Social Media Tips to Improve SEO

Using search and social data to create content was one of the biggest SEO trends in 2015, and it’s not going away anytime soon.

Long gone are the days of creating content for content’s sake, as search and social data are a huge part of increasing engagement for clients and to attract the right customers. While content is imperative to the conversion of customers, search optimization plays just as important of a role.

Social media presence can greatly increase your search rankings, while quality SEO can improve your social media reach. Having a website that is well integrated with social media platforms will start to define successful online marketing in 2016 more so than a site’s ranking. Having a prominent online presence means that companies will have to optimize their social media as well.

Coupled with the growing importance of mobile apps and the increasing amount of customers using it, social media content needs to be optimized for these searches. This means using vocabulary that customer’s use along with targeted keywords. Engaging content, high-quality images, and links back to the website’s blog will be one of the most important SEO trends in 2016; website development and social media are getting more and more integrated together.

In order to improve your SEO in 2016, check out these three social media tips from Tandem:

Optimizing posts. Pre-existing content allows for another way to search. Along with articles, Google favors popular social media updates in the top sections of its SERPs. In order to optimize a post, you need a strong anchor. It can be anything from a video, infographic, or a link to an article. Once you have a strong foundation, perfect your posts with text that is SEO optimized in order to grab your customer’s attention, as well as improve your chances of showing up in search results.

Brand awareness. Increasing your reputation on social media leads to increased brand awareness, which translates into more branded searches on Google. The more branded searches your company receives on Google, the higher it is going to rank for non-branded keywords. Social media will give your company greater search visibility across the board.

Number of followers. How many followers you have will play a major influence in your rankings. Because Google can detect the quality of your followers, building your brand following organically is imperative. Growing the number of followers you have may take a while, but it is effective; the key is to be consistent. Your brand should post consistently and uniquely, with helpful articles, tips, questions, and discussion starters shared on a regular basis. Following up with any users by engaging them in conversation are the key to growing your number of followers and to increasing your conversion rate. 

Local Directories Are Getting Better Visibility In Google Search Results!

According to a recent article I found on Twitter, Google's recent Pigeon update is boosting local directories as well as fixing that dreaded "Yelp Problem" that some of us all know a little too well.  The Pigeon update's main purpose is to deliver improved local search results, with enhanced distance and location ranking parameters.  According to Google, the new local search algorithm ties deeper into the site’s web search capabilities, leveraging hundreds of ranking signals, along with search features like spelling correction capabilities, synonyms and Google’s knowledge graph.  Are your local directories up to date? If not, contact us at Tandem-Interactive so we can help increase your visibility in local search!

Cheers,
Lauren DeMarco
Member of the Tandem Team since 2012 :)

Understanding SEO Content

This material is very useful for any individual looking to learn and understand SEO concepts more efficiently. We are going to breakdown SEO concepts starting with the three main building blocks: Relevance, Importance, and Popularity.

Relevance is the most crucial and basic question in SEO; is the content you are covering relevant to what the consumer is looking for. Here are 6 ways of determining your content’s relevance:

You will start with the title tag. The title should be the clear indicator of the relevance it has to what the user is looking for. Next you will need a semantic analysis of the content. Analyze the general relevance of the words and phrases being used in your content. Always use anchor text in your content. Anchor text is a link you click on that acts as a label which directs you to what you would expect to find once you get to that page (in example the phrase “moving company” would have a link to the All My Sons Moving and Storage website). Look at the topics of third party web pages containing links to the page. Ensure that your pages about moving to Denver link back to your page discussing child friendly neighborhoods in Denver. That is exactly the result you are working for. The topic matter of the site where your page resides should match. Your SEO efforts should all be focused on providing the most relevant information on your page and overall website. So on your child friendly neighborhoods in Denver shouldn't be a page on a website about focused on growing tomatoes. Analyze how users respond to content in SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages). Look at your metrics to understand if there is a problem with your landing page; if you are seeing patterns such as a high bounce rate (when someone clicks on your site and then hits the back button to go back to the SERPs page) that is a problem that sound be addressed quickly. Your page should be relevant to the search query being performed, if your bounce rate is high, that means the page the user is being sent to, is not the information they are looking for.

Search engines use a system ranked by importance to determine where a page should be placed in a particular search query. Page importance is defined by a combination of things, with inbound links and content being the heaviest hitters. Although many believe that social is a major contributor of page importance, it is believed in the SEO community that inbound links are more valuable in the eyes of any search engine. The Impact of Importance is a direct correlation between the content offered on your page and websites wanting to link to this content because they believe it is important.

Last is popularity. Popularity in SEO is very different than importance in search queries. Popularity is a very powerful factor for trending topics such as breaking news, social topics and trending hashtags. As with relevance, a search engine can try ranking certain articles in particular order based on the click patterns by users. Many factors can influence the popularity of something. We see a great example of Facebook stories that have 100K+ shares of a photo that has created an emotional reaction of the viewer such as a dog being rescued or a soldier coming home. Images and videos are strong ways to tell stories and create popularity on social networks.

Although relevance, importance and popularity are the foundation of SEO other important SEO concepts include segmentation, diversity, quality, and trust.

Segmentation is an interesting concept in SEO because you are changing the search results based on what is known about the user. Localization is the most common form of segmenting users on search engines. You can segment a user through personalization; when someone have been to a page before so the search engine shows them higher in the results because they believe the user is looking for that page again.  Google+ connections can also alter search engine rankings by ranking a related search query to something you previously +1. Time of day and time of year can influence your results.

If the user does not find interest in the first or second results, they’re most likely not going to find interest in the third if it is of the same relevance. Therefore you need to diversify your search queries so your webpage can stand out.

As we all know, search engines have algorithms to measure the quality of a page. Your website’s quality could demote the rankings in search queries.  Make sure your page is useful, accurate and informative. When optimizing go through the 6 steps of relevance to ensure you are creating relevant pages that will promote a good website experience to the user. Double check spelling and grammar perform publishing content.

It is very important that you are not violating any search engine guidelines or your page cold be demoted. Gaining your audience trust is crucial to your business. Read the Google Webmaster Guidelines to guarantee you understand what is considered valid practices. Get a second opinion; have others review your site and ask for feedback. This is also a way to developing a relationship with others in the SEO industry. Hint… Hint… your Tandem team! :) 

Focus on Quality: Moving From Old SEO to New SEO

Most of us are familiar with the Google Panda update in 2011 and the rise of the Penguin in 2012. The innovation behind the release of these two updates from Google was to lower the ranking of “low-quality sites” and return higher-quality sites near the top of the search results.  In a Pre-Panda and Pre-Penguin world, marketers were using “Old SEO” tactics for their websites.

Old SEO was to build an experience for search engines to create rankings. The entire focus of Old SEO was strictly based on how the search engines viewed the website. After the updates, marketers had to change their SEO foundation to the “New SEO” practices that are recognized by Google. This new style of SEO is to building an insightful and useful experience for the user based on high-quality content.

Now, 3 years after the initial update we are still seeing some that are struggling with the transition from old to new. Your main focus on your site should be to avoid unoriginal, syndicated or ‘thin content’. Google Webmaster provides a set of guidelines and best practices approved by Google and other search engines. It is important to be familiar with these guidelines. Although Google does not give an exact definition on what ‘thin content’ really is, it is important to understand how our site should behave and the user experience search engines expect from us.

Assess your site for thin content. Again, because there is no clear explanation of “thin content” it isn’t as obvious as knowing you copied some content from another site. You need to take a very close look at what your content objectives are, what is its purpose, and how will your users benefit from or engage with your content.

A basic outline for thin content is any content on a site that has low value to you and the user. Look at any content that is obstructing of goal funnels, misinforming others, impeding crawl budgets, inflated internal link counts, and ultimately causing ‘noise’ to the search engine.

There are a few tools that can help you control content thinness; Screaming Frog, Google Analytics and Open Site Explorer. Screaming Frog is a tool that scrapes your website’s URLs. Once you run a search you can export this list to get an in-depth view of your sites content. Sort your URLs by word count; if your blogs content posts are all under 200 words, this is thin content. Consider revising your post with new content or stats to plump them up a bit.

Google Analytics is a free tool that website owner should be using. Analytics can give you an entire breakdown of a user’s experience on your website. Examine your metrics for high bounce rates and page exits/drop offs. If you see a high exit rate on a page, investigate the information on that URL. The unexpected drop off could be cause by thin content. Google Analytics can also conduct a URL scrape and site review by page via filtering pages by folder, Content Grouping, or Content Drilldown. This breakdown can help you understand the thinness on a folder aspect rather than a page aspect. Look over the goals and success of the page visits. If you see that there are pages that do not benefit the user or the objective of your site, then there’s no need for it.

Open Site Explorer entails you to review the backlinks for your domain. Similar to Google Webmaster Tools, Open Site Explorer allows you to view your top linked pages. By viewing these pages you can gain an understanding for what content on your site is actually receiving links. You may discover that whatever links you do have are to the homepage and high level pages, that don’t really have any link authority. If you export this list you should also examine pages associated with tweets, Facebook shares and likes, also Google+ +1’s. Again this will be useful to understand what is engaging your audience.

What do you finally do with thin content? Once you have all the pages and folders of thin content from your site, ask yourself the following questions:

• Delete or Redirect? If the content has no value anymore, then do not let it impede on the users any longer. It may have been relevant at one point, but if those stats are out dated, throw it out! Quality over Quantity, always! If you see that the content only has minor issues, freshen her up.  
• Add to Archives? If you believe that the material still holds value to the user, then you may want to keep it. Add the content to archives. Remember to exclude these pages so it is not in the search crawler view.
• Content Distraction? If the pages hold some value but is under performing minimize the linking to this page. By reducing internal linking the page so isn’t in the common route of search crawling and won’t divert the user.

If you feel your site is inefficient, try using one of these tools to dig into the opportunities for change in your site’s pages. By altering your Old SEO techniques to the New SEO approach, you will have a deeper understand of search engines algorithm for ranking. This new preeminent knowledge will help you develop quality content and establish a strong standard of content quality for your site. 

Recapping Las Vegas Pubcon 2012

Last month, Lauren and I had the privilege to head out to Las Vegas and watch Joe and a slew of other internet marketing professionals speak on various topics relevant to today's search industry. I took copious notes and have been summarizing sessions for the official Pubcon blog, in case any of you would like to take a peek at some of the knowledge that was shared to us. The first blogs have been posted, which you can check out here:

http://www.pubcon.com/pubcon-recap-seo-hot-topics-and-trends
http://www.pubcon.com/latest-topics-and-trends-on-twitter
http://www.pubcon.com/seo-lessons-from-disneys-jeff-preston

I will continue to post a few more blogs into November, and Lauren and I hope to give our link building tactics and upgrade and offer some cutting edge ideas to each of your accounts. If you ever have any questions or concerns you are always welcome to email me!