The mindset that you need to have isn’t complicated. It just takes a little bit of getting use to because it is a new way of thinking about search engine optimization. It is a new way of thinking about online business in general.

The process involved here could fill a 500 page book so I will give you a broad overview so you have a basic understanding of the process involved.

There are five main steps in SEO 2.0:

Step 1: Build your central hub (your blog or website)

Step 2: Discover potential networks (social media blueprinting)

Step 3: Learn your communities

Step 4: Develop and deliver your content strategy

Step 5: Engage the Audience and build your fan club

Let’s go ahead and break each of these steps down into easily digestible chunks so you can implement them right away.

Step 1: Build Your Central Hub
Your central hub is the focus point of all of your SEO 2.0 efforts.

This is the place where you will grow your search engine visibility through SEO 2.0 – this is the website you’ll see rising in ranking as you go about doing SEO 2.0.

Your central hub should be a blog, preferably a WordPress blog (Wordprss.org), which is hosted on your own server that is subsequently “plugged in” to the social community through Social Media Optimization (SMO).

Your central hub should be search engine optimized by paying attention to on page factors which are covered later.

All traffic will initially flow into your central hub. And from that point, you will direct this traffic to your products, services, or other promotions, either by linking to them or hosting them on your central hub.

Once your hub is optimized for social media and search engine rankings then all you have to do is create targeted, timely content that compels people to want to “share” your content with the rest of the world.

To help them do so, you will optimize your site for the social media scene by having “plugins” and “widgets” (software tools you install with your WordPress blog) right on your website. These tools encourage your readers to share your content and make it a snap for them to do so.

When creating your content, you’ll want it to be educational, enlightening, and/or entertaining as mentioned above. These 3 E’s of content have been proven to resonate best with others and motivates them to want to share with others.

When you implement the rest of the steps below you will create a well rounded system for generating traffic, action and sales. Your search engine visibility and rankings will climb because your audience (your community) will do all of the linking for you.

They will link to, share and discuss your content. Notice here the difference between this and SEO 1.0 linking strategy… In SEO 1.0 you are the one out there artificially building the links, in SEO 2.0, others are doing it on their own free will

We have undeniable evidence that Google is paying close attention to ‘Social Rankings’ – how others share your content. As a matter of fact, Google has already submitted a patent application to determine the overall rank of a website using this concept of ‘social ranking’.

In short, the more your content is voted for, shared, or linked to, the higher you climb in the search engine rankings. This is SEO 2.0 and your central hub is the center of all of this activity.

By focusing on the community angle (tribalism), all of your search engine visibility and ranking initiatives will be handled automatically.

Step 2: Discover Potential Networks (Social Media Blueprinting) Now that you have a firm understanding of what your central hub is and a broad overview of the end goal (relationships), it is time to look for the social networks that will allow you to build and foster those relationships.

Unfortunately, there is no cookie-cutter approach here.

You are going to have to choose networks depending on your market, preferences, personality, and the level of participation from the audience.

You have to choose your networks using the level of participation by its audience as the gauge. Once you have determined that your target audience exists in a network, you now need to compare that network’s level of participation compared to another network.

You are looking for a network with highly active audience. This is a process, known as
Social Media Blueprinting, that might take a while, but in the end, is well worth it. Now… before you become intimidated by this process let me calm your nerves a bit.
This is not a complicated process and it does not require you to exit your comfort zone. See, you are choosing your networks and your level interaction with your target audience based on your personal preferences.

Like I said earlier, there’s no cookie cutter. So I am not going to sit here dictating to you the networks you need to be a part of. As a matter of fact, never subscribe to systems that tells you what networks you “need” to be involved in.

Using this formula, you’ll only need a handful of these perfect networks (5 or less). And with this formula, you will be able to focus on these few networks and leverage them to extend your reach into your entire industry and raise your rankings.

Step 3: Learn Your Communities
Now that you have discovered your communities (your social networks), it is time to learn them.

Sit back and listen to what other people in your target market are saying. What are their problems, concerns, interests, products they are buying, etc.

Find out what they need and how you can serve that need. Determine how you can position yourself as an authority and as someone they’d want engage with.

Listening will allow you to develop a content strategy that will pull people into your
“central hub” (I will cover the content strategy below).

Another aspect of learning about your communities is learning the “software” that drives the community. How can you communicate, what tools does the network have to help you reach out to your target audience, build relationships, communicate and share?

However, don’t get attached too quickly…

Not every community you choose and learn will be a perfect fit for you. Be willing to walk away from any community if it doesn’t fit the bill. Never feel obligated to stay.

Okay, now that you have an understanding of your community’s attitude and mentality, it’s time to develop a strategy that’ll help engage the audience by addressing their specific needs.

Step 4: Develop and Deliver Your Content Strategy
The content strategy you will set In motion will both engage people in the social network you have chosen and also help lead them down the sales funnel on your central hub.

When creating content, you have a few different choices:

• Text
• Audio
• Video
• Photo
• Slideshow

After you have determined what is important to your target audience and planned your content strategy to address their needs, you can then deliver content to them in whatever form you desire.

Now is where the magic happens…

Remember how you first studied the community and listened in on the community? Because you listened, you know exactly what they are looking for, and now you are going to give it to them.

You will produce content that will be both “timely” and “on target” to your target audience. And, if you follow the personal branding and community building techniques I cover below, they begin to share your content.

Once your community starts the process of sharing, your search engine visibility and rankings will increase automatically without ever focusing on them. Thus creates the SEO links you were seeking for in the first place!

See where the SEO 2.0 magic starts happening?

See, like I was saying, this is very contrary to traditional Internet marketing tactics which focuses on you trying to build yourself up and only serving yourself – without needing to heed the community.

Well, with social media and SEO 2.0, your primary focus becomes centered on your community and delivering content to them based on THEIR needs. And their needs, of course, are determined by listening, taking notes and then devising a content strategy for engaging them.

This primes the pump for everything else. Your content is the driving force. This is not a difficult thing to accomplish if you will just “listen” and then act on what you heard by delivering solutions, advice, entertainment, enlightenment, and education.

The act of engaging your community in this manner will build fans for you. Your fans will follow you to your hub and buy form you without you having to push advertisements in their face.

And beyond that, they will even help you spread the word. So now on to engaging them with your content…

Step 5: Engage the Audience and Build Your Fan Club
Once you have determined and developed your content strategy it is time to engage your community with that content through a process called “personal branding”, the art of community building.

Let’s first take a quick step back and make sure we are on the same page on what a
“community” is first.

The word community is a fairly broad term that encompasses quite a few different relationship angels. In general your community will be made up of four different kinds of relationships:

• Business Development – These relationships are formed based on business relations and developments.

• Evangelist relationships – These are relationships with people that will spread (syndicate) your messages on your behalf. For example, when you post new content to your blog your ‘evangelist’ friends will bookmark, share, link to your content, etc. This activity spreads your reach through the action of others. This is also an element of crowdsourcing where ‘the crowd’ (your evangelists) does the work for you.

• Communicators – These people stay in contact with you constantly with questions, comments, advice, etc.

• Followers – These people are the quiet ones in your audience. They don’t evangelize, they don’t communicate, they just listen. You will have far more followers in social media than any of the other three types of relationships.

Of course you will have contacts (friends) that are a mixture of any or all of the relationship types. You can have a community of hundreds, thousands or even millions of people all the while remaining focused on your content strategy.

In other words, reaching thousands of people does not necessarily mean that your work load increases. All you have to do is focus on your content (your personal branding) and hundreds, thousands or millions of people Who appreciate and value your work will flock to you.

As an example, Barack Obama has a focused content strategy using online social media where he is able to reach millions of people without increasing his work load.

Now, let me present you the simple blueprint that streamlines this community building process. It’s called the O.G.R.E.S. process:

O -­ G -­ R -­ E -­ S
“O” is observe. You want to pay attention to your industry by observing what is going on so that you can engage your target audience with it. An easy way to stay on top of your industry is to follow all the top bloggers in your niche. Subscribe to their RSS feeds and watch as new news pours in daily.

This will of course help you stay current with what’s happening in your industry and give you easy access to fresh and new content to write about. We will cover much more on this later.

“G” means “gather.” After observing content, you might find a few items that are very interesting. What you want to do then is to gather that information into your community.

Let’s say you’ve built followers in 3 different social networks. So you gather that quality content into your networks so you can share it with your people. It can be your own content, or someone else’s (more on that later as well).

There are two things you do with the content you gathered, “Reward” the person that created the content and then “Engage” your community with that content.

First on “Reward”.

“R” means “reward.” When you reward people, you are essentially promoting them to your community, it’s your way of saying, “This person posted really content!”

Rewarding them gives them a feeling of recognition, just the same as you get when others comment on your content. And believe me, they’ll be forever thankful and will reciprocate in whatever ways they can. But of course, don’t expect and seek that reciprocation

Be sure to check within your own circle of friends and fans in each of your communities for good content and reward them.

Just remember this cardinal rule rewarding begets BEING rewarded in social media. Never forget this rule.

“E” means “engage.” You’ve gone out and “gathered” good content that you’ve observed. Now engage your community with that information somehow. Blog posts, videos, audios, link sharing, forum postings, etc.

Perhaps post the content that you gathered while passing credit to the original resource via a link. Maybe even add your own personal thoughts on the matter. Whatever the case, encourage your community to participate in the posted content by commenting, linking to it, sharing it with others, etc.

Ultimately you want 2-way communication between you and your fans to take place. Engaging promotes 2-way communication.

“S” is for “seek”. You want to find people who also observe, gather, reward, and engage. If people don’t do those same things, your community will not build. So you want to seek out those people who are doing exactly the same thing.

They obviously understand the process, and they are the best people for you to connect with in order to mutually further each others’ interests.

The O.G.R.E.S formula follows human characteristics that will never change. As long as you’re connecting with real people and using this formula, then your business will succeed no matter how Internet technology changes.

This is a force of UN-change… It never changes and never will. Whenever you use any Internet social technology to grow your business always seek how you can achieve the OGRES formula within it.

This formula will work to build your communities and your personal brand. All you have to do is…

Do it. And you shall reap the rewards that’s in store for you.