As we all know, SEO is heavily influenced by securing external links to increase search rankings. The more relative and authoritative backlinks you have, the more visibly you will be found in search engines for your primary keywords. This poses an critical question for online marketers: What do you do in order to increase the number of relevant backlinks to your site?

Today, social networks have exponentially increased their presence on the Internet.  The time spent on social media sites is expanding, as over two-thirds of the world’s Internet users are using social networks to varying degrees. What better way than to create buzz through these user-generated content sites? In social media channels content is shared and created over and over, which is a benefit when it comes to incorporating keyword-rich links to your site within such content. These inbound links will increase the link authority of your site, and in time will increase your organic search rankings. While “followed links” are preferred, natural link growth will build a balance of followed and nofollowed links.  The participation and increase in “votes” to your site through brand mentions and social media content will positively impact rankings.

An article in ClickZ shares a few tips on how to easily gain online buzz.  Triangle Direct Media understands that flooding blogs and social networks using only brand promotional content is frowned upon. The key with social media is to actively participate in relative discussions to extend the conversation with a thoughtful comment, while including a relevant link to the client’s site as a useful resource for readers. By creating fresh content within these social media networks, you will increase your brand’s visibility and gain increase inbound links to your web site that helps to improve your organic search rankings. It’s important that brand advertisers recognize and leverage the convergence of social media with search engine optimization.

As marketing tactics are changing, many businesses are overlooking quality search engine optimization because of a lack in understanding of the industry and the complexities involved in effective SEO. Due to the shortage of knowledge in this field, most business executives end up choosing the SEO company who is most cost efficient, instead of which company is most effective in getting results. Executives focus too much on the job title and put too small of a price on SEO skill set when looking for the right company to help drive their business. As an article from Search Engine Watch explains, if SEO is about the effectiveness of organic rankings to drive traffic to your business, then searching through organic listings for an SEO company would be obviously be a good first step in finding a worthy SEO or SEO Audit company.

That particular tactic may be obvious, but where do you go from there when you choose that SEO company? To be found by people typing in various keywords or phrases in a search engine with Google’s shifting algorithm is an inexact process that takes a lot more skill, creativity, and thinking than traditional marketing strategies. SEO is a transformational process of a varied number of tactics over time that does not have a set budget for every business, as the needs for every business are not the same. This is why a technical sales assessment should be provided by an vendor you’re talking to.  Ideally, they will either determine your needs before a contract is signed, or they will offer a professional SEO audit service that leads into a customized SEO strategy.

The key to moving the needle in this industry today is educating businesses on SEO and its benefits so that they can see how these strategies will improve their rankings, traffic, conversions and Key Performance Indicators. Successful search engine marketing requires more than just the SEO professionals and tools they use. It involves a balance of technology, creativity, strategy and ongoing execution with improving website architecture, backlinks and on-page content.

Starting at 12:01 a.m. Saturday, June 13, 2009, Facebook users will be allowed to create their own personal username for their profile. So what all does this mean to a Facebook user? It may be more obvious for businesses, bands, celebs or public figures, but there is actually benefit for every Facebook user. Whether for business or personal use, you can now change your Facebook URL to match other social media networks that you use. Keeping your identities the same will form your own personal branding, making it easier for friends, family, and professionals to find you online.

Originally assigning random numbers to each person’s profile made it hard for someone to look up your public Facebook account in search engines. With the ability for personalized usernames, search engines will now be able to pick up the URLs just like they can with your Twitter, LinkedIn, Flickr, and other various social media network accounts. This should allow your brand to be ranked in search engines along with your social media networks, blog, business site or your own personal website, making it easy for people to connect and learn more about you. As expected, Facebook will not let you choose generic terms for your username such as shoes or butter, which will eliminate competition for choosing keywords that are often times nearly impossible to rank for, without the help of SEO professionals.

The greatest business benefit with this, besides easier collateral brand (ex: www.facebook.com/companyname) is Reputation Management.  The first 10 results in Google for a “branded” search phrase is your reputation.  Smart, innovative companies are optimizing social media profiles, press releases & other “rank-worthy” content so the first 10 results for their company name(s) present positive sentiment. We’re seeing successful execution with Triangle Direct Media clients.

Now with short and direct URLs it will be much easier to share your Facebook profile with others. You will now be able easily address your Facebook profile URL over the phone and even fit your new custom URL on business cards and into ad space. Usernames can only include alphanumeric characters with the option of a period or full stop, and must be five characters in length. Users must choose wisely, because once the Facebook username is set it cannot be changed.

To select your username, visit the link below after 12:01am on June 13th:
http://www.facebook.com/username/.

Perspective can quickly be lost when blog posts are written for the purposes of SEO [embedding keywords, anchor links, etc]; you must remember that you’re also writing to and for ‘the people’. An article on Search Engine Journal reminds us how important it is to write for people and not exclusively for search engines. As blogging is originally intended for social interaction purposes, both personal and business, the posts should be written to engage the reader. Instead of just dropping a link in the post, you need to put focus into making the content of your blog post interesting and useful to readers. Creating posts with valuable content will increase the chance of people re-blogging your link. If you create worthy content, it will spread through social media channels and the aspect of search will in a way take care of itself.

Make sure that you post in your blog often enough so that your blog doesn’t look to be a pure-play SEO strategy. Frequent posting is also a benefit for SEO purposes, as search engines are keen on routinely spidering fresh content. When it comes to SEO, what should be the focus is primarily including a few targeted search keywords in both the title, post, and into your URL. As the attention is on writing for the people, you can focus on SEO when posting images by using ALT tags. Utilize XML Sitemap plug-ins, which will update your sitemap and notify all major search engines when you edit or create new posts. When writing a blog post, keep in mind that SEO is important but don’t forget that you are also blogging for the people.