SEO, Content Organization, and Its Impact on Social Media

If you're working on your social media presence (isn't everyone?), be sure to include search engine optimization in your tactics.  As we all learned in the 90s, "if we build it they will come" does not play.

Social media is about distributed information - a blogger posts a review and links to your product page, a fan posts an your facebook page, a follower replies to a tweet.  All of these interactions required (at some point) for your customer to find you online. And once they do find you, make sure they have easy access to the content you want to highlight.  You can't control the conversation, but you can influence it.

What does this mean for you?  Here are a few relatively easy things to do to make your site Social Media friendly.

SEO

• Use a single version of your company name - don't dilute the brand.  If your company is "John's Limo Service" don't refer to it as "John's Limos" or "John's Limousines".
  
• Avoid "click here" links and instead link via descriptive text (see the first bullet above for a good example).  Links are given higher relevance and the description will be used to help index it appropriately.
• Add a "What's New" box to your home page, and list the headlines of your last few blog entries.  You'll accelerate indexing of the new content because the spider doesn't need to find your new entry organically - it's right there on your home page the next time it indexes your site.

Content Organization

• Prominently link to your social media channels, and use their icons for easy recognition.  There's a great set of Web 2.0 icons available from iconarchive.
• Feature consumer quotes throughout.  Social Media is about consumers' experiences with your brand.  When you come across a positive review or comment, request permission to quote it and use it on your site.  Note: An upcoming post will be about the tools you can use to monitor your brand on message boards, blogs and other online channels.
• Make it easy for users to bookmark and tell a friend.  Use a service like Share This to enable social bookmarking.

This list is just a start - but they're quick things you can do that will have an impact.  Do you have other suggestions?

Up next - social media monitoring tools: how to keep up with activity and still have time for dinner.