Don't Misuse Social Networks

  Written by Kevin Phoenix on Nov 14, 2009 12:49 AM

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If you look at Search Engine Optimization (SEO), the idea is to improve your Search Engine rankings by doing certain things to your website, or by trying to build links.

A couple years ago, a lot of the social media networks were passing what we call "Page Rank." You could go in and place a link on that network back to your website, and your website would increase in ranking on the Search Engines, as a result of that "link love" - the inbound links.

In recent months, that mode has changed. The Search Engines, especially Google, are paying attention to how people are using social networks in an attempt to gain higher rankings when perhaps they don't deserve them. That is what technical SEO has been all about - improving your rankings by focusing solely on link-building and link love.

The social media and the direction they're going has changed that.

Then look at the direction that Google is heading. They are in position (at the time of writing) to become the largest social media network in existence. They're paying attention to communities. They're paying attention to voting patterns. They're paying attention to crowd sourcing patterns, where other people go in and bookmark and share content.

So it's really easy for Google to go in and spot an account and see that it has nothing but links back to your websites. If you multiply that by many different social networks, it's obvious to Google that you are just trying to game their system. So they will penalize you for that by not counting any of your effort.

What about people like Copyblogger and Chris Brogan? We find them on Twitter all the time. They do interact, but they also post links to their latest blog... where is the line there?

It's simple. What you have to do is stop focusing on link-building and simply focus on your community (networking). When you do that, it's evident that you're not just creating a network for the sole purpose of increasing your search engine ranking. You remove the focus on technical search engine rankings and, instead, put it on social community building. Doing that empowers your network to crowd source. They can bookmark your content, Digg it, Sphinn it, etc. That is the way these applications were designed to be used, and that's the purpose of the content.

People will bookmark it when you give them great content, and you'll get the result you want. Plus - Google will be happy.

So all these activities improve your search engine rankings - but only if you are not the one doing it. Intent is critical.

In all the study I've done the last few months, it all goes back to natural human intent. Search engines today have prodigious technology they have developed to search out artificial community and content. By following this group, I will show you how to get high search engine visibility without focusing on link building.

The new SEO is upon us.

The moral of the story is... Don't misuse social media networks by only using them to increase your search engine rankings. I have tested this course using many different case studies. While it may be more or less effective in the short-term, the long-term outlook on link building in social media is frowned upon by the search engines and is becoming less effective.

Link building is an element of SEO that is for ever changing. It is invariably a bad idea to involve yourself in processes that change all the time. It causes you to have to reconstruct your entire income structure over and over again.

As stated before, in this group we purely focus on aspects that DO NOT change so that time and effort spent today will continue to have residual effects 2 years from now.

Gaming systems for short-term rewards is a short-sighted policy that will ALWAYS lead to a re-investment of time. The question you have to ask yourself is... Do you want to waste your time or compound your efforts over time to build an asset?

The next published article is Promote Two Way Communication

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