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SEO and Social Media: A How-To Guide

The combination of Search Engine Optimization and social media channels like Twitter and Facebook brings a whole new level for those promoting gambling-based affiliate programs. Read for ways you can begin to blend the lines of SEO and social media to have them work symbiotically with one another. After this point, you’ll never look back.

The End of a Single Marketing Strategy?

The recent Google Panda 2.5 update has had many effects for gambling affiliates, with the moral of the story being that you cannot simply plaster the web with links and hope for the best for higher web rankings. We discovered content is king.

However, content and Search Engine Optimization aren’t the only items to focus on after the major Panda update. We’re now in the era where the combination of existing techniques and social media will become the new standard for online marketing.

Before Action: There is Research

You must first understand whether you’ve created an SEO and social media strategy and have set goals that are going to progress you forward instead of being stuck in an endless loop of discussions. After all, the point of all of this is to create some kind of conversion whether it’s someone joining your affiliate programs or helping to promote your website.

Before you begin, here are a few items you should review before launching a new campaign:

The SEO and Social Terms

Like SEO, your social media efforts need to have an overview of the key terms you will be focusing on that can be used when searching for people that may be mentioning items related to what you’re promoting. The Twitter Search feature is a great place to begin by placing your key terms to discovered individuals that could become followers and participants in your affiliate programs. Another option is to use a variety of Facebook marketing strategies that will help reveal where your members are hiding around the web. Once you’ve identified these people and begin to monitor their conversations, they will be more susceptible to your message because you’re speaking on their terms.



The Social “Hangouts”

Another element of SEO and social media to cover prior to putting strategies into effect is whether or not your affiliate campaigns and messages are reaching the right “hangouts” online. The best marketing message will fall upon deaf ears if the websites and networks you choose to speak don’t house the individuals that are open to your ideas.

To get started, you can begin to use search results to discover communities that fall upon your focus using the key terms you’ve identified in the previous section. Forums, newsgroups, IRC chats, Twitter lists, Facebook groups and blogs can reveal entire communities which were yet to be discovered and ready to hear your message.

SEO and Social Media: The Real How-To

Now that you understand the importance of social media and how to conduct proper research prior to taking action, it’s time to dig into the meat of the content.

The following are a few scenarios you could implement to combine Search Engine Optimization and social media:

Collect and Reward your Brand Ambassadors – Every website or business has a set group of people that stand by the brand through thick and thin. It just so happens that these same individuals are the ones that are likely to write about your website and share your affiliate program when the conversation arises within their own social circles. Once you’ve found your brand ambassadors, it’s imperative that you reward them, regularly, to keep them happy and actively a part of your community such as sharing breaking news, exclusive deals and even allowing them to be more active on your website.

Leverage Contacts for Content Marketing – One of the greatest ways to combine SEO and social media is to leverage each and every contact as a form of building content marketing. It’s impossible to understand every question that may arise about your affiliate promotions so instead of stressing about understanding everything, hand it over to your community. Your community will have the real-world questions that need to be addressed that you may have never known. In fact, you could go a step further by allowing people submit their own content which not only improves your SEO and SEO backlinks but initiates great discussions amongst social circles – its win/win scenario.

Creating Omnipresence – SEO can greatly benefit from you being active on social media platforms such as Twitter and Facebook. Unfortunately, you can’t possibly keep up with social media 24 hours a day but there are many great tools and tricks you can use to develop omnipresence. Being active on social networks will keep dialog going between your followers and ultimately result in a greater sense of social awareness and authority because you’re providing a valuable service and experience. People that appreciate your work will take that to their own websites and share it with others within their small communities.

These items, although limited to just three, are the main, core elements of getting the most out of social media and traction in search engines because, in the end, it’s all about building great relationships that will open new opportunities that lead to conversions and search engine optimization.

A typical scenario in which this could take place is this:

1. You reach out and contact people that may be interested in visiting your website, hearing your message or joining your affiliate program by finding them through social media circuits like Twitter or Facebook.

2. You share incredible information from your website which gets people interested in coming over to experience something valuable. In exchange for that value, they give their own through blog commenting or telling others about your website.

3. You eventually turn repeat visitors into brand ambassadors by constantly delivering great information and kick-backs to them; this could result in them naturally linking to your website, writing reviews and helping to promote your promotions.

4. You later leverage your community into building new content and campaigns that get even more people on board with your website and creates greater dialog on social media; this benefits your SEO and your social presence.

5. You use the combination of your community, website, campaigns and social networking to create an omnipresence online that begins to automate your search engine optimization and social media interactions because others continue the discussion well after you had your say.

This may seem like a simplified scenario but it’s highly effective for finding and converting individuals into people that not only want to be a part of your community but feel they need to be active within it.

All-in-all, as noted, SEO and social media is the culmination of using your online authority to get others to naturally boost your search rankings; it comes full circle.

How do you build communities to improve your SEO and social media usage? Share your thoughts and tips in the SEO forum.