Social Networking seems to be the big thing that everyone is discussing. The net helps you do that well. As well as getting you more contacts (after all isn’t that what it is about?), the flipside/upside is when used properly you gain more traffic and ranking status on your website too.

I’ve got a client who ranks in the top 4 results on Google, Yahoo and Bing globally for a specific search term. They don’t even use the keyword search term on their website!! But, because some 62 of their backlink sites mention them for those keywords, they rank highly. Obviously, if they were then to use that search term on their own site they could well jump up the rankings even higher.  So social networking on sites such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and Stumble can be great for gaining contacts for your business but when it becomes a backlink its a double whammy!

At www.recruitmentmatters.com we have so far got 22 different search terms ranked in the Google top 10.  I’ve come across a great free tool to check out your own backlinks and those of your competitors. A backlink is simply a site that uses one of your URL’s in their text content e.g.   “For recruitment tips please visit http://www.recruitmentmatters.com/free.php “. Working smartly you can see what blogs, articles, sites and links are or can be good for you. The old adage of “it’s not what you know but who you know” still stands true. Just make sure they are quality sites/people/links that you associate with. The site I mentioned is http://www.backlinkwatch.com/ . You can get me at warren@recruitmentmatters.com