Making Social Media Optimization Work for You - Read This Before Submitting a Link
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As with anything else, there are things you should do and things you should avoid doing if you’re going to promote your business through social media. I’ve already explained the first one: know your audience, know where they’re likely to hang out, and know the terrain on which you plan to do your promoting. So let’s move to a short list of things you should avoid doing. I owe thanks to Eric Ward over at LinkMoses for posting these at the end of 2006. They’re still relevant today.
First, don’t create a bunch of “sock puppet” accounts at sites that allow voting just so you can vote your submissions to the top. Yes, you get more traffic if your post reaches the top of the first page and stays there for a while. But the practice reeks of spam. I’m not a practicing SEO, but if I were, I’d probably think of it as a black hat technique. There are sites that will delete your posts for doing something like that, which is counterproductive. So don’t do it.
In the same vein, don’t try to get tons of other people to vote your submissions to the top. In this case, it’s more a matter of degree. As an example, when I post a link to Searchles I’ll sometimes send it to one or two site members that I think might be interested in its content. One or two is fine; four or five is probably fine too. When you start getting into double and triple digits, however, you’re “stuffing the ballot box,” as Eric Ward would put it. That’s an abuse of the system.
Finally, when you decide upon tags for a link, more specific is better than less specific. Remember everything you’ve learned about the “long tail” of keywords – fewer people search for them and fewer companies compete for them, but they bring in higher conversion rates. The same thing holds true for tags on links. Ward uses the example of a dermatologist who specializes in treating acne scars. “There are 37,000 posts tagged Acne over at Technorati, but only 356 tagged Acne scars,” he notes. Offer real content in a smaller niche and you stand a better chance of being heard above the noise.
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