If you know who Google’s Matt Cutts is, no doubt you will know all about the importance of search engine optimisation and obeying the corrent SEO guidelines outlined by the aforementioned internet giant. By only listening to him you may be incorrectly thinking that SEO is about writing some good articles and getting others to link it and to your website will be enough.

By only playing Google’s game of Webmaster Guidelines, you may find that your SEO efforts aren’t yielding quite the traffic and ranks you had been hoping for. A lot of people in this instance resort to taking short cuts to meet SEO goals, or give up completely.

Enter social media; the relatively new revelation of social networking will help you gain links, thus benefiting your SEO campaign.

Link building

Links you receive from third parties who see your content as being valuable ad industry-relevant are worth their weight in gold in the SEO world – so to speak. For small businesses, gaining natural links is the hardest part of SEO when starting a campaign as it is and always will be difficult to get this content seen by those who might be willing to link to you or mention you.

If you have a new website that doesn’t have a direct audience, make use of social media to get the ball rolling. One of the most effective and easiest methods of harnessing social media’s power is to promote content to your target audience through your page.

Example:

You have a site that isn’t established yet and doesn’t bring in a lot of traffic – either organically or through other means. Publishing blogs and articles in the hope that Google picks it up isn’t a quick solution; it could take a long time to be indexed by Google and generate natural links. But if you have gained somewhat of a presence on Twitter, Google+, Facebook, and LinkedIn, you can share your content directly with your audience.

After completing this blog, you can guarantee I’ll be posting it on all forms of social media Blue Ocean Search are currently present on.

Make sure you engage with the right people on the social web – there’s a big chance people are going to link to and share your content (provided it’s good stuff) within their own social circles, increasing your reach and digital footprint online. The better quality content you produce, the more people will be interested in it and will share and pass it along.

How can you get started with this?

  • Invest in creating magnetic content. This will help your content travel and will keep your visitors on your site for longer.
  • Focus on building a strong social media community.
  • Make your content easily shareable.
  • Don’t be afraid to reach out via social media so that other likeminded individuals can share your content. Make your content interesting, useful and relevant.

SEO and social media shouldn’t be measured in their own silos. Combined and working hand in hand, they will make measuring your digital marketing campaigns easier. Using a simple method of setting up goals in Google Analytics and then creating specific campaigns you can track, measure, and work out the ROI of your SEO and social media campaign.