Recently, a client of ours experienced what we like to call SEO gold. The Good Table is a corporate and private catering company from Westchester County, New York, specializing in farm-fresh food made with local ingredients. The company dedicates a section of its web site to featuring and celebrating the small family farms that supply these ingredients.
One of the farms that The Good Table profiled — Laughing Child Farm of Pawlet, Vermont — added a link on their own Facebook to the Farmer Profile page. This social media effort not only provided excellent publicity for both Laughing Child Farm and The Good Table, but it actually generated a spike in web visitors for The Good Table — 10 times the typical amount of daily visitors.
So, why exactly is this SEO gold? Search engines show preference on their search engine results page (SERP) to web sites that receive relevant, inbound links — especially when they’re coming from social media channels. Social media activity — including likes, pins, tweets, comments, links, and shares — drives search queries, which in turn drive rankings on SERPs. In turn, this fuels brand visibility and awareness. Therefore, not only did one Facebook link drive immediate traffic to The Good Table’s site, but it also helped add weight to future search engine rankings.
So, even if you’re not into social media, chances are you know someone who is. Might not be a bad idea to ask around to generate some links to your site. It just might be a gold mine for you.
