Late last year, Google launched real-time search into its algorithm. What does real-time search mean to Googlers? When you perform a Google search, there is a very good chance that the most recent and relevant blog articles, news, and social media conversations related to the search query will show up in Google's SERPS (Search Engine Results Pages). Social networks ARE relevant in the eyes of Google! Now that Google is indexing social media content in real-time, how can you leverage blogs and social networks to rank on Google?

How to Use Social Media to Rank on Google

1) Trending Topics - How do you discover keywords and trending topics? A few good places to Discover Trending Topics are: Google Trends , Twitter Trending Topics and Yahoo's Trending Now . Consistent themes across all of these tools reveal pop culture, breaking news, and sports. Once you discover a particular trending topic related to your business, the next step is to determine how you can create remarkable content that can be indexed by Google and potentially show up in their real-time SERPS?

2) Relevance: Understand the target audience for your content. What do they like? What types of activities do they enjoy? Is your target audience local? Is the target audience Gender/Race/Age Specific? Think about ways in which you can relate the trending topic to your business and prospects.

3)   Schedule in Advance: Know events that will be coming up so you can create content and analogies relating your business to the local event/pop culture event/breaking news event. Major events often become the focus of trending topics. because these events are planned far in advance it is possible to create content ahead of time and publish it as the events becomes a trending topic. 

4) Breaking News: When you can't schedule in advance, you want to have your finger on the pulse of real-time search and understand what is going on in your industry. Internet marketer, business owner and blogger, Barry Schwartz recently reported Google's real-time search results included a "top links" section for the keyword "plane crash" after the tragic news of Poland's president and over 90 others killed. The Top Links section shows the most popular and authoritative links based on the search query.

I am not advocating creating content around every trending topic related to pop-culture, sporting events and/or breaking news.  Rather, think about those trending topics and how they may relate to your business. Can you create content around one of these topics that provides value to your customers?  

While there is no “guarantee” that you will show up in Google’s real-time search results, you want to understand what topics will trend and be covered by major media outlets, bloggers, and talked about on social media networks and then create remarkable content that is relevant to your business AND the event. 

This is a guest post by Inbound Marketing Specialist Ryan Beale. If you enjoyed this post, you can read more Internet Marketing articles from Ryan Beale on his blog and Follow him on Twitter .

Photo Credit: miss_blackbutterfly

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