Adding Social Media to my SEO game plan

[CarolSLC]

Okay, this is a little scary, I don’t want to ask stupid questions, but I think (hope) that this thread would help others that may be in my position (SMO newbie?). I’ve been doing seo for my own site for 8 years, and I think I’ve done pretty well. I’ve done everything in the stickies for the basics of seo. I still do great in yahoo and msn, but in google I’m seeing my site gradually getting pushed off page 1. I’m keeping myself on page 1 with Adwords, but I need to up my game. I’ve also started building new sites for others, and want to make sure that I do the best I can to help them get traffic and good search results.

I think what I need is to delve into social media optimization. My hypothesis is that google is placing more emphasis on this and that is why I’m slipping. I also think it will help get my new sites I’m creating off the ground.

My sites are not technical…at all. I’ve got retail clothing, an attorney, a med spa, a non-profit research fund, an avionics manufacturer, all small, all new start-ups, brand-new web sites. Nobody has a blog.

I’ve been researching the social media stuff and it's overwhelming. I’m on LinkedIn and facebook, but utilizing this stuff for seo is making my head spin. So, hopefully I can get started slowly and build on it.

Here’s my phase 1 plan to get better rankings and traffic (with associated questions):

• Continue using Adwords to maintain/get page 1 presence and build traffic
• Have owners create LinkedIn and facebook profiles, link to their websites
• Create a fan page on facebook, when appropriate, such as with the retail clothing store
• Have owners write at least one article, with links back to their site (they are all experts in the field where their website resides)
• Publish articles – thinking of doing that on ezinearticles. But do I put the article on the website first, then a duplicate article on ezine articles? I’ve seen a lot of controversy over same content or different, on my own site or not. I’m still confused here.
• If article on site, does it matter whether it’s as a pdf or html? Do I add social bookmarking buttons if it’s an html page?
• Should I add social bookmarking buttons to the sites in general?
• Blog – owners are not bloggers, but if I could convince them – do I put the blog on the website, or on an external site and link back to the original site?
• Add a “tell a friend” script to site
• Owners and myself will bookmark pages in delicious and stumbleupon

Can you help me with the questions? Anything I’ve got wrong, or any biggies that I’m missing?
Thanks so much!

[gridsix]

Keep searching online for tips and tricks on social bookmarking...

Here's a brief intro from a marketing standpoint:
Social Bookmarking: What Can it Do For Me? | zMogo Tech Stuff

Digg, reddit, stumbleupon, and delicious are some of the bigger ones. Sign-up, make friends and build your network before submitting too much content.

[CarolSLC]

Thanks - I appreciate the link and the advice.

[southplatte]

Something to keep in mind with Social Media is it is just that: "SOCIAL"

No matter what your game plan is, no matter which social "networks" or "tools" you use, remember that simply joining, following, networking or adding people and then blasting your message to them is not very "social" and unless you are one of the top dogs, you generally cannot get away with it. Sure you will get the link you and your site owners place back to your content, but is that really what Social Media is about? Joining, adding your links just so Google or Yahoo may pick up on them? No. You might get a few followers, friends or what have you, but you aren't providing them anything but a link back to you and your clients' sites, and having one or two extra links from each service probably is not going to increase your search performance to what you are desiring.

You have to look at what "value" you are adding to the network, specifically what value are you giving your followers, friends, etc. that will make them want to click through to your content, products and services.

Sure, you can link back to all your stuff, and maybe gain a bit with Google, MSN, Yahoo etc as far as links because each site will get a new link from each new service, maybe if the sites are exceptional others will bookmark them, retweet them or what have you.

What if you actually tried building a network (aka followers and friends) that see the value you or your clients' sites, products and services offer? The social aspect, this interaction, becomes relevant, rather than just saying "We are another business here because I think we have to be here, by the way here's our link, click it" you have people who see value in you and your clients and they will add links to your content, products and services. So now instead of self promoting, you have others that help you because you are providing value to their network, friends, followers or whatever a particular service calls it. When this value is there you will start seeing links from these networks showing up, links others made to you and your clients rather than what you made yourself.

[SnerdeyWebs]

I'd for sure have the owners of sites assign someone to edit the blog on a daily weekly basis. We use blogspot here within our company. Whenever we have new product we blog about it. Using blogspot will be a great inbound link to their website. I know it's helping ours!

Inbound links are better if related and having a different IP rather than the same one on the website makes it a quality link and rewards are for those sites who blog more than others. Google loves fresh new content. Just not all at once

Setup simple blogs and let them have at it!

[seopo]

Twitter is something I'm seeing used to drive more traffic too

[CarolSLC]

Southplatte - now I see why I've read that SMO takes a lot of time. I will take your advice, and find time to start building my networks on the social bookmarking sites - beyond facebook and linkedin that I'm already doing.

It does make me curious though - the kinds of things I would like to read and bookmark would be very different than the person who would be interested in a new avionics site. My client sites are all so different - it's hard to imagine how I could appeal to all at once. Perhaps it's the site owner or someone on their staff that needs to get in there and build a network in that area of interest.

Snerdeywebs - thanks so much for sharing your experience with blogs! It sounds like I need to set up the blogs for the owners and make it as easy as possible, with a brief set of instructions, and maybe we'll get somewhere.

And thanks to whoever made this the featured post on the email today!

[risk]

Hi,
I read your post and thought, F**k you were me, sort of, a year ago and I've been doing this full time since 1998. I've got some of the best domain names in the world for the sectors I target, fairly successful websites, MSN and Yahoo easy, Google very difficult and although I have a lot of success the ones I want eluded me, until like you I had to rethink.........

To avoid dupe content, get yourself over to my blog ' <a href="http://www.the-system.org">The System</a>' to read out how I've cracked google, its so easy and quick and you are partially along the right lines. You will need to automate to achieve what you're looking for and its always hard work!!!

Think Social media the highway, Video the cars, delivery of the message and viral backlinks!

Its all still about backlinks on big googly terms!!!

[Orion]

Postings and articles are awesome, but what can really make them powerful is using the RSS feeds to place one article onto multiple sites.. not only does this get you and your company's name out there, it helps get the articles / posts read and brings in traffic to your site.

The more people the more bookmarking..

Personally I highly recommend adding a blog to your site (wordpress is nice and easy to work with) this will allow you to add content to your site on a regular basis, and then add your RSS feeds to your myspace, live space, facebook, etc. etc... you can also stick in the DIGG plugin, Stumpedia and a bunch of other social bookmarking tools to automate that part of the puzzle quite a bit.

That there should keep you busy for a few months lol.. you are right there is a ton you can do!

[dentalgil]

Carol - nice question, because I have been curious as to how "social sites" work from an SEO point of view. The answers, along with some of the links were very helpful, since they gave me a crash course on this subject. It seems like you might have to spend a lot of time making "social friends" to really make these sites work for you and your website. Thanks again for the question and the answers.

Gil