Top 5 Social Media Sites for Small Business SEO

[caption id="attachment_587" align="aligncenter" width="600"] Social Media Sites[/caption]

With recent advancements in Google's search algorithms, it's no longer a question that social media sites have a profound influence on search engine rankings. Now, the real question is how does social media influence rankings?

The first social variable that impacts SEO stems from "social signals." These are Likes, Tweets, +1's, Pins, Shares, etc., that individuals attribute to a webpage. When a specific page, whether a blog post or YouTube video, has a wealth of social signals, its SEO-value increases.

Think of this as Google's way of knowing that real people find the content of a webpage credible and interesting, and thus deserving of higher search engine rankings.

The second social variable centers on the brand or business's profile page. In addition to providing a quality link back to its website, some social media websites enable companies to build citations.

Citations, which are simply mentions of a company's name, address, and phone number, help to make its website appear more credible and legitimate from the perspective of search engines. For local SEO and earning a higher placement in Google's local search listings, simply put, citations are the bee's knees. These are important variables that any small business marketer should keep top of mind.So now that you understand how social media sites influence SEO, let's get to the good stuff: the top social media sites for SEO.

#1: Facebook: Similar to Pinterest, Facebook profile pages can also rank in top of the search results (depending on how competitive a keyword is). Beyond SEO, Facebook offers a massive and widespread audience to connect with.

SEO Tip: Again just like Pinterest, try to include your keyword targets in the profile page's URL and in the description. Also, include a link (or better yet, a clearly visible icon) on your website that links to your Facebook page. This will help promote more likes and help grow your audience (making your page more authoritative for SEO.)

#2: Twitter: Twitter carries a great deal of SEO potential for small businesses. Tweets and re-tweets are among the most powerful social signals for SEO. So when you share your website's content on Twitter, and it's well-liked amongst your followers, its overall ranking potential increases.

SEO Tip: Take the time to reach-out, follow, and re-tweet posts of like-minded influencers and businesses. The greater the following you can cultivate, the greater exposure (and social signal potential) your tweets will have.

#3: Google+: Although an emerging social media platform (and one many small businesses overlook), Google+ offers incredible SEO potential in many respects. Google+ Local pages (which have replaced Google Places pages) are what appear in the Google Local search listings (the dedicated local results accompanied by the map with little pins.) A well-populated Google+ Local page will empower your small business' ranking potential in these listings. Additionally, Google+ page also provides a backlink as well as citation for you website.

What's nice is that you do not need to spend a lot managing a Google+ page for your business. Simply building a presence and ensuring your page contains accurate information will provide significant SEO benefits.

SEO Tip: After you've built a Google+ page for you business, include the suggested "site verification" link on your website (directing back to the Google+ page). This linking tells Google that your company's website and Google+ page are one of the same entity. This can be found on your profile page (while in edit mode), and essentially it ties everything together.

#4: LinkedIn: From a search engine perspective, LinkedIn is one of the most trusted and authoritative social domains. This why you see LinkedIn pages of both professionals and companies ranking well in the search results (similar to Facebook and Pinterest pages). LinkedIn "shares" are also incredibly potent for SEO. And at the very least, by creating a LinkedIn profile for your business, you get a quality backlink to your website, as well as trusted citation.

SEO Tip: Just like Twitter (and virtually all social media platforms), connect with as many colleagues and friends as you can. A strong LinkedIn following will increase your page's search engine authority, in addition to increasing the likelihood that your LinkedIn posts get shared. You can also include keywords in your page's content, but be careful not to degrade the quality of your page with over-optimization.

#5: Pinterest: Not only do Pinterest profile pages rank well in the search engines, but you get a nice DoFollow backlink to your website. Setting-up a Pinterest page is super easy. The time-consuming part is creating pin boards and pinning images (which can be effectively done by investing about 20 minutes a week.)

SEO Tip: When building your Pinterest page, use keywords to describe your pinboards, as well as define the URL and description of your profile page (e.g. "Atlanta Tax Attorney")

You Need to Stop Ignoring Google+ - Here are 4 SEO Reasons Why

In the two years since its launch, it is no secret that Google+ has had its skeptics—myself included.

However, it might be time to reconsider such hasty judgments. Recent data shows it has leap-frogged YouTube and Twitter as the second largest social network.

Personally, I was never very familiar with what is now the world’s second largest social network. I had a page by default through my Gmail account, but never took the time to actually complete my profile. I always considered it to be just an attempt by Google to jump on the social media bandwagon—providing us with yet another burdensome social platform to maintain while failing to stand out among the giants that had such a firm hold on the social media market.

Eventually, I caved and decided to complete my own Google+ profile as well as do some investigative research to see what all of the buzz was about.

Through my probing, I found several advantages and features unique to Google+ that content creators can take advantage of. Many of these features, such as the +1, Hangouts, and Communities are old news...but what really caught my attention were the SEO benefits that an active and completed profile can have for your online content.

Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt had this to say on the matter:

“Information tied to online profiles will be ranked higher than content without such verification…The true cost of remaining anonymous, then, might be irrelevance.”

There is little question that Google is the perennial leader in the world’s search engine game, and irrelevance in the eyes of its crawlers could quickly put a damper on your online marketing efforts. If your content is not showing up in Google’s search results, there is little chance that your website will get the traffic that you are looking for. This could spell disaster for any publisher, blogger, or brand hoping to compete online.

So to help you avoid any looming disaster strike on your marketing efforts, here are four ways that an active and completed Google+ profile can improve your SEO:

1. Establish your author-ity.

Have you Google’d anything recently? If so, you have probably seen people’s faces appearing next to some of the search results—behold the power of Google Authorship! Google is now adding more weight to things such as the Authorship tag and Author Rank in its search rankings. In order to take advantage of this great benefit, and potentially increase your click-through rate by up to 150%, you should implement the Authorship tag immediately.

As an example, here’s what it looked like after setting up my authorship through the email verification method:



I’m thinking a more complete Google+ profile, along with more authored content, would help my content rank even higher on Google’s search engine results page (SERP).

2. Get by with a little help from your friends.

How active are you at giving social signals? A social signal could be a retweet on Twitter, a “like” on your Facebook page, or the sharing of a post. In the case of Google+, the most recognizable one is the +1 feature.

Social signals are now going to hold more relevance in Google’s algorithm for determining quality content. Therefore, don’t just have a Google+ profile. Be active in using it to share and link to great content.

Some ways to use Google+ to increase the number of social signals for your content include adding the Google+ One Button to all of your work, creating a Google+ Brand Page in addition to personal profiles, and encouraging recommendations and reviews of your content or brand page.

3. Scratch my back (link), and I’ll scratch yours.

The third SEO benefit of Google+ for content creators comes in the form of what is still one of the top SEO strategies in today’s dynamic SEO landscape: more high quality, natural back links to your content.

A complete Google+ profile offers a great opportunity to get the back links to your site from high-authority sources that will directly influence your page ranking. Inbound links in your Google+ posts will also help drive traffic to your online content. The activity on your Google+ profile is one of the ways that Google determines the value of these links, so creating great content that others will want to link to and sharing links to your own content are essential if you hope to leverage your page to help you rank higher on Google’s SERP.

4. Look for more SEO real estate.

Google now has the option of creating a Google+ Brand page for your business.

When completed and used actively, a company’s brand page appears alongside any related search results, essentially acting as free SEO territory for your brand or business. A brand can also link to their own corporate blog or social media accounts in the Links section and include top keywords in the About section. Google will look at all of these factors when determining search rankings.

It’s safe to assume that Google is slightly biased toward its own social platform when determining search engine rankings.

Have you completed your Google+ page yet?