Do You Know How To Socially Network For Your SEO?

Social networking can boost your SEO (if it’s done right)

Do you know what social networking is? Do you know how to use it to boost your SEO? If the answer to either of those questions is no, read on.

What is social networking?

Out in cyberspace, there are online communities of people who share interests and are interested in finding out about other people. If you’ve ever used services like Facebook, MySpace or Bebo, then you’ve already been using social networking. Other forms of social networking include blogs, social news websites and forums.

How does my SEO benefit from social networking?

Since another term for Search Engine Optimization is Search Engine Marketing, it is a given that the purpose of SEO is to (a) inform as many people as possible about your website (b) turn visitors into customers.

Although businesses can use social networks for advertising in the form of banners and text ads, the greatest advantage of this media is that it connects people at low cost.

Since networking sites offer an opportunity for people with similar interests to meet up online, it makes sense then that relevant, quality traffic will be directed towards your own website. For example, if you owned a travel and tourism website, you could be contributing posts to travel related forums with the result that you would get the attention of other people also interested in travelling.

Alternatively, you could set up a MySpace page where you could publish the latest news, measure your site’s popularity through the amount of ‘friends’ the MySpace page has and include links back to your official site. With this form of networking though it is important to stay engaged with the people who visit the page by posting new content and respond to friend requests. The SEO benefit here is that you establish well-regarded search engine content that links directly to your company’s website.

SEO can also benefit from social news sites such as Digg and Delicious.com (formerly Del.icio.us). Here you can submit news that you feel is interesting and relevant to readers of these sites. If readers like it they can cast a vote for your news. Your site will benefit from the inbound links to it from these well trafficked pages. Bloggers looking for their next news item will also pick up your stories and provide multiple links.

Clearly all this networking is very time consuming and it takes time to build your presence in each different format. Talk to the SEO specialists at Suncoast Web Solutions today to find out how they can launch your social networking presence and attract quality traffic to your website.