Salt and pepper, peanut butter and jelly, social media and SEO. These two online marketing strategies are so intertwined that a media marketing campaign cannot ignore one or the other. To be successful online, a business or website needs both.
What is SEO?
SEO, short for search engine optimization, is using keywords and concepts in a website’s content or blog that attracts visitors to a website. Knowing what keywords and concepts are searched most often is essential to make SEO for a site effective.
Google Adwords Keyword Search Tool is one tool that website designers and writers use to incorporate common search terms into a blog post or article. Yet, even with optimal search terms and keywords, a website can’t build popularity without social media.
What is Social Media?
Social media, once considered the domain of people looking to network and make friends online, is now confirmed as an essential component to any business marketing strategy. Politicians, entertainers, charities, businesses, and well, most everyone uses social media these days.
Social media is more than a way to gain contacts and followers. It’s a basis for gaining links. Links are a driving force in search technology. When a site has many incoming links, the search engine perceives the site as more relevant and important and moves it up in the rankings. If a website doesn’t come up in the first page, or even the first three pages of a search, it’s practically invisible.
Some popular social media sites include Twitter, Facebook, del.icio.us, Stumbleupon, Digg, and Squidoo. More are being added all the time, changing the dynamic of social media. Tools are available that help users connect with accounts on several sites at once, increasing efficiency in social networking.
How Social Media and SEO Work Together
When a website is listed or bookmarked in one of the social media sites, other users can grade the site and its content. This validates the importance of having relevant and informative copy.
As users comment on blogs and articles, they can add their own links, and increase traffic to their sites. One important component of media marketing is commenting on other sites and becoming active in online communities.
As people visit a site and like what they find, they pass the link on through their own social media sites. This is termed viral marketing. When a site, video, or article goes viral, it means it’s being promoted all over the Internet through people visiting it.
Think of it as a beneficial sort of gossip. One person tells ten friends that a site has something exciting, those ten friends tell ten friends each, each of the 100 new friends tells ten more. A site can be promoted exponentially, much as a virus replicates, hence the term viral marketing.
Launching an Online Media Marketing Campaign
When launching an online media marketing campaign, the first thing to consider is branding. A site should reflect its brand every time it is mentioned, every place on the web.
Another important aspect is to consider what the customer or user of the site needs and wants. When a site meets those needs with relevant articles that reflect the keywords and SEO terms that clients use in a search what happens? It goes up in the search engine ranking.
Invest time and thought into the campaign. Define the goals of what the website needs to be successful, and keep those goals in mind when social networking online. Become educated in search engine strategies and implement them into the campaign. Others are working hard to do the same, and knowledge is today’s competitive edge.
In conclusion, SEO needs social media just as social media needs SEO. For a business to thrive online, the webmaster must become expert in both, and utilize both on a regular basis. Success happens when a site goes viral and finds itself on the first page of the major search engines. The marriage of SEO and social media produces better results than either can alone.
Suzanne Pitner - Suzanne Pitner is a teacher and published writer. A member of RWA and YARWA, she writes fiction as Suzanne Lilly.
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