SEO Advantages of Social Media

I’ve already written multiple times on the branding benefits of social media, and social networking. But what about Internet Marketers looking for a bump in Search Engine Results. I’ve put together a guide explaining how each Social Media site can be used for Search Engine Optimization.

Disclaimer:
Mixing Search Engine Optimization and Social Media is a very dangerous technique. Your outcome is based on the emphasis you place on either branding or SEO.

Marketer’s that recognize Social Media’s main function is branding, leaving SEO to be a secondary effect, will find success in their campaigns. However, marketer’s, or better yet spammers, that use Social Media as a link building resource, can expect their brand to be muddied to a point of disrepair.

For those that understand Social Media but do not know what secondary effects are possible, I’ve outlined what each network offers.

Plurk

Pagerank: 3
Estimated Pagerank: 4
NoFollow: No
Uses:
Plurk is in an interesting position. User pages and individual Plurk pages are not only indexed, but link on these pages aren’t NoFollowed. This means if you Plurk a link to your site, Plurk will pass link-juice.

Twitter

Pagerank: 8
Estimated Pagerank: 8
NoFollow: Yes
Uses:
Between links being NoFollowed and the consistent use of tinyurl, Twitter, offers little direct SEO use. However, the ability to connect and share media with top bloggers and search engine optimizers is priceless. Twitter enjoys a community of tech savvy users. It would be imperative that any link building campaign at least mention their site on Twitter.

FriendFeed

Pagerank: 7
Estimated Pagerank: 7
NoFollow: No
Uses:
Not only are links followed, but your entire timeline and “likes” are indexed. Links found on either of these pages pass link-juice. The problem with this is that most individual pages have a pagerank of 0, however, some power users do show a pagerank between 2 and 3.

Digg

Pagerank: 8
Estimated Pagerank: 8
NoFollow: Yes
Uses:
Digg’s huge technologically savvy userbase makes this site prime for secondary links. The actual link from digg to your site is minuscule compared to the number of links a fronpate story can receive. Also, since Google bot visits digg very often, new sites submitted to digg get indexed very quickly.

Do you have another social media site you use that gives you an SEO advantage? Leave a comment and share it.

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