When it comes to SEO (search engine optimization), there are no shortage of people who claim they can help you achieve the #1 ranking in Google for you keywords.
Most people who get paid to do this are using blackhat SEO techniques, meaning they are “unnaturally” causing your website to increase in the search results. Google has gotten pretty smart about these blackhat strategies, and most, if not all, are now rendered useless.
Eric Schmidt, the CEO of Google, recently made a comment about how the Internet is a cesspool of information. With free, uninhibited barriers to entry, information flows onto the web without resistance.
However, Schmidt said, getting your content to the top of the search results and generating traffic, in today’s era of the web, is all about building your brand.
Brand building has become the cornerstone to any successful online marketing campaign. It’s what decides who gets to the top search results, and who stays on page 10.
Building your brand has never been easier with social media tools such as Twitter, Facebook, and blogging. These tools allow you to spread your message further, attract a large following or fans, and build your brand faster than ever before.
Sure, you’re going to have to work hard and be committed to building your brand, but with sustained effort, and patience, your efforts will begin to pay off.
Here are some strategies for effectively building your brand with social media!
1) You must have a blog and write in it on a regular basis. What’s a regular basis mean? Well, there is no set formula, but I would say at a minimum, 3 times per week.
And why is writing in a blog so important? Because Google, like all other major search engines, are now favoring freshly updated content that is highly concentrated on specific subjects. This can be seen easily by the fact that new blog postings from authoritative sites, like Mashable.com, are found in the top search results within hours of being posted.
Writing in a blog on a regular basis not helps you achieve top rankings in Google, but it also, over time, increases your overall presence in the search engines. Let’s say, for example you write 4 articles per week. After 1 month you now have 12 new pages of content that can be found online. After 6 months of this effort, you would have 96 pages of content on the web and in the search results of Google.
The more pages you have indexed from your site, the more likely you are to be seen over and over again by people who are interested in your particular content. This sustained effort over time begins to build a brand for you and your business. And as your brand builds, an increased level of traffic will begin flowing to your site.
Google’s search algorithm, the calculation that determines how pages are ranked, is structure as such that it’s able to follow these variable (pages indexed, traffic, etc…). And as the number of visitors per day increases to your site, and the number of pages indexed increases, Google starts attributing a higher level of brand recognition to your site – just like how people start attributing a higher level of brand to your site.
This process continually works in your favor, and your pages will continue to climb higher in the search results, which gives you more exposure, increased traffic, and an even stronger brand. As you can see, having a blog can begin paying off exponentially for your business by having a lot of pages ranked highly in the search results of Google.
2) Be “keyword conscious” in your blog postings. This means, make sure that you included highly targeted keyword phrases in things like the title of your blog post, and repeat your keywords throughout the context of the post, and in varying forms and derivatives.
Being “keyword conscious” ensures that for all of the new blog postings (new pages) that are found in Google, there is targeted keyword phrases associated with those pages.
This is important simply because you want to connect your content (pages), and build your brand, to people who are searching for what you offer. I mean, what better opportunity is there than to provide information to people who are actively searching it out. And when the specific page from your blog that provides them the information they’re looking for, you just added one more person who knows your name, recognizes your brand, and will begin to tell other people about you as well.
3) Use Twitter and Facebook as a traffic source to bring new people to blog. Twitter is an amazing tool for sharing links to content on the web. A lot of what happens on Twitter is done through the process of link sharing – providing others with a link to visit a page that you’re interested in.
By having a Twitter profile for your business, you can build an audience of followers that, for one reason or another, are particularly interested in what you offer.
This creates a rich environment for providing updates, sharing free information and tips, and telling people about a new blog posting you created.
For example, something as simple as posting the title to your new blog along with a link back to the posting, can dramatically increase traffic and awareness to your site, which contributes to your brand building process.
So create a Twitter profile, and start providing updates about your business, share tips, news and information that’s relevant to your industry, and start telling your followers each time you have a new blog posting. Your efforts on Twitter will contribute to building your brand online and helping you rank higher in Google for your targeted keyword phrases.
Facebook provides another way for you to build your brand online, and with the new Facebook Fan Pages, the leveraging of Facebook for business has become a whole lot easier and more effective.
A Facebook Fan Page works a lot like Twitter in that people voluntarily follow you (or Fan you on Facebook), because they are saying, “yes, I want to receive information from you and I want to hear from you”.
The one advantage that Facebook Fan Pages’ has over Twitter is the ability to engage your audience in direct conversation.
Being able to talk and reply directly, and immediately, to people on Facebook provides an invaluable opportunity to build your brand. Facebook allows instant communication and feedback to other people, and through the interaction and the process of you responding to others, you begin to build a level of trust and reputation with your audience on Facebook.
Again this process contributes to building your brand, bringing more traffic to your website, gaining a larger audience of dedicated followers, and from all of that, increasing your rankings in Google.
And as your rankings increase in Google, and assuming you continue to put in the hard work by doing the things I’ve described above, your brand will become stronger, your rankings even higher, and your audience of prospects even larger!