As social media continues to gain traction in the ever-changing world of SEO, it’s important to consider why it is so important and should be included in content strategies. Most of us use at least one platform personally, but are the benefits really that big to warrant including it in all content strategies? The short answer is yes – the long one is below (but still yes).
Choosing the right platforms
It can be easy to rush into social media and just say “I’m going to make a profile on every social media platform I can find” but that can actually do more harm than good, especially if you don’t have the time to keep an eye on them all. With so many to choose from, it takes time to build up a following on each platform and then maintain it. Yes, you can create content that goes out on each platform with only minor tweaks but if you have the same people on each platform, they will notice.
Whether for personal use, for a project or a client, take the time to really understand what the end goals and targets are. This will help you decide how many, and then which, platforms you should be working on. Some are better than others but having a profile for the sake of having it is pointless and should be avoided.
Also, focus on fewer profiles at first, and really gain some authority with that profile so that your audience want to follow you, read your updates and content whenever it’s posted. If there’s a team of you, it might be an idea to work on different profiles and compare results – but never contradict each other and talk to each other so you know what’s going on!
Links and content are still important
With each Google update (specifically Penguin at the moment) there seems to be a lot of problems with websites losing rankings and the owners losing faith in link building campaigns. These are still important and provide real results when done properly. The point of these updates is to create a more authentic and natural search results – no more paying archives or websites a large amount of money to get hundreds of links put out to anywhere!
If you are concerned about link building, talk to an SEO agency or specialist and find out a little about it. Not only will this put you at ease but a good agency will be able to prove that it works.
The content is important as well – make sure it’s appropriate for what you plan to use it for! If it’s to go out through social media, it probably needs to be different from what is used in link building most of the time. You’ll have to spend more time on it, yes, but the results will be a lot better and future updates by Google shouldn’t hit you (or at least, hit you as hard).
Forming the right content strategy
As it stands now, content strategies need to focus on link building, quality content and social media. These are three key areas where websites are suffering because the effort is not being made to understand the strategy and carry it out properly. Making this effort will see your search engine rank improve over time – but you may still need to deal with those spammy links.
Quality content takes longer to produce, but has better results, whether it’s a piece of writing, a video, an infrographic or something else. Research where these can go and how they might be seen and viewed by audiences before making sure that any links built with it are ones that would be done naturally, or you’ll get an even bigger penalty.
Get your social profiles sorted with people who will engage with you and your content and share it with people who follow them. This is going to gain more power in the future and trying to cheat with this will hurt you later, almost as much as not having it in the first place.
Granted, this could all change again in six months, but those are the joys of SEO. As it stands now, this is what we should be focusing on to get the best results.
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