Chapter 37 Links and Search Engine Results Are Byproducts of Social Media 281 Securing Your Social Media Profiles Is Wise, But Don't Count on Them for Rankings A year or two ago, simply establishing a profile on a social media channel with your company, brand, product, or service name would automatically garner you a rank- ing in the search engines. That was before the search engines started to weigh more factors in determining the relevancy of a social media profile. Now just establishing your profile on Facebook, MySpace, YouTube, Flickr, or any other of the hundreds of social media sites doesn't mean you will control the top 50 spots in the search engine rankings for your brand names. However, it's still wise to secure your profile on major social media sites and any lesser-known ones that you might want to become active in. This prevents someone else from "squatting" on your brand name. Similar to domain name squatting, peo- ple have been known to acquire social media profiles that are brand names of com- panies, hoping for big "paydays" from companies willing to pay to acquire the account on the social media site. Securing your profiles on these social media channels isn't only wise from the cybersquatting aspect, but for two other reasons as well: 1. Similar to cybersquatting, your competitors could actually register an account in your brand name. Although it's not the most ethical market- ing strategy, it can occur in today's competitive environment. 2. You should utilize the profiles to your advantage. Inevitably, someone might search for your company on that particular social media channel. Even though you might not be that active on it, you should still fill out your profile with the pertinent contact information or how to find you actively engaging on other channels. It gives the person searching for you an option to engage you where you are actively conversing with others. You Don't Do Social Media for Search Engine Rankings A prior boss asked me to build a blog for a client to gain "another foothold in the search engine rankings." Every fiber in my body was against taking such a step; however, I could not appease my boss no matter how I explained that the keywords were too competitive for what the client was attempting to rank this new "blog." In addition, the client had only three pieces of content to put into the blog and, as far as I could see, it wasn't planning to add additional content later. It takes a lot more than just building a blog on WordPress's site to get it to rank for competitive terms.