Social networking websites have transformed the web in recent years; Understanding how to use them and their inherent value as a marketing platform is truly valuable to today’s growing businesses. Five popular social networking sites are examined in more detail below in terms of how they work and how best to use them for search engine optimization purposes.
Facebook: Facebook can easily be considered a progenitor of the many social networking sites that have come to fruition in recent years; is one of the largest and most popular social networks. The ever-changing look of Facebook and its ever-growing reach have kept it at the top of the social media food chain. New technologies keep coming, from apps to fan clubs, status updates, streaming YouTube videos and page requests, keeping users connected and engaged. Perhaps its ever-expanding content is the reason behind Facebook’s population of over 250 billion members. If you’re looking for free viral marketing opportunities, this may be the best it can be. Use Facebook to insert inbound links to your site to support search engine optimization; This can especially affect your SEO ranking if you develop fans of your brand and drive traffic to your site to increase your online presence.
LinkedIn – A leading professional networking site, LinkedIn is the virtual space for employees and employers to connect, search for jobs, recruit new employees, and generally maintain communication and business exchanges. LinkedIn allows users to create a profile that includes their employment history and information about educational background and specific skills. An advantage of this site for search engine optimization is that it allows you to insert a followed link in your profile, improving your SEO visibility. LinkedIn also allows you to create profiles for your brand; Users can also write testimonials on this page, which contributes to your presence on this social networking site and on the web in general.
StumbleUpon – A social networking bookmarking site, StumbleUpon is a network where users rate websites according to their interests using a thumbs up or down icon. A stumble button added to your browser will suggest new websites based on users’ previously recorded preferences. To get your site into the StumbleUpon index, simply go to its home page and give it a thumbs up. These preference-based social bookmarking sites are beneficial in terms of search engine optimization; When indexing your site, StumbleUpon allows users to select which categories their site will be indexed in, as well as create tags to maximize traffic to your site. Since the people who visit your site are already interested in that topic, StumbleUpon is inherently showing your site to a refined target audience. These viewers are more likely to enjoy your site and provide inbound links from their own personal site or blog; This is a search engine optimization friendly cycle. Also, if you manage to get a large number of high ratings, your site will appear on the StumbleUpon home page, which will really boost your search engine rankings.
Twitter – This social networking site allows users to post status updates about their current endeavors. Unfortunately, Twitter does not have tracking tags, so posting your site’s URL in a tweet will not increase your search engine visibility. But Twitter isn’t entirely useless in terms of search engine optimization; If you insert a hyperlink in your tweet and users click on it, it will still increase traffic to your site, another SEO strategy. Since there are so many Twitter users, the likelihood of increasing the number of hits you get is good, especially if you have a lot of friends.
Wikipedia: Wikipedia is a social networking site that allows users to view, add and edit content about any word or term, a kind of mutable encyclopedia, made by and for the masses. Wikipedia entries are consistently listed at the top of search engine results; The nature of your site lends itself to constant content updates and additions, which is a practice that contributes to search engine optimization. Although Wikipedia does not have tracking tags on any inbound links inserted into its site, using three-way linking can overcome this hurdle. If nothing else, Wikipedia is a quick fix in terms of disturbing competitors’ high SEO rank, as it is always favored by search engines. However, since anyone can delete or change their post at any time, it may not be the most effective SEO strategy.
Another way you can increase your visibility is to narrow down the hyperlinked text on any of these social networking sites to specific geographic areas so it appears more relevant to search engines; For example, a site that offers search engine optimization services will be more easily optimized if the hyperlink text is “Boston search engine optimization” rather than a more generic, less relevant hyperlink. In general though, social networking sites can be a great way to drive traffic to your web page, distribute inbound links, and increase your overall web presence. Link building on social networking sites can increase the relevance of your sites according to search engines and ultimately increase your keyword rankings.