SEO Tutorial

Social media isn't just about staying in touch with your existing users. It can also be a powerful engine for driving loads of new visitors to your website. For this to work, you must have a strong plan for building your social media exposure. Using social media for traffic generation is not the same as using it for follow up. You must implement specific strategies.

Here’s how to do it.

Use Facebook to Auto-Post Comments to People’s Walls

Use WordPress Facebook plugins or Facebook’s API to host your website’s comment system. Why? If someone posts a comment on your article, that comment also automatically gets posted to their Facebook feed. You instantly get exposure to all their friends.

Facebook comments are also much more intuitive than a lot of other commenting systems. This is a great way to get a lot of Facebook exposure quickly.

Connect With Other Influences

One of the most powerful ways to get more traffic is by leveraging other people’s social media channels. One of the best ways to do this is to create content pieces that involve them.

For example, you might create a Top X list for your industry. In online marketing, it might look something like “Best Tips from the Top 7 Online Marketers in 2013.” Compile a list of seven people who you want to network with, along with their best tips. Publish that blog post.

Then reach out to those page owners and let them know what you posted. There’s a very good chance they’ll share your content.

You can also do interviews with people in your industry, or offer them the opportunity to do guest posts. This tends to work with “2nd tier” bloggers and website owners. People at the very top usually don’t do interviews or guest posts unless you have a huge audience. Smaller influences often jump at every chance they get.

Tag and Track in Google Analytic

Tag all your social media links. This will allow you to track where all your traffic comes from. Google Analytic does try to attribute traffic even without tagging, but it’s not as accurate. Tagging your links lets you know exactly how much traffic you get from social media.

Use this to identify your top performing channels. For example, you might start off by testing Twitter, Facebook and YouTube. After a while, you might find that only Facebook results in any conversions. By tagging your links, you’ll figure out what’s working and what’s not very quickly. You can then focus all your attention only on the avenues that are actually bringing in traffic and revenue.

Leverage “Like” Walls

Like “walls” allow you to give high value content to people only after they've liked your page. Use this to incentive people to follow you. The more likes you have, the more social proof you have. Each like also appears on that person’s news feed, bringing you more traffic.

Get People on Your Email Newsletter

As powerful as social media is, it’s nowhere near as powerful as email. In Facebook, Edge Rank determines how often your posts show up (it can be as seldom as 10%!) On Twitter, you’re always at risk of being flooded out by other people’s messages. The only way to make sure all your content gets in front of your audience is through email.

Use social media channels to drive traffic to opt-in pages. Get people’s email addresses, so you can build a strong audience of people who consume all your content. Then use your email newsletter to send people back to your social channels and generate even more engagement.

If you follow these tips, you’ll start getting a ton of social media traffic very quickly. If you combine these strategies, the results will be even more powerful.

WHAT’S YOUR BEST STRATEGY FOR GETTING SOCIAL MEDIA TRAFFIC? WHAT’S WORKED AND WHAT HASN'T WORKED FOR YOU?

 

Keyword Research & SEO Tools

Favs

Google Keyword Suggestion Tool – Get keyword suggestions and search volumes
Google Webmaster Tools – Learn what your site needs to succeed
XML Sitemap Submitter – Submit XML sitemap to all 3 search engines at once
Keyword Density Checker – Onpage keyword density checker by David Naylor
Quintura Search Engine – Visually see which keywords are associated with a search term

Keyword & Industry Research Tools

Google Insights – Historic Keyword Research Tool
Search Combination Tool – create a combination of terms to search on the search engines fast
SEM Rush – Research specific keywords or domains/competitors’ traffic and rankings
Spyfu – Keyword and competition spy tool for keyword research
Lexipedia – Learn words associated with any word/phrase for LSI (antonyms, synonyms, etc)
Keyword Spy
Google Trends
AdWords Suggestion Tool

SEO Analysis Tools

Code-to-Text Ratio – Compare percentage of text to percentage of coding on any given website
Search Engine Spider Simulator – Check how a site looks to search engine spiders
BizziBuzz Quick Report – (just replace “jameseo.com w/your site in url, or signup) site analysis tool
Website Grader – In-depth Analysis of your website (email required)
Review My Web – Quick SEO review of website (email required)
SEO Analyzer Tool – Onpage SEO analysis by SEO Workers
Keyword Density Checker – Another keyword density checker, by Webconfs
SEO Workers – SEO Analysis Tool w/ Google Matt Cutts Explanations
http://www.plagspotter.com/prices/

Other Website/SEO Tools

LedBetter Submit URL Tool – Free Search Engine Submissions Tools (use spam email)
Site Analytics Traffic Tool – Domain Traffic Research Tool by Compete.com
Whois Domain Tool – Whois and domain research tool
Rank Checker – Check the rankings for up to three keywords
PageRank Verifier – Check the real PageRank of a website
Pingomatic – Update different search engines that your blog has been updated
Ping FeedBurner – Feed Updater by Google’s Feedburner

Tool Sites

Webconfs SEO Tools – Similar page checker, redirect check, keyword density check & more
SEO Chat Tools – Domain age check, meta analyzer, page size, keyword cloud & more
Bing Webmaster Tools – Tools for webmasters by Bing (WannaBe Google Webmaster Tools)
http://ubersuggest.org/