According to Wikipedia, Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of improving the volume or quality of traffic to a web site from search engines via “natural” (”organic” or “algorithmic”) search results. This is most commonly accomplished by making the site of interest appear in the first page of search results for specific keywords. After all, the higher a site appears in search, the more clicks it will theoretically receive; and if a site ranks for a relevant set of keywords, it should theoretically receive qualified traffic. Of course, building rankings for your website can take a substantial amount of time. As a supplement to your mainline SEO efforts, consider leveraging third party website rankings in driving traffic to your site and exposure for your company.

There are a number of third-party websites that allow the submission of user content, including social networking sites, user-submitted content sites, and product review sites, to name a few. For most of these sites, user-submitted content is search-indexable; if your content manages to rank, it can serve as a gateway to the ultimate destination, your company website.

I’ll give an example from my recent work with Song Manager. Song Manager is a relatively new web app designed for church service music planning. Since the brand name “Song Manager” contains generic keywords, ranking for the brand name was a slow-going process. By creating content on third party sites, we were able to get Song Manager faster search exposure. We created content on several sites including killerstartups.com, geeksandgod.com, facebook.com, and youtube.com. The pages on these sites ranked much faster than Song Manager’s website. And more important, these sites drove traffic to the main website in the absence of direct organic search traffic. (After a couple of months, Song Manager began ranking for its brand name)

Here are a couple of ideas on how you could make use of this technique:

• If you want search exposure for your name, create a LinkedIn profile.  Make sure to create a vanity URL!  Mine is www.linkedin.com/in/jordanteague.  Even if your name is common, there’s a good chance the LinkedIn directory page for your name will rank.
• If you want search exposure for your business, create a listing in Google local search and Yahoo local search.  More on this in another post to come soon.

If you’re interested in more ideas on how to construct a creative, effective SEO campaign for your business, contact me!

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