Leveraging Social Media for Better Website Traffic

The only way to keep ourselves on top of the SEO game is to keep ourselves updated with new techniques and strategies. Many are still coming to terms with the new strategy of using social networks as a method of promoting their websites. Many would even say that creating links on social networking sites such as Facebook for example could have some effect on a website’s search engine results.

Social Networks and SEO

Before we get confused, let us first define what SEO and Social Networking are. SEO is defined as strategies or techniques employed to improve a website’s search engine results. It works on the principle that websites that are prominently displayed in search engine results have a better chance of attracting traffic.

Social Networks on the other hand improves traffic to your website thru community building and information sharing. This does not in any way optimize a website’s search engine results. They work very differently but are similar in their objective which is to drive more traffic to your website.

Social SEO

I’m not exactly sure if this is the perfect term to describe the process of optimizing your social network campaign for improving your website traffic but I guess it’s clear enough to stress the point. With Social Networks gaining more prominence, search engines like Google have included.

Great Titles

Just like your regular websites, social networking sites gives you the option of creating titles for your articles or announcements. You could then link these back to your website. The great thing about social sites is you don’t have to come up with long word articles just to capture your audience attention. A few words or killer title is all it takes to drive traffic to your website. The rule of thumb here is to create a killer title that is difficult to resist which is easier said than done.

People Targeted Content

If you’re going to write, write for people. This has always been an important factor even for web content but the difference here is that no SEO is required. Throw keywords out, no amount of keywords is needed here. Even Google’s ever dependable spiders will not be able to crawl their way thru social networking sites.

Build your Social Profile

Be an active member of the community. Joining other social networking groups helps you build meaningful relationship and increases your exposure. This is where branding and link building comes into mind in terms of social networks. Just like link building, you are creating backlinks to your social network sites.

Add Social Widgets

Many website owners are missing out on the benefits of social networking by failing to install social networking widgets on their website. It only takes a few minutes to install these but their benefits are invaluable. People are unable to follow you simply because you have not given them the option of doing so. Adding a share button makes its simpler for them to tweet or share your articles at Twitter and Facebook.

Images and Videos

Social media sites have opened new doors for promoting your services and products. Posting a few images and videos over YouTube for example gives you a creative way of promotion aside from writing good content. It is said that pictures can tell a thousand words enhancing the quality of content.

Different Strokes

SEO and Social Media Marketing are two different sides of the coin. SEO in its strictest definition helps us get to the top of search engines to increase traffic to our websites. Social Media can also be considered as a tool for increasing traffic to your website but works on a different principle. The difference is that SEO targets search engines while Social Networks is people oriented. With the growing popularity of Social Networks it has become another valuable tool for increasing traffic to websites.