Creating your own virtuous circle (SEO)

Social media and bookmarking sites offer you the opportunity to create a virtuous circle that delivers SEO benefits. It's based on the idea that all ships rise on a rising tide.

You have to be a prolific content creator for this idea to work. If you can't even manage a blog post per day, there's no point pursuing this strategy.

In terms of the accounts you'll need, this will get you started...

• Your own web site
• Your own Blog
• A Twitter account
• A Delicious account
• An account with at least one topical forum
• An account with Ezine Articles

Of course, it's well worth picking up accounts with other social media, networking and bookmarking sites.

If you create video content, you'll want to include You Tube. If you're a photographer, you'll want to include Flicker.

The purpose of these accounts is to place content with them. All your content should be centrally recorded to your Delicious account. This is a bookmarking site, allowing you to link to everything you create. It's the key to the system, allowing you to keep track.

Here's how each component is used...

• Your blog posts should contain unique content aimed at your target market
• Your site should contain unique content aimed at your target market
• Twitter should be used to announce each new piece of content you create (along with a link to it)
• Social media sites (You Tube, Flicker, etc) are used to link to or upload content
• Article sites are used to create contextual links to various sites in your virtuous circle
• Leave comments on topical Blogs that link to your main site or Blog
• Post to topical forums, and include contextual links in your signature (to various sites in your circle)

Once your circle is up and running, look for other people operating a virtuous circle. See if there's scope to cooperate with each other. You can link to each other's content in a way that doesn't cancel each other out (because one link is not directly reciprocated).

It's also possible to direct your virtuous circle at a particular social media site, to raise the prominence of one or more pieces of content.

As some of your content rises in prominence, the rest can follow thanks to the magic of link juice.