In this article we explain why it’s important to develop a social network so that search engines can find, crawl, and interact with the network and its content.

• Closed or open network?
• Do search engines like social networks?
• Why is the ability for a search engine to find a social network important?
• How do you design a social network that gets crawled by search engines?
• What about sitemaps?
• What about privacy?

Closed or open Network?

When developing a social network it is important to understand your target audience. First question to ask is how will people interact within this network? Two well known social networks are Facebook and Twitter.

Facebook started as a closed network (at least that was what the users expects) while Twitter from the start was always an open platform. This is an important point and is also the reason why the privacy issue is bigger with Facebook. Users expected that their updates, friends, pictures, and videos within this network was only going to be seen within this network. So as Facebook has moved to open up more of it’s platform to the search engines and the web it has met resistance.
 

Twitter started as an open network—you could argue this is one of the selling points of Twitter. People that sign up and ultimately use Twitter understand this going in.
 

This is something you have to keep in mind when developing a social network. Obviously the more user generated content (UGC) that is available to the web as a whole the more opportunity that your network can be found. The more opportunity that your network can be found the more likelihood that this will be a growth channel for you and your network.

Does that mean that you should always have an open network? Not necessarily, the XX network for teachers is a closed social network with friends, blogs, and updates that is only viewable and sharable with members of the network. You can’t see blog posts or any updates if you aren’t a member. This works for this network because of its core use, purpose, and target market.
 

Why is the ability for a search engine to find a social network important? 
 

Search is where people start to find information, knowledge, and entertainment online. Look at search as another channel of advertising for your business. For a social network it’s an integral part of gaining new members and reaching a larger audience.

For instance let’s say that you have a local car club with currently 50 members in Colorado.  Each year you host a free “Ride the Rockies” and a “Classic Car Show” event to draw in new members.  If you didn’t have a social networking site you might advertise this event in the paper, local publications, and work on getting free PR from the local news stations. 

 

What if you had a social network that was search engine friendly?  First, people searching for “Car Shows” in Colorado could find this event by simply searching in Google. 

Even more important say a local news station picks up a story on your event. They do a video piece as well as publish it to their website.  Now the news station can link back to that specific events page where others can register for that event.

What does that do for search engine rankings?  That link will help you rank for “Car Show Colorado” which is a huge plus but also you could reason will lead to more signups and interaction.

Do search engines like social networks?

Major search engines like Google & Bing have already struck deals with Twitter to receive twitter feeds (what is called the Firehose).  Google announced on their official blog all the way back in 2009.  These companies are spending effort and money on crawling these sites because social networking is becoming part of the mainstream.  What is termed Real Time Search (RTS) is the next evolution for search engines. The ability to take content almost instantaneously and serve it within search results.

 

This is something Google has already pushed out and most likely you’ve seen these results if you do a lot of searching.
The same is true with your social networking site you are looking to build.  Google wants the content that your users are producing to be indexed in within their search results.  This is exemplified even more by Google creating Google Social Search.

How do you design a social network that gets crawled by search engines?
 

1.  Allow Search Engines to see Unique Pages
 

In order for your social networking software to be search engine friendly you as the ADMIN need to be able manually create the follow attributes for your sections, categories, and new static pages easily in your administration panel:

• Custom Page Headers
• Custom Meta Description
• Custom Meta Keywords
• Custom Breadcrumbs
• Custom H1 Header Tag
• Custom HTML Description

use this page as an example, keyword “redneck girls” http://redneckcommunity.com/gallery/main/cidc_12/redneck-girls/

Note the picture below, we created a mod for PHPFOX to make RedneckCommunity.com search engine friendly.  Notice how the ADMIN has modified each of the above elements themselves to rank for the keyword above.  Search engines look for this information, you don’t have it or your software does not allow you to add it; you need to look for a new web designer.

 

2.   SEO Data Automatically Created for Dynamic Pages

In order for dynamic pages (page created by your users) to be SEO friendly your software has to automatically generate the attributes above. When a user creates a profile, uploads a video or picture, posts a classified ad, or creates any new page the following should be automatically created:

• Custom Page Headers
• Custom Meta Description
• Custom Meta Keywords
• Custom Breadcrumbs
• Custom H1 Header Tag

3.  Search Engine Friendly URL’s

 

Once all that is created your next step is for the system to create search engine frined URL’s. These are URL’s that support the content and can be easily read by not only the search engines but humans. Take the URL below for instance:

http://redneckcommunity.com/gallery/main/cidc_12/redneck-girls/

 

The last part “redneck-girls” is what is considered search friendly.

4.  List out Categories

You also want to create an internal structure of linking for your social network. An example of what this would look like is setting up a structure like below:
 

section > category > pages

From there you would list out category names/links.
 

Many designers hide this in drop down menus, but this is not something we would recommend—at least for new social networks.  You also want to List out the full category name.  Continuing with the Redneck example don’t put “houses” when the category is “redneck houses.” People are not looking for RedneckCommunity.com when they type in the word “houses” plus it would be rather difficult if near impossible for a new network to rank for this keyword.
 

 

5.  Add Tags
 

Google loves links.  Users love tags.  This happy relationship is why every social networking site should have a tag cloud.  One word of caution when programming tag clouds.  While there is technology like javascript, AJAX, or flash that will make these look pleasing to the eye they don’t help you in ranking for the search engines.
 

Insider Tip:  Make sure you use rel=”tag” microformat so the search engines like your coding.

What also might shock you is that tag clouds based on popularity are not always the best option. Instead of programming tag clouds by popularity consider displaying them by relevance. 

We have found that it is wise to display all relevant keywords AND keyword phrases in a tag cloud and then link each keyword or entire keyword to that section of the network.  This is appreciated by both users and search engines alike.

What about sitemaps?

Sitemaps are important but first it’s important to spend time developing a strong SEO architecture.  If the search engines cannot find all your web pages without a site map (.XML or .HTML) then you have larger problems within your design.

For large social networks do you need to worry about getting every page indexed?  We like to implement the 80/20 rule and we create an .XML site map of top 500 – 5,000 pages for large sites. 

This helps in directing the search engines to the top pages and then their crawlers take care of the rest. One thing to keep in mind that if a member creates an amazing internal page it will be indexed naturally.  This is the simple nature of a social network–If it is that good your customized software should feature the page on your main or category page.

 

Usually the search engines are indexing this page. Also for great content your members will start linking to that page thus driving in more links and traffic.
 

What about privacy?

If you want privacy update your robots.txt file with noindex and nofollow rules and run your private social network.  If you don’t care if search engines find you then don’t worry about any of the above.

If you say, “Well, I want them to find my site but I want them to register before they can read the full article or view the full profile.”  Many will say you can create landing pages for this, only display so much of the content and then add a call to action so people sign up to see the rest.  Is that the smart move?

 

Would you link to a page that has a paragraph or information and then a sign up button?  Would search engines really say, “YES, that is the best result to display to someone searching for that topic?”  The obvious answer is no.  You can try this “landing page + call to action approach” for security reasons but you are fighting an uphill battle that (1) many users don’t want (2) search engines don’t want.