SkyFall-ing Rankings – you need an SEO Agent, that’s no secret.

You know you’ve been ‘Gurgled’ when you wake up and find that your rankings have been subjected to a ‘Skyfall’ and dropped from the stratosphere faster than your allocation of facebook shares on the first day of trading.

James Bond 007 secret agent will no doubt save the day in the recent Skyfall movie with a golden bullet,  but we’re talking reality here. If your keyword placements have  dropped significantly, how do you go about resurrecting your website rankings, and more importantly what should you do now?

The Enemy

The first thing is to find out what has caused it?  The most common issue is unnatural link building, so if you or your SEO company been trigger happy with your link building recently, this may be the cause.  You should immediately track down these poor back links and remove them.  Replace links with better links. Check your webmaster tools and see if you have  received an email from Google warning of ‘unnatural links’, and act swiftly.

The Killer Solution

There’s no need to be crestfallen, there is a solution, but you will need to be patient and persevere. The answer is a combined search & social media campaign – obtaining back links naturally, organically and from high quality sites is the only way to go since the Google and Panda roll outs.

Here’s an extract of an outline tactical social media campaign plan you can use to build your own strategy.

1. Approach

Phase 1:  Audience building- freemium model

Phase 2:  Community Building Phase 3: optimizing community to grow naturally and grow revenues, seo and viral.

2.  Utilise Your Blog

Objective: Drive targeted traffic to the blog/site, collect email sign ups/members

a) Research Topics/Subjects/Keywords/Hot Topics Task: Create a content marketing plan/calendar

b) Regular, quality content on every aspect of the site. Standardised format of blogging with high quality pictures, videos, and written content.

Task: Write/Publish Content

c) Cross platform social media – propagate content to other social media platforms for seeding.

d) Enhance blog experience to promote sharing. Task: Add social media sharing plugins.

3. Social Media – Blog Outreach

− Research blogs/bloggers in your market and build an engagement list, segmenting blogs by relevance and authority.

− Create an editorial calendar built around topics relevant to these influential blogs in your market that are also aligned with your keyword priorities.

− Building lasting trusting working relationships with influential bloggers, online newsmakers and other online influencers is vital in leveraging your brand’s message, product/service message output and increasing ROI on sales vs marketing

− Research the blogger’s audience and topical focus, and find out who accepts guest posts and what their submission criteria entails.

Short term objectives:

• Increase Recognition − Promote brand trust

• Increase Engagement −  Encourage comments, forum pages, etc.

4. Social Media – Networks Short term objectives: Facebook Fan Page − Share a mix of relevant links, engaging content, videos, and polls − Make sure you promote upcoming events and create them in the events tab − Engage with influencers

LinkedIn

− Account Setup

− Posting relevant content

− Identify other groups to follow and participate

− Company interaction with influencers

− Monitor and participate in Q&A

− Social recruitment of advocates on different platforms

Google + − Optimize for SEO − Appropriate posting − Timezoned, targeted to audience and demographics/research − Share engaging content, videos, images, and relevant links − Comment on posts − Interacting with influencers − Building customer support − Utilize Google Hangouts − Create and promote upcoming events

Pinterest − Create boards leveraging both content and company culture − Follow other businesses, thought leaders, customers, and partners

5. Social Media – Micro Blogging

Short term objectives:

Compile a list of company Twitter users Promote company blog post through corporate account Communicate support issues from social media to support team, ensure follow-up Build reputation Promote other social networking activities/sites through Twitter

Key Metrics:

Friends/Followers Retweets Interactions/ relationships established with key relevant influencers

–  2nd-order followers (follower’s follower count) Velocity

– avg. of first-and second-order followers attracted per day since the account was established Social Capital

– influence of twitter followers Centralization

– how much influence (reach) is invested in a small number of followers Pages ranking on key terms from microblogging sites

6. Social Media – Peer to Peer

Short term objectives:

Add a social element to every campaign to expand reach and increase engagement Share videos, reviews, ratings, and polls