http://socialnewswatch.com/social-media-seo-spam/
I’m thumbing it up because it’s about social media and SEO, but it’s a flawed article, in that it once again espouses the popular misplaced notion that SEO equates to spam.
Most SEO / SEM people within the social media sites contribute great content and add to the sites value. What makes them different from a normal user? Actually, the quality of what they submit will probably be higher, they want to get “power” accounts and work hard to archive that providing content that the rest of the site’s audience want.
Yes, there is a brief paragraph mentioning the good SEOs involved social media:
“Is everyone who uses social media websites for SEO bad? Are they all spammers? Absolutely not. Some of the most respected members of the SM sites are SEOs by profession. Without ‘outing’ any, it’s clear that they are active contibutors who submit quality content. They participate in many ways, more than just submitting. They vote, interact, and in general they add more to the website than they take.”
But the majority of what the article talks about is spam. And spammers are not SEOs. Having multiple accounts all of which serve just to friend other spam a/cs and vote up the same terrible sites & articles is hardly SEO, and I’m pretty sure it doesn’t work with regard to getting consistent traffic either. I don’t think I’ve ever hit a spam site by clicking on the tool bar “Stumble!” button, while I have found plenty of spam profiles & content and have reported them as I’ve wondered around SU. If it’s raw visitors they may consider my visit a success, but I’ve hit the site, reported the spam, the spammer and then trawled through the friends list outing other spammers too. Pretty unsuccessful use of social media if you ask me. Also consider how the target sites rank in the search engines, next time you find one of those spam sites, take a keyword or phrase from the page and search for it. I doubt you’d find all but the most obscure phrases in the search engines, so it’s an unsuccessful strategy for Search Engine Optimization too.
Oh, and if anyone from SU reads this, please make hitting a spam have an indicator on the account, an icon like with friends ot fans, so I can see who I’ve reported before and not waste my time (and yours) by doing so again. Many of the spammers will have the same avatars and nonsense usernames making it harder to keep track of who I’ve already grassed-up.
Repeat after me – social media spamming is not SEO.
</rant>