social media marketing for seo + links

Social Media Marketing for SEOEarning links, tweets + shares from social media to influence

search engine rankings

Rand Fishkin, CEO & Co-founder, SEOmoz

April 2011

Rand Fishkin, CEO & Co-founder, SEOmoz | April 2011

Download at http://bit.ly/socialseosydney

Social Media Marketing for SEOEarning links, tweets + shares from social media to influence

search engine rankings

At SEOmoz, we make SOFTWARE!! We don’t offer any consulting.

Social is so much more than

Twitter + Facebook

Big Opportunities in Social Come

from Being an Early Adopter +

Valuable Contributor

5 Major Ways Social Can Contribute to

SEO, Links & Overall Inbound Marketing

#1: Discover the Right Content to Create

#2: Share your Content with an Audience that will Spread it

#3: Build Relationships with the Right Influencers

#4: Acquire Direct Links and Co-Citation References

#5: Conduct Indirect Brand Building Leading to Positive, 2nd-Order Effects

Discover the

Right Content to Create

At the very least, I’d recommend checking out http://quora.com, http://stackexchange.com, http://linkedin.com/answers, http://formspring.me, and http://answers.yahoo.com.

Q+A Sites are Awesome Content

Inspiration Sources

I should write a blog post about that!

Searches like “anyone know,” “need help finding,” “where can I,” etc. combined with keywords/topics will often reveal needs. Once you have that content, you can tweet back

Searching Twitter + Facebook for Relevant

Keywords Works Too

Not many people are doing this yet, but it’s an awesome way to get roundups and content that others (especially those you’ve curated) are likely to share.

Finding + Curating Contributions from

Experts Can Be a Huge Traffic/Link Draw

Enterpreneur magazine online does a segment on “Five to Follow” in dozens of topical areas - http://www.entrepreneur.com/blog/fivetofollow/. Naturally, they get tons of tweets + traffic.

Top X Lists of Influencers in a Space is Like

Cheating for Link/Social Sharing Acquisitions

I like http://news.ycombinator.com because it’s relevant to stuff I do, but you can find news sources + social sites in virtually every field (or follow key Twitter accounts in those).

Timing Matters w/ Topical Content. Social is

the Best Way to Stay Ahead of the Crowds.

When I want to find good stuff to tweet (and earn more follows/RTs), I click “New.” I find something good

almost every time.

An easy place to start for inspiration is http://popurls.com – you want to find those types of aggregators in your niche (often, “most read” lists from news/content sites work very well)

Raw Curation of Top Sources in an Industry

Can Quickly Generate 1000s of Followers

Note the short, punchy, well written (but many

times rewritten) headlines used before the link, followed by relevant hashtags.

Share Your Content with an

Audience Likely to Spread it

I wrote a post about how to do this here - http://www.seomoz.org/blog/calculating-and-improving-your-twitter-clickthroughrate

Use Bit.ly or Goo.gl to Measure + Test Your

CTR and Ability to Earn Retweets/Shares

My shorter tweets have higher CTR

Check this feature out in action on http://blog.okcupid.com/ (OKCupid’s blog is brilliant, BTW)

Ask for the Action at the Right Time,

in the Right Place

This box with the link + Facebook like button drops down using CSS once you reach the end of the article, making it

impossible to miss. Brilliant!

It also helps to separately reply and comment on the tweet/link or even ask a smart question to help build engagement and awareness as you’re being generous.

Be generous. Retweet, share, link to

and spread the content of others.

These retweets help spread the message, but the original tweeter will

rarely see them.

This retweet gets seen in @ replies

and search.

A tool like Mailchimp (http://www.mailchimp.com) can be very good for this, and the first 2,000 subscribers to a list are free.

Build a private, industry group for

content sharing + feedback

Build Relationships with the Right

Influencers

Line of text

Find influencers using FollowerWonk

It really is that easy to find highly followed

influencers in any niche.

Anyone who attends or speaks at events as part of their marketing role needs to start using http://lanyrd.com. It’s amazing how easy it makes it to find events that have the right audience.

Use Lanyrd to Attend the Right Events

The same thing works on LinkedIn, DMs through Twitter and… even email!

Send Personal LinkedIn/FB/Twitter Requests

There’s a very high chance the contact will see this message, click through and share it (if they like it)

This not only gets these people to your pages, but if you have a company profile page on Facebook, it gets them “liking” your page, too

Take Photos. Upload to Facebook + Flickr. Tag. Repeat.

Testimonials Build Lasting Relationships

BTW – http://trunk.ly is a genius tool that everyone doing social media should be using.

Giving a testimonial or posting one is a fantastic way to build a shared

marketing relationship. Both parties feel invested in one another.

Acquire Direct Links and

Co-Citation References

You Should Have a Profile on Every One of these

Social Sites (and probably at least a dozen more)

Facebook Company Page

Twitter Profile

LinkedIn Company Page

YouTube Account

Crunchbase Page

Crunchbase Page

Quora Profile

About.me Page

Scribd Profile

SlideShare Profile

Reddit Account

StumbleUpon Account

StackExchange Account

Wikipedia Profile

Google Profile

This is my top list of social sites to register with, but there’s likely more that are relevant to your niche.

Follow this Formula with Each Social Site:

Step #1: Setup

Step #2: Contribute

Step #3: Measure

Step #4: Repeat

Build your profile out completely. Connect w/ friends + content on the site.

Contribute 2-5 hours of time participating in the community, sharing content, etc.

Use your web analytics to track primary + second-order impact

Throw out low ROI projects; repeat high ROI ones.

I often upload decks to Slideshare, Tweet to them (which connect to my FB and LinkedIn updates, too), then embed them on the blog and link to them in Quora answers or blog comments.

Share Good Content EVERYWHERE!

13,308 views for a deck I initially presented to only 300 people!

BTW – If you haven’t filled out your https://profiles.google.com yet, you should!

Make Your Profiles + Social Content

Useful for Search Engine Co-Citation

I use words/phrases that I want connected with my name through Google search (and do the

same with “SEOmoz” and “SEO Software”

Tweeting links to a Google SERP also increases branded search volume and CTR on your listing

Double+Triple Share Content. To Make it More

Unique, Share Links to SERPs or Different Locations

One Bio to rule them all! I recommend changing this up every 6-9 months to be fresh and get more variance in your link profile.

Use Your Profile/Bio to Get Great

Anchor Text to the Right URLs

Conduct Indirect Brand Building,

Leading to Positive, 2nd-Order Effects

Via http://techmeme.com

Content Advertising on Social/Content

Sites Works Wonders.

Smart advertising from Microsoft

Via http://www.seomoz.org/blog/recommendations-blog-commenting-marketing-strategy

Blog Commenting + Answer Posting

Accrues Social Karma

Via http://www.facebook.com/redbull

When Possible, Own + Brand Your

Social Channels Visually

http://www.subreddits.org/ is a good resource for this

Don’t Forget Reddit; It’s the New Digg

Be “Authentic” = OK Advice.

Be “The Best Part of Yourself” = Better.

Misusing/Abusing Social is a Terrible

Idea.

Black Hat SEO Gets You Banned.

Black Hat Social Costs You Friends.

Q+A

Rand on the Web

• Twitter: @randfish

• Blog: www.seomoz.org/blog

• Email: rand@seomoz.org

You can now try SEOmoz PRO Free!http://www.seomoz.org/freetrial

Download at http://bit.ly/socialseosydney