social optimization

To make your website more social, consider these five tips for going beyond buttons:

1. Encourage a more social experience. 
There is a belief that people either share or they don't. Not so. You can encourage sharing and engagement on your website by choosing "emotionally intelligent words." This means you select words that represent the personality of your brand and appear conversational.

A good example would be changing a "Try it now" link to "Ready to give it a whirl?" This evokes an action and also makes the click more of a personal experience for the user. Making it personal, in turn, can help users feel more comfortable about leaving a comment or sharing on your site.

2. Raise the bar on content quality.
Creating distinctive content that your customers find interesting and useful is, of course, key to any successful online marketing strategy. Without such content, there's less chance that your pages will be discovered and linked to by other sites.

Improving the quality of your content is one way to make your site more social. Think about it. Are you creating articles, blog posts or videos that are worth sharing? For example, make sure your titles are enticing. Be sure to integrate your sharing buttons closely with the pieces of content.

Content format and length are also important. Infographics, videos and concise blog posts are generally shared more often than long, in-depth pieces because they're easily and quickly digested. That's especially important with the growing number of mobile-device consumers.

3. Incentivize when possible. 
By incentivizing your visitors with gamification features such as badges, counts and stars, you play to an innate need to compete and win. Ask yourself what can be tweaked on your site to incentivize sharing. Maybe it's something as simple as ratings or voting.

One example of successful incentivizing is ModCloth's "Be the Buyer" program. The online vintage clothing retailer invites shoppers to vote on which outfit the company should sell next. Customers are also encouraged to promote the outfit to friends to get more votes. If an outfit gets enough votes, ModCloth will carry the outfit.

This program encourages shoppers to check back often, increasing site visits and potentially boosting sales. The shoppers are rewarded by being able to buy an outfit that isn't carried anywhere else. It's a win-win.

4. Actively seek customer feedback. 

When was the last time you asked your visitors what they wanted to see next? Whether it's asking them to vote on the next feature you build or to choose a product they'd like to see you sell, don't underestimate the power of feedback. Crowdsourcing on your site can help encourage users to be social both with you and each other.

5. Track diligently and make adjustments.

You might believe that some brands are just more likely to win in social engagement than others, but that is rarely the case. Success often comes down to a more strategic process of testing and making adjustments.

To boost engagement on your site, test such factors as where sharing buttons go and which kind of messages encourage customer interaction. Most sites have Google Analytics or other research tools, but few are using them to track social media traffic and better understand how people are engaging on their site. Simple changes such as using more direct language can often boost social activity.

Businesses that refuse to test and adjust their social optimization strategies will find that engagement can quickly fizzle and competitors will gladly connect with their former fans.

Branding for Google

Google loves big brand names, and for good reason. But that doesn't mean smaller companies don't stand a chance when it comes to search engine optimization (SEO).

In regard to natural search results, the better the results Google can deliver, the more people will use its service. To provide the best possible results, Google tries to identify website elements that provide quantifiable proof that users find a given site valuable, as well as to refine its ranking algorithms to ensure that these factors are prioritized. Website branding falls into this category because users tend to trust and engage more with website brands they know than with lesser-known competitors.

Spend time on any SEO news website and you'll likely find dozens of articles about how difficult the world's largest search engine is making it for small-time webmasters to compete with the big brand boys. But instead of bemoaning the fact that bigger brands seem to receive advantageous treatment in natural search results, follow these three tips to harness the power of branding for your own site:

1. Develop your visual brand.
Just because your website only has a handful of pages doesn't mean you can't create a strong brand. Not only will developing your own distinctive brand pay off when it comes to SEO, it can also be an effective way to generate business. Consumers are still wary of handing out personal and financial information to potentially unscrupulous sites, but recognizable brands tend to put them at ease, making them more likely to convert into buyers or subscribers for your business.

Think about the elements that you associate with well-known brands, such as discount retailer Target. The company has:

• An easily recognizable logo
• A consistent color scheme across its web and offline properties
• Consistent marketing messages, taglines and slogans

None of these factors is out of your reach, no matter how small your business. Setting up a consistent color scheme, for example, can be as simple as choosing a couple of colors that you feel reflect your company's personality and then splashing them across your website.

Once you've chosen colors, find a qualified designer to create a distinctive logo. 

Creating compelling marketing messages may take some time, but once you settle on some, you can easily incorporate them into different areas of your website. Encompass your brand's primary features and benefits in as few words as possible. That can help increase the chances that your audience will remember the message and associate your brand with it.

2. Add branded keywords to your site's SEO.
Because search engines rely on your site's SEO to determine what it's about, make sure your branded keywords are incorporated into your website's content alongside your target keyword phrases. Branded keywords include words that are unique to your company ("Zappos shoe sale," for example), while traditional SEO keywords target phrases consumers enter into search engines ("women's sandals, size 9," for example).

One effective place to include your branded keywords is your title tag, using the following structure:

Keep your title tags to a maximum of 62 characters to ensure that your branded keywords aren't cut off by the search engine spiders. Don't "keyword stuff" your title tag with a series of unconnected traditional keywords. Instead, make sure your title tag reads naturally and provides valuable information to your readers. Then, add your branded keywords after a pipe symbol (|) to begin to build search engine recognition for the brand name you've created.

3. Behave more like bigger brands.
Try to think like a bigger company and make your branding as pervasive as possible. For example, do you think that Target would send out an email newsletter without formatting that mimics the branding elements on its website?

In general, the more places you can incorporate your brand signals, the better. As you integrate these symbols across your web properties, you should see better visitor engagement and increased trust with your consumers.

Additionally, Google will likely continue to roll out algorithm updates that reward well-branded websites over their unbranded competitors. Implementing these techniques now could lower your risk of being affected by future search algorithm penalties.