There are many different strategies that are being used to try and maximize a websites exposure and to increase the site’s SEO ranking. These include having quality content, good links and the proper integration of social networks and social bookmarking.
Blinded By Facebook
The leading social media site is Facebook and it has garnered the majority of efforts directed at establishing quality links and increasing SEO exposure. Unfortunately this has diminished the effectiveness of using Facebook as the prime source of an SEO campaign. There are alternatives and one of the best sites that delivers more positive results for the same effort is Google Plus. Popularity is great but if your primary reason for interacting with social media is to maximize the positive SEO effects and to increase the visitors to your website then how well your efforts translate to improving your ranking is the only important measure.
How Google Plus Can Help Your Site
While Google has said many times that there is no direct relationship between positive or negative effects on a sites search engine ranking and having a Google Plus site there is plenty of evidence that positive content and links Google Plus seem to have a significantly larger effect. This is not to say that Google are deliberately pushing Google Plus but the fact is you can be a bigger fish in a smaller pond that is also directly connected to the Google search engine all of which are positive things that should be considered.
Advantages Of Google Plus
One of the technical advantages that Google Plus has is that being part of Google allows it have the fastest updates, being indexed more often that other outside sited. This means that links and content on your Google Plus site are assimilated more quickly so the results of your SEO activities are faster to take hold. Another difference is the entire site is indexed while other major sites limit what is indexed and there for seen, by a search engine.
A little known fact is that Google Plus allows links in your posts to be followed for indexing purposes. This can be a huge advantage as most other major sites have severely curtailed or completely eliminated dofollow links reducing the SEO value that can be obtained from these sites. The links also use the post title as the anchor text which can help ranking unlike other sites that use generic terms that reduce the links value.
What You Should Be Doing
The first thing is to join Google Plus and start building your profile, adding links and spending some time creating a presence. Even a moderate amount of time and effort can have very positive results and it only takes a few minutes every couple of days to keep your site growing.
One of the best ways to get the most from any social media site is to post quality content that is interesting and relevant. You should also be setting up Google Authorship and putting as much relevant information as possible in your About page. These do not have a direct affect on SEO but create a better site that will attract more interaction and build up your reputation.
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