Traditional search engine optimization methods – the SEO tricks of tag spam and semi-relevant backlinks among other tricks – no longer lift a Web site’s page rank. Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo engineers have worked to find ways to identify bogus methods and have, in part, succeeded.

For most Web sites, the long road to appearing in the first page of a search results list begins with content. But excellent content is not enough. The content must be refreshed and new, substantive content added. Experts disagree about how often a Web site’s content must be updated, but most agree on one key point: New content is needed. Unfortunately high quality content takes time and effort.

If you have good content and want to leverage, there are some new ways to repurpose content and get some additional mileage out of your information. What’s important is that the method can be implemented when you do add a new article or update an existing Web article.

The combination of your original content and social media produces three benefits.

First, you are shifting from SEO tricks to content leveraging. The change in focus gives you new opportunities to reach potential customers or partners without running into problems with the digital watchdogs looking for relevance ranking spoofs and tricks.

Second, you can tap into the power of social media to get your information to a larger audience. For many of these individuals, a link back to your core Web site will mean an opportunity to provide more in-depth information to this site visitor. More traffic usually translates into signals to the Web indexing companies that your site is important.

Third, the use of your content in social media generates new information. If you have a Web log, you can summarize or supplement information on your Web site. By activating the comments feature of the Web log, you invite those who read the Web log to submit their remarks. You can contact this individual and request additional information and then post that information on your Web site. Alternatively, you can summarize the comments a Web log article generates in a new article for your Web site. You are not duplicating content; you are creating new information for your Web site.

The diagram below provides an illustration of a single Web site that is little more than an island sitting in a vast ocean of Internet-accessible information. The flows of data rush past the island, and it is difficult for most Web sites to generate meaningful traffic. In our experience at SSN and Beyond Search, a single Web site is almost invisible even if indexed by Google, Microsoft and Yahoo.

The diagram below shows how a basic strategic social networking “mesh” operates. An island is essentially a single shot for a person or an organization. It is isolated and may be anchored to other content via links. The “mesh” works almost like a digital fishing net and “catches” more opportunities to communicate.

Instead of a single way of reaching people, the two social functions amplify the impact of your content. The math looks like 3 * 2 * 1 = 6. This is a dramatic improvement from the 1 = 1 math of a basic Web site.

Keep in mind that the addition of social media “amplifiers” does not eliminate the need for you to create new content. You will be generating more content because you have to produce a blog post and instruct your blog software to generate a “tweet” that a new story has been posted. You can make this simple sequence of content activities add impact to your content and produce traffic to your Web site.

With some effort, you can convert comments to blog stories into new content for your Web site. The Twitter outputs are your personal broadcasting station about the information on your Web site.

Let’s recap. The use of social media—in this case a Web log or blog and automated “tweets”—put your content into the real-time information channel. The blog post and the “tweets” point back to your core Web site. The idea is to create new information for the Web site, post a synopsis of the new content on the blog, and then “tweet” about the new story.

If you do not create new content for your Web site, the effectiveness of these interlinked communication media is diminished. Properly staged, you can use social media to generate more traffic to your Web site and increase the likelihood that your Web site will appear higher in a search results list.

We call this method of amplification the SSN triple tap method. To learn more, write us at ssnblog at gmail dot com. We are delighted to talk without fee or obligation. We hope you will find our approach useful and that you will want our team of social media experts to assist you.

Stephen E Arnold, January 31, 2010