind that some social networks are better for certain businesses than others.
Let me explain further. One of my best clients sells spare parts for vintage tractors. How many people on Twitter are interested in Vintage Tractors, the answer is not very many. On the other hand, there is Facebook, where a huge number of people are interested in Vintage Tractors.
Facebook just works for this particular client, whereas Twitter has brought them in no customers at all, so they have put most of their social media efforts into Facebook and it’s paying off dividends, with over 5000 followers.
If you are just starting off you need to try a few different social networks and once you find one that works for your business, stick with it and dump the others. It’s better not to waste too much time on something that isn’t working.
The nice thing is that you’ll be able to tell in a matter of two or three months which social network is best for your business and which ones aren’t. You could be really lucky and have the type of business that people just love across all social networks, but experience suggests that usually one is better than the others.
Once again, if someone tells you that Social Media doesn’t matter for SEO, point them to General Electric as a case study. When you search the keywords General Electric in Google, you will see on the first page of the Google Search Results, the general Electric Instagram, Pinterest and Twitter accounts and even more importantly, on the right hand side, you will see their Google + profile information.
There are also more people than ever before searching up your company profile on Twitter or Facebook, before they even do a search for your company on Google Search.
Your social media profile matters to Google and other search engines including Bing, which is getting more popular all the time.
So get stuck in now and ramp up your Social media profiles, start sharing great content and get your staff to do the same.
At the very least, make sure you have a Google Plus profile for your business and make sure your business information on it is correct and up to date.
The internet is all about relationships, gaining an audience, expressing your business identity and sharing content.
Paid Social Media Advertising
Here’s a list of the most popular social media networks that you can pay to advertise on.
--Youtube
You should test all of them, results will vary, but it’s worth spending about £100 on each one to compare the results.
The advertising world has been completely transformed by social media and gives you a chance to get your message directly to potential, current and previous customers
As with advertising on Google Adwords, you can target by location, behaviour and interests.
Facebook has over 700 million active users, Twitter has over 270 million and LinkedIn has over 300 million. About 75% of all internet users are in one or more social media networks.
Reddit currently has 174 million unique hits every month throughout 186 countries.
The great thing about advertising on social media is that you can directly target people who are already interested in what you have to offer.
It is a cheap way of connecting directly with customers. This is where your entrepreneurial spirit can really kick off.
Think of questions or problems that your current customers have, make a list of them and consider some answers that would help them out. People love getting answers free of charge that help them make the most out of your products or services.