Most times when we hear the term SEO we simply link it to just search engine optimization but there is a new concept called Social SEO which deals with how various social networks understand the content on your site. Different Social networks have different ways and formats of interpreting the content on your website and so you have to specially optimize your website content to at least suit the major social networks.
For example, Facebook uses the Open Graph tags to understand your website parameters like the URL, descriptions, tags etc. Twitter uses Twitter Cards and Google+ uses the Google Authorship markup. Every webmaster should understand this concept of Social SEO and implement it on every website so as to fully take advantage of its features in getting the best out of the social networks.
Social media signal is a very important search engine ranking factor and optimizing your website to display correctly when your post is share on the social networks could be the needed difference to succeeding as a blogger. Before I learnt of this Social SEO, I struggled for awhile. When I share posts on Facebook, it may not display with the right thumbnail image, or it may not show the title or description at all, same with Google+ and Twitter.
When you optimize your web pages with relevant information in prescribed formats, you can attract massive traffic through the social media networks. So the question now is how does one optimize a web page for optimum Social SEO? Of course it will be difficult to manually optimize all the web pages for optimum Social SEO. Let’s look at some of the things we will need to optimize if we are to attract the right social media audience/traffic.
Meta Tag:
The Meta tag is the main text that describes your web page. The Meta tag is a very important on-page SEO element that should be optimized for proper Social SEO. When your post is share, the Meta tag represents the title of the shared post, so ensure to keep it below 70 characters.
Meta Description:
The meta description provides the description of the content of the web page and as much as it is important for search engines on search engine result pages to display preview snippets for a web page it is also important in Social SEO where it will also serve as the description for your article when your web page is shared on Social networks. It is best to keep it between 150 -160 characters.
Featured Images:
Try as much as possible to use featured images in your articles as this will serve as thumbnails when your post is shared on Social networks. One can easily get attracted to the image and decide to check out the full post.
Social SEO Tools you should use:
Facebook Open Graph:
Once a page is shared, liked or recommended on Facebook, the first thing Facebook does is to look for the Open Graph tags from where it pulls all the required information it needs to properly display the post on Facebook. So I recommend if you are not using the Facebook Open Graph, quickly install the Facebook Meta tags Plugin on your site now.
Twitter Cards:
The Twitter Cards makes it possible for you to attach media experiences to tweets that link to your content. Twitter cards will simply add some few html lines to your Tweets. So if you are not using the Twitter Cards yet, simply install the plugin now or if you are already using the WordPress SEO plugin, simply go to the Social tab and add your Twitter username under Twitter. You can read more about Twitter cards here.
Google Authorship Markup:
Google Authorship Markup will simply include your author information in search results when your web pages appear on search results. This will have your Google+ profile display along with the search result.
You can find out how to achieve this from an earlier post I published on this blog titled “How I claimed my blog’s Google authorship and its benefits”.
Must Read: Role Of Social Media In Promoting Your Business
Social SEO is very vital if you are hoping to make any impact with your site on the Social networks, a well optimized web page will attract massive social media traffic. Have your optimized your website for Social SEO? Do you find this post interesting? What is your view about Social SEO? If you have any questions to ask concerning Social SEO please use the comment form below to ask, I will be very glad to answer your questions. Remember to subscribe to my RSS feed.
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SEO is important when you want to get good positions in search engines. Currently I am not using SEO on my blog, I’m focusing on writing good content and getting more bloggers interactions. That’s not to say that SEO is not important to me, but I’d rather write for my readers rather than for search engines. Good article anyway. I’ll try the tools provided by you. Thanks for sharing.
Thanks for bringing to light Social SEO! Up until now I had never heard of such a concept. I guess in the 21st century to stay a head of the curve it’s mandatory to keep abreast of new information in order to succeed.
Thanks for your comment…Social SEO is very important since social signal is a very important ranking factor.
Social SEO though a new concept already has its root on the SEO core…you should try it.
Nice tips have read first time about “facebook open graph and Twitter cards, now going to install Facebook meta tags plugin according to your suggestion”, thanks for the tip.
Those Social SEO tools are really necessary so the various social networks can inteprete your content correctly.
In as much SEO is hard, it is a good thing for someone to optimize its site. Google and other search brings a lot of traffic to one site and should not be ignore. Thanks for the post
As much as SEO is important, Social SEO is also important because it will definitely improve your social media signal which will directly affect your search engine ranking.