Content syndication and social media becoming an integral part of SEO
Matt Cutts`of Google said it best in the interview with Mike Grehan titled "The Future of Search and Outdated SEO Methods."
"There’s no point in doing textbook (SEO) stuff unless you have enough great content and the reputation within your community to be a challenger."
Delivering good content, that your audiences find interesting and valuable, has always been the best way to do SEO. While there may be many tips and tricks, some considered black hat, that have worked in the past, syndicating good content and making the most of social media opportunities is the best way to improvbe your search ranking and broaden the audiences that see your content. And it pays off in online visibility, brand awareness and traffic.
The launch of Skin MD Natural is a case in point, and it was so successful that it got the attention of PR Week. It was featured on July 31, 2006.
There was a great thread in the Search Engine Watch forums yesterday about getting traffic from social media sites like del.icio.us
1. Write Good, Relevent, Useful Content.
I know its an obvious one, but it’s the one to remember. People will only bookmark what they find interesting. Watch what’s popular on del.icio.us for a couple of days to get an idea.
2. Get Popular On Another Site, Leap Frog to Del.icio.us
If you can make it to sites like Digg.com, BoingBoing, Kottke, instructables.com – anything influential – chances are the cascading effect of the web, will have your site be popular on del.icio.us too.
3. Use Del.icio.us Like a Directory
Find the best articles tutorials and bookmark them on del.icio.us with the appropriate tags. People searching for similar content, matching your tags, may find your site and (if they like it) bookmark it, building your "capital" so to speak.
4. Make sure all your content has an "Add to Del.icio.us" link (along with email to a friend etc) As your content is found, it’ll be picked up by visitors and maybe even added to del.icio.us.
There are a few initiatives in progress to assist PR folk to take advantage of these ideas. PRESSfeed, the content syndication service that was built specifically for SEO-PR purposes, is one of them. All enterprise level clients get social media bookmarking links, Technorati tags and "easy subscribe" buttons for all the better known RSS readers on their articles, news updates or press releases.
You can see it on the PRESSfeed news page
Put your cursor on the RSS icon to see the drop down menu for subscribe buttons
At the end of this article on the future of search and content syndication you’ll see the tags and the list of social bookmarking links.
