Social media 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 growing businesses today. Below, five popular social media sites are examined in further detail in terms of how they work and the best way to utilize them for search engine optimization purposes.
Facebook: Facebook can readily be considered as a progenitor of the many social media sites that have materialized in recent years; it is one of the largest, most popular social media networks. Facebook's constantly changing look and broadening reach has kept it on the top of the social media food chain. New technologies just keep on coming, from applications to fan clubs, status updates, streaming YouTube videos, and page requests, keeping users tuned in and engaged. Perhaps their constantly expanding content is the reason behind Facebook's over 250,000 million member population. If you are looking for free viral marketing opportunities, this may be as good as it gets. Use Facebook to insert incoming links to your site to support search engine optimization; this can especially impact your SEO ranking if you develop fans of your brand, and drive traffic to your site to grow your online presence.
LinkedIn: A prominent professional networking site, LinkedIn is the virtual space for employees and employers to network, job search, recruit new hires, and just generally maintain business communication and exchanges. LinkedIn allows users to create a profile listing their job history and information regarding educational background and specified skills. An advantage of this site for search engine optimization is that it allows you to insert a followed link in your profile, enhancing to 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 media site and on the web in general.
StumbleUpon: A social media bookmarking site, StumbleUpon is a network where users rate websites according to their interests using a thumbs up or thumbs down icon. A stumble button added to your browser will then suggest new websites according to users' previously recorded preferences. To enter your site into StumbleUpon's index, simply go to your home page and rate it with a thumbs up. These preference-based social bookmarking sites are beneficial in terms of search engine optimization; upon indexing your site, StumbleUpon allows users to select what categories their site will be indexed under, as well as create tags to maximize traffic to their site. Since the individuals that view your site are already interested in that subject matter, StumbleUpon is inherently showing your site to a refined target audience. These viewers will be more likely to enjoy your site, and provide incoming links to it off their own personal site or blog; this is a search engine optimization-friendly cycle. Moreover, if you manage to get a large number of high ratings, your site will appear on StumbleUpon's homepage, which will really optimize your search engine ranking.
Twitter: This social media site allows users to post status updates about their current endeavors. Unfortunately, Twitter has no follow tags so posting the URL to your site on a tweet will not increase your search engine visibility. But Twitter is not altogether useless in terms of search engine optimization; if you insert a hyperlink in your tweet and users click on it, it will still drive up your site traffic -- 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 media site that allows users to view, add, and edit content on any word or term, a mutable encyclopedia of sorts, made by and for the masses. Wikipedia entries are constantly listed at the top of search engine results; the nature of their site lends itself to constant content updates and additions, which is a practice that contributes to search engine optimization. Though Wikipedia has no follow tags on any incoming links inserted on their site, using three way links can overcome this roadblock. If nothing else, Wikipedia is a quick fix in terms of disturbing competitors' high SEO rank, since it is always favored by search engines. Since anyone can erase or change your entry at anytime, though, it may not be the most effective SEO strategy.
Another way that you can increase your visibility is by narrowing the hyperlinked text on any of these social media sites to geo-specific areas to appear more relevant to search engines; for example, a site offering search engine optimization services will be more readily optimized if its hyperlinked text is "Boston search engine optimization" opposed to a more generic and less relevant hyperlink. Overall, however, social media sites can be a great way to drive traffic to your webpage, distribute incoming links, and grow your overall web presence. Link building on social media sites can increase your sites relevancy according to search engines and ultimately increase your keyword ranking.
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