How to make your social media profile search engine friendly

Due to the sheer popularity of Twitter, Facebook and Instagram, search engines will usually index your profiles on these networks.  When prospective customers are searching for your business, your social network profiles will show up in the search results of Google, Yahoo and other popular search engines.  In some cases, your social media profile link may show up in the search results BEFORE your own website does. 

You want to make sure that your profiles are optimized for these search engines so that you can be found for BOTH your keywords and your brand / business name.

When you fill out your information make sure you always include a valid web address for your website.  There will be multiple instances where you can place your targeted keywords as well.  Adding your keywords to your profiles is very important as not only can you be found via the search engines for these keywords, but also within the social network’s search function too.  For example, on Twitter there are many ways for users to find others to follow based on keywords they enter.  You will want to make sure your keywords are targeted to your business niche so TARGETED users can find you and follow you based on those keywords.  Targeted followers are more often going to convert than followers that aren’t really interested in the niche that you are in.

If you haven’t done so already, you will want to do a little keyword research to make sure the keywords you are using are being searched for.  Make use of Google’s Keyword Tool to find out how many people are searching for that specific term monthly.  You will be able to find out other terms related to it as well that are being searched for which is very helpful.

Take a look at your competition, how are they wording their profiles and description fields in their profiles?  Are they keyword heavy?  Does it seem to be working for them?  Are they posting relevant content based on those keywords and including the keywords themselves within their posts, tweets or image descriptions?  You can learn a lot by analyzing your competitions social media profiles.  For more information about analyzing your competition, check out this article here.

Please see below for the different fields available for optimizations on each social network:

 Facebook:

Facebook allows you to have an ABOUT section at the very top of your Business Page. They also have a URL field where you can place your website URL.

 Twitter:

Twitter’s new interface allows you to put a description and a website URL link at the top portion of your profile.  Make sure you use a keyword rich description, but also make sure that it makes sense when you read it!