SEO Tips - Using Web 2.0 tools or social networking sites to assist with your website rank

There has been a lot of hype lately about Web 2.0 or social networking tools and like everything else SEO, people search for the magic formula which is going to unleash the power of web 2.0 and finally give them the online success they deserve.

But really, SEO is like other forms of marketing – it’s common sense. It’s about understanding whatever beast it is you’re dealing with, what makes them tick, what their objectives are and then align your activities with those objectives.

For instance, we know that Google wants to give people the most relevant matches they can for their keyword searches – that’s why people come back and that’s why Google is the most valuable piece of online real estate on the planet.

We also know that Google likes Web 2.0 bookmarks, blogs, posts – Why? Go back to what makes Google important – relevance. So they provide relevance.  Why? Perhaps partly  because they have their own policies of policing and eliminating spammers and let’s face it, the biggest threat to Google’s existence is Spammers – People getting their site listed in keywords it is not supposed to be listed in. And that is easier to do with blogs and websites you put up yourself, than it is in a Web 2.0 environment where people are looking out for suspicious activities.

Even without Google, Web 2.0 sites have huge membership numbers and can generate loads of traffic for your website – but to use them effectively, you have to understand them and that takes time. There are no shortcuts, there is no super software – spam is spam and relevance is relevance. You have to be relevant, you have to be real and you have to be somebody that people want to deal with and then you work the numbers, just like marketing anywhere.