As I’ve researched SEO for social networks, particularly as it relates to my own social network – Dub and Reggae – I find myself reusing these special Google search queries.
- site:
- When followed by a URL, shows all pages within a site that Google has indexed. This is a useful tool for quickly figuring out if a site has been spidered. Including subdomains and directories in the query helps you get even more specific.
Here’s a result set of all pages on Dub And Reggae that Google has spidered. - link:
- When followed by a URL, shows all websites that link to that page. This is useful for an SEO link building strategy: it shows you who is linking to you, so you can work on getting more links from similar sites and possibly set up reciprocal links. It is also a good way to figure out who is linking to other sites similar to your own, so you can consider getting those sites to link to your own site as well.
Here’s a result set of sites that link to Dub And Reggae. - ~
- Putting a tilde (~) before a search keyword tells Google to search for all terms that it considers synonymous with that keyword. In the results page, the synonyms are bold, making this a great tool for figuring out additional keywords to consider when planning an SEO campaign for a specific word or phrase.
As an example, the search results for ~reggae show that Google considers lyrics, calypso, and dub to be synonyms, so I should include some content for one or more of those keywords on DubAndReggae.com.
Didn’t know about the tilde, that’s a good one.