Having your business well positioned in Internet search results is a great way of improving sales opportunities. So when the chance arrives to easily improve your search results, grab it!
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| By MarioSundar |
Just such an opportunity has arisen because Google are ramping up their use of information that is posted on social media websites. LinkedIn and Twitter are two of the most highly "ranked" social media sites and what's happening on these sites is going to increasingly influence search results. Interestingly, many feel that Facebook may be much less significant because they don't allow Google to view all of their data.
An example of the search power of social media websites is often seen when searching for a specific company. The personal LinkedIn profiles of employees at that company are often right up there alongside the company's own website.
Here are 5 STEPS* that will allow you to take advantage of the rising importance of social media websites:
1) Create a Twitter account at https://twitter.com/. It's pretty straight forward just enter your name and email address, then create a username and password.
Don't worry! I'm not going to suggest you spend all day tweeting. But as you'll see in the next step, there is a way to use Twitter without any extra work at all.
2) Connect you LinkedIn account to your new Twitter account. On LinkedIn go to "Settings" then "Profile" then add your Twitter username under "Manage your Twitter settings". Once this is done your LinkedIn status updates will automatically go out on Twitter as well. Great web search exposure with no extra work!
3) Establish a Google Account at https://www.google.com/accounts/. This simply needs you to enter an email address and create a password.
4) Then complete your Google Profile at http://www.google.com/profiles/ . A short cut here is to cut and paste the "Summary" section from your LinkedIn profile to the "Introduction" section of your new Google profile.
5) Connect your Linkedin account and your Twitter account to your Google profile. You do this by inserting your "Public Profile Address" for each account into the "Links" section of your Google Profile. Public Profile Addresses are the actual website addresses for your profiles. They will look something like http://au.linkedin.com/in/NAME and http://twitter.com/USERNAME
* You may not even need to take all 5 of the steps if you already some of have the appropriate accounts established.
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| GOOGLE PROFILE |
The above steps will do two things to improve search results for you and your business. Firstly, your status updates will get exposure on both the LinkedIn and Twitter websites. Secondly, Google will better understand your presence on social media and who are your business contacts. Scary? Well yes, slightly. But consider that Google are now giving preference to information associated with you, IF they know your connected to the person doing the search On that basis, it really does pay off if Google are aware who are your business contacts. Google do also commit to not sharing your private information with any other third party.
To further help your web search rankings remember to also do the following: continue to increase your LinkedIn connections; publish regular LinkedIn status updates; make sure all employees have LinkedIn profiles with customised weblinks to the company.
NO TIME? Implementing the above steps yourself really is worthwhile and will cost you nothing. However if you don't have the time or inclination, for $110 we'll carry out the above 5 step process for you. Just email me at richardc@business-connections.com.au to have this done.
Can you suggest other ways to improve search results using social media? Please comment below.
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