Social Media Marketing plus Search Engine Optimization the Right Recipe for Success

Today successful website owners are someone who takes advantages of both the forms of Internet Marketing that is Search Engine Optimization (SEO ) as well as Social Media Marketing (SMM). At an initial glimpse, you may not find any connection between the two.

This happens usually because SMM is more of an off-page interaction whereas SEO directly aims to drive traffic to a website via search engines. However, if you study carefully you will find that there is definitely a direct relationship between the two.  

As a website owner, you need to create several interesting and unique content and share them with potential customers every day via various social media channels like Facebook, MySpace, Twitter and blogs in case of Social Media Marketing. This content is then discussed and distributed in these discussions groups and forums, thus further generating links. With so many people sharing such links on a website, its ranking is bound to increase. 

Social Media Marketing permits you to use a wide range of keywords. All you need to do is to create a search marketing strategy in which you create a list of socially promoting keywords that will help you to enhance the brand value of your product. 

However, it does not only work in one direction. This whole process also works the other way around where SEO services impact Social Media Optimization. Well, this happens in this way. When a link is at the top of search result, it is more likely to be shared by people. 

However, if you talk about targeting audiences, social media marketing only adds social value to a brand. This means that SMM only influences the opinions of customers but do not compel them to take any action. On the other hand, SEO generates Link value to a product or service and it doesn’t essentially care about the Social value of a website. 

This is due to the fact that while you do off-page optimization of a webpage through SEO processes you place links of your website on other websites which are high in search results in the hope that it improves the ranking of your website.

Top 3 Important SEO Tips For Local Businesses

Find out the 3 simple things that every local business should be doing. These easy to implement steps can get your businesses name listed at the top of the search results page almost every time, but yet so many are still not utilizing these steps.

1. Google Places Page

If I had a dollar for every business in the United States that have not claimed their Google Places page it would probably amount to the millions. Setting up and optimizing this page is on the highest of my recommendations when I consult with local business owners, but the problem is that most of them have no idea what kind of content they should put on there.

If you do not own a website for your business, the Google Places Page can essentially act as one for you. The intentions of Google is to help people who are searching for things on a local level, so it's ideal to list any of the services you offer, hours of operation and contact information. I've seen people bring in thousands of dollars in revenue directly from the clients they've picked up on the internet, and some without even owning a website.

2. Yahoo Local Listings

Yahoo local listings are similar to a Google Places Page but just a downsized version with not as much control. Even though this tool is not as powerful, it is still very effective to use for listing your business. As I'm writing this, Yahoo is currently up for sale to the highest bidder so there has been a lot of questions about their destiny. Even so, there are still a lot of people in the world who use Yahoo as their preferred search engine and email carrier so it would be foolish to think it's obsolete. They have still ranked the 4th most used website in the world according to Alexa, which means millions of people use it every day.

2. Bing Local Listings Center

Last but not least, the Bing search engine also has a place for you to get your business listed when people are searching for local places. I recently saw a newscast that said around 90% of Bing's users found what they were looking for on their first try, which is impressive considering only about 40% of people find what they're looking for on the first try when using Google's search engine.

If you are using these 3 methods to help maximize your exposure on the web, I'd say that you already have one up on your competition that is not. There are lots of directories that are out there related to your industry in which can help too, and many offer a free listing that I highly recommend you take advantage of.

If you do not know how to go about setting this up or simply do not have the time, there are lots of internet marketing and SEO companies whom you can help you get your business listed for a small fee.