Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of affecting the visibility of a website or a web page in a search engine’s “natural” or un-paid (“organic”) search results.

The search engines are wearing social-tinted glasses to an extent where they have been making changes to their algorithms to handle the crowds making their way to the social media avenues.

Reason? Every business with an online presence has understood the importance of social and SEO techniques and incorporating social strategies can significantly grow a business.

Interactions with people on social networking sites make a difference in search engine rankings, and all sorts of social activities are being given importance.

For example you create a post and submit it to a social media site. If that article gets shared a lot by your friends and friends of friends, it has a much greater impact than just submitting a social bookmark. This sort of interaction that leads to sharing takes time, and search engines notice the time you’re spending legitimately interacting with prospects and customers.

Creating a social media presence can seem intimidating for many new marketers. Imagine having to interact with all those people. What are they going to say? How are they going to respond to the various questions people may ask? It’s these feelings that keep them away from social networking sites.

Oh, they don’t mind interacting with their friends though. They love chatting away about numerous things and sharing images and text they find interesting. But not business-related stuff!

If interaction at a personal level is fine, why not for business? It really is not as complicated as it’s made out to be and Social SEO techniques can be really quite simple.

How Social Media SEO Techniques Help

The first and foremost advantage of social media is the visibility factor. Whether you’re a brand new business or an established business; a small or big business – social media offers the visibility that businesses thrive on. If handled in the right manner, it offers the kind of visibility that can transform businesses from struggling to mega successful. It has happened with many and it continues to happen.

Twitter, Facebook, Google +, LinkedIn and Pinterest can all come to your rescue when used properly. It all starts with the creation of a business website.

Create A Stronger Social Media Presence

There are several social media-related articles on this website which talk about how you can use the major social networks for the benefit of your new or existing business. But here I would like to tell you that while the major social networking sites are important, there are other social media sites that can help you too. Because social signals revolve around popular recommendations, look at all possible social media sites. Just Google and find them. You may be missing out on niche-specific social networking sites.

What is the use of building a presence on social media sites that are not interested in what you’re offering? So join only communities that can actually make a difference to your business.

Re-Evaluate Your Content Strategy

The reason I’m asking you to re-evaluate is to ensure you go back and check your existing content. If your content is not going viral on social media the way you want it to, take a look at why that’s happening. These SEO techniques (or ideas) may help you.

* Identify and define the personas of your target market. Add keyword phrases to be found by more people, and this will lead to more customers and more sales.

* In your content, ask questions that show empathy and address pain points.

* Give the reader answers to the questions they’re looking for.

* Make your content scream, “Hey, look at me.”

Use Your Brand Name

When creating social media accounts, using your brand name will help Google associate your brand with the keywords or phrases people are using to search. This will help rank your social profiles. On Twitter, you’ll find that many online marketers and small businesses use a personal picture for the profile and they use their brand name for the account. What this does is, create a brand for your business as well as ensure you’re personalizing it by having a picture of you on there.

The best way to establish your brand on social media sites is to stop “selling” and start “engaging” with the audience.

Use Your Location

This is something not many people do. If your business is something that you think can benefit from being promoted locally in your area, then you need to let people know your location. You can use your location when creating social media profiles and in the keywords. Website content and meta tags are places where you can use your business name and location. Use them wherever possible to make sure your business comes up with people search for local businesses.

Linking

You’ll find two different lines of thoughts where linking is concerned. The majority say that all content should be linked back to the website, and some say it has to be done in moderation. I feel good SEO techniques link all business content to your website and leave out the personal content without any linking, as that’s not relevant to your business. You use personal content as a way of engaging with your audience.

However, keep in mind that circulation of URLs in social media is important, and this happens through a high level of engagement, leading to increase in traffic.

Don’t Forget Internal Links

We talk about content, we discuss keywords, we ensure all the meta tags are fine, we have opt-ins on our pages, but one of the most important things that people forget is to provide internal links on the pages leading to other pages on the website. Don’t forget such important SEO techniques.

SEO Techniques Summary

Overwhelmed?

If you’re overwhelmed by it all, just think that you’re being chased by a bear and all you need to do is be one step ahead of your competitor to stay safe. The only way you can succeed in social media SEO is by being a thought leader.

Know what you’re talking about and be an authority in your field. Try and help as many people as possible and build trust. Keep posting fresh and valuable content.

Soon, you will experience an increase in rankings and traffic. You’ll enjoy several other benefits like increased domain authority and inbound links to your website.

It doesn’t really matter what the size of your business is. What matters is how you build a network of people that trust you.

Have these SEO techniques given you some ideas?