These days a potential client coming to your door wants to know two things: 1) Can you put my website at the top of search for my relevant keywords, and 2) How soon can you make it happen? While we all would like to have the crystal ball that tells us when to expect the fruits of our SEO labors to bloom, answering either of these questions can’t occur without some heavy explanation into how search engine optimization works. As you win the confidence of clients and take on the tasks, you might find utlizing social media is a good way to expedite some goals, but what happens when you take on too much work?
Recently we scored phenomenal success with a client by creating a Facebook page that attracted nearly 2,500 fans in less than a month! That the client practically sells itself – a southern travel destination – helped enormously, but the fixes we made to the site allow us to update with pertinent information without having to log into every single network profile we set up. As you take charge of more accounts, knowing the shortcuts to take when promoting websites can be a boon to your own business.
RSS is Your Friend
The beauty of syndicating content is that once you place it in a primary spot, usually a blog, you can set up a feed practically anywhere else. If you have a client for which heavy article marketing is conducive, you can set up a weblog with RSS capability (WordPress and Blogger, for two), and use the content to feed an accompanying Twitter account and Facebook page. Squidoo, a growing social network for business users, also accepts multiple feeds into their pages.
Maintaining a blog for a client, too, permits the use of widget to bring in supplemental content that can be helpful for blended search. Feed the blog with RSS or XML links from video sites like YouTube, plant the client’s social bookmarking links from Delicious or pictures from Flickr.
Essentially, one task for an SEO client could look like this:
Article posted to off-site hosted blog > fed to Facebook page, Twitter, Squidoo lens, and RSS widget embedded on main site.
Depending on the business involved, more specialized networks may permit feeds. A good SEO trick for a book author would be to sign up for Amazon.com’s AmazonConnect program and feed a blog into that client’s page.
The only caveat to this approach: it is advise to check up periodically on the social pages and profiles you create. You can’t always rely on e-mail to notify you when a visitor makes a comment or when somebody tries to spam your space. Plan your course, monitor your progress, and you will find you can become quite adept at juggling multiple SEO clients through social media.
