Is Social Media Another Form Of SEO?
There’s an interesting article at WebProNews about the relationship between SEO and social media. It’s actually an interview between Chris Chrum and four SEOs who use social media. As readers of Search Engine Optimization Journal know, it’s a topic close to our heart. We won’t bore you with a repeat of our own ideas here, but we’ll make some observations about Chris Crum’s interview.
First, it’s interesting the different takes the interviewees have on the subject. As a summary, here are some pull out ideas from the interview:
- Social media marketing builds global link popularity
- Create brand awareness through targeted social media marketing
- It’s all about reputation management and branding
- Use Facebook and similar sites for distribution of high level content
- Get your best content in front of the right people and they will link to it
- Twitter is best for specialized content that is engaging
- Build a targeted community to market to
- Social sites are great for parasitic hosting
- Use social media for market research
The most interesting of these concepts is the one presented by Joe Whyte called parasitic hosting. The idea is to put your high value content on one of the social media sites, by building a Facebook page, for instance, or a Squidoo lens. These pages can rank highly for your search terms in and of themselves. By having those pages rank high in the SERPs you can drive indirect traffic to your main site by hosting page on other sites you do not own. Great concept for search engine optimization.
4 Responses to “Is Social Media Another Form Of SEO?”
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Social media should get the attention of publishers and website owners. Social media sites are no longer there just to meet friends, but for business purposes as well.
Parasitic marketing, sounds like what Howie Schwartz was doing years ago. In fact it is. Howie should get credit for this, not this guy. Howie was using this in 2005.
2006 Google knows spam and slammed this kind of BS starting with Squidoo in 2006. Google just slapped down social bookmarking spam Christmas 2008. For this to work and pass any SEO it needs to get incoming real links. I still use this but it has to be done right.
Typical SEO guys talking about social media and have no idea what is really going on.(not you Justin or Nick)
BTW the link above goes to the wrong WebProNews story, but here is the BS this guy called parasitic hosting. Are you kidding me? Howie has been talking about this in 2005 and using it quietly before that.
Don’t get me wrong, I am no black hatter like Howie. I am 100% whitehat and so are my products. But Howie should get credit for this and I improved on it with my products in 2007.
How full of crap are SEO guys when it comes to social media? For the last two years EVERY SEO guy BUT Nick here, Jeff Smith and Jennifer Horowitz have been telling me I am wrong. That social media does not influence Google. Wrong O Mary Lou.
Want proof? Get to the top of YouTube for a search term, you will rank top ten in Google search results for the same term with your YouTube video.
Simon Ford is kicking my butt with this right now and we have been waring over a term for weeks. It has been fun and we both learned even more than we knew before. If we took what I know and Simon Ford uses now to promote a business we would really have something.
YouTube rankings come almost completely from social indicators, but this guy Todd wants to talk about hosting stuff on Facebook? Simon Ford or Mari Smith is who you should be listening to about that, they know how to do that right.
If Todd knew what he was doing he would be talking about Google Friend Connect that is the social platform running YouTube friends lists right now.
Meanwhile this guy Todd Mailcoat is ripping off something Howie invented and renaming it Parasitic Marketing. Justin thank for bringing this to light so I can set the record straight.
If you guys really want to get the true social media truth out, interview Simon Ford and Mari Smith, they know how to use social media especially Facebook. You already know who knows Google Friend Connect and social bookmarking, just look back on what I have guest blogged here.
@Chris Lang – As always, Thanks Chris for your comment and additional information!
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I went and tracked down the right link for you Justin, here is it is.
http://www.webpronews.com/topnews/2009/03/25/where-social-media-fits-into-the-seo-equation#comment-78073
You are right and these guys have the right ideas, but Parasitic Hositing is Howie’s stuff recycled.