Advanced SEO and Social Integration by Roy Morejon and Brandon Uttley, Command Partners

Roy and Brandon are two of Charlotte’s top social media gurus. There presentation is on: There are a few ways to think about SEO and how it connects to other pieces of your marketing strategy. Increasingly, social media and SEO are becoming more closely aligned. A lot of the work we do in social get rewarded with more exposure for our businesses in the search engines. Even Google is making big efforts lately to focus on higher quality content and content that people react to in positive ways. How we rank in search engines can be an integral part of our inbound marketing system.

• Content Marketing is the backbone of all social media and search engine optimization today. 
• Social Sharing is Driving Growth
• We are in the midst of a massive shift online from search and intent to social sharing.

How do you compete with strong sites? A fresh burst of links may provide exceptional value. It will allow a page to overtake a high authority website for a short or even a long period of time. SEO is an amplifier and catalysts to social media and content marketing.

Where to Start?

• You need to make sure your website is suitable so that google can see your website properly.
• Google now has social analytics. Need to use the Beta Version of Google Analytics. You can see Social Engagement, Social Actions, Social Pages. For more information go to http://bit.ly/gasocial
• Google Profile Integration – Google allows you to see what “they see” in regards to content you are sharing. See google.com/s2/search/social.

What’s Working? Most Important Social Media Factors

• Trust Factors – Everything you do online should be done to increase the trust others have in you. 
• Google – Social Authority – An author’s authority on social networking sites is influencing traditional SEO. Social shows authority, not relevance.
• What are the Social Signals? How Google and others are quantifying social networking authority as a ranking factor within traditional search engine results pages. 
• Facebook Optimization - Fill out all page profile information completely. Because of Facebooks Social Graph all information on Facebook has the potential to be indexed. 
• Twitter - Tweeted links get discovered and indexed quickly.  Tweets from high-authority accounts get lots of RTs act as links (Google & Bing)
• Slideshare - Slideshare is great to use. Very good for long-tail keywords. Multiple opportunities for keyword placement. 

Jeanne Hopkins from HubSpot had a great introduction. It’s all about leads at HubSpot. 45K Leads last month. Wow!

It’s time to Rethink Marketing! Inbound Marketing is a fundamental shift in how we relate to potential customers. Jeanne says “Stop Pushing”. People are on the “do not call list”, they skip ads on TV, they unsubscribe, etc.  ”Start Attracting” leads through relevant, useful, easy-to-find content. 

Stop forcing and start responding to how people make decisions. Adapt to their interests and timelines. Inbound marketing you pull, earned, own, attract and asset. Hubspot blogged 6 months before they started company. They are still receiving leads from blog posts 6 years ago. You don’t want to be “the ad”. You want to be the “content” around the ad. Publish everything! 55% more website visitors for companies that blog. 

Tips for Content

• Talk about the industry, not yourself
• Use lots of different media