How Social Media Can Help With SEO!

There are so many inquiries that I have received already in terms of SEO or Search Engine Optimization. What is it? How can we implement it on our own? Is it really important? What I want to achieve in this post is to give you some practical tips on how we (our own brand) or your site can become searchable.

Imagine creating a site or wanting to promote your personal brand. You do everything. The content is fantastic, the artwork or design is very creative, but people cannot find you on the web. All your efforts become useless because you have not given SEO much thought.

What is SEO? Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of improving the volume or quality of traffic to a web site or a web page (such as a blog) from search engines via “natural” or un-paid (“organic” or “algorithmic”) search results as opposed to other forms of search engine marketing (SEM) which may deal with paid inclusion. The theory is that the earlier (or higher) a site appears in the search results list, the more visitors it will receive from the search engine. SEO may target different kinds of search, including image search, local search, video search and industry-specific vertical search engines. This gives a web site web presence.

Now that we have defined it, how then can we achieve a web presence in a more practical way? It is really simple. By being present in social media, you can actually achieve the objective. Yes it is simple, but you still need to follow some guidelines in order to succeed:

1. Use social media wisely – There are so many social media platforms available now for a person or a brand’s disposal. You have Twitter, FaceBook, YouTube, blogs, etc… One thing that is often overlooked is that they may be at your disposal, but are you using them wisely? Is the platform relevant to your brand or your subscribers or readers? Are you hitting the right audience? These are just some of the questions you need to ask before embarking on your campaign.

2. Make sure you offer useful content – Content is still important, no matter how aggressive you are in social media. If people do not find your content relevant then all your efforts are useless. They may go to your site in the beginning, which is your objective in the first place, but in the long run, they will figure you out and see that what you offer is not what they need.

3. Follow through and consistency – People often forget these two characteristics. They are so gung-ho at the beginning. They join Twitter and create a FaceBook page, but then don’t follow through and don’t update it or engage with the people who have either followed or liked their page. It is important to be consistent. You gain searchability when people start sharing, commenting or back linking to your posts. Do not forget that only when it has become authoritative do you get bumped up on the search list. If you are not consistent you will not hit your objective.

I have included a slide show that speaks more about social media and how it can help you with SEO. I hope you find it useful!

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Social Media and Search