Wikipedia defines it as:

A social network service focuses on building online communities of people who share interests and activities, or who are interested in exploring the interests and activities of others. Most social network services are web based and provide a variety of ways for users to interact, such as e-mail and instant messaging services.

Social networking has revolutionized the way we communicate and share information with one another in today’s society. Various social networking websites are being used by millions of people everyday on a regular basis and it now seems that social networking is a part of everyday life. The main types of social networking services are those which contain directories of some categories (such as former classmates), means to connect with friends (usually with self-description pages), and recommender systems linked to trust. Popular methods now combine many of these, with MySpace and Facebook being the most widely used in North America; Bebo, MySpace, Skyrock Blog, Facebook and Hi5 in parts of Europe; Orkut and Hi5 in South America and Central America;and Friendster and Orkut in Asia and the Pacific Islands. CouchSurfing is a new type of social network called hospitality exchange networks.

Some of the major social networking sites on the web include (but are not limited too): facebook, twitter, myspace, squidoo, youtube, linkedin etc.  The basic principle lies in you link to people that have something similar to you.  For example if you are reading this go ahead and follow me on twitter, 99% of the time I generally find it useful to return the follow since we probably have something similar in common, we want to make some money online.

How do you take advantage of these social networks?  How much time does it take?  While I do not use social networks to their fullest, it can take a significant amount of time for someone to go around and make multiple updates a day.  I like twitter since you cannot do lengthy updates!  (I’m lazy), you can make a blog post and point people to it.  For sites like myspace you need to be more diligent on making friends and growing your network, just like on twitter.

Your best bet is to find one site you want to focus on and jump in and start to build  your network there.  Once you feel comfortable with it go to the next.  It is important that you don’t simply sell your wares, or you’ll be slapped down.  It is important to become part of the community and not a thorn in it’s side.  Another great place to get known is on forums that focus on your interest, so if it’s gaming find a forum that works for you.  Become a contributor and then you can put your site in your signature to grow awareness.  If you contribute, people will click on your link to see what else you have to say.

Again social networking is not rocket science it is simply finding people that have a common interest and sharing your ideas with them in a constructive meaningful fashion.

I’m learning more about this daily so I’m sure I’ll have more to say on it soon.

But enough about the research, how do you start to rank?

1. Use key phrases multiple times in your content
2. Use internal site links to that page using your term
3. Get links for quality external sites to your page
4. Use basic HTML formats like H1′s and title tags to emphasize phrase

When you are writing your article/page/blog make sure you are aware of what you are looking to be ranked for and use it a few times in the body. Also make sure you use it in the title and header of the article. It’s important that Google knows that the content is the primary reason for sending some one to this page. One of the most important things to understand is that you should not over stuff the phrase onto the page. If you use it every other word, the search engine will throw it out knowing that it’s simply being put there for ranking. While there’s debate of the % the phrase should be used it can be anywhere from 3% – 7% of the content. I tend to lean towards the lower side to prevent spamming penalties.

When you are creating your webpage you can feel free to link to your own pages using key phrases to pass it along to other pages. So if you want to rank for “best noodles in vegas” create a link on your home page that points to that article with that term as the clickable text. Also repeat this on other authority web sites. One way to find them is simply go to Google and type the term in and see who comes up. Contact them and see if you can get a link exchange with them. Some will want to charge you, but be weary as Google’s getting smarter about purchased links!

I mentioned headers and titles but wanted to stress how important these are to Google. With everything on the web being pretty, it’s important to realize Google is a color blind dog, they don’t care what the biscuit looks like, they only care if it tastes good. A trick I was once taught was to remove the style sheet and see what the page looks like to Google and the other engines. If you use an H1 the text is the largest on the page and is therefore more important to the read (stands out). Same goes for Google. But only use 1 per page. If you feel you need more start using H2, H3 etc. The higher the number the more you can have on the page. The title which should be one of the first pieces of HTML will define part of how you show up on Google as will the meta description. Use these as they also add weight to your page for those terms.

Is this all you need to do for SEO? Of course not, but it’s a great start for a first timer and is a base understanding. Feel free to leave a comment, I’ll try to answer anything I get.