The growing convergence ofSEO and Social Media

Digitise the Nation10th May 2011

Presenter: Barry Adams, Senior Digital Marketer

Webinar Agenda

1. Introduction2. Why Social and Search are merging3. How Social Signals arrive in Search4. What you can do to make use of it5. Q&A

Why Social in Search?

Traditional websearch = algorithms

Algorithms are mathematical rules which can be abused by clever spammers

A pure algorithmic approach eventually leads to polluted spam-filled search results

Social Media = websites enablinghuman behaviour online

What people like and approve of, they share:

Facebook LikesTwitter (re)tweetsStumbleUpon StumblesReddit upvotesEtc…..

Because of all this, social signals have a better signal-to-noise ratio.

And that makes incorporating social signals in to search results a very smart thing to do.

But, as with all things, in moderation. Search will, for now, remain primarily algorithm-driven.

How Social Signals arrive in Search

Search engines pay close attention to what happens on social sites, especially Facebook and Twitter.

Interaction on Facebook & Twitter seems to correlate with Google rankings

SEOmoz study: http://seomz.me/hLcNlQ

Twitter (re)tweets directly affect indexationLinks tweeted are indexed & ranked by Google in minutesPart of Google’s real-time search vertical

Google is implementing social signals directlyin their results: Google +1

http://www.google.com/+1/button/

Google’s internal bonuses now partially dependent on success of social strategies.

What you can do

Make social an integral part of all you do online.

Facebook Like box:

Show a Like box on your site to show latest FB activity and allow people to like your company page on FB.

You do have a Facebook page, don’t you?

Facebook Like/Recommend buttons:

On product pages: Recommend this product

On News & Blog pages: Like this article

Facebook Developers

http://developers.facebook.com/docs/plugins/

Tweet buttons on news articles and blog posts

Combined buttons

Sidebar box: Share buttons:

Don’t go overboard

Handy Tip:

Add Twitter and Facebook buttons on your order confirmation page with preformatted text

“I just bought product x on site.com”

Upload your videos to YouTube

YouTube is the 2nd largest search engine in the world

Put your photos on Flickr

Be sure to optimise your photos’ titles & tags

Find out if your audience has an online hang-out

For example:

Tech geeks

Q&A

Thank you for listening.

Please type your questions in the webinar questions window.

If your question isn’t addressed, you can email me at:badams@piercecommunications.co.uk