With the rapid development in recent years of mobile devices, the IT world is going through what may be its biggest change since the introduction of the personal computer in 1981. Tablets and smart phones that can connect to the internet from any location that has a signal are overtaking traditional land line internet users, and the internet is also changing to adapt to the new medium. The introduction of 4G wireless connectivity has made it possible for more users to employ cloud computing technology, while the development of Software as a Service (SaaS) has moved the desktop from the device to a corporate server, allowing users to access the same data from multiple devices and different locations.

There has been a lot written about cloud computing and it is thought of as the next step in the evolution of IT. Cloud computing is the delivery of scalable IT services over the internet as an alternative to hosted or locally operated resources. Services can include data or applications that can be used remotely on your tablet or laptop, without being physically installed on the machine. This sort of data sharing is well suited to mobile devices and allows people the flexibility of being able to access the data that they need, on the spot, on a wide variety of devices. The changes that they make to any shared files are then immediately visible to all of the other people in the cloud, making the process more efficient. Another aspect of the cloud that adds efficiency to IT procedures is that because the services and data are all stored on one server, none of the usual duplication of software installation is necessary in order for everyone to be able to access them. This aspect of cloud computing has found its most practical application as the Virtual Desktop.

In order to take advantage of the mobility of devices like tablets and laptops and to cut the cost of keeping hardware up to date, many corporations are now using a Virtual Desktop. This is essentially a Windows desktop that gives users access to all of the company’s software and data that they use in their professional roles. Updates to the OS and other applications need only to be installed on the server where the Virtual Desktop is being hosted, and the information becomes immediately available to all of the client devices. Because all of the processing work is done by the server, and not the client machine, the Virtual Desktop can serve to extend the life of older equipment. It is also possible to block individual machines from the central server so that devices that are lost or stolen can no longer access the desktop.

With the growing trend of employees who want to bring their own devices to work, cloud computing and the Virtual Desktop can be an effective way for businesses to lower their IT costs overall. The reduced maintenance time that comes with only having to maintain a central computer can in itself be a significant cut in costs; especially considering that the alternative may be to make the same changes to multiple machines every time that your anti-virus software is updated, for example. The factor that may see the Virtual Desktop become a standard resource management system is the security that it guarantees for data that can be used and even altered by remote users, but which stays on the company’s servers, rather than an employee’s iPad. With all of the other benefits, the security aspect alone makes this likely to be a large part of the internet in the years to come.

Chances are, your business employs people that have mobile devices like tablets, laptops and iPhones. Often the equipment that they have is better than what you could supply them to work with. In many instances, employees are happier to use their own devices as they are more efficient and may have functions that make their work easier. As this situation is becoming more common, a growing number of companies are adopting a Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) policy that defines what acceptable and unacceptable usages of personal devices exist in the workplace. There are a number of benefits and difficulties that come with adopting a BYOD policy which need to be weighed before you can decide if such a policy is right for your business.

The popularity of many mobile devices has given them value as status symbols, and so perhaps the most tangible benefit of adopting a BYOD policy is that it engenders greater job satisfaction. Because the devices that your employees purchase will usually be the most recent equipment available, you also get some of the benefit of being able to try out new technologies without having to invest anything up front. In fact, in half of the cases surveyed recently it was found that employees are absorbing all of the costs of using their own devices at work and that generally they were happy to do so. This represents an average saving of as much as $80 per month for each device1. Generally the expenses are shared to some extent and the amount that an employer contributes is capped at a level that still represents a substantial saving in costs while giving the employee some extra benefits.

While this may make a BYOD policy look like a great way for business to shift costs onto willing workers, there are some difficulties that immediately present themselves. The primary concern for most businesses is security, with employees often having sensitive corporate documents saved on their personal devices. While inconvenient, it is not an insurmountable problem. One way to get around it, for example, is to create a Desktop as a Service network environment for all of your users so that all of their work-related documentation and applications are stored on your company’s servers, and they may only access them via their personal devices.

Allowing BYOD also raises concerns about viral infection brought into your business network by a personal user’s device. To counter the risks, there is often a stipulation in place which states that employees must use the corporate anti-virus software to remain compliant with the requirements of the work environment. Another problem is that allowing BYOD in your business often introduces a grey area of acceptable use of the personal devices for things like checking personal e-mails or logging onto social media sites while in the workplace. In some businesses this may not be as an important issue, but it does raise the question of whether BYOD will raise or lower productivity.

As mobile devices become cheaper, and more people acquire them, the issue of BYOD is going to become more pertinent to all businesses. The companies that implement the best policies will be the ones that derive the most benefit from the strategic use of employees’ devices. Taking the time to speak to your employees about what sorts of devices they already have, and how much they are already using them at work, may be very revealing. This issue is one that is sure to come up in most industries as more employees request permission to bring their own device to work because they know that it can get the job done more efficiently. With this information in mind, it is definitely worth the effort to examine the pros and cons before you finalize your decision.

References:
1. Good Technology State of BYOD Report

In late April 2012 Google made a significant change to the way that it calculates the ranking of pages in the search engine results pages (SERPs). The fact that Google is changing its search algorithm isn’t that significant in itself; Google alters its algorithm every few days on average¹. The significance of the Penguin update is that it targets websites that are keyword stuffed with thin content and too many inward bound links from low value sites. According to Google’s Matt Cutts, the object of the latest changes has been “to help searchers find sites that provide a great user experience and fulfill their information needs”². There have of course been websites that have suffered from a drop in their page ranking in the SERPs, and the changes have challenged some SEO practices like creating backlinks as a practical tactic for building page rank.

Google has been heading in this direction for a long time, and since the 2011 Panda update that focused on content farms, sites with a high ad to content ratio, and other page quality issues, it has weeded the webspam out of its SERPs. Penguin has put much more focus on the quality of the links that point to a page, and many websites that have built their page ranking on the back of online directory links have suffered falls in the SERPs because the source of those links has caused Google to classify them as unnatural links. There has also been a greater focus on the use of keywords in the content of pages, and often if too many keywords are used as anchor text it can have adverse effects on the page ranking as well.

Google has stated that it supports ‘White Hat SEO’ which creates more compelling sites with higher quality content. Cutts said, “We also want the “good guys” making great sites for users, not just algorithms, to see their effort rewarded.²” Oddly enough this reward has taken the form of an ‘over-optimization penalty’ for sites which have too many obvious SEO tricks working for them. Another feature that Penguin is focusing on more closely is doorway pages, which are optimized for a particular keyword in order to dominate the SERPs³ and then funnel users to a single destination. ‘Black Hat SEO’ uses these sorts of pages to lower the SERP ranking of their competitors’ websites, and reduces the number of options that are presented on the first page of the Google results.

So what does this mean for traditional SEO practices like link building and creating content with good keyword density? Will the many affiliate based websites online now drop down the SERPs for having too many ads and too little content?

The sorts of pages that Google wants to see in its SERPs have a good balance of content and links that point both to and from the site. The use and distribution of keywords should look organic, and the content should be updated regularly to show that the site is active and not just a billboard on the side of the information superhighway. The sort of site that best fulfills these specifications is a blog, and this makes the company blog even more important now to making sure that your business gets seen in the SERPs. The use of keywords has been changing, and with this latest update it will be important to make sure that there are enough synonyms included in the content to make it appear to be organically produced content and not keyword stuffed, spun webspam. For a genuine blog this won’t present any problems and the quality content of these sorts of sites will ensure that they are protected from losing their spot in the SERPs.

Affiliate sites where the content consists largely of ads and keyword heavy product descriptions like the many online retail sites that are just a front for amazon.com, or any one of the online dropshippers, will almost certainly have to rethink their web design. It won’t be sufficient to have a website that is the cyber equivalent of the Sears catalog without contributing original content to support it.

In addition, the SEO tricks like posting hundreds of backlinks to those sorts of pages may actually drive them further down the SERPs since Penguin. While this may improve the quality of information that does make it to the top of Google’s lists it may also be a setback for many smaller businesses that display their wares on their corporate website and have only a thin veneer of content to present it. Often smaller businesses are the ones that lack the resources to generate a steady flow of fresh content to keep their SERP ranking safe.

There have also been some concerns about the Penguin update opening the door to the use of negative SEO such as placing a lot of spam links online for a competitor’s website to damage them in the SERP rankings⁴. So far, examples of this have all been created by the webmasters themselves and their most common cause has been their own bad linking practices, but it still remains a concern and there will undoubtedly be a further update to Penguin to address this issue in the future.

There is no doubt that the general shift by Google towards generating more relevant results in the SERPs is going to change the way that webmasters build their websites. In some extreme cases where a website’s ranking is heavily invested in backlinks it may be easier to start over again than to try and clean up all of the damaging links. The importance of having quality content is now paramount, while link building on some sites may need to be completely reassessed. InfintechDesigns.com can, with a free consultation, help you to understand how the changes to Google’s algorithm may have harmed your page ranking and can then work with you to create an SEO campaign that works with all of the changes that have come in with the Penguin update. The shift to greater relevance in the SERPs should be a positive development for any business that is genuinely offering valuable content on its website.

References:

1. http://www.seomoz.org/google-algorithm-change

2.http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.co.nz/2012/04/another-step-to-reward-high-quality.html

3. http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=66355

4. http://searchengineland.com/google-talks-penguin-update-recover-negative-seo-120463

The majority of traffic to websites originates from a search engine with 91% of people using search engines to find their way around cyberspace1. At the heart of the search indexing system that the engines use is the recognition of keywords in online content that defines the nature of the information that it contains. This requires that web pages are tagged so that the crawlers know what they are looking for as they attempt to place them in their correct place in the index. This makes the choice of keywords vital for every web page designer and copywriter.

There are two types of keywords that are commonly used for most websites: short and long tail keywords. Short tail keywords are usually single words that are associated with a niche or a topic, while long tail keywords are short phrases that describe more exact aspects of the topic. For instance, a baker may use ‘bread’ as a short tail keyword and ‘multi-grain loaves’ as a long tail keyword. Most websites will use a set of keywords to describe their content that is made up of a set number of these keywords that they intend to use in their content, like blog posts and product descriptions. The reason that it is important to focus on a set of keywords for your niche is that by using a predefined set of keyword tags for your published material you are increasing your chances of a good ranking in the SERPs.

The simplest way to begin to assemble a list of keywords for your website is to make a list of words and short phrases that relate to your niche or industry. Some of the terms will be obviously the right ones to use, but to build the most practical set of keywords it is good to get some analysis of their value to the search engines and the competition that you will have for the front page of Google’s search results. To do this, you can access Google Adwords free Keyword Tool which will generate a list of associated words and compare them according to both their global and local monthly searches, as well as the amount of competition that exists in the SERPs for each term. Often looking through the list can help you find keywords that you would otherwise have not thought of and if you haven’t there is a good chance that others in your niche haven’t either. Ideally, you are looking for the keywords with the most monthly searches and the least competition to use for your own page, to give yourself the best chance of dominating the SERPs for as many keywords as possible.

Depending upon how broad the topic is a practical set of keywords for it could be anything from six or eight words to a couple of dozen. Too many keywords and you won’t have enough content online to generate a good SERP ranking while too few will make the search parameters for your page too narrow and miss too many potential customers. Don’t be afraid to compete for the high competition keywords, as the extra competition indicates that they have a higher value but will require more effort to use effectively.

Even when you have settled on the right keywords for your website it is still important to monitor the statistics for your site and see which keyword terms are bringing the traffic to your pages. Often it is the case that a good deal of traffic might be generated by a less central keyword or an image that has been tagged, and it can give you a good indication of how to modify the set of keywords that you are using.

References:
1. Search Engine Use 2012, Kristen Purcell, Joanna Brenner, Lee Rainie, Pew Research Center

Online advertising has been around for quite a while now and has produced mountains of statistics for analysts to pore over and then pontificate on. Tracking the conversion rate of internet promotions to determine the impact that they are having on sales is always a hot topic and the rise in the past couple of years of social media marketing has challenged the way that advertisers now look at the sources of their conversions. Traditionally the conversion rates for internet advertising has been based on a last click model but the huge amount of traffic that is driven by social media sites has put more focus on the importance of the first click in an internet marketing campaign.

To understand the difference between first and last click attributions you have to examine the stream of interactions that led to the sales conversion. In the last click model the sale is attributed to the last link that the customer used to find the page where the purchase was made. Even if the customer had been to the same page a dozen times from multiple other sources this last click got all of the credit for making the actual conversion. First click models track all of the visits by a particular customer and attribute the sale to the first link that brought a visitor to the website. In some models the credit for the conversion may be spread across several links that were used to create a bigger picture of customer behavior.

This wider examination of the source of traffic and the conversions that come from it has revealed some interesting patterns. The first thing that has shown up is the decline in the effectiveness of banner advertising as a source of last click advertising but at the same time it was also shown to boost general visitation rates1. Another statistic revealed that 60% of last click conversions had at least one prior connection with the campaign. These figures show the importance of the clicks that lead up to the last one and the statistics are even more revealing when the influence of social media is taken into account.

Overwhelmingly the source of most last click traffic comes from the search engines but the origins of much of that traffic may have been in social networks, particularly Facebook. The first click attribution from social media sites has been shown to be 88% higher than its last click conversions. This contrasts with search engine traffic which generates a first click value of $3.85 per customer and $2.78 per customer for last click conversions while social media returns an average of $1.13 per first click customer then falls away to only 60c for last click conversions. These differences show the real value of social media marketing as a method of introducing your brand to an audience that then can be enticed to find your business via the search engines later on to make their purchases.

To build a really accurate picture of how your online marketing is working to drive conversions it is important to take the whole stream of customer interaction into account. The first click that raises awareness of your brand on a social site may not return as much revenue as a last click from a search engine but without the first click the last click would never have happened anyway. Even first and last click models don’t take into account the value that connecting on social media or via the company blog may have on actual sales but taken together they all contribute to the customer making that last click before they make their purchase.

References:
1. Appropriate Attribution, Eric T. Peterson, Coremetrics, 2011

Over one fifth of all bloggers are either employed to blog for their company or are blogging to promote their own business1. These bloggers tend to produce more posts than hobbyists who make up the bulk of contributors to the blogosphere and so they generally produce a lot of content that they need to see a return from. Being under pressure to produce content every day can make it difficult to write anything that is worth reading, while people that are blogging to support their business might not be natural writers. In order to consistently produce valuable content, it is necessary to have a plan and to follow some simple guidelines to simplify the writing process.

The most noticeable thing about successful, vibrant blogs is that the personality of the blogger comes through. Blogs are all about connecting with readers and encouraging them to leave a comment and join the conversation. Writing in the first person about your experiences will be more encouraging than a dull report. It also shows that the person writing the blog is the one that has the expert knowledge, and contributes directly to building your online professional presence.

Keep each post as simple as possible. Blog posts that run over a thousand words are less likely to be read all the way through to the end by very many people. The best blog posts usually introduce a topic and discuss it all in around 500 words which, with an image is roughly one screen of content. This size of post will also be more easily displayed on the small screens of mobile devices which is becoming more important all of the time.

Set a realistic schedule for making blog posts. Many people can write one or two good posts per day while others are stretched to post one per week. In most cases, two to three short, but informative, blog posts per week will do a great job at getting your message out while building SEO at the same time.

Choose a theme for your blog posts to create a thread of a conversation on a larger topic in your niche. This can then be used as the basis for a serial of posts that all relate to different aspects of the general topic. Breaking up longer articles so that they can be posted in three or four parts can be used to entice readers to come back to read the next installment while it also takes the pressure off of the writer for a while. These sorts of serial posts can then be reassembled as a single post on its own stand alone page to add depth to your website for visitors and spiderbots alike.

Use images and embedded video or audio to give your blog posts more impact. Attractive, interesting or humorous images are likely to be shared on social sites while they also contribute to SEO. Using images break up blocks of text making it easier for readers to get through and also gives your web page more color and interest to keep them there.

Finally, take advantage of the whole point of blogging and encourage your readers to join the conversation with a call to action. Prod them for their opinion and encourage them to leave a comment so that they feel like they are a part of your blog. Collecting comments is only half of the job and it is even more important to answer the comments that you do get. Often these conversations themselves will inspire new topics for future blog posts.

References:
1. The State of the Blogosphere 2011, Higgins, Technorati Media

Facebook has become an important part of most online marketing campaigns now because it is so cheap and user friendly and almost anyone can set up a brand page and get some click through ads or sponsored stories started by themselves. A really great feature of Facebook advertising is the access to its analytical tools to its users. By using Facebook Insights, it is possible to see at a glance who your message is reaching, how many likes you have picked up, and how many Facebook users are talking about your page or how many clicks you have generated on your ads in real time.

On the surface it might appear that the number of ‘likes’ that you collect on your Facebook brand page might be the most important statistic to track. After all, people that have ‘liked’ your brand and are following have shown a direct enough interest in your business to follow your posts in their newsfeeds. While the number of ‘likes’ is a sort of general rule of thumb measure of how popular your brand page is on Facebook, the breakdown of demographics that Facebook Insights provides is far more useful. Examining these personal details of the people that are ‘liking’ your brand, gives you a good indication of who to target with your marketing on Facebook.

A closer look will reveal that ‘likes’ are only the first step in the marketing process on Facebook and that the really vital statistic is the reach that your posts have. When your fans interact with your posts, they become visible to their friends for the life of that particular post. These are the people that your messages are really reaching and the number of them is always more than the number of people that have ‘liked’ you. In order to grow your following on Facebook and extend that reach your message has to encourage these people, many of whom will be seeing your brand for the first time, to ‘like’ your page. The more detailed statistics that Insights offers are also providing useful information about how many times your message has reached people. If you have a high percentage of one person being reached one time it may indicate that your posts aren’t engaging them and enticing them to connect with you.

The third, and perhaps the most important statistic that Facebook Insights provides, is the number of people that are talking about your page. This statistic tracks the number of people that have shared your link or ‘liked’ your post. These statistics are further broken down for users in the Facebook Insights Dashboard where it is possible to separate the different ways that people have shared your stories and graphing the viral reach of each method.

Facebook ads also offer useful tracking statistics that allow you to judge the effectiveness of your advertising. The important variable in Facebook advertising is the amount that is bid per click which if it is too low will limit the page impressions while if it is too high will be costing you money unnecessarily. Tracking the number of impressions for your ads as a guide to gradually increasing your bid per click is an effective method of finding the right level of spending for Facebook campaigns while tracking clicks can give you a clear indication of how effective your ad’s call to action really is.

To get the most out of your marketing efforts on Facebook it is necessary to look beyond the number of likes on your page and to examine the traffic more closely. By using that information to target the right audience it is possible to get the most bang for your marketing buck on Facebook.

Most people think of Google as being an all-conquering search engine that they use to find the things that they are searching for online, but Google offers an even wider array of services and many of them are free. A lot of these free tools are useful for building SEO for your website and some services that they offer are essential to creating and running a successful company website. Some of these sites can be accessed for free without the need to even sign in, while others will require that you create a Google account. Having a Google Account can be a real asset to a business, especially a smaller one, as it gives the account holder easy access to services like Gmail and Blogger, Google’s free blog platform. The Google Accounts dashboard lists twenty services that are available to everyone but this list is not exhaustive and many of the most useful services are not included.

One service that could be useful to anyone who is designing a website is the Google Adwords Keyword tool. This service allows users to test the popularity of keywords for their niche to determine which ones would be best in order to try and dominate, or at least compete for, within their particular niche. The Keywords Tool is also useful for suggesting synonyms and connected words and phrases that you may otherwise have had to spend hours compiling on your own. Search queries produce a table of results that lists the number of searches for each term and compares it to the number of sites that have been tagged with the same keyword. Using this tool effectively can give your web page dominance in the SERPs for important keywords that describe your business, while helping you to see the keywords that you will have to compete for more aggressively.

Google Analytics is another useful free keyword tool that allows users to track the traffic that comes to their website via the search pages according to which terms were used in the search. This tool can help to clarify which of the keywords you are using are the most effective in driving traffic to your website. The tool works by generating a short piece of code that you insert into the HTML at the end of your page, enabling it to monitor the traffic to your site; it then compiles a report for you on the Analytics site on demand.

Another keyword tool that is often useful is Google Alerts, which will automatically send users links to anything new that is indexed in the search engines that contains the keywords specified in the alert request. This can be useful to keep up with the conversation in your niche and even to stay informed about what your competitors are saying. Related to this is Google Trends, which will show you the latest trends for the keywords that you use. When you enter a search term, Trends will produce a graph that compares the number of searches related to the total search volume across the internet and subsequently connects this with new content that is tagged with those keywords.

If your business is based at a specific location, then you also need to embed the appropriate Google Map that shows your customers where they can find you. Google Places also offers a free listing that allows you to fill in a comprehensive business profile that will appear in the SERPs for searches in your niche for your location. When you think that you have optimized your page and are dominating cyberspace, it is time to go to Google’s Page Rank Checker to fill in your domain name and find out your page’s score, on a scale from one to ten.

Building a reliable and successful presence online is important, and it places you and your business in the context of your niche. To really see where you stand, it is just as important to take a look at who your competition is, and what they are doing online. Keeping an eye on your competition online can have a lot of benefits beyond merely comparing products and prices. There are several simple things that you can do to keep tabs on what they are doing.

Because the bulk of all traffic to websites originates in the search engines, a good way to start looking for your main competitors is to find them in Google. Do searches for all of the high value keywords in your niche and see whose sites turn up in the first couple of pages. For a minimal amount of effort it is usually possible to compile a list of a dozen or so other businesses that are turning up most often in the SERPs. You should also Google the names of any competitors that you are already aware of. Once your list of competitors is complete, you can advance to the next stage of the plan: surveillance.

Most business websites have a squeeze page, or a subscriber opt-in that allows users to receive the company’s online marketing information. Take advantage of this free information and sign up for your competitors’ promotions, newsletters, forums and blogs and keep yourself current in the conversations that they are having. If there are niche based forums for your industry, find your competitors and follow the things that they contribute to them, offer your business as an alternative if it is appropriate, and associate yourself with the niche as a major contributor. In order to compete with other businesses online it is vital to step into the game and make a place for yourself in it.

The most important places to connect with and monitor your competitors are on the social media sites. Generally one or two of the social sites will be most suited to the industry that you are in, and the majority of people in your niche will either use Facebook or Twitter for most of their marketing. For many professions, LinkedIn can be an indispensible resource not only for watching the competition, but for networking and connecting with them as well. The greatest advantage of engaging with your competition on social media sites is that it gives you an equal voice and creates an opportunity to present you and your business as a viable alternative to theirs in a neutral, online space. As most wall posts on brand pages go unchecked, it is also possible to leave comments that will be prominently displayed on competitors’ fan pages.

You will definitely want to keep an eye on the SERPs for your specific keyword set to be aware of any new players entering your niche market. It is also a good idea to use a service like Google Alerts to monitor the web for new content that is posted for your keywords and the names of your major competitors. If you take the time to set up the relevant subscriptions and Google Alerts, watching what other businesses in your industry are up to shouldn’t add a lot of time to your online marketing schedule. Additionally, it is a good way to stay current with developments in your industry. Every niche has an online conversation, and the first step towards joining it and becoming a part of it is to find out who is having it and what they are talking about. Watching what your competition are doing online does just that.

A lot of the focus of internet marketing has shifted in recent years to counting how many ‘likes’ you have collected, and what the social media reach of your brand page wall posts is, but the fact is that the bulk of online traffic originates in the search engines. It is still more important to have a highly visible corporate website to successfully build your online presence, than it is to have thousands of followers on Facebook, therefore making SEO more important and relevant than ever.

Statistics show that 91%1 of all people use search engines, and some estimates put the amount of traffic that visits most websites that originates in one of the SERPs as high as 70%2. With over 50% of people now using mobile devices to find things in the real world, being visible in the SERPs may have an immediate and positive impact on your business’ revenues. This means that in many instances the last thing that customers did before making a purchase was to find the business online, and the place that they found it was in the SERPs.

Similarly, online marketers measure the success of their campaigns on the basis of how many click-throughs they have had, and generally assign more value to the last click visitors over the first click visitors, because the former are more likely to convert to sales. Of all of the avenues that drive traffic to the checkout on your website, search engines are more often the last click that customers use to find your site to make a purchase, while social media and PPC ads are more often the first click that customers make to find your business in the first place. Both are equally important to generating online sales, but the search engine is the one that is most likely to be driving actual sales because when users find your links in the SERPs, it is because they are specifically looking for it.

The real advantage that having good SEO has over social media marketing is its longevity. With a short shelf life, social media posts fade from the top stories list within a few hours in most cases, requiring a new message to be posted to maintain a presence on the medium. A blog post or a product page that is visible in the SERPs will remain visible at the top of the SERPs for years in some cases. The long life span of search engine listings means that the content that you have worked on to represent you and your business remains relevant for much longer and keeps working for you long after the links to it on Facebook have faded into history.

All of this reveals that the value of social media marketing is mostly in the potential that it has for directing traffic and building links to the content that you have listed in the SERPs, like your corporate blog. With less than one in twenty Facebook brand pages enabling their shopping cart3 it is apparent that almost all online sales are occurring on a corporate website, so it makes sense to maintain the visibility of that page in the search engines where the majority of customers will find it. In our enthusiasm to embrace the benefits of social media advertising, it is easy to lose sight of the things that have proven to be reliable sources of traffic. Neglecting your SEO efforts because you think you can drive traffic away from Twitter may be a mistake that could possibly require a lot of effort to repair later, when you have dropped out of the SERPs.

References:
1.Search Engine Use 2012, Pew Research Center, Kristen Purcell, Joanna Brenner, Lee Rainie
2.http://www.roi.com.au/beginners-search-engine-marketing/percentage-of-website-traffic-generated-from-search-engines/#.T54-PbPzuSo
3.http://www.mediabistro.com/alltwitter/facebook-twitter-and-the-state-of-social-commerce-infographic_b19026