Importance of Social Networking in 2011 for SEO

Social networking

A great way to increase traffic while getting backlinks at the same time is using social networks. Social networks is taking more and more place and can be a huge source of traffic. The strength of backlinks usually are poor and don’t get indexed by the Google Search Engine. BUT they are a very important part of online success.

Social networks can give you a Profile signature and bring huge amount of traffic to targeted pages.

Understanding the immense potential of social networking

Social networking is essential to online success because they are used by a huge part of the internet users and they take most of their online time. On average, users spent more than five and a half hours on popular networks such as Facebook and Twitter in December 2009. In December 2008, users clocked just over three hours on social networking sites. The numbers in 2010 got higher and are expected to keep rising in the next years. Take a look at  the graphic and you will see that the audience for Social Networks also increased year-over-year for the last three years, reaching an estimated audience of over 300 million.

So not only did the time spent on the social networking sites increased over years but the number of users increased even more dramatically. With new regions getting access to the internet the numbers of new users is not to stop rising in the next decade.

So the power of social networking is the huge traffic that can be targeted using them. YouTube videos go viral on the web thanks to social networks, twitter followers go and check everything they are suggested to and when browsing on Facebook we always take a look at what friends are sharing. The potential is immense.

First you need to understand the market and see which social networks can help benefit your website. not all social media are equal, on the following chart you can see that Facebook is used more and more and that twitter is also on the rise. MySpace on the other hand is on decline because of Facebook.

Also understand that the market isn’t distributed equally and that United States are far ahead with the use of social networks. Americans are the first consumers but also spend more than 6 hours per week on social networks. Once again the potential is immense.

Take a minute or two to realize just how much time you spend on  Social Networks yourself and think how you could use that time for SEO.

Using Social Networking for Traffic

Knowing that so many people spend time online on social media websites, you must realize that you can get a lot of traffic from those websites. Millions of people are browsing around those Social websites searching for distracting stuff and interesting links to enjoy their free time. You must do all you can to benefit from this kind of traffic.

Here is the list of the top 5 used social networks websites

What you need to do is expose yourself on these social networks, you can find the list of all the social network websites you can imagine fallowing this Wikipedia link.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_social_networking_websites

Referral Twitter Traffic

First you need to grab the attention of as many people as you can. On twitter you need a list of followers that will be converted to referral traffic to the links you post. On Facebook you can either get fans or make a group on which you will convert links to traffic. The more people you get interested in you or your group, the more traffic you will get.

This account has 919 followers and is in 68 lists. Having 919 followers is a very small number but it can bring 10-20 views to your website if not more. Having several account can give you a lot more, and that for every time you post. If you create multiple accounts and just Fallow other twitter users, about half the time they will fallow you back. And these followers will be converted to traffic. This isn’t a lot of traffic but it can get you some PPC or some sales when the accounts add up. This doesn’t take a lot of time and can do a interesting difference for steady referral traffic. Building huge lists of followers can on the other hand make a huge difference especially for PPC.

Referral Facebook traffic

Another way to get some referral traffic is from Facebook. Make a fan page or a group about your website and add a Facebook link on your website. Once they like or join your group, everything you post new on these page will be seen on their Home Page and that will bring a interesting source of referral traffic. Once again, the more followers the more traffic. This method doesn’t work for every sites and it might take time to build a solid list of followers. Never the less it should not be ignored because these followers will show far more closer interest to your website then other visitors as they added you because you give them something they need or like.

You can notice that Megan Fox has almost 20 million people fallowing her. When she post a link, you can be sure she gets hundreds of thousands of clicks on those backlinks. For example her Armani link has 42,000 comments and probably far more clicks.

You might never get a 20 million follower list, but the more you get the better.

Learn how to make money from Social Networks:

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