March 5th, 2010 by Nick

Any self-respecting search engine optimisation strategy will have a clear interest in the burgeoning social media trend. However, the exploitation of a social page to try and manipulate search engines can only end in once place – account termination! So, how exactly can a successful social media marketing (SMM) campaign avoid the banstick?

Luckily there are some clearly defined techniques and activities that might just get you banned from a social media page, from the obvious – to the borderline unfair. This blog helps you to see which activities to steer clear of and which

Breaking Contract

I’d say that pretty much everyone who signs up to a social media site, e.g. facebook, myspace or youtube just skips on right through the “terms of service” agreement; however if you’re a corporate entity looking to take advantage of social media marketing opportunities then its definitely a good idea that your read them – ensuring that any potential SEO strategy that you plan on employing wont get your account removed (let’s face it you wont have an excuse)

Spamming

There’s a good chance that this will be reffered to in the terms of service, and anyone spamming is undoubtedy aware they’re doing something unethical, but it’s worth reinstating – DON’T SPAM! (e.g automated submissions, comments etc)

Trolls

Trolling is kind of like spam, but a little less unethical – it is, however, an unnatural way to behave on social networks and will probably get you banned – as well as spoiling everybody else’s fun; basically trolling involves posting offensive comments, or voting comment in a, let’s say, overtly critical way – this is a bit of a grey area in terms of banning, but if enough people report you, you will get banned – anyway, hopefully the kinds of companies embarking on a social media optimization campaign will be above such childish activities!

Linking to Low Quality Content

This is were we get into issues that could damage a SMM campaign; basically you should always want to offer something of value in return for website visits, this means that when your putting links on social media pages, e.g. in the form of comments or forum posts etc, your should ensure that your not just sending people to irrelevant, low quality or even worse offensive content! This will not only get you banned, but it could affect your brand’s reputation.

Submitting Poor Quality Content

On a similar note you should not only avoid linking to poor content, but you should definitely avoid posting poor quality content; for obvious reasons in terms of SEO its not going to encourage people to navigate to your website, but in more serious terms it could get you band – remember it is the function of many social media pages, e.g. youtube, to rank their content, and therefore any low quality content will become quickly and explicitly marked; whilst this doesn’t necessarily get you banned straight away, it does increase the chances that you will be flagged as spam and then removed!

Don’t Over-Do It

As a final point, throughout all of your activities don’t try and over-egg the pudding. Just keep your tweets, posts and updates natural, interesting and positive. Encourage feedback but don’t do a big sales pitch. There is a balance here which can result in almost limitless benefit to your overall search engine optimization efforts.

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