Google Social Search Will Change SEO

Today I noticed Google introducing results from my “social circle” into my organic search results. This is a big move towards personalized search from Google – which WILL affect the SEO world in the next couple years. This puts importance on social connections and content outposts.

Here you see “Results from people in your social circle”

When you click through you get an interesting result…

Filtered search results from your social circle!

What makes up your social circle?

If you have a Google Profile – then Google knows about your social outposts. It uses these outposts – like Twitter, FriendFeed, Google Reader, and others – to create your social graph and filter organic results by what your friends have blogged, shared, and linked to.

How does this change SEO? If it isn’t obvious – this move is away from traditional ranking by keywords and authority and into ranking by social proof. This means your content outposts and social connections will become increasingly important.

The future of SEO is changing. We’re moving towards a social proof model where your social graph will help determine the relevancy of results. SEO tactics will move away from keyword targeting towards building an expansive social graph. The standard SEO practice of link building will change – shared links will carry more weight than inbound links.

SEO is changing – are you ready? Traditional SEO tactics will remain unchanged and will still be important. Adding social into personalized results will just add another facet to our internet marketing strategies.

Do you have questions about Google social / personalized search? Let us know in the comments or jump into the forums!

Don’t Get Caught In The Social Media Vacuum

In this great snippet from Louis Gray’s 10 Predictions for 2010 (he does them annually) he says we’ll see a lot of mediocre “agencies” launched in 2010.

8. Many Social Media Experts Will Launch Mediocre AgenciesMany of the self-proclaimed social media experts will leave their corporate day jobs and strike it out on their own, looking to convert the world to Twitter and Facebook fan pages. A good number of them will find that the world of business relies a lot more on revenue than it does on retweets and @replies, and may walk away disappointed.

via 10 Predictions for 2010 In the World of Tech – blog.louisgray.com

While that’s a probable outcome there’s something else he says in there that I think is more important…

A good number of them will find that the world of business relies a lot more on revenue than it does on retweets and @replies…

People often lose site of revenues, conversions, and goals when they get lost in the vacuum of followers, retweets, fans, and visitors. A couple days ago John Jantsch posed the question “Is Social Media Killing Your Business?” where he observes many small businesses are spending far too much time in the social media pool and not enough on the bottom line.

Are you putting more effort into re-tweets than sales?

ROI of Social Media = Sales. Who woulda thought?

If your social media strategy is about getting more followers or re-tweets you are going about it all wrong. You should be focused on your goals – sales, conversions, leads, etc. Social media is a tool – not a web strategy. Don’t lose sight on what’s important in your business – making money.

Do you think businesses are losing sight of what’s important? Let us know in the comments or jump into the forums!

Increase Your Shareability With The Meebo Bar

Today we installed the Meebo Bar WordPress Plugin on this site.

If you look at the screenshot below you’ll see it adds a “bar” along the bottom with several social and sharing functions…

Hovering the “Share Page” button on the bar allows visitors to your site to quickly share the page…

We also setup the ability for visitors to ask us questions when they are on the site. If you are reading something and have a question about it – just ask us! We’ll try to get back to you right away.

We also added the RSS, Twitter, Facebook, and StumbleUpon buttons using the easy configuration tool provided by Meebo. The RSS button pulls the latest from our RSS feed. The Twitter button pulls our latest tweets. The Facebook Button shows off our fan page widget. And the StumbleUpon button lets you share it to the SU network.

If you have any questions about the Meebo bar and integrating it into your website, jump into our forums or leave us a comment here.

Social Media Is Not A Web Strategy

Neither is email marketing. Neither is blogging. Neither is search engine marketing. Or Facebook pages. Or LinkedIn. Or an iPhone app. Or Twitter. Or WordPress. Or podcasting. Or creating killer content…

None of these on their own is as effective as using them all together!

Coordinating them all together IS a web strategy

Don’t get us wrong – we love social media, internet marketing, search advertising, etc. But just focusing on individual tactics is not a strategy. You need to plan on how to get all these practices to work together to run your business online. Every other year we have new buzz words and hot marketing tactics that everyone dumps all of their time and money into – especially when it comes to the web. This type of silo marketing works in the short term – but not in the long term.

If you really want to run your business online – you need to figure out how all these work together so you can plan a long term web strategy for your business.

Got a question? Jump into the forum or leave us a comment!

Intersection of Search and Social Media

A video with Aaron Goldman about the future of search and social

[Can't View Video? Click Here]

Integrate Social Media and Email Marketing With Flowtown

Got questions about Flowtown? Ask us in the comments or jump into the forums!

Twitter and LinkedIn Integration

Facebook For Business

Real Time Social Media Press Releases – Episode 3

In this screencast we show you how to create a real-time social media press release using our content, FriendFeed, and WordPress. You can see the final product here.

This real-time information shows what our company is doing right now – from what we are working on to what we are talking about – giving our community a quick snapshot into who we are and what we do.

Show Links

• FriendFeed
• WordPress
• Social Media Press Release Template (pdf)
• 48Web Social
• FriendFeed Group
• Web Strategy Workshop FriendFeed Group

Twitter Marketing

Learn more about Twitter marketing…

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