Published on September 28th, 2016 | by Guest

10 Ways to Optimize Your Social Profiles for Google

When you hear about site optimization, you most likely think of business or personal websites – which is completely accurate. However, optimization isn’t just for websites, it’s also a critical factor when creating and maintain our social profiles so they too can get the love from Google that we’re all seeking. After all, with all the effort you put into our profile, the last thing you want is to get short-changed in the search engine ranking. But no worries, with just some small tweaks here and there, you’ll greatly improve the odds of your profile being seen in the all-powerful Google search engine.

Here are 10 tips to help you optimize your social profile for Google:

1) Customize Your URL

Changing your URL is one of the first options you’re offered when you open up an account on a social networking site, and you should jump at the chance. With Google’s search engines constantly scanning the web for URLs with the magic keywords it’s looking for, customizing your URL is a great opportunity to help Google find you.

2) Take the ‘About’ Section Seriously

A lot of people look at the ‘About’ section on their profile as simply a place to write a few tidbits about themselves before moving on to the easier stuff. That’s a big mistake, though, as the ‘About’ section provides you with the ability to optimize your page with both keywords and links that will boost your search engine results. In fact, proper optimization of the ‘About’ section plays such a large role in attracting the Google Search Engine that many people hire professional writers who understand SEO to write it for them.

One thing of note is in some cases, such as Facebook, the options you’re provided in your ‘About’ box will be affected by which category you choose to place your profile in. Thus, if you select the category of ‘Website’, your ‘About’ box will offer you a place to enter a short description of your site, while checking off ‘local business’ will provide you with places to put info like your hours of business and street address.

3) Choose the Right Keywords

Just like any other website, choosing the correct keywords is essential when optimizing your social media profile for maximum Google exposure. By selecting the keywords that are relevant to your profile (what words would people use to search for you with, which terms best describe the content on your site), you’ll have a much better chance of being noticed and ranked by Google’s search engine and consequently, attract many more visitors to your site.

Also, once you’ve figured out how many keywords you want to use, you can use a tool such as Google’s Keyword Search to show you the most frequently used terms people use to find a particular type of site and then implement them into your social network profile.

4) Optimize Your Profile Updates

Whenever you post a link, your social network site will allow you to create a short message underneath the link. This is another chance for you to gain attention from Google by keeping what you write relevant and concise. Additionally, if you’re creating a direct link back to your business website, you’ll want to include your URL in the description as well.

5) Optimize the Titles For Your Images

When you’re uploading an image, you want to be just as conscious of SEO optimization as you are for other parts of your profile. Thus, inserting keywords into the title of your images will also affect how Google views you and coming up with a relevant title for your images will play a role in the optimization process.

6) Post Consistently

You can fine tune your SEO all you want, but in order to obtain a high ranking Google presence, you’ll need to post on your social media profile regularly. So if someone is driving through Nevada and looking for a late night restaurant, a constantly updated social networking presence will do a lot to drive that person to your site. Thus, the trick is to not just posting random content but to pay attention to who’s actually visiting your social profile and what their questions or concerns, from their you can tailor your posts to your visitors needs and increase your online presence.

7) Don’t Hide From Hashtags

Like keywords, using hashtags will boost your site’s visibility and exposure and is essential to keeping your content up-to-date, relevant, searchable and trending. All the major social networks (Twitter, Facebook, Google+, Pinterest) let you use hashtags to draw in and obtain followers and by using the tools each social platform provides you, such as Facebook’s “Graph Search”, you can obtain insight on which hashtags are the best to use. It’s even easier on Twitter where you simply have to look over at the trending topics area of the page to see which tags are hot.

One thing to remember though is that whatever hashtags you go with, you want them to be relevant to whatever it is you’re sharing. Misleading people will only lead to resentment and could easily cost your followers.

8) Link Back To Your Website

Google likes seeing a lot of inbound links, and the more you have to your site, the higher its rank will climb. So designate a section on your website where you can insert links to your social networking pages and also look to link your site back to your social media pages.

9) Specific Advice for Facebook

Facebook offers a notes section that effectively serves as additional pages to your profile. This is a great area to offer additional details about what your business offers or any other relevant information. By implementing the optimization practices you used in the other sections of your account in the notes section, you’ll improve your chances of being recognized by Google.

10) A Tip For Twitter Users

Keep things short and sweet. This means that you want to keep the descriptions as brief as you can for the links you tweet out and to place the keywords at or near the front of the tweet so it doesn’t get chopped off by the way Google limits the seeable portion of the heading to 30-40 characters. Of course, the rest of your tweet will show up in the description underneath it, but it’s essential for the keywords to be seen in the heading.

Tags: google, optimize, profiles, SEO, SMM, social, ways