Social Media Optimization and SEO

I found a really good article, from a Search Engine Strategies session, that helps explain the relationship of social media to SEO and other forms of online marketing. This article focuses on Social Media Optimization, or SMO for short. SMO is the process of optimizing every aspect of your website and various components to take full advantage of user interaction with your content. Below are some of the highlighted topics I found most interesting.

• Using Social Media to compliment your SEO efforts and PPC campaigns
• Optimizing your tags, titles and descriptions within social networks
• Maximizing searchable content (images, videos, link bait)
  
• Blog optimization
• The continued value of forums
• Niche social news sites

As social media marketing matures, I think we will find there are few differences between how we optimize content for social media sites and how we optimize content for the Web.

Marketing Myth of Bottled Water

Found a great video that unearths the myths on bottled water. Bottled water companies have spent a ton on marketing to get the general public to believe bottled water is cleaner than tap water. This proves that enough marketing and PR can still sway public option. When two products are virtually indistinguishable, the only difference is packaging and marketing. I used to buy bottled water, but have now switched to Britta filtered tap water.

Google Semantic Search is Here

For months the SEO community has suspected that Google began using search semantics in it's algorithm. Now we have proof.

" ... we're deploying a new technology that can better understand associations and concepts related to your search ..." - Official Google Blog

What does this mean for marketers?

Web Page Content - When creating SEO content for your Web site you must consider using related words, concepts and copy along with your keywords.

User Experience - While creating a good user experience is important, Google seems to be shifting it's focus back to keywords and related keywords.

Longer descriptions - Since Google seems to be focused more on the meaning of each page in it's search results, it has expanded the summary for each link. This will most likely increase the need to be listed "above the fold" in search results, since the longer descriptions will push listings 6-10 further down the results page.

Creating HTML Email Campaigns

Back in September of 2008, I put together a short presentation on building HTML email campaigns. Based on recent research I've read, more marketers are looking to use email marketing as a way to increase sales in 2009. I plan on updating this guide in the coming weeks to include some additional tips and research.

Marketing New Products Through Blogs

The folks at SEOmoz have done a great job with their whiteboard Fridays. Today's discussion is on Query Deserves Freshness (QDF), a tweak to Google's algorithm that promotes results that are buzz worthy for given keywords.



"Remember the Adamo?"

What I find most compelling about today's whiteboard edition is the later half of the discussion that talks about promoting new products using the Dell Adamo campaign. This is a great example of how promoting a site through social media, using bloggers, can positively influence the search engine visibility of micro site. These are great tips for anyone looking to market new products through social media and positively influence your SEO efforts. What types of offline marketing and social media promotion are you using as part of your search engine marketing campaigns?

How to Twitter Links

A couple weeks back, I posted tips on how to Twitter for small businesses. I've put together some additional helpful links to give marketers an edge when it comes to using Twitter for marketing your business or helping your clients understand the micro blogging tool. Enjoy!

• Hubspot Twitter for Marketing & PR
• Video on using Twitter
• Business Ideas from Chris Brogan
• More ideas and tactics from Dosh Dosh
• Grade your profile (handle)
  

How Social Media Helps SEO

Over my vacation I read a very interesting book from Bill Tancer of Hitwise. His book brings up some very interesting points in regards to search engine visibility as a result of social media engagement. His book uses data to display how social media presence creates a lagging improvment in search engine visibility. I have provided a rough chart below that speaks to the "inflection point", the point at which social media activity is eclipsed by search engine activity. (please excuse my poor drawing) In his book, Bill uses the rock band Fall Out Boy as an example of how social media activity can have an effect on searches performed on Google.

Red = Social Media Activity
Blue = Search Engine Activity



Using this basic chart, you can see that the initial surge in social media activity resulting in a surge in search activity. While Social Media may not have a direct influence on improving search engine rank, it can have an indirect effect on visibility. If more people are searching and visiting your Website, then more people are likely to link to your site. If more people link to your Website, then your site will improve in search engine results.

Which comes first?

As SEOs, we often focus on what we can directly influence as a marketer. With the growth of social media, we need to expand our strategies to include social media as an early SEO tactic to gain visibility. Setting up social profiles and brand pages are often as important as building your website. If you think of social media as a promotional/link bait tool, setting up specific social media product pages with on site landing pages would make sense. While much of social media marketing is still in it's infancy, it's clear that it can be driver for all aspects of marketing success.

Your Thoughts ...

What strategies of combining social media and SEO have you had success?

At what point in an online marketing campaign do you introduce Social Media tactics?