Social Media for SEO: Three Ways to Control Your Front Page Results

Before you think of a positive social media strategy, think of a strategy that can counteract the force of negative feedback. These three tactics can help you control the first page of Google's results for your company's name. If you value long-term brand power and the positives of social media, it's a move that's certainly worth taking.

Build 'rank only' social media profiles.

The idea that all of your social media profiles need to be active is, simply put, wrong. While it's wise to concentrate your promotional efforts on just one service, it's equally smart to spread your company as wide as possible using the authority of other social media websites. With a collection of accounts indexed by Google, the chance of negative feedback creeping into your results is lowered.

Don't always respond to criticism.

Social media is the perfect avenue for responding to criticism. It's public, easily accessible, and read by millions of users across the world. When unfair comments are posted that are easily refuted, it's a smart move to publicly respond and clear the air.

But it's also a move that alerts the search engines to that page, and if the response turns into a major topic of discussion, it's one that could move up the ranking pages. If you would like to keep certain pages on the 'down low', it might be best to ignore them completely. Hard as that may seem, just one negative topic can get out of hand and draw more attention to the bad instead of the good. If you do end up creating such a situation, be sure and increate your positive posts with a steady stream of new information and feedback from your fans. Your relationship with your contacts and followers can help offset any negative topics from the past.

Build links to social media profiles and discussion pages.

Most search engine optimization professionals recommend building links to and from your website. For direct response advertisers and online companies, that's often a wise choice. But what about socially powered companies? Your market's not the same as theirs, so why should your strategy be the same?

If you want to truly control your Google ranking pages, ensure that you spend a small amount of time building inbound and outbound links to your unused profile pages. While it's unlikely they'll generate leads or help your business succeed, they can create a useful 'Google barrier' that prevents inaccurate information and controversy from rising to the top of the ranks.

They will also increase your site visitors and bring your site farther up in the rankings for any specialized keywords you may have determined attract your target market. While links coming into your site top the list of valuable assets, outbound links are equally helpful in improving SEO success. Consider what resources or products your target market might find beneficial and setup a page to link them out from your site to these other resources. Be sure to set them to 'open in a new page' so that when the prospect is done considering your resources they can easily transition back to your site and continue surfing.

Creating a consistent program for promoting yourself and your site through social media will go a long way in increasing your search engine rankings.