Pittsburgh SEO and Pittsburgh social media must be integrated if your business is to capture and retain the lion's share of your markets and niches. While these two internet marketing strategies are quite different in form and function, they can be used together in a synergistic campaign to create a total solution not only for your business needs, but for the needs of your customers as well. Understanding how to merge Pittsburgh social media and Pittsburgh SEO successfully is critical to staying ahead of constantly evolving internet marketing trends.
SEO refers primarily to strategies designed to increase a site's online visibility in the form of high SERP (Search Engine Results Page) placement for targeted keywords. Unlike SEM or search engine marketing, SEO seeks to improve the ranking of a website organically. This means that many business owners will be able to optimize their websites and business pages at little to no cost to them.
Social media is the sharing and distribution of content, pictures and videos on the web across a number of unique formats such as Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace and others. Many business owners are not aware that social media can be used as a powerful marketing tool by directly engaging their target demographic.
So what exactly is it about Pittsburgh SEO and Pittsburgh social media that - used together - can help your business dominate its competition? There are three fundamental elements, all of which occur simultaneously when done correctly:
The Power of Link Building
Linking is a crucial element of SEO. Links are created in a number of ways, including via web 2.0 properties, article directories, press releases, blogging, blog commenting, forum posting and management, document sharing, video marketing and many other strategies.
Social media also creates links. Every time you post a comment with a link or bookmark a page you are creating a link that could get indexed and provide valuable link juice to your site. And when your friends or fans share those links on their wall, more and more links are developed as the effect of viral marketing takes over.
Using the two together is simple: use SEO to create links to your social media pages, and use social media to create links to your business page or "money site." You can do this by posting an article, blog post, document, video or other content to your main site, then posting a link to that item on your Facebook wall, for example. You can then bookmark that same piece of content across dozens of other social media sites and RSS aggregators.
If your search engine optimization efforts have been paying off, you'll already be getting traffic to your website or blog. Providing the readers of your content with plugins to share your content will also help to create links that could easily go viral and result in an avalanche of traffic.
The key to building links using Pittsburgh SEO and Pittsburgh social media is to only use high quality content. Spun articles, offshore garbage and any other spammy or poorly written materials should be avoided. After all, why would anyone want to share what amounts to rubbish?
In Pittsburgh SEO and Pittsburgh Social Media: Capital Connections Part 2 we'll discuss two more ways that social media networks and search engine optimization strategies can significantly increase the amount of relevant traffic and targeted leads that your business gains.
Otherwise, click here if you're convinced and are ready to take advantage of SEO right now.