Everyone knows the importance that social media is playing within the freelancing world, and the opportunities provided to us via twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn to enhance our networking reach, find new projects and handle client management with ease are undisputed. However, what you may not realize is the benefit that social media can have on your SEO efforts. Social media can aid your SEO efforts in two ways; as a tool to increase the reach of your blog and increase traffic, and as a way to ensure that the content that appears on your site or blog is shared through social media, thereby increasing the number of backlinks to your site and improving your SERP results. So how can you make social platforms effectively serve your SEO efforts?
What can social media platforms bring to your SEO?
Platforms such as twitter offer you the perfect way to connect with other bloggers on a flexible basis. Not only can you follow professionals in your field via twitter and receive inspiration for your own site from their tweets, but you can also connect with colleagues with ease. Twitter functions as a great platform to assist the development of your content and if you want to use your followers as a sounding board for your ideas then this is a great way to interact with your colleagues. If you are producing quality content on your blog on a regular basis, then make sure to auto-tweet your articles to maximize their reach, the better the article, the more chance that it is shared by followers on Facebook or re-tweeted on twitter. This “hype” ensures more backlinks to the original source of the article – your website.
But the key to SEO success on twitter is reciprocity. You absolutely need to re-tweet articles from your followers and engage with their debates, questions or polls. Social SEO is a two-way street after all.
How can Social Media improve the quality of your backlinks?
This may sound strange, but if you procure a guest author spot on a prestigious online magazine within your field, then with social media you can actually improve the quality of any backlinks that you have placed within your article or within your author profile. Articles placed on high ranking blogs will be indexed faster, and backlinks that receive a high level of traffic will also bring you more link juice than backlinks that are not actively clicked on. So how can you increase traffic to your guest articles easily? Well through social media of course! By pushing through social media any high-quality guest articles you acquire, then the growth in traffic (and increased number of clicks on your backlinks) will maximise the link juice that you receive from these backlinks. The Google Panda update now actively searches for links that are clicked many times, because it takes this increased traffic as a sign of confidence and quality in your website, thus increasing your SERP results.
Using social media to find guest blogging opportunities
With twitter, there are many ways in which you can gain knowledge about your chosen field and follow the most authoritative blogs. However, with tweet-deck you can easily set-up some specific twitter channels in order to find blogs that you would like to procure a guest author spot on. You can find interesting content and negotiate with the blogger in question if they would be open to receiving some more unique and fresh content from you. Some blogs will actively seek out guest authors in order to diversify their content, so you should make a note to follow any channels with the hash tags #guest author or #guest blogs.
The effect of Google Plus
Up until last year tweets were integrated into Google search results thus enhancing the SEO worth of using twitter. However, with the break between Google and twitter back in August, Google +1 now plays an increasing role in the determination of your SERP results. If you integrate a Google +1 button onto your blog articles then this allows readers to share your content, thus ensuring that your pages rank higher in search results. This is because Google is actively ranking webpages higher if they have a large number of Google +1’s and will also artificially show these pages to a web-user in their search result if the contacts and fellow Google + users of this web-user have “plussed” this page.
This is a just a collection of tips and tricks that should help you best utilize your existing and future social media efforts for SEO. If you’re focused on creating top-notch content for readers and visitors to your page, then learn to make the best of your content and boost your SERP results with an effective social media push.
Author: I’m Robert from twago, Europe’s largest online platform for freelancers working on projects in the fields of SEO, programming, web design, graphic design and copywriting. I’m a long-boarding enthusiast from Berlin who believes in spreading the word about the benefits that social media interaction and authoritative content can bring to your SEO.
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