This is a guest post by David Cowling of SocialMediaNews.com.au
As bloggers, we are always looking for new ways to increase the level of traffic and readers to our websites. You may have a great product to sell or you just monetize you blog through display advertising—increasing your traffic to the next level is sure to increase your potential blog earnings.
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1. Use social media distribution tools to send out your RSS feed
As a blogger, you want to promote your RSS feed as much as possible. Getting other websites to display your feed can result in increased visitors clicking through and viewing your posts.
This can also result in back-links to your blog, which results in better search engine rankings. So how can we ensure our RSS feed is getting the attention and exposure it deserves?
You can take advantage of social media distribution platforms, such as Hellotxt.com or Ping.fm, which can distribute your RSS content to over 100+ different social media websites around the world.
These sites allow you to save in your RSS feed, and then they can automatically post your content to your social networking accounts whenever you write a new blog post. This is all done automatically behind the scenes so there is no extra work for you every time you create a new blog post.
While distribution tools like this can get your content in-front of a whole new readership, I don’t think signing up to every single social networking site that is integrated with these tools is the smartest idea. A better approach is to sign up with the social networking sites your readers and audience are most likely to use themselves.
2. SEO your social media profiles
We are now leveraging maximum traffic from our various social media profiles with the help of posting automation tools. The next step is to drive even more traffic to our social media profiles, which will in turn go onto our blogs.
A smart way to drive more traffic to your social profiles is actually through Search Engine Optimization—yes, that’s right, SEOing your social media profiles. This is a fairly new idea where we are mixing the power of social media with SEO.
Facebook Fan page SEO
One of the only parts of your Facebook pages that are seen by the search engines is the About box.
This is only a small section of the page, so make this product-descriptive if you are selling something, or if you are promoting a particular website, include your URL and primary keywords.
Whilst the URL won’t be clickable, this will display to search engine users, and correct keywords will also push your Fan page higher in the rankings. While that increase may only be a small amount, every bit counts.
If you have other Fan pages on Facebook, link them all together. In some ways, Facebook is like a big social search engine, and they will crawl the links between your pages.
When filling out the Info tab on your Fan page, make sure the information you include is keyword-rich, and again has some reference to your URL and/or your products.
The search engine inside Facebook is not just for people—we now have the option to search “everything,” which includes Fan pages and groups. Having keyword-optimized pages will help you show higher in the Facebook search results.
Twitter profile SEO
When you are creating your Twitter profile, take note that your username actually becomes the Title tag of your page. Since Twitter is so highly trusted by Google, many profiles rank highly in organic Google searches just because of a keyword-rich username, which becomes a keyword-rich URL.
If you decide to use your full name as your username, be aware that your Twitter profile may rank first when someone Googles your name.
If you’ve uploaded a picture to Twitter, the search engine also uses the exact image name of your picture. So you could further optimize your Twitter profile by using a keyword-rich image file name, (e.g. your-name-your-primary-keywords.jpg).
LinkedIn profile SEO
As LinkedIn is a pure business social network, its developers have made a number of tweaks to help your profile stand out, particularly in the search engines. Your name, LinkedIn headline, current location, and the industry you have selected for your profile are placed into the Meta Description tag on your profile page.
That’s often why when you Google someone, their LinkedIn profile may often be the first social network to appear in the results.
3. Use social groups to promote your topic
To get even more traffic to you blog, consider creating Groups and Discussions on both LinkedIn and Facebook about your blog and products. Facebook and LinkedIn users are generally very active, and if you can get active users in your own group, this will have a positive effect on your blog.
You may actually have a large LinkedIn network but not really sure how to take advantage of it. Create a LinkedIn group about your topic/blog and invite your network to join it. If you can get engaging discussion occurring you are likely to find more professionals in your space join the group. If suitable for your own blog or product, consider the option of an Open Group, where anyone can join and invite others.
As the group administrator, you are able to send LinkedIn messages to all Group members (if they have opted-in to receive notifications when joining the group). This is a great way to push-market to your LinkedIn network, as often, InMails have a high open rate and are not considered as intrusive as other email marketing tactics.
Conclusion
I hope these tips give you some insights into new ways you can leverage traffic from social networking websites to your blog.
If you are a blogger and actively use social networks as a traffic generation source:
- What networks send you the most traffic as a blogger?
- What % of your traffic is coming from these social networks?
- What has been your most shared article? What can you learn from this?
Consider optimizing your profiles to rank higher and get even more profile views and click-through traffic.
This is a guest post by David Cowling from Social Media News Australia.
If you are looking for more Social Media hints and tips check our David Cowling’s blog on Social Media.
I had no idea about the About box and the Info tab on FB being searchable by search engines, will definitely take a look at what I have there, as well as my Twitter profile.
Thanks for the info!
Bernice
The successful woman’s guide to NOT doing it all
I too am amazed to read this. I never thought search engines would go in that deep. I will now update both on Facebook and Twitter. David thanks a lot for highlighting such important tips.
The FB About box information was news to me too. I’ve found that Twitter really drives a lot of visitors to both my blog and Facebook page. It’s really helpful that my blog, website, Twitter account, and Facebook page are all named Trailsnet. It’s easier for people to remember just one word for all the trails network internet/social media sites.
Very usefull. Thank you!
Great tips especially for the point No.1. I’ll try those 2 links that you suggested to spread out the RSS Feed.
But one thing for sure, penetration through social community proved to be so viral if it worked perfectly,
Great post. I did not know about the social media SEO stuff . I will be checking them all out to see how this can help with things… Thanks!
I second what you said about using Linkedin groups – I avoided Linkedin for a long time, and now am realizing the untapped potential of using those groups to get targeted traffic!
I haven’t done much on my linkedin account but it still ranks well for my name despite having other popular people bearing same name.
Facebook is currently my most functional social media, and again, I’m not as serious. SEO has been my thing all the while. It’s time I get more from social media.
Thanks for sharing this resourceful piece..
I run a successful blog about my life with cerebral palsy I am currently sitting within the top five pages for the terms cerebral palsy blog and cerebral palsy blogger on google. one thing I have learned is write for humans worry about the seach engines later one word of advice about twitter write your bio outline the main topic of your blog my bio reads I am a blogger who blogs about my life living with cerebral palsy
also use http://www.friendorfollow.com/ once and a while to clean up your follower list and then a rule of thumb i use faithfully is only follow those who follow me first and syndicate my content via twitter too
hope you will check out my blog
I’ve gotten my biggest traffic spikes from Stumbleupon, actually, but social bookmarking sites have always been somewhat mysterious to me. Their algorithms aren’t very transparent and I feel like a lot of bloggers just start friending/following others and randomly sharing other posts in hopes that it will give their own submissions a boost.
Great tips on Twitter and FB page SEO; I didn’t realize your Twitter username showed up as the title tag of your page! As far as my most shared articles on Twitter, they’ve all come as a result of a retweet by a user with a large following. While optimizing your social profiles for SEO can certainly help increase traffic, building genuine connections with influential people is still the most powerful.
But optimizing those profiles is definitely something all bloggers should be doing; thanks for the post.
Thanks for those simple and effective tips…every little counts. Thank you.
I have no linkedin account.I think should create one. I have used twitter, facebook, stumbleupon a lot
I didn’t know about the About box on Facebook, thanks!
I get a lot of traffic from Stumbleupon and Facebook. Pretty much nothing from Twitter even though I’m more active on Twitter… In the last month… about 40% of my blog traffic comes from social networks.
My most shared post was when I launched my ebook… My network really helped me on this one!
I love the idea of SEO of the social profile for twitter, facebook and linkedin. These are highly trusted sites by Google and rank very well too. So, it is definitely worthwhile to create a proper SEO PROFILE for all of them!
Cheers,
Ming
Thanks for sharing an informative post!
I had no idea about the About Page or the Info on Facebook being searchable by search engines, and infact never paid much attention to the profile to make it searchable. Would surely take care now!
Social media is more like a means of free publicity…if used right. Thanks for the post!
Hi All,
Thanks very much for the comments. As a blogger I’m always looking for new ways to generate more traffic from the main social networking sites, and at the same time looking to portray myself in a more professional manner.
Using Social Bookmarking sites is a totally different ball-game. Maybe I will write a piece soon on how we can leverage these networks.
Thanks,
David
Hi David! Great post. Indeed Social Media traffic is an important part of traffic that bloggers engaging today. Freshly created contents should be save in RSS feeds. I agree to what you said “A better approach is to sign up with the social networking sites your readers and audience are most likely to use themselves.” Most people use facebook and twitter so you should also engage in these social networks. Doing SEO on your social media profile works best as well as creating social groups. As it is free and gives you longer results.
Hi David,
Optimizing your profile makes your job easier.
People interested in what you offer, find you. These folks search you out.
No need to socialize on social media all day long. Develop a passive traffic stream too. Make your presence known by adding value through your blog posts and engaging, and let a well optimized social media profile handle the rest. Advertise how you can help people by clearly stating it via your profile, and make sure you include plenty of rich keywords in the process.
Avoid going over the top with your keyword usage. This is repelling, not attracting.
I’m acting on a few of your tips immediately David. Thanks for sharing with us.
Ryan
Hi Davld, won’t the first strategy you shared result in a lot of duplicate content? That might adversely affect search engine results instead of help it no?
Hi,
No this won’t hurt search engine rankings at all – as the RSS feed (and the Social Media sites) will only be be taking your Post Title and not the body of the advert + it’s a link back to your site (even though ‘nofollow’).
Many SEO experts are suggesting in future Google updates that ‘social signals’ will be incorporated into ranking a website, meaning the more your article gets shared the more benefit this will have to your own SEO. I believe as bloggers we need to keep ahead of the norm in new trends like this so when they do become mainstream we will be ahead of the curve (and thus reap the rewards).
As I’ve said above, only sign-up to the sites where you are likely to interact with your audience. If you sign-up to Social Media sites that don’t fit your niche this could look spammy.
very true! i followed these tips and now making decent amount of visitors from twitter and fb. more u stay active in these networks the more people will come to read you..
social media traffic gives high bounce rate. ( as per my experience)
Social media traffic marketing is great but the systems seem too slow….Is there any procedure or software which can generate the quick traffic?
Great tips.Using Ping.fm is a nice idea .
Also a top tip: don’t be late on the social media…
Nothing worse then your blog-username already taken before you…. For me I was quick enough to get the twitter/youtube/vimeo-usernames dailybits with my small .be blog before the bigger .com blog tried to register them. If you snooze, you lose! ;-)
Great tips – I’ll definitely take another look at my FB about info.
Great post. I am always looking for ways to generate more traffic. I am looking more into SEO with my FB page and LinkedIn profile as I am still learning all about it. Thanks!
After reading your post I went to my FB pages and made some updates. Thank you so much for the wonderful tips. It didn’t even occur to me to optimize my profiles. Now that you’ve said it, it makes perfect sense. Amazing how we internet marketers can miss little things right under our noses. Thank you so much. Just love learning from your posts. Take care!
Hi David!
You are dead on about the groups. Groups, such as on LinkedIn and Facebook, are SO powerful! I also LOVE the questions and answers on FB and LinkedIn. Not only can you ask questions and get awesome responses, but you can answer questions and show yourself as the authority and just plain get involved! :)
I have thought about RSS distribution tools, but haven’t really gotten into them. But now that you’ve linked a couple places, I think I’ll give them a try. :)
Thank you for these great tips!!
the idea of optimize Twitter profile by using a keyword-rich image file name is really new for me. m going to try it now. This tutorial is really worthy as it will benefit you in two ways. traffic from twitter directly and traffic from search engine via twitter., thnks
I’d heard of ping.fm previously but had never got around to checking it out properly – thanks for the reminder!
Thanks for the wonderful post David…Was unaware about the SEO factors of my facebook, twitter and linkedin … Helped me a lot :)
I have somehow not been active on Groups and Discussions on LinkedIn and Facebook. Your tips have encouraged me to do so… thanks!
I use facebook, twitter and they are all linked to my blog posts. I am finding facebook not giving me as much traffic as twitter. I find also with twitter you need to interact with others on the site and then it seems to make traffic for your site. You can’t just sign up for it and have your posts published and expect followers…you need to interact. My facebook is under my actual name but twitter is same name as the blog which I think helps people see they are the same. I just started on linkedin and will look into the groups idea as I do belong to a few of them. Good informative post!
I like your post !
Its really good ! I think social media is one of the best way to generate traffic and I also think that mostly people use Facebook than other social networking websites.
I love that you mentioned Ping.fm as I took inspiration from them…for the tool I’ve created. How’s your social media sanity these days? We have Google+ to add on the list right now and there’s a rumor that Microsoft’s coming up with something soon. You see, keeping all these accounts active for your personal use is just too much, where you have to post updates and all. Imagine if you’re a social media marketer or an entrepreneur keeping multiple accounts; it’s simply a nightmare. I was so overwhelmed that I took on the calling to get the right fix. How can I save time, keep my account updated and spread my post like a real human would? People are smarter these days and it’s no longer cool to simply post looking like another RSS on the Web. Authenticity and trust are called for and it’s only crucial that you spend more time to really listen and talk to them like a real person. That’s what I have fixed and I’m glad I did.
Great post. Thanks for sharing this tip. Being able to have a way to maximize Social Media Traffic to my own blog. Keep it up. Looking forward to reading more from you.
Phenomenal post. Some of the best content I have read in a long time. Cheers.
Thank you for sharing this. Succinct and to the point. We really do need more traffic and thus we do need to be noticed in this great sea of other blogs. Awesome tips.
Twitter profile picture is one way of optimizing the Twitter profile. I will be checking my Facebook account, too.
I use Tribepro. It gives you a place to share other’s blog post to your social bookmarking and networking services and they do the same for you. Not only does it put me out all over the social networks, but It helps me to create buzz for my content that is picked up by Google.