The Future of Search: SERP’s, Social Media & SEO

Posted by inetseo on May 7, 2010 · Leave a Comment

As specialists in many aspects of SEO, Social Media and Content Generation, iNET SEO give an overview of where Search techniques are at right now.

Google SERP’s, Social Media, SEO… Where is it all heading?

Where were we 2 years ago?
SEO was the most important aspect of work on your website, after getting it built. Then there was a need to get your website seen in the search engines, so you head along the long road of SEO. Cleaning up your HTML, ensuring links can be followed, getting good content live and the holy grail, links back to you! Of course, this is just a small part of the entire SEO project for any website.

‘Social Media – it can wait… it won’t take off… We don’t understand it, therefore we don’t need it…’

Where were we 12 months ago?
SEO is still as important as it was 12 months earlier. In fact, it is even more important because as more companies realise the importance of SEO and being found higher through the search engines, fierce competition arises with everyone. Everyone wants that coveted 1^st place when someone searches for a particular term.

‘Social Media – Maybe I will look at this next week… We still don’t understand it, but our competitors are on Twitter and LinkedIn… Maybe we should be as well?’

Where are we now?
Panic is arising in many companies because they realise that they need to concentrate on their SEO as well as their Social Media campaigns – they are literally being left behind by their competitors! If you want to appear anywhere useful in Google, then you need to work at it. Google will only rank websites highly if the site meets their criteria. The two most important areas here are still Link Building and Content.

However, Social Media can no longer be ignored. If you are not concentrating at least some of your website SEO / marketing efforts into Social Media, then you are on a slippery slope into missing one of the biggest changes in acquiring a web presence that has happened in many years.

Social Bookmarking, LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Content Creation, News Articles. How about those for starters?
Which of these areas do your devote a good amount of time to? If the answer is none, then you are seriously running the risk of being wiped out by those that do! Two years ago, very few understood just how important these areas were going to be for businesses. Now everyone is scrambling to get on board!

Changes to Google in the recent months have been groundbreaking…

Caffine – One of the biggest shake-ups ever to happen to how Google ranks websites
Integration with Twitter
Live search options now dominant on every search page – just have a look on the left of any Google search results.

Google: New Search Options & Social Media

Do you have a blog? If not, you will never be found in the Blog results.
Do you have any content update areas to your site where visitors can interact? Perhaps a forum? If not, you will never be found in the Discussions results.
Do you publish articles that could be included in Google News? If not, you will never be found in Google News results.
Do you use Twitter on a regular basis? If not, then you will never be seen in the up-to-the-second results that are fed into Google. A wonderful branding opportunity that many miss altogether.

By definition, Social Media is the distribution of information and media through ‘social’ networks. This can be a following built up by yourself (e.g. LinkedIn, Facebook), or via more viral means where people want to re-publish what you have to say (e.g. Twitter, Digg, etc).

However, you have to have something that people wish to follow or re-distribute, so you are back to a good website and rich, interesting content.

This is an ever expanding spiral now! The more content you have, the more people will follow and re-distribute what you have to say.

But it is not all about re-distribution of content. For example, if you want to build a brand, you now no longer need to spend millions on huge advertising campaigns. Through careful planning and Social Media, you can build an effective brand for a fraction of the price once associated with these tasks.

This is just scratching the surface of where we are at right now; nothing more than a brief insight into what you, as a website owner, should be doing to build your website traffic, your social following and gaining exposure.

Be active; in fact, be very active! If you are not committed to heading down this route, you will miss out on what is going to play a huge part of search and traffic generation in the very near future.

The future of search is changing rapidly and if you blink, you will miss it!

iNET SEO specialise in SEO, Social Media Optimisation and Traffic Generation – www.inetseo.co.uk