Social Media Profiles Help with Ranking

Unless you work for an extremely popular business or company, your website or blog doesn't rank as well as online social networks such as LinkedIn, Facebook, or Twitter. These sites also made changes to their title tag structure and now ranks really well for names. Building online social profiles in a variety of sites that match your interest in industry is key to increasing your traffic and overall presence. It's important to Keep your social profiles current and active even if simply accomplish this with RSS feeds or online social publishing tools like Chi.mp. At the end of the day...this really means you are borrowing their search engine juice.

Blog. On Your Site And Off

Steady content creation and short bites of news and updates is key to staying ranked high with the search engines. I read somewhere online that BLOG is actually an acronym for Better Listing on Google? Did you know that? You didn't, because actually not true! Ha! But it could've been, because steady blogging works. It's the best way to organically drive traffic to your website without paying a lot of money to a search engine specialist or marketing firm.

What so many people seem to be missing and often simply just don't understand .... is the value of blogging off site. When you take the time to post comments and blog posts outside of your own they will often get picked up by other news aggregators. You will also enjoy the benefit of organic search engine optimization. When you post outside of your own site. ALWAYS include a link back to your own which helps with your own site optimization.

Guest Post On Several Blogs and Podcasts

I've personally have guest posted on several different blogs and podcasts as well as in some of the top social network communities. This has increased my own search engine rankings for my professional website at www.LisaLibutti.com.

So get out there, have some fun and be visible. Hop into the game of online networking and start contributing content! And remember...content can be pictures, videos, news, events, comments, reviews, feedback. You get the picture.

Finally, remember the goal. Ranking for your site for a specific term is the big win. When that's difficult or impossible, try to surround it with links to places that do link to you. Think of them as breadcrumbs that can lead people to you. Sprinkle as many as you can.

Abridged: Ignite Social Media

Getting Started With Social Media

3 Easy Steps to Get Started with Social Media Marketing:

1. Create a Profile Page or persona, like Jack Box on MySpace that is fun and interactive. Get your network and friends to dedicate a minute or two a day to help get things going, update their own Facebook status' mentioning your brand, Twitter about the page or something new they posted, include a link in your email newsletters to increase traffic and membership.
2. Search Twitter for your industry and/or topics that relate to your art or business and start to follow a few other industry experts. Your own list of followers will quickly grow. As it grows, keep twittering about industry news, press you received, or even that you've just completed your latest email newsletter (this is a little list building tip). Add links in every tweet to drive them to your site, group, blog, or opt-in form.
3. Measure your success. After all, if you can't measure it, why are you doing it?
   Use tools such as:
   
   
   • Facebook Lexicon to see the frequency of your topic's being mentioned.
   • TweetDeck to review all the Twitter feeds and break them down into manageable views.
   • Andiamo Systems (our choice at VerticalResponse) to manage all of your social media activity. (We track not only our own online "buzz" but our competitors' to compare.)

Obviously there is a lot more you can do with social networking. But I wanted to make your first steps into Social Media easy and fun. Remember social media networking is just another way to keep you top of mind with your fans and network. You are bringing your message to a highly targeted audience online and making it easy for your fans and customers to find you online.