Hopefully your 2011 is going to be a storming year. One thing’s for sure…if you haven’t really embraced SEO and social media, now’s the time to do so. It’s going to play an increasing role in the future marketing of your sites, so it’s best you get involved now. Here are a few tips I’ve pulled together on SEO, together with some key reasons why you need to embrace social media (horrible term, but it’s the only one we’ve got for now).
Don’t get hung up on Page Rank
Page Rank should not be the primary identifier of a good or bad link. It is a common misconception that a page with low Page Rank is not worth getting a link from. However, there are many other things to consider when building links including domain trust and authority, content relevance and position of your link on a page. Similarly pages with high Page Rank may not be what they first seem. Try checking the page’s back link profile for any deceptive tactics or evidence of link buying or blackhat before you dive into getting a link from it.
Use webmaster to fix broken links and errors
Find broken pages on your site which have inbound links with Webmaster Tools. This is a very easy, and very often overlooked way of clawing back some of those hard earned back links. Get logged into Google Webmaster Tools and check the “Crawl errors” section. Then drill down to the “not found” results and next to each one Google will tell you how many links are pointing to that page. 301 the 404ing pages to a current page on your site to pass the link juice.
E-Commerce with Content
Creating a blog/e-commerce tandem allows you to become an authority on your subject. It allows you to demonstrate that you are knowledgeable about your product and even passionate about it. When creating an e-commerce site, it can be hard to find that hook to get people to give you the link you need. What is so interesting about an individual product or service that would produce a link? Creating a blog, or adding more research related content (advice on online dating, for example) can add a lot more value and vastly increase your chances of a link.
Tips 4, 5 & 6 – 3 SEO reasons to embrace social media
There’s a lot of mixed feelings about “social media”, If you’ve been keeping the social side of your online campaigns at arm’s reach, then here’s 3 ways how social media can have an impact on your search marketing campaign:
25% of major brand search results are user-generated content
Whether you like it or not, you can’t control every single SERP. People are going to talk about you and these results are going to appear for your brand name or related service/product searches. If you’re not involved in these conversations, you will have absolutely no influence on what people say about you. Complaints left unattended tend to grow; especially online.
Social signals are blended into search
Blended search results (such as local listing, Google Products or Maps) are commonplace now. These results directly include ratings and reviews of your company, your product and your service. These are powerful signals to new customers when they are making their decision to interact with you. If your SEO campaign does not take these blended results and their interaction with main search results into account, you may have a #1 ranking – but you may not like what it says.
Social will have a direct impact on rankings
Social media signals are being integrated into pure search results. It’s very likely that even with blended and third party results aside, actual “pure” rankings will likely be impacted by social signals.