Social Networking SEO For Kids, Adults Will Probably Struggle

I always think of Social Networking as a mysterious sage. If you were to sit down and write a guidebook, it would be as extensive as a longcat encyclopedia, yet nine tenths of it is something that an average teen would be able to tell you today.

The world of SEO breeds an insatiable appetite for links that often blinds us to the simple, obvious facts. Better quality traffic will stay longer, come back more often and create more interaction. Links that are misleading, irrelevant or not helpful will get clicks, but these clicks will bring bounce rates and will affect the average time spent on your site.

Each social networking site has it’s own niche (this may sound obvious! But bear with me for a moment, I haven’t lost the plot just yet!). I sometimes catch myself link building on sites that are not even relevant, simply for link volume, but of course things don’t really work like that.

Digg is great for news stories and articles that simply must get that visibility within the next 24 hours, before a hot topic turns cold and someone else wins the spotlight. Reddit is the easy going Essex girl that will accept anything from anyone and Squidoo is a great place to keep all your interests organised together under the right categories. If you have a theme that you might regularly  blog about this would be perfect,  but don’t expect any articles to get indexed anywhere near as quickly as The Mighty Digg! Twitter is all about the what and not the who (how many of your followers do you know personally?) whereas with Facebook it’s all about the friendships themselves, the actual content is very much secondary.

I suppose all social networking SEO boils right down to a simple matter of deciding the most effective method of transportation for an idea. Deciding the target audience, the timescale and the purpose.  But I bet a teenager sharing a funny clip from a mobile with his mates could have told you that!

Tags: Google, links, manchester, SEO, Social Networking