SEO Essentials: Social Media Engagement

The growth of social media in the last decade has been phenomenal. We’ve seen websites such as Facebook, Twitter and Tumblr become titans in the social networking game. As much as we all hoped they wouldn’t affect our SEO engagements, these sites have had a huge impact on search engine rankings. We would all like it if we could optimize the content of our sites and then just call it a day, but, unfortunately, social engagement is a daily event.

Google expects businesses to keep open lines of communication with their customers. A site’s presence on social media is a determining factor in their search engine rankings. You could work for weeks on optimizing the content of a site, but your results may not be all that spectacular if you don’t continue to push content towards your site through social media. 

The key to ensuring you’re keeping up with social media is frequent activity within your social media communities. You should be posting quality information on a regular basis, reaching out to your followers and providing them with answers about your company. Today’s consumer wants to know insider information about your product/service and Google knows this. If you have a Facebook page, don’t make posting a monthly, or even a weekly thing. If you want to keep up on one of the major social media platforms, post content every couple of days and ensure that your respond to comments made by your followers. This connection with your users will do wonders for your social media prowess.

Another key component of social media engagement is receiving “likes”, “+1s”, “retweets”, etc. By making a conscious effort to obtain these, you’re preparing yourself to post con

tent that’s information rich and captures your audience’s attention. An easy trick is to make your content comical. By posting something that could bring a follower joy or even a laugh, you’re ensuring your profile’s popularity. Even further, they’ll make sure to share it with other people, increasing your total reach.

Aside from SEO, increased activity and presence on social media has other benefits. For your business, this could be a win-win situation – you’re increasing your ranking with SEO tactics while performing minor digital marketing. Essentially you’re hitting two birds with one stone. In today’s business world, there’s no reason for you not to increase your presence on social media.

Sites like Facebook and Twitter are a great start, but make sure you know which site your target audience prefers. Sure Facebook is the ringleader, but not everybody uses it. Your niche consumer might be hiding in the crevices of Reddit or Tumblr. Never stop testing which SM outlet brings your site the most attention.

Of course, the greatest advice we can give is to consult with an expert in SEO. If you are attempting a DIY SEO campaign, you may miss out on some great optimizing tips and tricks that we may have to offer. If you are interested in consulting with us, contact us through our website!

Dental Digital SEO (DDS)

Dental SEO help in today's world.

Why Developing a Quality Website is Essential

Have you ever gone to a website and thought to yourself, “Wow…I can’t believe this is actually a website.” It’s fair to say that we've all shared that experience and have secretly judged a website for its lack of quality content. Well, if you didn't know, so does Google. They continuously scour the Internet for websites that focus on quality over quantity. Google’s bots have become so sophisticated that when they “crawl” your website, they can distinguish between information-rich, user-friendly and lack-luster content.

This is important when it comes to search engineoptimization (SEO). Many of the original pioneers of SEO, to their misfortune, believed that a website’s presence on a search engine result page (SERP) was determined by the number of back-links pointing back to their site. As you can imagine, it was a free-for-all with companies embedding, purchasing and manufacturing links. Very little focus was spent on the content of the website itself.

This went on for some time as websites spread their links far and wide until Google finally laid down the hammer creating the Panda Algorithm. Websites that were practicing these “Black Hat” techniques were severally penalized. Many websites disappeared from SERPs all together while some companies even went bankrupt! With this game changer, Google completed shook up the SEO world and they have continued to do so by creating additional algorithms focused on enhancing the user search experience and eliminating poor websites from results.

With so many rules and guidelines, how do you create a site with an optimal SEO foundation? Well Google has published plenty of advisory articles and created tools (ie. Google Webmasters) which provide “White-Hat” techniques to follow. With that said, the one item that never fails is providing users fresh, quality content. Why do people use the Internet? They are looking for something engaging or for information. Think of it this way, if your content wouldn't be seen as “excellent” in the eyes of Betty and Joe Schmo, Google won’t see it as “excellent” either.

Following these basic tips below will help get your website on the right path to creating quality content and establishing a solid SEO foundation:

• No SPAM, hidden links or purchasing of links
• Ensure content is information rich and original. Don’t duplicate content among pages.
• Use key-phrases that users would actually search for via a search engine
• Keep page copy between 250 – 1000 words
• Avoid Flash components

If you want your website to show up on the first page of a search result, our best advice would be to consult somebody who eats, sleeps and breathes SEO. There are hundreds of consultants out their willing to help you, but finding one who specializes in your market is crucial. At Dental Digital SEO, we provide the SEO help you need to bring new dental customers into your practice the honest and credible way - by providing your dental customers value through your website by using white-hat only SEO strategies.

Dental Digital SEO (DDS)

Dental SEO help in today's world.