Social Media: The new powerhouse of link building
Linking with social media sites allows you to sprint in the race to gain search engine authority and rank. Search engine optimization is the process of gaining market share by directing traffic to your website. There are many on-page factors to consider such as making sure your website has fresh content, is structurally well-organized, contains relevant keywords related to your business, etc. However, one of the most important factors to consider has the most leverage in the search engine’s eyes and is not even on your website: inbound links. This means getting other sites, blogs, social media accounts, directories to have a link on their page to your site. If trusted, significant sites are linking to your site, it improves your overall search engine ranking and site authority, allowing your site to be more accessible to your future customers. There are many ways to go about posting your link on other sites and asking other sites to post your link but I would like to focus on the power of social media sites.
Social media is quickly escalating as a ranking factor for search engines. “This works well because, even though your Twitter profile (for example) is closely related to your site, it is hosted on a different domain, meaning you can pass along a great deal of trust to it from your site” says Rob Ousbey of Distilled. Like utilizing the power of keywords on your webpage, you should use the tools these social sites give you. Twitter, for example, lets you choose a 20 character name that doesn’t have to be your real name. So, take this opportunity to make that name keyword-rich as well as your business bio. Both of these things are highly indexable and therefore very important to your SEO strategy. From here, you want to get followers on Twitter or “likes” on Facebook and build your profile recognition.
Next, you want to start linking. “Link to your profile everywhere you can, and do so with strong keywords in the anchor text.” You should link your Twitter or Facebook profile to your main website as well as asking a blog owner to link to your site when you contribute content for them. This will improve the amount of authority your site receives from search engines. Likewise, you should invite users of your website to follow you on Twitter and like you on Facebook. The more you can link all your resources and keep the content fresh, relevant and timely, the faster you can build search engine authority and ranking for your business.
While it’s a good thing to have some fun with your Twitter and Facebook account and go off-topic from time to time, you should mainly stay focused and regularly publish tweets/posts that are on-topic and keyword-rich. Remember, like with any other webpage, your social media profiles are content that, if keyword-rich, are more likely to be ranked well. So, keep the content relevant to your business and your expertise. Being a trusted, knowledgeable source for your industry will grant you long term authority and success.
