Social Search and SEO
So how is the social search engine relevant to SEO?
It is obviously important because we see how more and more each day search is turning into something more personal as search engines seek ways to improve the relevance of search results. What this means is that we (SEOs) should encourage clients to improve their online network and to start seriously considering or putting more effort in the social media efforts.
Here are a few tips on what you should immediately do to get the most of Google Social Search (remember this may be in experimental mode now but you want to reap the benefits even before it’s fully released):
Get a Google Account and update your public Google profile – Add links to your facebook, twitter, myspace, jaiku, blog, flickr, and whatever other links you want to appear when contacts (hopefully your clients or the friends of your friends, who can turn into clients) search for terms that appear as content in those links.
Get more active in social network sites – Been neglecting your social site accounts? Start adding friends and posting updates WITH KEYWORDS. Don’t get spammy but think of real updates where you can insert a keyword or two. Oh and don’t forget to set your profile on public.
Get reviewed - Find ways to get reviewed by real people on industry-specific sites or even on their websites. Remember the real aim for many clients is conversion and not just traffic. For this word of mouth is still the best way to go. In search terms social search and reviews from people in your social circle is still equivalent to word of mouth. The more people review your site/product/service the more chances you get to appear on the social search results of their contacts.
Hope you find this helpful. Happy Halloween everyone!
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If you’re into Googling yourself to see where you rank for your own name, you should take this advice to heart. Cement yourself now, while it is still easy to do so, especially if you have a fairly common name!
Goran, good to hear from you, hope you are well and the Google gods are looking kindly upon you
LOL, they are indeed Gary! It has been a while since I last visited your blog, thank you for the welcome! I trust things are well with you?
They are indeed. Like the world over the UK has been in a slump, but luckily SEO appears unaffected, in fact I would say it’s probably a boom industry!!
I’m glad there is a google dashboard now to control and view all accounts ‘active’ with google. It gives us a bit more control. I don’t know how much, but a bit..
It’s good that google will provide more relevant results through social search feature. Viewers will also be able to know the popular stuffs resulting from social media sites.
As an added note. Google seems to favor LinkedIn (in terms of social networking sites), for giving backlinks to your website. Establish a LinkedIn account and ask for recommendations from colleagues and co-workers.
Excellent advice, I have noticed that guest blog post or being reviewed carries a lot of value.
The social media aspect can seem confusing, however, it appears to be more quality vs quantity. Simply submitting a low quality item on social media sites doesn’t seem to give any benefits, however, if you put a truly beneficial piece of information out there, it can spread like wild fire. Especially if you implement your recommendations and inter-connect all of the social websites together through platforms like Google (and in any other way possible).
Great advice. Staying active and “getting fans and friends” is definitely the way to go. It’s more important now than ever to manage your online reputation - reviews are a great way to create a good rep.
A lot of people using nowadays social network for promotion and they have a great results. I was very sceptical about this and in fact I think it depends on your niche how successful you will be on social networking. However I will try it cause it’s becoming more and more popular.
The problem here is that there are too many social networks out there, and all of them seem popular. So to keep that many accounts active would take up a lfetime. I think keeping those social media accounts active that lie within the popularity of our (SEOs) target audiences.
Twitter is an awesome platform but have neglected to “tweet” using keywords, duh… good tip! even though Twitter is considered “no follow” it doesn’t matter cause I get “searched” traffic nonetheless.
Now I need to pay some love to my LinkedIn, they have become even more popular as of late.
Be sure to check the number of characters you assign on the meta tags (title, keywords, description). Some directories cut long title and description that may affect the appearance of your listing.
You´re spot on and Local Search is becoming more relevant each day - if you´re not represented then you´re going to be missing out big time. Just look at the recent purchases by Google, they all start to form the bigger picture of how users are disseminating information through Social Media
Very cool post.
About Twitter: When I tweet anything business related I put a hashtag (#) in front of the keyword so the word sticks out if someone searches Twitter for that particular keyword.
keep up the good work!
Really an Informative presentation, It helped me a lot..Social Media has gained acceptance of the mass, it has started revolutionizing the online world. So much so that search engine giants like google have started developing real time search engines which are using social media shares like tweets as a criteria for showing results. The more the number of shares, more is the chance of getting noticed. Everyday the SEO strategy needs to be modified in order to stay in the game.