5 important things to consider about SEO, Marketing and Social Networking sites!

This post contains helpful information you need to know for effective marketing and seo for your company.

1. SEO beyond the corporate web page 

Search Engine Optimization is rapidly gaining ground within social sites. Content is king, and the ease of use to update fresh content to social sites, is making search engine service provides increase the relevancy they place on these types of site. A static site with great SEO, is limited in it's power if it does not have regular content updates that are relative to the text and meta data of the page. Emphasizing keywords, and keeping SEO in mind when creating social media site profiles and pages that link back to specific SEO optimized web pages on the parent companies is a great way to boost SEO ratings!


2. Search engines are changing

As more people use social sites as a medium for posting content and expression, the SEO related value of these posts is increasing. Search engines are constantly evolving. They have to, one good reason is to stay ahead of SEO black hat and spamming techniques. Another one is to ensure the quality of the content and the expectations of the searchers. Search engines have grown to be able to index more types of media, and are adapting, to take advantage of the "real time web", or the new social driven, rapid content updated web that we all partake in, when we use Facebook, Twitter and the like. Having a well optimized home page is not enough, you need to use social media tools just to keep up with the competition and to point back to your organization home base web site.

3. Use social media sites to generate SEO-Based Links

Links are crucially important to good SEO. Check your social media sites, to see if they are applying the "NO FOLLOW" attribute on links that you put in a post, or the profile section. There is a new social site every day, you can keep up with them on Mashable but one old standby, is Digg! Digg still allows the "DO FOLLOW" attribute for links from its site to any other. This is perhaps what made it grow so fast, as there is SEO value in the links from Digg to your site. In addition FriendFeed, Slashdot, Furl and Mixx allow the ever important "DO FOLLOW" value to links.

4. Target your specific market

Your website has a variety of visitors. Consider this when designing pages and making content on your site. Although difficult it is not impossible to to broaden the range of appeal of both your design and your content. Some web visitors want content on your site, while others mike want just a brief overview, but links to downloads and take away items, that they can scan your site for, get what they want, and if they like what they read, come back to get more information. Still others love the pro active value videos add to a site. If you have quality videos the over all value of the site goes up. Also by offering similar info in a variety of options will increase the opportunities to reach a broader market. No matter how many types of content you offer, if your site is difficult to navigate, and is not tailored to your viewing audience, you can be missing out. A great example of a site being optimized for it's target audience is the Ford Raptor site. In some instances you might consider testing your target's audience response to micro sites or social sites. Having the right tracking tools in place, can give you valuable insight into who is visiting these sites. This will make it easier to target your markets.

5. Does your website create a long lasting impression?

We are in the midst of a social media trend, and we have just gotten out of the wave of the web 2.0 trend. By paying attention to detail, and adding excellent design to your site, you can take advantage of another great trend in web design and marketing, and that is web based brand development. This can be achieved in many ways including personification of your brand, like Bug Eyes does with the bee, or Geico with the Gecko. If you have the budget to create an Iphone or fee phone or web based app, you can create a very powerful brand and marketing tool. A great example is with free SEO plug-ins for Firefox. Do you have an idea for a tool that your web visitors can use every day? Then you have the makings for a great branding tool!