Morning Coffee: SEO navigates social media seas
You know how it goes. You dive onto the internet determined to sell your new products from your new on-line business.
You’re confident that the fact you turned up on the Inter-webs-of-everything means your new home with a gazillion en-suited bedrooms, numerous spars, a spattering of media rooms, an assortment of lounges, and vista so stunning that it’s set to have you reaching for your Ventolin puffer, that home is coming your way soon. And it’ll turn up with a gold-plated Maserati parked in the drive.
And why would it not? After all, you set up a webpage, you hooked-up a stream of social platforms so numerous that, were it a river it’d make the mighty Nile look like an overflow drain from a bush outhouse.
You settle back, ready to watch Facebook, Google, Youtube, Tik Tok, Instagram, Tumblr, QZone, Sino Weibo, Twitter, Reddit, LinkedIn, Viber and Snapchat, Pinterest, Line and many more do their stuff.
Of course, you’re not naïve. Come, come, not at all. Yours is a professionally designed website coupled to a content management system, your product should have wide appeal, the price is right, and there’s even a marketing strategy of sorts. Yet, if all of this is the sailboat on which you are going to float over your social media Nile, the trouble is there could still be one factor missing.
SEO is not random
If this is your sailboat, then popular opinion has it that, to catch the winds of success sow the sails with SEO.
No, SEO is not a fine thread, strong yet light-weight. Not at all. In fact, SEO is, to borrow from the Bee Gees, “only words and words are all I have to take your heart away.”
But don’t take that musical anachronism and expect it to explain the anagram that is SEO or Search Engine Optimisation.
SEO is not random process. Applied well, SEO sifts out those words for which people search, ranking lists of words in terms of a range of search effectiveness criteria and so increases the chances of your social media offering moving towards the top of any search for your product or service. It works on the basis that in terms of search engine effectiveness, not all words are equal – some are searched more often than others.
Tailor made for success
Done well however, SEO has the power to see your brand and product story rocketing along the turbulent waters that are social media marketing.
An article by B&T Magazine offered up the example of Bali Villa Escapes, a villa management agency aimed at Australian and New Zealand consumers. Careful attention to SEO witnessed Bali Villa Escapes increase sales increase by over $1 million in under two years and increased its marketing fourfold.
The articles says that each website needs a tailored SEO strategy that has backlink and front of house components that includes continual SEO audits and upgrading. It’s an argument put in a recent Campaign article warning ‘Don’t Sleep on SEO.’ Remember to be active with your SEO – constantly updating.
If you think you have the idea, don’t call the real-estate agent ready to buy your mansion or tee-up your Maserati test drive just yet.
Paid or unpaid?
There is a flip-side to SEO. According to a study done by Content Management System Hootsuite, keyword data doesn’t offer a ticket to post often without consideration for the quality of the blog, SM post or website copy.
If you do that, it argues, you might lose followers and so fail to improve your ROI. It argues that the key to proper social media posting and effective website content is quality.
Hootsuite says its findings make it clear that paid promotion makes a difference to SEO, saying that a paid promotion almost doubles the impact of organic promotions.
Quality over quantity
There’s the rub, SEO is important but only as a key part of a broader well-constructed social marketing strategy that focuses on creating and sharing quality content. And that is where you find that number one ranking, improved ROI and, with good winds, fair tides and patience – a better bungalow if not the top-end mansion.
