There has been a little Twittering of late about how some individuals Twitter profiles are outranking their websites or blogs for their name. It could be an SEO nightmare if your name and product/service are synonymous and often used in searches.

Of course, there is one simple fix – don’t use your exact details when creating profiles. However, that could be counterproductive if you are trying to market yourself as part of your business. One solution suggested has caught many SEO guru’s off guard and created quite a bit of discussion.

Another suggestion that can work well for individuals is to create a Google profile. Your profile can include links to your web site(s) or blog(s). The profile can be created through your Google account. If you don’t have one, they are easy to create. However, if you have a blog or website then using Google Analytics can be a big help – and for that you need a Google account. You can kill two birds with the one stone.

The third suggestion that does have everyone a Twittering is to use a little thought of tag – the Rel=”me” tag. Doing a search around the net has found that just about everyone has a different idea on how to use it and whether or not it is of any benefit. The bottom line is that it will not hurt your SEO.

The ‘rel’ in this tag stands for ‘relationship’ and is used when linking to another page. When the tag – “rel=me” is used it is telling the search engines that the page or object being linked to is related to the current page.

If you were to create a page, or perhaps use your sidebars, you could link to each of your social profiles using the rel=me tag. Twitter uses the rel=me tag in your profile, that is why it ranks higher for you name than your website does.

The rel=me tag can also be used when you link to other sites you own. This places an association between everyone of your sites, blogs, or profiles where you have pointed the rel=me tag to.

Will this tag help your SEO strategies? As I mentioned, it wont hurt. If one of your social profiles is ranking ahead of your web site then the this tag should help to promote your site to rank above your social profile. When it comes to SEO, that’s all you can ask.

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This entry was posted on Friday, April 3rd, 2009 at 3:42 am and is filed under SEO, Social Optimization. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.