June 14th, 2010 by Dan

Social networking can be a major part of a link building strategy, but it is not something which can be picked up and dropped on a whim. In order to achieve SEO success, a campaign involving social networking must be persistent and ongoing, always bearing in mind that any achievements built up in terms of transient links can be lost quickly if efforts stop.

Deciding to pursue link building strategies using social networking means putting in work over a long period of time, aiming to obtain more links than one’s competitors and to retain them, especially those of better quality. The number of social networking sites available to target may seem confusing initially but there relatively few which are extremely popular at any one time, and fashions change, so it is worth remaining aware of current favourites.

Facebook is one of the more widely-used sites for social interaction, as are MySpace and Twitter. Together with blogs, these types of sites are tailored towards building up relationships with others gradually in an atmosphere of trust. The element of trust arises from becoming a contributing member of a community, one who actively participates and helps others with useful or entertaining information. People who are obviously only participating in order to try and further their own business aims, in a one-sided way, are soon weeded out by other members of the group. Taking time to nurture genuine relationships with others is worthwhile in order to obtain links in the long term.

SEO link building using sites such as YouTube relies more on the nature of the video material created, and the key to success here is to come up with something interesting enough to make people want to share it with others. Flickr is a site where users can share photos which often rank well in image searches, while Wikipedia is a hugely popular website which can be worth working with, although it takes time to build a reputation there and one cannot simply add one’s own page. Marketing plans can also include offline activities. Events where influential competitors gather are worth attending in order to enhance an online campaign, and useful connections can be made in person, which could later lead to acquiring links.

Social bookmarking and news sites such as StumbleUpon and Digg can be helpful for obtaining links. Again, it is important to build credentials carefully within these communities, offering valuable contributions to the group, but the rewards of having an article appear on the home page or in the ‘most popular’ list are worth the time and effort. On news sites a huge number of links can be obtained from an article which makes it to the home page. In the case of social bookmarking sites, although the number of links is likely to be lower they are more likely to come from people who were actively searching for a particular topic, so more of them will tend to be of high quality.

At SearchEngineOptimization.co.uk our link building services include strategies for social networking as a matter of course.

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