The primary objectives of SEO are to increase search visibility, create positive online brand exposure and encourage internet brand noise in order to drive interested traffic to the target web site, attract backlinks and ultimately register in higher positions within search engine results pages for specific keywords. The reality is that social media leveraged as a search engine optimisation tool overarches all of these possibilities and offers the additional potential of driving increased conversions and even contributing to client retention by reinforcing key brand messages.

As we have seen throughout this presentation, social media applications may only recently have been leveraged as part of the search engine optimisation process but offer huge potential.

1. Backlinks

One of the two most important aspects of search optimisation, social media sites offering blogging, bookmarking and online community applications provide a vehicle for building high numbers of backlinks. Each post or bookmark or forum message you post can contain a number of links back to the web site being optimised.

The number of links to your site can also be grown exponentially by using good quality social media content. Poor content will garner only those links you place. Information which is well-written, either to provoke a reaction, educate or inform will attract links from other bloggers and web sites as people refer back to the link, bookmark it themselves and pass on to others to view. Material either strongly on topic, breaking real news or airing controversial opinions or poll results increases the changes of attracting high quality linkbacks from traffic rich sites – places like the Times, the New York Times, CNBC Europe, Sky News etc.

2. Optimised Link Text

As the social media blogger or bookmarker you decide which keywords to wrap the link text around. This means in any blog post or forum response, you can create links for each of your primary key terms as well as phrases from the search string. When gathering links naturally from other web sites, this density and optimisation of link text is not possible.

3. Content

The press releases, articles, blog posts and opinion pieces you create to use on social media sites can be used as a basis for more optimised on-site content. While it’s not advisable to replicate all material produced, the best bits of your social media activity make valuable additions to your own web site, either in a multimedia or press room section.

4. Traffic

With an estimated 250 million people globally belonging to a social networking site, putting your brand and URL address on these web sites exposes your site to huge amounts of traffic. Choosing the most appropriate social networking tools for your target demographic and keeping postings on topic helps place your brand in front of potential users at exactly the moment they demonstrate their interest by searching on related key terms.

So is Social Media the Future of Search Engine Optimisation? Absolutely.

Social media actually harnesses the power of that most powerful sales tool – word of mouth because the advent of social media, the proliferation of blogs, lenses, book marks and wikis, makes every internet user a potential publisher. Rather than talking to their next door neighbour, they can share the experiences of the internet and the companies and services offered to them (good and bad) online.

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