Using Social Media to Your SEO Advantage

A growing trend in search engine marketing and search engine optimization is known as Social Media Optimization. This involves uses the myriad social networks available to drive traffic to your website by marketing through them. Interestingly, this also works to increase your link popularity, which will in turn boost your PageRank. However, there are some things to remember in order to make your social media marketing strategy most effective.

Not all social networks or social media sites will be beneficial to you. For starters, you have to have a good idea of who your target audience is, and what social media services they might use. These are the places in which you should focus your efforts.

Another thing to remember is that on many social networks, users are hyper aware of spam. Therefore, you’re going to have to get creative about where and now you submit links, because you don’t want to come off as a blatant marketer. When using social bookmark sites, such as Digg or Del.ici.ous, don’t make overt attempts to have your content voted to the top, either by encouraging others or creating false accounts and voting for your own content. This is considered black hat SEO in many circles, and your content can be removed if this is discovered.

One thing that’s important to remember is to provide specific tags for your links. Specific keywords and tags can help you stand out in a crowd. Rather than competing for a popular keyword such as “used cars”, try being more specific, using something like “used car parts” and try to tackle a niche. This will result in more attention in that niche and much better results.

When you link, link to content within your site that will be useful to users. Providing them with something specific is much better than linking them directly to your homepage. Remember, providing specific, useful content to a niche interest group will ultimately be much more effective than trying to reach everyone through general, boring content. A great idea is to link to an article within your blog, and then use the blog to relate back to your main site. Make yourself look like a specific expert, and your SEO and social media marketing will be most successful.