Last week I talked about “The growing importance of social signals” and how they aid your SEO efforts and help to validate your traditional link signals.
Based on current trends there is a new focus of importance for the search engines – ‘social signals’. Imagine if your business published content (say a blog or tweet) and the Age retweeted it. That would send a massive social signal to Google demonstrating your business’s significance, your trust worthiness and authority. One retweet has the power to improve your overall web presence.
But if marketers (and business owners) are going to stay ahead of the online game then understanding the search engines changing focus from backlinking to social signals is an important development to get your heads around. Currently 8 to 10% of both Google and Bing’s search algorithms relate to social signals. This will only increase over time.
That said, backlinking is still important and yes, you still need to build backlinks.
Think of backlinks as an academic citation. In academia land, if a piece of work is more frequently cited, it must be more relevant. And on the web – the more frequently your website is linked to from authoritative sources (The Age, Realestate.com, etc.), the more relevant it must be.
Social signals include:
- Facebook likes and shares
- Twitter activity such as number of followers, tweets, retweets; and now
- Google+.
So how do you build your social signals?
Great question. You start by building a content strategy that includes publishing your content into the social channels (Google+, Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook). Any SEO strategy is only as strong as the content, and without the content you cannot execute on either a backlinking or social signal strategy.
Content to consider for your content strategy includes:
- Blogs
- Customer case studies
- White papers
- Research
- Guest blog posts
- News items
- Videos
- Webinars
- Press releases
What else can you do to join up search and social?
Here are my top four strategies for increasing your social signals:
1. Optimise for social
Skew your SEO focus away from traditional site optimisation to social optimisation. Provide your customers with means to engage with the site and influence Google. Great creative content is the key here.
2. Integrated your content strategies
Develop content strategies that are separate from, yet complementary, to your website content strategy.
3. Make content shareable
Create more shareworthy content and then become active on social networks like Twitter.
4. Develop campaigns with a social focus
Make your search strategies more social focused – building real, long lasting relationships with your customers rather than the search engines.
Technology and marketing are merging and it is up to each of us to grow our technical knowledge and stay ahead of the pack. Good luck.
About the author
Peter Engelhardt
Peter has a ridiculous amount of marketing and communications experience. He is an inbound marketing advocate and a new media enthusiast with a passion for spreading his knowledge and blogging. Above all he is the driving force behind Creative Brew and a proud dad.
