|| Business & Social Media |
The online landscape today compels businesses to conduct well-planned Search Engine Optimization (SEO) campaigns in order to enhance their visibility to their target consumers. Together with social media, SEO has become an indispensable component of just about any marketing strategy that is geared towards generating the most online traffic to a company’s website.
SEO refers to the collective methods used to improve website rankings on search engine results pages (SERPs). A comprehensive SEO campaign has two major elements: on-page optimization, and off-page optimization. On-page optimization refers to the techniques used in modifying a webpages so that search engines will rank them higher on SERPs. On-page optimizations are readily implementable because the website owner fully controls all the necessary tools and permissions to update the website so that it becomes friendlier to both search engines and online users.
On the other hand, off-page optimizations are techniques (usually involving third parties) that a company can adopt to further enhance the ranking of its website on SERPs. Off-page optimizations should only be conducted after on-page optimizations have been completely implemented.
Much of off-page optimization involves link building and usually requires the creation of noteworthy content (such as articles, blogs, videos, press releases) for distribution to various channels. Here are some tips that will hopefully improve your off-page optimization campaigns.
Officially submit your website specs to leading search engines such as Google, Yahoo, and Bing. Submission is free and it complies with best practices on the Web.
Create offsite communities centered on your brand. Here is where SEO and social media intersect. Social media is a powerful marketing tool and any company who wishes to enhance its online presence should capitalize on a strategic social media campaign. By creating offsite communities (such as establishing a fan page on Facebook, or creating a Twitter account), you easily build and maintain channels through which backlinks to your official site may be implemented. It is also a way of deeply engaging your target consumers so that they are encouraged to participate in brand value-enhancing activities.
Distribute your value-laden content to reputable social networks and websites that promote user-generated content such as YouTube, VideoMogul, SlideShare, Digg, Ezine Articles, Suite101 and others. Use RSS (Really Simple Syndication) in distributing your content as it is one of the most widely used content distribution methods in the Web. To optimize your article distribution campaign, ensure that the articles you syndicate are high-quality, written content in order for your consumers to continually engage your content. In most cases, article syndication helps in spreading awareness about your brand, improving your SERP ranking, increasing user traffic to your site, building trust among your followers, and broadening your audience reach.
Create and maintain a trustworthy blog. Blogging counts among the most powerful ways of promoting your brand online. Remember to hire a credible, professional blogger to help build your brand reputation and prevent user and search engine penalties that will surely occur if your blog posts are substandard. Remember that posting comments on other blogs also provides an opportunity to implement linkbacks to your official site.
Maintain forums. Forums are not just channels for resolving user issues but are a good and valid method of link building.
Adopt social bookmarking. Use popular bookmarking portals such as Digg, and Delicious to further promote your brand. Doing so may increase user visits to your site.
Engage in link exchanges with reputable sites. Link exchanges are commonly done between two different websites in related sectors to mutually benefit both parties. However, there are unscrupulous players engaged in this practice and you should avoid these players. Otherwise, their low reputation will most likely drag your website’s SERP ranking. The best is to partner with credible sites if partnering with an authoritative company is too challenging.
Create link baits. Link baits are exceptionally good content (articles, vieos, images, etc) that people and websites across the Internet would like to share to their network. Truly creative link baits are viral in nature and will not only promote your brand significantly but will also help you convert some of the user traffic into real figures on your bottomline.
Publish press releases. If you are introducing a new product or service, have your best writers or a PR company create a compelling press release about the new product. Have the press release distributed on popular portals such as 1888pressrelease and Open PR.
All these techniques are designed to enhance the online image of your brand. With complementary optimization campaigns off page and a well-directed social media plan, you can improve your SERP ranking significantly.
