For a long time, search engine optimization has been a feat that required a certain level of experience and technical skills. And it still is. Fortunately for the average business owner and freelancer, you can increase your search engine visibility using just social networking websites. Since they’re the most effective, I’ll specifically talk about Facebook and LinkedIn.
Make sure that you actually go through a complete your profile on both of the websites. On LinkedIn, put mostly professional information, with just a tiny bit of personal mixed in there. On Facebook, it should be a healthy mix of personal and business.
On both, use some form of your actual name for your username. On LinkedIn specifically, make sure you take a look at your profile and customize your Public Profile address. It will generally start out as something generic like www.linkedin.com/pub/12/62a/4a3. Simply click edit next to the link, and you can change it to something like www.linkedin.com/in/yourname
Once you have those social networking websites filled out, make sure you link to your website!
Naturally, you should do similar things on MySpace, Plaxo and Twitter. But Facebook and LinkedIn have been proven to have a good effect on your search engine rankings, and should definitely be taken care of first thing.
Need proof that this works? Just Google my name, Tim Priebe, and you’ll see both Facebook and LinkedIn on page one out of 80,000+ results.
