Why Social Media Integration is A Must for SEO Campaigns

It used to be that SEO and social media campaigns were two separate things, but the line between the two is rapidly blurring with SEO campaigns just not truly complete with the social media aspect.

One of the most obvious reasons why SEO campaigns nowadays almost always tend to integrate at least some aspect of social media into their overall strategy is the sheer popularity of social media. There’s just no going around it. Social media is here to stay, and more than that, here to dominate. SEOs cannot afford to snub social media simply because clients will demand it, and even if some do not it will show a glaring lack on the SEO’s part as to his ability to follow trends and incorporate new strategies that will help out their clients achieve their end goals.

Another reason why SEO campaigns tap into social media marketing is that it is one of the best ways today to get more incoming links. We all know how hard link building has become, but thanks to social media sharing, we now have another very good source of links. What’s even better is that these links are organic, so that you don’t have to exert as much effort in getting like you would back in the days when options were limited to submitting your links to directories and other websites and blogs. While you still do need to have quality content, so that people will actually be interested in sharing your page, you don’t have to do much more, except perhaps share your own content to your own friends and followers.

In addition to getting incoming links that will help your SEO efforts (since search engines do index social content that are shared to the public), you get the added benefit of earning multiple alternate traffic sources each time someone shares your link. This means that your reliance on search engines as your traffic source is somehow decreased, which is especially important if your site does not rank well in results pages yet. This is also even more important if you do not have the resources to launch a full-scale online ad campaign, which otherwise could have been your major alternate traffic source.

Last but not least, SEOs should realize that search engines are also recognizing the ever growing importance of social media, and so are adapting their own algorithms to further personalize search results based on social media profiles. And though the most glaring example would be Google and their latest moves to further integrate their web search results with Google Plus, you can bet that Bing and Yahoo! are not taking the social aspect of search lightly. As SEOs, it is no dabbling with social media is no longer enough. It is imperative that you learn how to use social media as part of your SEO campaigns right now, and to be vigilant in watching the trends so that you don’t get left behind.

Vic Carrara
MasterWebSoftware.com