For the many of us that have been setting up social profiles and social bookmarking our sites in hopes of increased traffic, the time has come. Google has begun searching social profiles and logging these results. I believe their reasoning behind this move will be to better understand the person/company and their social habits. Just as Google has the doubleclick cookies to track where you have been on the internet to better advertise to you, I think this is the same reasons for the social profile tracking.
At one time, people were getting criticized for setting up so many social network profiles. Internet marketers had an idea of setting a bunch of social profiles, adding their links in there with some keywords, and getting one way links. This led to a bunch of spam complaints and even some of the search engines not counting the links and even counting them against you. but, like always, the search engines eventually relax their rules, and what was not allowed at once is now allowed.
While this is extremely good for business, it is very scary for personal profiles. Think of all of the data being collected by social networks about you. People feel some strange reason to place their entire history online for the world to see. Once Google starts cataloging all of this information about you, they will have their hands a basic FBI style profile on you. This is the bad part of this. But from a business standpoint, you can exploit this opportunity to your advantage.
The best ways to optimize your social profiles for seo are as follows:
- Sign up with a legitimate email address, but not your primary one. Be sure to check this email and answer all of your posts and comments.
- Set up your account with a related username. If your niche or business is into gardening, then you might make your username gardnermike.
- Only post and bookmark information related to the business and business related topics.
- Ensure your profile has a link to the website you are looking to promote.
- Add as many keywords to your social profile as possible. But, make sure you are not keyword stuffing. It still needs to sound good.
- Add a picture to your profile. I would also use the same picture for all of your accounts. This will give the users and potential customers confidence that each site they see your picture is actually you.
I think if you follow those rules you will be better suited to take advantage of the indexing of social profiles. You business could get that much needed boost in search engine rankings. Just be sure to keep it simple, and not start keyword stuffing or spamming the social networks. This will result in canceled accounts, and that does absolutely no good for your business. Just set up a good social profile and add some good content. This is not your entire business, only a small part of it. So maximize it!
Related posts:
- The Zen of Social Media Marketing: An Easier Way to Build Credibility, Generate Buzz, and Increase Revenue
- Inbound Marketing: Get Found Using Google, Social Media, and Blogs
- Trends in Social Media for 2011
