Social networking - say 'hello'

Whether your own preference is for Facebook, LinkedIn or any of the many other social media networking sites, the simple fact is that these sites present opportunities to help get your web site a more effective search engine ranking. Your search engine optimisation agency should be helping you reap the benefits of social media, and an important basis for that is to get your company registered with these sites.

If you have a brand name or company name that's already known and familiar to a large number of customers, it's vital you retain ownership of that name in the social networking media. At the very least you should be registered and have a profile on the most popular sites. You can have an account on many of these sites without being particularly active, although a regularly updated profile is worthwhile. You'll usually be able to include your URL in your profile and you may be able to add links to your site elsewhere. You can also encourage visitors to your web site (or any of your social media pages) to "follow you" to your social networking pages. Bear in mind, of course, that if you're using these methods you need to give your followers something fresh to read when they get there.

There are a great many social networking sites out there. In the next few articles we'll introduce you to them. We'll also explain some of the ways in which your SEO agency can make the most of them and raise the profile of your web site.