Social news sites are about content for the reader, not self promotion.

This is part two of my series on Optimization for Social Media Integration, this time covering social media news.

The top two social media news sites today are Digg and StumbleUpon, so I’ll concentrate on these. However, Propeller.com, Reddit.com, Mixx.com (do-follow links) and Buzz.Yahoo.com are all worth a look.

The main thing to remember about social media sites is that the news on these sites is chosen by the users, making popular items even more so because bloggers look at this content for cool, link-worthy stuff and then re-post or write about them. The stories get great visibility and natural editorial links. In addition, the content is targeted, making it great for boosting your ranking and authority.

In brief: Digg utilizes outside voting, requires LOTS of votes for an item to go popular, generating less illegitimate content. StumbleUpon features toolbar voting, send page to a friend ability (which pretty much forces a view) and even includes the option to buy more views at a whopping 5 cents each.

Here are some general guidelines to make your social news more popular and to provide those nice surges of traffic to your blog or site. These spikes can be fantastic!

Content

• Give quality. Readers (voters) appreciate hard work, like learning, hate spam, SEO and marketing. They strictly want news, not fluff, so make sure that news, not self-promotion, is what you’re presenting.
• Be concise. Save time for everyone by not overdoing the amount of text. Social news readers like to skim without too many clicks. In other words, they are anxious to vote and want to get it done right away!

SEO

• Use titles in your blog posts that are positioned for back links with great SEO text. Page titles can have more keywords.
• Post regularly. Keep that great content coming.
• Don’t be tempted to 301 redirect old content to new posts. Let the content be.
• Garner trust because trusted domains are more likely to hit the front page of Digg.
• Stay on topic.
• Make your news linkable.
• Adhere to the Terms of Service for the news site.
• Optimize, rework and monetize your articles 30-60 days after they have gone viral.
• Utilize RSS feeds to help drive links from other sites.  RSS feed links are not nofollow.

One final thought. You can actually dominate longtail results with proper social news optimization even if your site isn’t optimized, a terrific byproduct. Links generated to your news article can push even pagess with no SEO to speak of higher.

This article is an original post from The Web Optimist – SEO in The Desert.

Optimization for Social Media Integration: News is a post from: SEO in The Desert | More about Palm Springs SEO

It was magic. It was innovative. It was fun.

It had power! Thousands of musical artists and acts got their careers started with music videos and a lot of forgotten acts were rediscovered. For example, a simple weekend marathon of the old Monkees TV show resulted in the once trashed group getting together for what turned out to be the biggest summer tour of the year 1986. New records by the group, more reruns and the rebirth of a made-for-TV band followed.

But most of all, MTV was exciting!

That’s where I see social media today. Like MTV in the beginning, social media is all of the above with innovative features being rolled out right and left and the ability to connect with folks around the world 24 hours per day. It’s like magic!

But, again, most of all, it’s exciting!

And, it’s now a part of SEO, which some have also likened to magic.

Unlike MTV, which was one-way, social media is about interaction. You connect with folks who connect with other folks and everyone provides user generated content and links that help bolster your SEO, traffic and conversion goals. You do this through photo or video sharing, news and networking sites as well as blogs.

There’s the power!

And, like the young MTV viewers of the 1980s, social media users tend to be cutting edge, comfortable about innovation and technology. Using sites like YouTube, Facebook, StumbleUpon, Digg and del.icio.us, etc. just comes naturally.

So how do you tie your SEO efforts into all of this excitement and power?

1. Tune in regularly. Join some of the social media sites and commit to participate every day. Yep, it’s very time consuming, but there are no shortcuts.

2. Have a hook. Like an MTV VJ, learn what is popular in each specific community and segue your content and participation in that direction.

3. Be anonymous. Just as you voted for your favorite MTV videos using different phone numbers (remember that?), don’t make it obvious that you are promoting yourself. That’s a big breach of etiquette. Promote from a different IP and account. Get your friends to help. If your office is participating, be sure they all cast their votes and submissions from home and NOT on the office IP. Too many coming from the same IP address can get you into trouble.

4. Become a groupie. Connect with influential users of the service. Later, take a look at their friends and see who else might make good connections.

5. Vote for your fave. Cast votes for good, quality content, not just yours, every chance you get and Stumble at the same time.

6. Have variety. Let’s see…rock or rap? Submit quality articles, content or videos from a variety of sources. If all you do is submit your own, you’ll be labeled as a spammer or your submission will just get killed.

7. Promote. Got a new gig? Social networks are great for introducing your blog to your network of friends.

8. Get subscriptions. We’re not talking 16 Magazine. Social news traffic is short term. What’s on the front page is gone tomorrow, so to keep some of those viewers coming back, get them to subscribe to your feeds.

9. Use Twitter! No, Flock of Seagulls hasn’t released a new album. Twitter is what you’d call a mini instant messaging system. I have to admit that when Twitter first came out, I thought it was kind of silly – 140 characters to alert your friends about what you were doing? Didn’t make a lot of sense, but it sure does now. Tie your Twitter account into your social accounts to let people follow you automatically. For instance, you can use a WordPress Twitter plugin on your blog called Twitter Updater to automatically send a Twitter status update to your Twitter account when you create, publish, or edit a WordPress post. A similar web-based service, Twitterfeed, can be used as well. Facebook has a Twitter application that you can install that will feed blog entry status to your Facebook status updates. Twitter is also great for customer or visitor communication. Feel free to follow The Web Optimist on Twitter.

10. Name the band. Register your company profile on all of the social networks. Grab your company name as quickly as you can to prevent someone else from doing it and pretending to be you.

Where to go from here? Once you are established as a reputable social media user, you’ll find that connecting with the Linkerati, influential social media linkers, bloggers and journalists, will be easier. Your doors will open wider. Hey, make a video!

So, it’s an exciting time to be in social marketing and SEO. Let’s just hope social media keeps its focus on what it is and doesn’t do an MTV on us.

I miss my MTV!

Social Media & SEO: I Want My MTV! is a post from: SEO in The Desert | More about Palm Springs SEO