SEO Checklist For Social Media Marketer's

Normally in the SEO world, links are like money in that the larger the bill (more authority), the more powerful it is. So for a long time, most SEOs blew off links from social sites like Twitter and Facebook since they didn't have much direct SEO value because the links are almost always nofollowed [learn more about nofollow]. Now that we know that Google and Bing use Twitter and Facebook to influence regular search results, it's time to start thinking about how the person in charge of Social Media can start to think like an SEO as well.



Keyword Research



The best place to start is with the Google Adwords Keyword Tool. You can start by inputting a couple keywords you think searchers will be looking for to find your content. Then the tool will show you estimated (e.s.t.i.m.a.t.e.d.) monthly traffic numbers for those keywords plus others that it thinks are similar. The keywords you choose will come into play as you craft your tweets and Facebook updates, plus when you look at the Title tag and meta description (discussed more below). We ran a test to determine which would get a page to rank faster, lots of tweets, or lots of direct inbound links to a page. As of right now (about a month later) the Tweeted version ranks #1 for "ending hunger sierra leone" while the regular linked to version is lost in the shuffle. Although we still have more analysis to do, and more tests to run, this is a pretty big indication that tweets can influence rankings (possibly) more than links!



Social Segments For Tracking



Before you even get started on your campaign it's important to have your tracking all set up. You probably already have a specific way you're tracking URLs (more on that below) but what about setting up an easy way to see all "Social" traffic at one time. About how to Segment Social Traffic in Google Analytics it will walk you through the steps of setting this up.



URL Shorteners



When determining which URL shortener to use remember that you want a shortener that will do a 301 redirect from the short URL to yours. That way you can keep as much of that link juice flowing to your own site as possible. Also, be sure to use one that gives you some analytics about clicks and such, like bit.ly.



Content Easily Linkable



As a master in getting your content shared on the social networks, have you also thought about ways to build direct links to your content as well? I know for me personally, we saw a spike in social sharing once we (finally) added sharing buttons for Twitter, Facebook and Stumbleupon. But what about adding widgets and embeds to help build links to your page/site.

Canonicalize



SEOs use to make sure that the search engines only see one URL for a specific page. For social sharing this is something to think about when you're setting up the tracking for your social shares. Whether you use Google Analytics tracking, or get tweets from an RSS feed, you're going to have URL tracking variables appended to the URL.

Rel=Canonical Tag



Using the rel=canonical tag you'd point this at the URL without the tracking coded added to the end. Using the example above,





if your tagged URL is:



http://seobiginners.blogspot.com/2011/01/create-content-link-bait-seo-tips.html



Then the rel=canonical looks like this:



link rel="canonical" href="http://seobiginners.blogspot.com/"



301 Redirect



Many SEOs will claim that this is the "proper" way to do it, and most likely is. Unfortunately it's not always the easiest to implement especially if you're in charge of Social Media and don't have quick access to the dev team.



Page Load Time



Can your site handle the load if the campaign goes viral? Obviously you're going to make sure that the site won't buckle under the pressure of all the awesome social traffic you're sending it's way, but what if it slows it down? You could have an infographic that takes a long time to load, or unnecessary JavaScript slowing you down.



Title Tags - Use Keywords



Remember earlier in the checklist you did a little research to see which keywords would be most beneficial to use? Now it's time to put them into play! It's too easy to use fancy shmancy titles in your social content because it's a bit catchier than a typical "optimized" title. But there are a few things to remember: 1. The Title tag is thought to be the highest on-page ranking factor and having your keywords toward the beginning of the title is best. 2. If your social efforts can help get a page ranking in Google, that title tag is going to show up in the results and



Description Meta



The meta description isn't going to help with getting a page's rankings but in the social world it's often times the text that is automatically pulled into a social site. The best example is Facebook. When you add a link to your Facebook wall, it automatically pulls the title tag, meta description and let's you choose an image. Think of the meta description as a way to entice users to click on your link whether the user is searching on Google or checking out a page you shared on Facebook