Why it is useless to link to Facebook or Twitter or similar websites

Okay here is the funny thing about Social Media websites like Youtube, Facebook, Twitter, etc...

Every time you link to them via your website(s) those websites get the SEO benefit of those links and will rank higher on the search rankings - and your company website will end up ranking lower.

It is even possible that your company will website could end up ranking lower than your company's Facebook, Twitter or YouTube pages.

Why?

A combination of factors including the fact Youtube, Facebook, Twitter all have good Google PageRanks. As such they get ranked higher easier.

Another factor is that Youtube, Facebook, Twitter all use rel="nofollow" on their outgoing links, which means that if you link back to your company website from those pages then those links don't count because they are "nofollow" links that are ignored by Google's search bots.

Thus social media websites get all the benefits of incoming SEO, and none of the negatives because every outgoing link doesn't count as a link.

So let us take an example.

Let us say your website is ArcheryToronto.ca and you are linking to several pages about archery in Toronto on Facebook like The Canadian Toxophilite Society, The Toronto Public Archery Range, etc.

Every link that goes to those Facebook pages benefits Facebook itself and boosts the rankings of those Facebook pages - but your website gets nothing in return.

Even if you were to post links on Facebook to your website (and get a little traffic from curious people who click those links), those links won't count as SEO as far as Google is concerned because it is all rel="nofollow".

And the same goes with YouTube, you could post a link like Toronto Archery Videos, which will ultimately benefit YouTube, but is it going to benefit your company website? Not really.

So the trick then is to make sure all your outgoing links are also rel="nofollow", so your company website maintains its position in the search rankings and the social media aspects of your company are further down in the rankings - but still be there.

Of course if your goal is to wildly promote your YouTube page, Facebook page, etc, then by all means link to them willy nilly. Just don't expect to make a profit off of them unless those pages are somehow rigged up to sell a product or service.