No one will be surprised to hear that social networking is as much a part of younger web users' lifestyle as their attachment to cell phones. What is interesting is the rate at which these networks can grow with little consideration for the quality of the connection. A student entering college can have hundreds of so-called friends from that college before she even sets foot on campus. According to the Millennials interviewed in a recent workshop, there is safety in numbers. Having a hundred friends on your social network infers social acceptance or status.
For this reason, the number of connections one has in an individual network has value for search marketing. Think of the size of a person's network as being his own personal marketing department. A lot of contacts equals instant rank in a social or business network.
Equally important is the degree of trust between connections. Trust establishes a person's longevity as a member of the network, and suggests integrity. Think of the strength of a person's connections as his customer service department.
Because measuring trust level between members in social and business networks is difficult and not conducive to display, however, what ends up being evaluated is impression of popularity based on number of connections.
One way to manipulate perceived popularity is by deliberately inserting content into these networks. Search engines never get tired of relevant incoming links, and social networks provide a place for link-building activities. Manual link building can be monotonous, but also can be rewarding for a brand seeding these networks in that it can bring it both rankings and traffic.
There are many creative ways of link building, referred to as link-baiting, to get people to link to your brand site without you even having to ask. Start with engaging, original content. In the context of social networking, use a combination of a blog, article directories, press releases, Squidoo, Wet Paint, Hubpages, paid links and online charity donations. If you are surprised that online charity donations will up your rank, you're not alone. But the ".org" status of charity sites is highly regarded by Google -- and thus gets an almost immediate indexing to the search pages.
Below is further insight into how to construct a campaign and what results can be generated from it.
Let's assume you are trying to attract attention to your product or brand site and build dozens of relevant links in the process. Creating hundreds of new links is the whole point of a link-bait campaign. These campaigns are similar to PR campaigns in which the quality of the content and the distribution list are the critical success elements.
Step 1: Research your market and develop content that is relevant to this audience. In many cases these articles launch on Digg.com, which is visited primarily by young tech-savvy males. The choice of a catchy title that would immediately appeal to that target market is critical.
Step 2: Create a page on the main site domain that looks like an ordinary article page. In other words, it should not have any branding elements or headers. For example, www.sitename.com/article-location. The reason for this is that you want any links to the page that result from the campaign to point to your domain. You don't want the page to look like part of your site because audiences will assume it's a bait and switch. Use images where appropriate.
Step 3: Invite all your friends and colleagues, individually -- not in a mass spam email -- to Digg the article. Start with your own personal and business networks and then expand to other acquaintances and friends-of-friends as much as possible. This is the hardest and most laborious part of the link-bait campaign. It can take hours to send out all the individual emails and chat notifications with the link embedded.
Step 4: Be patient and watch the Diggs grow and the traffic swell.
As you write your next blog posting, comment, article or press release, heed the words of the experts and do not get greedy. Make sure to follow a rule of thumb to optimize for one phrase per content item in these socially connected sites, and then never have more than two links to your site or product. It is generally agreed that the more outgoing links a web page or a press release has, the more diluted the effect becomes.
Websites like MySpace and Facebook are only relevant or applicable to some marketing strategies, and even then require startling creativity in order to make any difference. Choose your off-site content pages carefully. Not only could they be a misplaced marketing effort, but the cost of maintaining such a site with up-to-date and relevant content can be exhausting.
What are your thoughts about using social networks to achieve SEO goals? Let me know in the comments below.
Richard Banfield is CEO of Fresh Tilled Soil, a web design and marketing company based in Boston, MA.
