How to optimize (SEO) your social media accounts

Here at Nyman Ink, since launching our new website, we’re getting used to blogging more regularly and getting the word out about our new posts via social media.

But as one of the Nyman Ink bloggers, I often find myself wondering how much traffic (that is to say, how many visits) actually result from our social media efforts. Social media is, after all, a lot of work. And I want it to be fruitful, but I’ve often find myself wondering … Is it working?

If you’re a new social media user, you might have felt the same way. So with that in mind, I checked out our metrics (our statistics and Google Analytics) and I did some research into how to use the full power of social media to gain traffic to your website and blog.

I've found that optimizing your social media profiles is a great way to gain more traffic to your site. SEO for social media was something I hadn’t considered, but now that I have, I’ve definitely tweaked our pages. You should tweak yours too. Here’s how:

SEO for your Facebook fan page

Only small parts of your Facebook fan page are crawled by the search engines. Focus on placing your SEO keywords in the "About" box. And include your URL (even though it won’t be clickable). You should also include keywords and references to your URL and products/services/activities under the "Info" tab of your profile.

SEO for your Twitter profile

Believe it or not, your username is actually a very important area to place a keyword within Twitter. If you’ve already chosen a username that doesn’t contain keywords, don’t worry — this can be changed under the Settings tab. Also, you should know that search engines do crawl the image name of your avatar or Twitter photo, so use a keyword-rich image name as well. (For example, name your avatar greatkeyword.jpg before uploading.)

SEO for LinkedIn

LinkedIn makes it pretty easy to optimize your profile. Basically, if you use good keywords throughout your page (in the name, headline, location and industry fields, etc.), you’ll be well on your way to a highly searchable profile.

The final word: search engine optimized social media equal more traffic

How does optimizing your social media pages impact your web traffic? It's simple. The more eyes you draw to your online identity, the better. By optimizing your social media profiles, you make them more searchable. And each person who finds one of your profiles is one step closer to finding your website.

It’s a small thing, but it makes a big difference. Give it a try.

_{Traffic photograph in header by Benjamin Earwicker from SXC.}

_{Crowd photograph by Michal Zacharzewski from SXC.}