Five Ways Social Media Can Increase Your Google Rankings

Google’s search algorithm changes rapidly.  Normal search strategies have had to adopt to include social media.  Did you even know that what you say in your social media sites can heavily reflect on your rankings?   Here’s how….

1.    Real Time Search – Link well

Google signed real-time search with Facebook, Twitter and MySpace in late 2009. This means that when somebody searches for a particular topic on Google they will receive real-time updates from a variety of social media sites, as well as the usual list of search results.

What you write in Twitter and Facebook matters.  You want to keep it real but think carefully about the subjects you choose to update your status with.  Im not saying be keyword heavy just to sell your product but be aware that your words have an impact. Links from Twitter and Facebook are treated the same as any other site. Google does not distinguish them.

2.  Decrease your usage of Hastags

We all know the hastag happy people!  We love #Googlebuzz #ipad and #socialsearch.  Yes its fun and can help us identify people with like minds but can also be overkill.  
One of Google’s jobs is to identify what is spam and what isn’t.  Trending topics on Twitter, measured by hashtag popularity, can attract lots of junk tweets.  Unfortunately Google finds hastags to be a negative indicator of tweet quality and adjusts is ranking factors for tweets with hastags accordingly. Be careful not to abuse the hashtag.

3.  Know your No Follow/Do Follow

“Link juice – expression refers to overall quality or “weight” of the incoming link to your website. All outside links pointing to a certain page of your site affect your page score in the eyes of the search engines. High quality links considered to have more “link juice”.”
internet-marketing-website-design.com/internet-marketing-glossary.html

DO Follow means that it passes link juice on to your site.
NO Follow prevents link juice in order to block spam

Twitter – No Follow Links

Twitter links in Tweets are NO Follow, but the link in your Twitter Profile is DO Follow Links on Tweets to your site are NO Follow, but remember, keywords you use in your Tweets now show up in Google’s Real-Time search results.

Facebook – Do Follow Links

Set-Up a Facebook Fan Page for your business. Facebook Fan Pages are public and are DO Follow links.  By updating it often with links back to your site should help increase your Google rankings.

4.    Increase your circle in Google’s new Social Search

This is a great new tool for making search results more relevant. It’s just out of Google labs so it still has a few bugs but essentially Social Search pulls in information from Websites, blogs, public profiles, and other content linked from your friends’ Google profiles and creates your Social Circle.

In order to appear in more search results you need to:

•    Build your Google profile
•    Grow your network and update your information as much as possible
•    Try to make more connections with people using the Gmail network and Friends

5.    Join the Google Buzz

It likely you have a Gmail account in order to use Google Analytics or Google Reader.  Recently Google have announced their own network site Google Buzz.  Although Buzz has raised many negative points Google still hold the cards when it comes to search.  By completing your Buzz profile and increasing your network you should impact on their search engine results pages.  If you become a ‘buzzer’ in your field you could become influential and show at the top of search engine ranking pages

Your Business

Katrina de Gruchy is a social media consultant with Bright Social Media.  She can help you build your business’s social media presence to gain new customers and enhance relationships with existing ones.  Contact her today to find out how.

Google Love/Loathe

So whether you love or loathe Google they are very much the monopoly and in control of your businesses destiny.  Im not saying that you should keyword stuff your social media networks and make friends with just anyone to raise your profile on Google.  Contrary…It should be an organic process, building true relationships that matter but you should be aware of how social media impacts on your Google rankings.

How do you feel about Google’s monopoly? Have I missed any points out that you would like to discuss?  Feel free to drop a line…..