What Is Structural vs. Social SEO?
SEO (Search Engine Optimization) seems to get a lot of buzz effect on the internet, strictly because there is this idea that if you follow everything there is to know about SEO, you can, with ease, get your website to the top entry of your selected search criteria. This is a little bit like the story of the snake oil salesman who has a simple elixir that will cure everything that ails you.
The fact is, that there are so many factors that are in control of where you rank for a particular search phrase, that you can barely get your head around them, much more to follow some magic formula to the top. Many of these factors are beyond the control of most people. Some are completely out of your control. However, what companies DO strive for is to get a handle on those specific things they CAN do to help themselves in the long run. We'll talk about those here with regard to structural and social SEO.
Structural SEO addresses those concrete, analytical and tangible things that can be done to enable a website to maximize its presence on the web and in search results. These items typically have to do with keyword analysis, link building, technical programming of the website itself and content creation. These may seem rather trivial, but careful consideration of these items can make the difference between a website that shows up on page 212 and one that shows up on page 2 of search engine results. Valid keywords are those that your customers would use, not that you might use, for instance. Link building starts on a fundamental level, but then strives to increase value by pursuing more valuable links. All links are not created equal. A link to your page from CNN would be infinitely more valuable that a link from your local chamber of commerce.
Structural SEO, done correctly, takes time. So called "BlackHat" SEO companies that promise quick results in getting you to page one, typically list you with hundreds of obscure link directories to boost the link number to your pages. This is a process that you, yourself can do at a fraction of the price, by the way. However, such links are only valuable for a short period of time. Those link directories will eventually delete your entry if there is no follow up. Once those links go away, your rank falls. What you would rather have are links with some value, that persist and never go away. This is where structural SEO can pay dividends in the strategic construction of the content of your main page and, more importantaly, your back pages.
Content writing goes quite a bit further than just slapping a few marketing phrases on a main page and waiting for the sales to roll in. Keyword analysis is pivotal in tying search engine indexing to active phrases embedded in content. It does no good for you to put a keyword for Justin Bieber in your code, if you never reference him in your content. Search engine algorithms are linguistically intelligent and can in some cases, penalize you for attempting silly attempts to grab attention using popular topics. A good copywriter, however, will take the chosen keywords that have been targeted, and write them into the content at various densities, in order to provide the search engines valid contextual information to, in turn, deliver to its customers. Content writing is perhaps the most important link, because it bridges structual SEO with social SEO.
Social SEO, has come into existence with the popularity and growth of various social media such as Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Linked-In, and similar sites. Social Marketing techniques seek to deliver short blurbs of information to a targeted market using immediate technology methods. Interest in topics, products and ideas can be delivered at a low cost to groups or pods of individuals, who in turn provide a viral-like mechanism for perpetual delivery of the marketing message. In product marketing, these tie back to blog pages or even web pages with specific content of interest. The Social SEO specialist will craft a network of so-called "link-hubs;" whereby social media interacts with blog entries. video-content, visual delivery mechanisms, or hard links so that products and services can be presented.
It is the integration of these two entities, along with a crafted marketing strategy, that allows the contemporary organization to succeed over his/her competitors. Progressive companies have to go beyond looking at a website as just a validator, as was the case perhaps five to ten years ago. Websites now can be done by anyone to sell anything. The new marketing paradig realizes that all-inclusive corporate marketing strategy must usurp their web presence to use both structural and social SEO techniques to amplify their presence to an ever-increasing, mobile marketplace.
Structural and Social SEO
Structural SEO is primarily composed of keyword analysis, link building, technical website construction and content. At Entropy Dynamics, we employ specialists in each of these areas to provide our clients with a complete solution that integrates with the corporate marketing vision.
Our technical analysts have years of experience in being able to isolate the appropriate keywords for your niche, and then exploit those through website creation and copywriting. Linking building is pursued targeting high-value links for maximum effect. Our professional copywriters can produce contextual publishing that maximizes index-values in search engines to enable your site to increase in rank over time.
Social SEO has relevance in how you market your vision, message, products and services to an ever changing, more mobile marketplace. With more competition, there is more demand for attention of your consumer. Those consumers are being bombarded every day with more and more demands on their time. Marketing messages from social media have a particularly important impact, as these are preferred by the consumer in the long run, since they are coming from within various pods or circles in which they have joined.
Entropy Dynamics has specialists in building social marketing message campaigns and can create and deliver these targeted promotions to the ever-increasing mobile marketplace.
