Tuesday, January 3, 2012

SEO is Changing - Thanks to Social Media

By Oliver Newton


Worry not! The title of this article is, in fact, not facetious in the least! If you've just spent big bucks and a lot of valuable time optimizing your website to be its most searchable and marketable, this bit of news doesn't bring all of that hard work to a crashing halt. However, it does render a few asides about the changing landscape of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) that are worth working into what you've already done.

Throughout 2011, social media sites, particularly the main ones such as Facebook, Google+, Twitter and LinkedIn, have changed people's opinion about SEO techniques. Because these sites have been so successful (LinkedIn issued an IPO this year, and Facebook is on the verge of doing so), it is crucial for many websites to be socially optimized.

At this point, you may be thinking "What do you mean by socially optimized?" After all, you've already established numerous ways of sharing your website content, and have packed keywords into your website headlines. No doubt you think you've done much of the work already. Well, SEO techniques are changing.

Yes, social sharing buttons for content are still very important, but it's proven to be more effective to keep it to a minimum, selecting the social sites with the most eyeballs to maintain user's focus on a few methods. Twitter, Facebook, Google+, and Digg or another social bookmarking site is enough.

So, if you haven't yet set up accounts on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter or Google+, you should do this now without further delay. You don't need to invest a huge amount of time on any one site, but be sure you do enough to maintain a presence on each. The time you spend making knowledgeable and trustworthy connections with other people through these sites will be worthwhile and increase your credibility.

By establishing relationships with others on these sites, you will be able to make your website known to other people's followers and promote some sort of online community values. Don't rush to get as many followers as you possibly can from the outset. Make sure that you are focusing on quality connections, and the number of your followers (who, incidentally, will be relevant to and interested in your website content) will increase.

Thanks to the impact that social media sites have had on SEO, website content and headlines can once again be exciting and creative. Facebook and Twitter in particular have focused on writing titles that are interesting to readers, and this has contributed to their success. People aren't interested in reading content that may well be packed full of keywords, but is otherwise bland and banal.

Brilliantly, it looks like the days of focusing on content that's only readable for a search engine, and maximizing the density of keywords at the expense of fun and interesting content, are over. Once again the Internet can be a joyful and imaginative place-Woo!

So, it won't be too difficult for you, will it? Over the past year, we have seen that making some relatively minor, but very much positive and welcome, changes to the way you carry out your SEO will have a great result for your website. These changes can be worked from new information and easily carried out. Keep in mind though that, like all forms of technology, SEO techniques continually change. If you can keep abreast of the changes you will have a huge advantage in keeping your website successful.




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