More social media interaction or more content best for SEO/rankings?

Hi

I've been running a blog for a few months now and not getting the level of traffic I want as I want to monetize in the near future. I plan to use other SM but only use Pinterest at the moment. I'm just unsure how my time would be best spent to improve my rankings which are poor at the moment. Should I concentrate on content, SM or both and where should the emphasis be.

Also I need a bit of clarification on the SEO by yoast plug-in I use within Wordpress. Quite often is says the keyword density is low, even when I add a few more of the specific keywords. When I read the post it would seem unnatural or potentially keyword stuffed if I were to add more, and Google suggests that they penalize this anyway. At the moment I try to put as many keywords as I can without the post seeming to be unnatural - even if it's below the keyword density target of the plug in. Is this the right way to proceed?

I'm creating a quality content driven blog so I don't want to come across as being a bit spammy.

Any advice or suggestions much appreciated

Thanks

 

Your original question suggests you want to choose between content and social media when in reality nothing is limiting you from using both. At the very least your quality content is something that the social media helps you share. So one complements the other in this case. As you are now using only Pinterest you have seen yourself that it doesn't bring the desired results. So expand. Add Facebook, Twitter, GooglePlus, even Linkedin in the mix and make sure you are well presented everywhere. So with the coming of new, fresh and interesting content you will have more interesting news to share, discuss and have people engage with.

As for your Yoast question I believe you have taken the right approach. I am using Yoast myself and while very helpful there are a few advices that it something gives that I just don't feel are right for me. So I just disregard them. Haven't experienced a negative impact because of it so you can go ahead and continue what you are doing if you are feeling its doing for you.

 

Thanks for the reply. You've kind of confirmed what I was thinking anyway. I was intending to keep regularly posting quality content and then add new social media sites gradually as time allows. I just didn't want to plough ahead with one avenue if it there was a more beneficial way of doing it.

 

I definitely think you should concentrate on both but this doesn't necessarily mean you have to be in every single social media network that exists out there. Google Plus definitely. Then, each social network targets different audiences. Find your audience and try to be present in a couple of social media which you can use to advertise your good blog content.

Also a tip on blog content: Optimize it for web. With this, I am not referring to keywords but write it using a web approach (vs. print approach). There are many interesting articles about this: How people read in a different way when they are using the web (rather than a newspaper or a magazine). If you study your audience, you can also work with the most suitable times of the day/days of the week to post to attract their attention on your Social Media channels so they can actually have time to sit and read through your blog.

Good luck!

 

Hi, Youst is a good SEO package for WordPress but it is a little out of date when it comes to keyword density. Google is no longer just counting keywords on your site, with their new Hummingbird algorithm they are now looking for indications of authority on the subject. They do this by first determining what they believe are the keywords (so you still need them) and then look to see if the article also contains other words commonly associated with those keywords when the topic is being discussed by an authority. As a simple example if your blog post was about SEO then just putting SEO several times in the post will no longer do the trick. Google will be looking to see if you also use other words in the post that connect to the SEO keyword, such as SEM, SERPs, backlinks, authority, Google (they like to hear about themselves), and the like. What this all means is that shorter quick posts will no longer rank as well, longer more in-depth posts will rank better because they will naturally include more related words. And... Youst has not caught up with this yet.

 

For me I concentrate my time on the content of my site and then make an effort with sharing it on social media. So I would say I am 75% content and 25% social media as far as effort is concerned.

However you can't get decent results with one without the other. Also if a blog post you do gets shared by your readers it will then be easier for you to get SEO results for. For example I have one keyword that gets me 10,000 unique visitors a month from SEO and that has been shared a lot and has google.com positions of 1,2, and 3 for it.

Also with my own traffic 76% of it comes from seo and social media and as a result has moved my traffic from 20,000 in january to 60,000 in August. You can have a read about my traffic in this post and how it has increased:

http://myweightlossdream.co.uk/weightlossbloggers/weight-loss-bloggers-income-report-august-2014/

I hope it goes well for you and with lots of regular content, social media and such like it wont be difficult to increase your traffic.

 

Hi, appreciate your further replies. Apologies for my slow reply, there's been an major internet problem in my region the last week.

Since I posted this I've managed to get on Facebook and have posted all of my existing content on there. I've had trouble doing posts with the internet situation, but now it seems to be OK and I've just added another post. I aim to be an authority site as I've got in-depth knowledge in my particular niche. I already write long detailed posts and carefully research keywords and appropriate search terms and language to use in my posts. So perhaps I'm conforming to what you suggest.

I'm slowly trying to adapt my writing style to make it appear better on the web as you mention. I suppose I'm quite traditional but I can see how other sites present their information and understand that it would be a better way to go and likely provide benefits - I need to do more on this.

I've had a brief look at Twitter but to be honest it's style of brief comments isn't really me and I think I may struggle to motivate myself to use it because of this, although I can appreciate it's benefit. I noticed on Facebook there's a feature where you can send updates to your Twitter account so maybe this would work for me and make it easier. From my brief time on Facebook I actually quite enjoy it, Pinterest also, and I think this is important to give you the motivation to use them.

Now I've got these set up I'll just gradually add the others - probably Google+ next, I was thinking of that anyway. Out of interest do you find that you get a significant number of people that like your page on social media if you have a like or other button on your blog/site as opposed to just liking you on your social media page?

Thanks again for your ideas.

 

You should absolutely focus on content and social media. Create quality content and pick 2 or 3 social media platforms that you can manage effectively and share your content.

You asked where your emphasis should be and I say on content. If you get them to your site through social media and your content is not of value, then they will not stay, subscribe, make a purchase and so on.

Don't worry about keyword density. It is not necessary for making you post search engine optimized.

A few ways not to look spammy is by sharing others content, never post only the link to your content (add a nice intro) and engage with others shares.

Utilize Communities and groups on your social media sites. That will be a great way to get your content seen by many until you grow your personal following.

I hope this helps!

 

Ya definitely content is the main part to concentrate , in SEO content is the KING. Interesting and informative text will lead u to get heavy traffic. Share those text in social media links sure u will reach high traffic.

 

Thanks for your other suggestions.

I tend to agree - no one's going to stick around or return if your content's weak. I think I'm doing O.K in this respect as my stats show that most visitors are staying a long time on my blog. I'm on Google+ now and I kind of agree with you that several SM sites are enough, and just concentrate on them. TBH, I like using them as well so I like to update them manually and try and interact rather than automate with other software. I might just update from Facebook to Twitter though, as I mentioned I doesn't appeal that much to me.

 

Social media will not help you to increase search engine ranking so I suggest you to use content marketing to earn some high-quality backlinks. You can continue social media marketing as it is one of the best options to drive traffic on your blog. Don't fill your content with keywords just add them naturally.