7 Tips to Getting SEO Value Out of Your Social Media Efforts
Recently, I was asked by the folks at MOTM to give a talk on Social Media. I typically present to real estate audiences, so I decided to rethink my usual approach for this tech-audience. More than anything, I wanted to present something that was worthy of the group.
After more than a few conversations, I decided to explore the “gray” areas of social media, and especially how you can use social media engagement to improve search engine rankings. It feels like I’ve been living in this gray area for quite a while now, but I don’t often blog about it because most SEO works best when it is not widely shared. 
In terms of SEO strategies, the stuff I presented last night was relatively tame (i.e. on the black hat to white hat scale, the ideas trended toward the lighter side of gray). And at the request of more than a few of the people who attended, I’ve decided to publish (most of) the slides I used in the presentation.
As with most of my presentations, the slides don’t begin to tell the whole story. That’s especially true with this presentation since the conversation that came out of the slides was by far the most informative part of the evening.
Nonetheless, the 7 tips listed below offer some insight into how you can start to improve your website rankings (SEO) by taking part in various social media sites.
Assumptions Going Into the Presentation
The four assumptions I start out with are:
- Off-site SEO is where you can get the most bang for your SMM buck
- You should focus on anchor text of inbound links whenever possible
- Social media sites can often pass along ridiculously great SEO value
- You should focus on DoFollow sites whenever possible
Tip #1: Create Value on Your Own Site (URL)
The typical corporate blog is about as white hat as they get in the SMM world. Here the company is trying to outreach to consumers and/or clients by providing useful, interesting or otherwise valuable content and thereby earn inbound links and other positive word-of-mouth from their blogging.
Background on Black Hat SMM
- Automation is not all that effective in social media and often pretty easy to detect
- While there are examples of useful automation (think: google news), most is spam and does not add value
- [Note: this slide generated a fascinating conversation at the presentation with an active discussion on the role of automation within social networks.]
TIP #2: Promote your Posts... HARD!
- Level of “gray” really depends on how hard you promote.
- It’s trivial to join/create a group that attempts to “game” the social news/bookmarketing sites. Is this “black hat” or just using your social network effectively?
- [Note: I do have a group for online real estate professionals where we help each other promote posts. It's in invite-only thing, so as long as I know who you are and you run a quality blog, then feel free to let me know if you're interested in joining.]
Tip #3: Create Active Profiles... lots of them
- BusinessWeek’s BX is a personal favorite because it sends pretty high-quality traffic.
- In addition to traffic, you can get four juicy links on your profile
Tip #4: Get Creative With Your Profiles
- One example is that you can use delicious to push “topics” to mybloglog to get SEO value from a “nofollow” site
Tip #5: Play Especially Hard on One Social Network
- Great example is how the Village Voice weekly newspapers are playing Digg.
- Is this spam? Not really because they are adding value to the social network
Tip #6: Develop an Exclusive Database
- If you can develop something that media outlets want to pick up, then it’s quite possible to drive a ton of traffic and great inbound links by feeding them exclusives
- In the real estate space, this is celebrity listings, but most industries have their exclusive stuff you can mine from databases
Tip #7: Think SEO When Syndicating
- While this example is specific to real estate, most industry could benefit from thinking of SEO when they push their content around the web.
- In this case, I work with agents all the time to create listing detail pages on their sites and then make sure that they link back to those listing detail pages in a savvy way to ensure SEO value is getting past to their site whenever possible.
- It’s worth noting that I created a syndication tool for my real estate clients called HomeSyn that syndicates listings in a savvy way (i.e. links back to the listing detail page of an agent’s choice whenever possible). However, it’s an invite-only tool. If you have some listings and are interested in testing out the tool, let me know and I consider throwing an invite your way.
If you think I’m wrong or have something to add, let’s continue the conversation in the comments… and if you found this information helpful, then help spread the luv by returning to the top of this post and giving it a digg, save, bookmark, stumble, or whatever it is that you do!
alex 9:39 pm on February 24, 2009 Permalink |
I’m interested in the BX and the HomeSyn….tell me more and I’d love an invite.
Dustin 9:52 pm on February 24, 2009 Permalink |
Alex,
I highly recommend checking out BusinessWeek’s BX and connecting up with me while you’re at it. It’s kind of a hybrid between a social bookmarking site and digg.
Kristal Kraft 10:50 pm on February 24, 2009 Permalink |
Interesting to think about a “gray” area in social media. So much of it is entertaining and useful in actually building real relationships. It would be hard to do it if one “had” to.
I’m interested in your HomeSyn I just need to get more listings.
kk
Dustin 11:09 pm on February 24, 2009 Permalink |
You make a great point… Most of social media is about building relationships and it’s what I enjoy the most. But I think a lot of folks underestimate just how much work goes into promoting posts.
So many people have a “if I build it, they will come” attitude to blogging. But unless you’re a ridiculously great writer, that method almost never works to drive any serious traffic.
Dennis Pease 11:29 pm on February 24, 2009 Permalink |
Great article Dustin, everyone knows social media sites are the hot thing, but most people don’t know how to actually gain any real value from it.
Anyone joining BusinessWeek’s BX can connect with me as well.
Kristal, you are right on the money, building real relationships is key to everything we do in our businesses whether in person or online.
wayne 12:14 am on February 25, 2009 Permalink |
Interesting to think about a “gray” area in social media. So much of it is entertaining and useful in actually building real relationships.
Dennis Pease 12:53 am on February 25, 2009 Permalink |
You know it’s a good article when you book mark it. I will come back to make sure I implement the ideas here that I’m not already doing, like using delicious to push topics to mybloglog, hmm…
I’m going to have to think about that a little more. I guess Ive never used delicious much and I’m not sure I grasp the idea there. Feel free to help me out here a little.
Lou Lynch 1:09 am on February 25, 2009 Permalink |
Definitely not wrong here Dustin. Great little intro to the value of social media beyond the networking value. Keep up the good work.
Dustin 1:28 am on February 25, 2009 Permalink |
Dennis,
I love delicious… but I’ve been using it so long (you just inspired me to check and my first social bookmark was May ‘05), that I’d use the service even if it didn’t have SEO value. It had a better vibe before yahoo bought the site, but it’s still an incredibly valuable way to save and organize links. I’ve also used it to do some pretty random things (quite effectively I might add) like track internet marketing staff endeavors and RCG’s blogroll.
Anyway, it’s just so darn easy that when you know there’s a minor SEO kick you can get from tagging things “right”, then it becomes a no-brainer.
Thanks again for your interest and help spreading word about the post!
Ann Cummings 3:41 am on February 25, 2009 Permalink |
These gray areas are pretty intriguing. I use social media to build relationships and have gotten some business from it, but I need to concentrate more on the sites like Digg and Delicious, etc. I help others out there but have never done my own stuff there – need to learn how, I guess.
GenuineChris Johnson 5:03 am on February 25, 2009 Permalink |
I definitely notice social media’s impact on my posts, sites whatever. I also think that there can be streamlining without automation. Setting up RSS feeds for say a [re promotions] group makes it quick to be in and out etc.
Bill Gassett 5:13 am on February 25, 2009 Permalink |
Great article Dustin. I am going to head over to the Business Week site as it sounds well worth the effort.
dawntrenee 6:39 am on February 25, 2009 Permalink |
SEO, linking and such is such a great side effect of utilizing social media. It become a great link building tool, just remember too much is still too much when it comes to google take your time and build slowly.
Joeann Fossland 7:53 am on February 25, 2009 Permalink |
Thanks for sharing this line of thinking. Most agents I am talking to are frustrated at the amount of time they are putting into social networking expecting it to be a magic bullet. You underscore the importance of having a plan and some understanding of how it all works together.
Callie Sinkinson 9:00 am on February 25, 2009 Permalink |
Gosh Dustin, I wish I could have been there for the discussions….
You have some fantastic info and as a a Realtor, SEO is not really my thing.
I am supposed to be selling homes but I seem to be spending so much time and effort on my position on the net….it gets hard to remember why? LOL
I will join and link to you on
http://bx.businessweek.com/profile/dustin-luther/dluther593/
Would really appreciate anymore tips
Callie
Justin Brooke 6:17 pm on February 26, 2009 Permalink |
Very profound insight and the tips too are great. Starters will definitely dig juicy information here.
Sarah Cooper 4:34 am on February 27, 2009 Permalink |
Your gray areas are my “accidental” areas. I was just playing with friends online, and somehow all these really good opportunities kept throwing themselves at my feet. It would be wasteful not to pick them up and use them.
I suppose it’s not a bad idea to try to create more of those accidents, right?
Dustin 5:32 am on February 27, 2009 Permalink |
Sarah: Sometimes I feel like I live to create accidents. But at the same time, I enjoy trying to figure out what’s working out of that play (i.e accident creation) and replicate the good stuff.
Doug Willis 8:41 pm on February 27, 2009 Permalink |
Dustin,
I would be very intersted in connecting with you on BX and would also really appreciate an invitation to HomeSyn.
Thanks,