Archive for the ‘Social Media’ Category

Search is constantly evolving, changing, being redeveloped around the clock to make results more relevant, interesting and a better reflection of the displayed results importance in the grand scheme of the World Wide Web.

How do you Deem Something to be Relevant?

Of course these results, their perceived importance and relevancy, are all calculated using various algorithms designed to best interpret the information on the internet and present it to us on submission of a related query. Therein lies the problem; they are after all just machines, and whilst programmed by skilled and talented people, they will likely never truly mimic our perception of interesting and relevant. However, the benefits of utilizing such machines and algorithms far outweigh the drawbacks outlined a moment ago; they can crawl the web indescribably faster than even an army of people could and analyse the data just as quickly, hence why we don’t just employ an army of people to index the web.

Growing Use of Social Media

Then consider the advent of social media and the rate at which it has grown over the past few years; out there in the blogosphere there are millions of people publically expressing their views about what they deem interesting, important and relevant to particular topics.

It is very possible that at some point in the future of search, search engines will begin to analyse trending topics and use this information to present more relevant search results. Queries such as “new movie” may begin to return results related to films currently experiencing social media hype, or searches for more specific topics might return pages or companies frequently mentioned by users of the social networks.

The Future is Uncertain

No one knows exactly how the future of SEO is going to go, but keeping in mind the ideas above, it just goes to show how important keeping in touch with your customer or user base via an online social presence could become.

Just when you think they’ve run out of ideas to develop search engines, the bright sparks at Google go and prove us all wrong by releasing a new piece of search engine software.

‘Real Time’ has recently been launched to help provide users with access to up to the second information across a platform where information is being created at a pace where seconds matter in assisting and ultimately optimising results.

Google’s ‘Real Time’ software extracts up to the second data from over a billion pages available on the web. Not only will the software scan promotional websites for information, it will also be able to read the data being broadcast by social media websites such as Twitter, Facebook and MySpace, which all have constantly changing material in the form of profile updates.

SEO Implications

Google are setting the trend for SEO development as this is the first time ever that any search engine has integrated real time web data into its results output.

Search engine optimisation from a business point of view is all about relevance from both an industry and customer perspective. With billions of web pages across the internet, a bundle of information is being generated every second, so getting the relevant material to appear on a results page is integral to the success of a product.

With more businesses using social media platforms as part of their SEO and internet marketing campaigns, as a means of regularly updating the customer with news and offers, it is hoped that ‘Real Time’ could help assist rankings as soon as new updates are released.

The real time stream of data will continue to be shown in Google’s normal results page.

Competitive Stance

The recent announcement by Google has been hailed as a landmark event in the world of search, but some analysts view this as an aggressive push by Google to maintain its mantle as the innovative leader in a search market they already control 81% of.

Further to the release of ‘Real Time’, it is proving to be a busy end to the year for Google as they also unveiled ‘Google Goggles’, a new visual search feature that allows consumers to use a picture instead of keywords with regards to a search query. The new tool will then compare the image against Google’s database to return relevant information.

With both software releases proving to be revolutionary for search engines, it will almost certainly have big implications for the way SEO works with more material available to boost both individuals and brands. Watch this space ……

Working in SEO, it’s always useful to keep an eye out for news stories that relate to technological advancements, particularly if it involves the internet or search engines specifically. Google rarely fail to disappoint with this and so my attention this week was drawn to their announcement of their intentions to embrace the social media phenomenon.

Making Money from the Social Web

Over the past 18 months, companies have been capitalising on the worldwide interest in social networking sites, using them as a key marketing tool by capitalising on search, advertising and user generated content.

Google, the world’s biggest search engine provider is one such company taking strides into this media trend with the planned release of ‘Social Search’, a new project planned to give the search engine a makeover.

Search Engine Benefits

The primary idea behind ‘Social Search’ is based on personalising the results produced by the search engine. Most people on the web make social connections across a variety of interactive media websites and publish web content in numerous ways such as blogs, status updates and tweets. ‘Social Search’ will analyse and use this information to translate the content into special relevance for each person in regards to the results it produces.

Using the information from the public profiles people have created with Google and other connections across the social web, the searches will produce friend’s reviews and comments that they have made previously on the nature of the subject you are searching for. There is a concern by some that this infringes on privacy but Google have declared that all information is taken from that which was already freely available on the web.

Possible SEO Implications?

When discussing changes to search engines, this inevitably could have an effect on business rankings and ultimately SEO strategies.

Manipulation of social media sites as a marketing tool could lead to businesses using ‘Social Search’ to target specific audiences with reviews and product updates as a way of furthering their search engine optimisation.

As a new member of the Ignition team, I thought this blog would be a prime opportunity to share with you, the ins and outs of SEO and my experience so far as a newcomer into the world of search engine optimisation.

I probably shouldn’t admit it, but when I first started my new role, my knowledge of SEO and PPC was limited to say the least. I knew the basics but had never really given search engine strategies or the importance of rankings a second thought. In the past few weeks though all that has changed. I have now seen the ‘SEO light’ and have a whole new appreciation for the effective impact SEO has on a company’s website and overall business.

What I’ve learnt….

In an age of technological advancement, the internet is increasingly becoming a heavy influence on people’s decisions to choose one specific business over another. A company’s website is one of the first ports of call for most people and therefore could be seen as the most important marketing tool. I’ve learnt that with so many companies competing against each other in an apparent struggle to stand out above others, a solid SEO campaign can sometimes mean the difference between success and failure.

When using search engines in the past, I have always taken the results for granted and not given a thought to how a company appeared on page 1 of results, always presuming it was based on reputation rather than the keywords I had typed in. I’ve learnt rather quickly though that all web content has an effect regarding one business’ standing against another. My eyes have been opened to title tags, keywords and the importance of social media and regular fresh content.

Take the Chance

Business owners and marketing managers are sometimes more concerned about saving money rather than making it. As a result, SEO is occasionally viewed with scepticism in regards to the importance of the role it plays. Some firms attempt to save money by optimising their website themselves, but this often backfires due to lack of knowledge or impatience regarding the length of time it takes to get results. A small investment in SEO can help increase your client base, boost brand awareness and ultimately increase sales.

One of the biggest things I’ve learnt from the team at Ignition Search so far is that they are honest and realistic as to the possibility of maximising your SEO and how long that will take. I’ve seen the positive impact optimising your website can have, with a hard working team providing analytics, keyword research and link building, I have been converted into a SEO follower, and if you haven’t seen the light yet, I strongly recommend it!

For businesses and individuals not familiar with SEO and how it works, it can appear a daunting and obscure concept. They often wonder whether SEO is a one-off strategy or an ongoing process that requires hard work and perseverance. The answer to this is in the latter. It is crucial to regularly monitor rankings and alter tactics accordingly in order for SEO to work effectively and efficiently.

Minor maintenance and attention to the fundamentals of the sites content can ensure the optimisation for search engines keeps on working over a longer period of time.

Key Areas of SEO Strategy

A vast majority of the world’s population use the internet and ultimately search engines everyday. The primary objective of their original search was based around finding answers relevant to their question. Striving to be the website that provides the desired answer, individuals and companies apply the fundamentals of SEO strategy in order to be the dominant force within a particular subject. These fundamentals haven’t really changed within the last decade but have merely evolved with technology.

The three major areas of SEO strategy are: -

·    Technical – Inserting internal links, site maps and not duplicating content
·    Content – Ensuring the information is viral co-efficient, unique and has a value to the user.
·    Marketing – Currently the main area people are attempting to take advantage of as social media/web  engagement evolves. Also provides for external link attraction and email marketing campaigns.

SEO is still based around having a search engine friendly site structure combined with great content that allows a natural integration of inbound links and user interaction. The most modern and increasingly common marketing tool being used in recent times has been social media.

SEO and Social Media

Social media is designed to delegate information through social interaction, using highly accessible techniques. The most basic form of interaction being used as an SEO tool is blogs. This appears to be the method of choice as it is simple to set up and maintain, as well as providing a great platform for embracing the social sphere. If time is spent optimising a blog then there is a very good chance you could be well on your way to adding new, well ranked search results for new target audiences. Social media applications such as blogs make it easier to venture into different social venues as part of an online media mix.

Choosing Your Social Media Venues

When attempting to establish which social media venues should be targeted to help optimize your online presence, you should first of all consider the audience(s) you are trying to reach. Establishing your target market allows you to determine where to get started and which social media profiles to use. Without defining a target audience, there is no way to offer them substantial, gripping content.

Even though the ultimate objective of participating in social media is link building and reputation management, it should not be used as a personal advertising space. The content management should be directed towards sharing not selling, with a listen first then respond attitude.

The greatest barrier that seems to stop people future proofing their SEO initiatives is trepidation. Anxiety, uncertainty and doubt never play a role in building successful search engine strategies.

We are loving the Social Media explosion here at Ignition! It’s a really interesting and quickly developing area and it’s providing some of our clients with some excellent results.

We’ve already written about one client who suffered from a lack of search within the search engines, but whose project raced away when we ran some ads on a few social media sites; and this trend has snowballed somewhat to the point where we are almost offering a Social Media Marketing service as standard, and often in tandem to an SEO service.

And this is the bit that we are enthusiastic about, this correlation between Social Media and Search. The services are complimentary as oppose to an either/or approach. Just about every service or product has a target market, and this can usually be defined by demographic information eg gender, age, location, etc, particularly in a business to consumer scenario. So any potential visitor that is missed through the search engines can be picked up through social media. All it takes is a bit of thought and a bit of research to find out where they ‘hang out’.

Once we’ve found your audience it’s a case of experimenting with advert appearance or copy, much as you would do with an SEO project or a PPC campaign. Split testing still applies until you start hitting the right notes and attracting the right kind of converting traffic. Then we roll it out and it’s onwards and upwards!

It doesn’t just apply to consumer services and products either. Business people visit and use Social Media sites and many are becoming prolific bloggers and visiting sites 2 or 3 times daily. The enormity of this emerging and exciting medium cannot be ignored.

Social Media and Search? Together? I think so.