Trying to determine how social media can generate ROI for your company?

Adding an online community to your website can impact your overall search engine strategy in a variety of ways.

(This content is a continuation of a live webcast -- welcome all attendees! -- by Kent Lewis of Anvil Media, and Paul Biggs of Jive Software, who explored this question in depth. We look forward to everyone's comments & feedback here. Also, since there were so many Q&A questions that we didn't have the time to address you can post your SEO questions here on Clearstep. You must register to participate.)

Overview

Capture the Long Tail

(Click these slidesto see full versions...)

• Outsource long tail content generation to your cutomers/users
• Without a source of niche content for less common terms, your website is missing out on a large opportunity to capture the long tail of search phrases.
  

Boost Core Keywords

• Increase SEO factors for your core ("head") keywords on the main site, by seeding conversations that will be popular with community members, and have relevant links to your main website.
  
• Use both a community's templating system to connect high-value pages, as well as strategically placed links in the content itself, to have the greatest impact.
  

Drive Keyword Research

• If you run your own community, you can:
  
  • Deploy web/social analytics tools on every page.
  • Maintain rights to the user-generated content for integration with other marketing programs.
  • A/B test different topics for popularity with customers.

• You can also re-purpose new keywords into organic and paid search initiatives as they arise -- keep a pulse on what the market is saying.
  • Data tool's like IBM's Many Eyes help analyze the conversations, and what phrases bubble up
    

Reduce PPC Costs

• Offset paid clicks with organic clicks by showing up higher on -- and in more -- search results pages.
• Helps cover content that before could only be addressed with broad match PPC keywords.
  

Sample Referenced Resources

• Susan Esparza, Bruce Clay Inc., Maximizing SEO Returns with User Generated Content
• Rand Fishkin, SEOmoz, Interview About UGC & Social SEO Communities
• Avinash Kaushik, Occam's Razor/Google, How Thick is Your Head and How Long is Your Tail?
• Lee Odden, TopRank, User Generated Content For SEO

Webcast Follow-up Links

• Webcast video and powerpoint slides
• Anvil's search engine marketing resources
• Jive's Clearspace Community software details