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Coordinating Social Media and SEO Strategies for Effective Blog Promotion

Updated on by in Blogging

Social media, the online media platform that has turned the world of communication and mass media head over heels. From communication to advertising, from personal communication to mass communication, social media has forayed into almost every business vertical and sector. This has been the trend in the past ten years, and certainly will be so in the foreseeable future.

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At its current rate of gaining prominence, it could soon slay other traditional media forms such as print and broadcast media. The current social media revolution has been spurred on by increased access to and widespread usage of broadband Internet around the world. At this juncture, social media has become an irresistible force of the Internet world.

Traditional SEO Altered

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Search engine optimization, though not as new and prominent as social media, is an important process that showcases the existence of a website or blog to online audiences. Search engine optimization or SEO comprises of a series of techniques or processes that help websites or blogs rank better on search engine results.

In SEO, the rank given to a web page in search engine results depends on two main factors: authority and relevancy. Relevancy is about using the keywords pertaining to a niche in headlines and anchor texts in order to match the queries that people are searching for on the Web. Authority is based on the number of quality backlinks that your website has or the type of websites that are linking to your website thru inbound links.

This was how websites and blogs were being ranked by search engines till now, but all is about to change with ensuing social media revolution. As more people register, use and engage with social media websites, search engines are now focusing on authentic user-generated content available on social media platforms, so as to validate a piece of information. Search engines are obliged to provide verified and authentic results in their search listings, thus they look into user-generated content rich social media websites to validate content. In addition, search engines have started to integrate social contexts in their search listings. So, it can be asserted that social media has altered the way search engines provide search results.

Emergence of ‘Social Search’

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In terms of online search, social media has brought about a whole new search concept called ‘social search’. Social search is a type of online search that considers the social graph of the user performing the search. The concept of social search in a way contradicts the traditional algorithmic ranking method. Social search engines provide results that primarily consist of information that is either user-created or shared by existing users. Social search results comprise of shared bookmarks, tagged information with descriptive labels, shared images & videos, documents, and more.

A social search engine takes into account various sources before ranking a web page or content. These various sources comprise of tags, comments & discussions, bookmarks, number of shares & likes, and news items. Social search has become a term under evolution as social search engines take into account a user’s social media profile called social graph to display results accordingly. The highlight of social search is that you are sure to get results that are in a way related to you or have a social connection with you. Social connection could be a content that you or your friend tweeted recently, or something that you have shared on any of the social networks. Certain types of social searches rank content based on the shares it has received from social media influencers, albeit they are not directly linked with the user.

Time to Integrate Social Media Strategies & SEO Strategies

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With the prominence of social search demanding changes to tried and tested SEO strategies, it has become obligatory for businesses to integrate social media strategies as part of their SEO campaigns. It’s evident that top search service providers like Google are valuing social content rather than raw content that was developed just for the purpose of building links. Promoting a blog is essential for businesses, private users looking for monetary benefits and websites looking to build links. These types of links also attract fellow bloggers in a niche and help build relationships. Blogs can also be used to create internal links from a company’s main website to the blog. For example, a website’s navigation template when shared on social media platforms can bring about increased page views and enhance visibility on search results. If you include your website’s global navigation template on blog pages, then you boost the number of likes that you have for high priority pages. From a user point of view, it would be easy for a user to swap between the website and the blog. Though blogging is an important part of SEO, it is completely different when compared to social media strategies. Social media is something that is more interactive than just blogging.

With websites like Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, and Pinterest fast becoming a colossal repository of prospective customers and information about them, it is mandatory for blogs and businesses to be a part of this all-important social media bandwagon. Webmasters who are using these websites to promote blogs must use the landing page link across their posts and focus on their important keywords. It is also important to use links that have some historical value, rather than using a newly created URL. With social media promotion, it is important to promote the same landing page used in SEO rather than any other new page. Whenever you post on any social media platform, it is important to include a link to the most important page of your blog. Initially, it is good to focus on a few web pages and then gradually include all your web pages. It is always quality before quantity when it comes to social media promotion. So, always focus on generating quality content with intriguing titles. The promotion method may vary from website to website, so it is important to know about each website before registering with them.

The Decisive Point

Integrating social media along with SEO can boost promotional efforts, especially from an online visibility point of view. It is vital for businesses to unify their social media, internet marketing and SEO teams to create a foolproof online marketing strategy, which will in turn maximize ROI and deliver considerable results in terms of effective blog promotion.

Author: Mark Dwayne

This guest post is brought to you by Mark Dwayne of buytimewarnercable.com, a site that offers savings and current information on time warner internet.

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