April 5th, 2010 by Dan

As more and more people learn to Digg it, Spurl and follow their friends on Twitter, so search engine optimization services are having to diversify in order to satisfy the needs of their customers. It isn’t just a matter of people knowing these social media sites exist – they must implement them into their website design and customer emails. Building social media links are as important as SEO tools in today’s world.

Just because you don’t care about Reddit or Furl, it doesn’t mean your customers don’t. If they see your name there when they visit, it will be uppermost in their minds when they need the services or products your site delivers. What’s more, social media marketing utilises networking between members – which means a single click on your link may get you thousands of potential new customers.

Social media optimization, or SMO, is still new to many web users, but in fact it’s only a step away from search engine optimisation. Search engine optimisation services break down the web crawling barriers, allowing search engines to access and index your site. SMO breaks down site walls in a similar way, allowing easy access to your web content via links embedded on social media sites. Via a variety of routes content can be located, stored, distributed and shared by the internet community.

To do this successfully, you need to utilise link building strategies. These can be as simple as embedding a “Follow us on Twitter” link on the home page, or as complex as creating a striking “linkbait” video to drive people to your site. Many people automatically strike out for the latter, using the “more the merrier” approach. However, just as many people come unstuck like this. You can spend an awful lot of time and money on complex link building strategies, only for your site to fail to get a single hit.

This is why it’s best to use specialised link building services. These people know how and where to use link magnets to attract the maximum numbers of visitors to your site – and it doesn’t have to be complex, or expensive. A front page placement on the social news website Digg, for example, offers credibility as well as visibility, since you will be sharing space with top names and events from around the world.

The keyword in social media marketing is leverage i.e. the way in which you manipulate media sites to drive traffic to your website. Leverage, however, depends on the ability of your embedded content to attract visitors, and thus increase the number of conversions to your site, via the link. To be effective, your message should be simple, but eye-catching. Think of the clever ways in which successful “bricks-and-mortar” sites attract visitors – and then try to be just as cunning.

In using SMO, never forget that the ultimate goal isn’t how many clicks you achieve – but how many visitors convert from browsing to buying. Placing multiple links in sites valid to your field of commerce will reap dividends – but only if the landing page inspires your visitors. When it comes to conversion rates, link building is only the start of the equation.

Link to us

If you want to link to this blog, copy and paste the following HTML code to your website.