Social Media for Traffic + SEOHow to leverage the channels of social media marketing to earn direct traffic and higher search engine rankings

Rand Fishkin, SEOmoz CEO, March 2011

At SEOmoz, we make SOFTWARE!! We don’t offer any consulting.

Where Does Social Media Traffic Originate?

Facebook

http:/googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/06/our-new-search-index-caffeine.htmlhttp://www.benphoster.com/facebook-user-growth-chart-2004-2010/

Twitter

http:/googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/06/our-new-search-index-caffeine.htmlhttp://www.mediabistro.com/alltwitter/twitter-used-by-16-4m-us-internet-users-will-growth-to-27-7m-by-2013-stats_b3682

Q+A Sites

http:/googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/06/our-new-search-index-caffeine.htmlhttp://www.quora.com/How-many-people-use-Quora

Blogs

http:/googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/06/our-new-search-index-caffeine.htmlhttp://www1.emarketer.com/Report.aspx?code=emarketer_2000570

Social News / Bookmarking

http:/googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/06/our-new-search-index-caffeine.htmlhttp://www.reddit.com/r/blog/comments/evmek/2010_we_hardly_knew_ye/

Is Social Traffic Worthwhile?

Direct Value of Visits

http:/googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/06/our-new-search-index-caffeine.htmlhttp://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/11/business/media/11search.html

Direct SEO Impact

http://searchengineland.com/what-social-signals-do-google-bing-really-count-55389

Danny Sullivan: If an article is retweeted or referenced much in Twitter, do you count that as a signal outside of finding any non-nofollowed links that may naturally result from it?

Google: Yes, we do use it as a signal. It is used as a signal in our organic and news rankings. We also use it to enhance our news universal by marking how many people shared an article

Citations & References

http://www.seomoz.org/labs/blogscape

Citations almost always lead and

exceed straight links

Branding via Exposure to a New Audience

http://www.quora.com/SEOmoz

2nd-Order Awareness Impact via Social Sources

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/i-disagree-with-fred-marketing-is-for-companies-that-have-great-products

How Can Social Sources Influence SEO?

Direct Effect for Twitter / Facebook

http:/googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/06/our-new-search-index-caffeine.htmlhttp://www.seomoz.org/blog/tweets-effect-rankings-unexpected-case-study

Possible Effects from LinkedIn / Google Buzz

http://searchengineland.com/how-to-use-linkedin-to-generate-business-44330

Influence the Influencers to Link + Share

http://news.ycombinator.com/

Create Direct Links in Social Profiles/Publishers

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/your-profile-just-got-a-whole-lot-snazzier

Clickstream Data

http://www.flickr.com/photos/dullhunk/3677405185/

Where to Participate on the Social Web

Facebook

http://www.facebook.com/SEOmoz

Twitter

http://twitter.com/seomoz

LinkedIn

http://www.linkedin.com/company/seomoz

YOUTube

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k7BWCgvebdI

StumbleUpon

http://stumbleupon.com

Wikipedia

http://wikipedia.org

Blogs

http://blogsearch.google.com/

Forums

http://boardreader.com/

Social News Sites

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/reddit-stumbleupon-delicious-and-hacker-news-algorithms-exposed

Q+A Sites

http:/googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/06/our-new-search-index-caffeine.htmlhttp://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/question_and_answer_sites.php

Document Sharing Sites

http://scribd.com, http://docstoc.com and http://slideshare.net

Emerging Social Properties

http://www.foursquare.com

Emerging Social Properties

http://namesake.com

Emerging Social Properties

http://path.com

Emerging Social Properties

http://trunk.ly

Best Practices for Social Marketing

Start with Great Content People Will Want to Share

http://www.seomoz.org/dp/engineer-page

Use Sharing (and SEO) Friendly Formats

http://www.google.com/search?q=refer+an+engineer

Choose the Right Communities

http://careers.stackoverflow.com/jobs/10371/wanted-software-engineers-reward-12-000-seomoz

Create Robust Profiles

https://profiles.google.com/randfish/about

Be Consistent Across Mediums

Hot tip – search for other strong social participants in your industry to find profile opportunities

Contribute High Quality Content

http://www.quora.com/SEO/What-techniques-do-websites-use-to-game-the-Google-search-engine

Link Drop Authentically

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/googles-farmer-update-analysis-of-winners-vs-losers

Be Cautious With Anchor Text

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/11/business/media/11search.html

Create + Leverage Offline Relationships

http://www.flickr.com/photos/seomoz/sets/72157625661324746/

Examples of GreatSocial Media Marketing in Action

Virgin America

http://adage.com/article/digital/virgin-america-values-twitter-facebook-tv/148795/

Old Spice

http://mashable.com/2010/07/15/old-spice-social-media-campaign/

Mixtent

http://www.mixtent.com

Unbounce

http://www.unbounce.com

Oyster Hotels

http://www.oyster.com/hotels/photo-fakeouts/

Great Case Studies from Radian6

http://www.radian6.com/resources/library/category/case-studies/

Q+ARand Fishkin, CEO & Co-Founder, SEOmoz

• Twitter: @randfish

• Blog: www.seomoz.org/blog

• Email: rand@seomoz.org

You can now try SEOmoz PRO Free!http://www.seomoz.org/freetrial

Summary of This Presentation

Using Social Media to Drive Traffic + Search Rankings:

• The Source of Social Media’s Rise and Value

• How Social Media Can Add Value to a Company

• How Social Media Can Influence Search Engine Rankings

• Where + How to Participate in Social Media Marketing

• Examples of Great Social Campaigns