The Reciprocal Consulting Blog

WebProNews reports that Google+ is beating LinkedIn for referral traffic on several websites. But it’s still trailing Twitter and Facebook.

That’s pretty astounding when you consider that Google+ has only been rolled out for a month or so and then as a limited beta test. Not everyone is using it yet.

When it finally goes public, what will the statistics be then?

One important point to consider was made by a commenter on the WebProNews article:

If the second trendline is significantly higher than the first then you have internal synergy and true growth in social media exposure. If the second trendline is equal to or lower than the first, then all you have is Google Plus siphoning off referral numbers from other sources.

That’s an important point and I think even the folks who conducted the initial study on this probably didn’t gather enough data to make a conclusion regarding that point. If Google+ only takes away referral numbers from other social networks, that’s not enough to say it’s a worth the effort. But if your Google+ traffic increases while your other social network traffic remains the same, then it could very well be a force to reckon with.

Then, of course, there’s the increase in spam that going public will likely draw. That will be a force as well. Bottom line: The jury’s still out on Google+.

Have you seen one of your tweets hit page 1 for a key search term? If so then you understand how it can be good SEO. If not then pay attention because this isn’t rocket science.

Of course, not everyone is doing it either.

Twitter results are now a part of all the major search engine results in real time. But even outside of real time you can rank for keywords on Twitter as well as on secondary social networks.

A secondary social network is a social media site you are a member of that automatically updates any time you update your Twitter feed. Many social media sites allow you to sync your profile with your Twitter feed so that your tweets automatically appear on those sites. Every tweet that is fed to a secondary social network has the potential to rank in the search engines.

When you write your tweets, keep your keywords in mind. Target them just as you would in a blog post or any other online content. You might just find your tweets appearing on the first page of search results at all of the search engines.