Search is Part of Social

Search is definitely part of social, but it's important to remember that social is part of search, too. For example, I Googled my name yesterday - first search result was a link to my Twitter account - so remember that what you say and do in the social media sphere affects search results, too!

Chris

This is a crucial point indeed. Many of the me-too services similar to Tumblr (e.g. Posterous where I have made this point and the founders said they are working on it) suffer from lack of good search. I do however think the next step isn't searching one network at a time but searching many at a time, meaningfully --> semantic web.

PS: You turn out posts faster than one can read or process. I am keeping up. Just.

Good point. When I post to twitter and the likes, I try to think of a key word or two that will trigger the reader to want to "search" my blog or website. So it makes sense that we should use more searching to better reach our customers. I am going to check out your references. Thanks,
InfoESource.com

All the best SEO resources one -including the ones above can be accessed at
http://seo.originalsignal.com/ ( OriginalSignal is a awesome aggregator)

For those who want to see Google Webmaster Guidelines (and others including one from SEOMoz) in Flash - visit us at
http://vizedu.com/tag/seo/

You're right. Social media is a broad term that covers many aspects..

Another good SEO site is: http://www.seo-theory.com

Also interesting article about myths of SEO by @leeodden
http://allbusiness.sfgate.com/technology/softwa...

http://twitter.com/Adgenius

I have a video from MarketingProfs - the session right before yours, actually - talking about prerequisites of social media. Search comes BEFORE social.

Watch the video on Marketing Over Coffee!

That is why I use keywords in my social media posts. I'm not doing this in all my posts but when I talk technical I try to use in as many forms that I can.
That is why I post the name of the article on which I link to in my twitters because every title has keywords in it.
I use search extensively in order to find potential new friends or potential new clients or just to see what's the word out there.
If I search for my name on Google the first 3 results are my websites but after that comes links to my social media posts or accounts and there are 4,060 pages containing my name.

So, yes, search is a part of social media. Basically you can benefit from the direct contact with your friends and followers by helping them and sharing good content but also you can benefit from search if you're using keywords in your posts

Great post Chris. All three blogs are great. I follow all three. Another blog I think is really good is Your SEO Plan

I agree with all the comments. I believe social media, link building and SEO practices are all part of the same global strategy and affect one another. There are quite a few SEO resources out there, the best ones have already been linked to. seoMOZ remains my favourite so far.

gotcha!
20

Reminded of Paul Gillin's presentations at NMB and NMS by your lead here. Like all the tools at our disposal, it is through using them that we can refine our practice. A fear was shared in my blog comments two days back about feeding search results into google reader: won't I get flooded? My answer, perhaps in the beginning until you learn to craft the search to deliver the focused content that will make you do better at whatever it is you do. I advise that folks spend five minutes reviewing the Boolean search operators and study how tweaking things delivers different content.

Yes, social media, community generated content, ad placements and search are all converging. A great time for watching closely, influencing where we can, but most of all participating in the collision. Merrily we roll along.

jmacofearth - Dell Global Online

Twitter Search Optimization (TSO) :)
(On Google, there's 8 results as of today).

Would you say that traditional search and social media search dovetail each other? That is, in order for enterprises to fully optimize their web presence, should they understand the difference between them and how to best couple them?

Traditional search provides different results from social media search. I think that as social media becomes more mainstream, people will learn to use both methods to find their answers.

If I ask Where Can I Get a Purple Meatball Sundae in Philadelphia?, the results on Google would be vastly different than the results from, say, Search.Twitter. With Twitter or other social search, I get more immediate access to human brains. With Google, I get access to servers and alogorithms.

Time-sensitivity, relevancy and context/quality are different between the two kinds of search. Plus, Twitter searches potentially could link us to other people much faster to help spur further direct quering than you could get from a blog.

I'm not SEO expert. But I would think that social media search seems to extend how people find what they're looking for.

Optimizing on each is different also. With Google, we have pages of text to optimize serps. With Twitter, you've got 140 characters. But you could be tactical in your tweeting. Of course the problem with that kind of approach is that if it's not done right, it could disrupt your ability to hold quality conversations.

How much of a game-changer is social media search? How will the search aspect, and efforts to optimize, affect how social media is used?

Search engine marketing is an interesting topic. If it is in social media or Twitter it doesn't really matter. You have to tactically attack the searchs and a lot of times you have to do it in different ways.

I have to agree, although I am guilty of wanting to separate the two myself at times, but that's just pure intellectual laziness- I usually don't let it win. I can't tell you how many times I have met with a client who want to keep social media and search in their own homes without giving any consideration to how one affects the other. It has been my experience that one (social media) has been viewed as sexier than the other (search) Good for bringing this discussion up.

A great resource for tools and information is http://mashable.com, they have tons of resources and information added. Sometimes its too match as I get bombarded by their RSS feed. If only we had the time to read everything...

SEO is always an interesting topic. Some (like me) write posts that the role of the traditional SEO consultant is dead, and that companies need to learn to integrate the function of SEO into their day to day activities.

This holds true for bloggers/publishers as well. Learn the basics of SEO, there are a ton of resources out there.

But where social becomes interesting as its relates to search, is in two places: reputation management and trust management.

SEO/SEM is important only as a function of driving traffic to your publication. Reputation/Trust managment squarely sits on the shoulders of user generated content, or social content. What I generate outside of my blog becomes as important as the content I generate on my blog itself. Why?

Because I am the sum of my parts. Each tweet I send, each photo I take, each video I upload allows potential clients and friends (anyone looking to create a relationship with me, or vice versa) helps to create trust and support my reputation/expertise.

Damn you Brogan! You have inspired me to write yet another blog post!

I recently gave a presentation on this subject at a Media Future Now lunch. I made the point that SEM and Social Media (or rather Social Media Marketing) are two separate, but increasingly overlapping, disciplines. You can do them separately, but that can be inefficient.


On the flip side, it's important to recognize that they are not the same thing. Neither is one merely a subset of the other. They both require specialized skills, and just because someone can do one, doesn't mean they're prepared to do the other well. The important thing is to recognize what each discipline is, educate yourself on what it can achieve and how, know what it can't accomplish, and be honest about which you are good at. Then, hire an expert to work with you to fill in the gaps if your skillsets aren't enough.

if folks want to learn about technical seo they can always visit our company site at http://www.hirank.com :)

i think social media strategy should start from seo, but ill have more on that in a post later.

Jacob

Agree, if your blog/site can't be found in the search engines, it's hard to expand your readership. Great content needs to be found to be read.

Here's an easy strategy any blogger can incorporate into their workflow (hint hint):
http://thefuturebuzz.com/2008/09/13/blog-search...

Nice search blog to follow - http://www.searchengineguide.com/

I've learned a lot about SEO in the past few years, but the thing is, things are continuously changing. I just recently read an ebook that has up to date information and is by a trusted source. You can download it here:

http://www.sitefling.com/index.php

I really enjoyed it and I'm starting to use some of the tactics taught in it.

Yes, search is indeed part of social media. Everything you do on the web, including social media, will create a profile of yourself. At the end, a web search on your name will results in a lot of hits which reflects who you are. So a sort of curriculum vitae.

Thanks for sharing all these links. I just realised how much outdated my knowledge from some university research some years ago already is. I will follow some of the feeds recommended here to catch up a little.

If people want to read about the intersection of social media, PR and SEO, they can check out our blog. Here's a post that specifically addresses this:

http://www.buzzstream.com/blog/seo-and-pr-are-m...

There's lots of talk among SEOs today about the fact that nothing moves the search results needle more than off-page factors, the largest of which is inbound links. The old methods of building phony links and trying to game Google just don't work any more (and if you want to bet on anything, bet that Google will just keep getting better at sniffing out illegitimate link building strategies). So how then do you increase your inbound links in today's environment? By creating great content and building strong relationships. Sounds like a big PR and social media strategy to me : )

This is exactly why we added "Searchcamp" to Podcamp Philly this year; search is a vital part of new media and social media, and something we could all know more about. And Penn is right- it's a fundamental building block and shouldn't be an afterthought. I'm backfilling that issue on my own sites as we speak, now that I know more.

Because the copywriting aspect of SEO is probably the most accessible to most bloggers, I'd highly recommend Jill Whalen's High Rankings site. Her approach to SEO is very content-centric.

http://www.highrankings.com/forum/

I like what AMI Software do in this space. They apply intelligence techniques on top of search, what I describe as trying to amplify the signal to noise ratio. They look for quite sophisticated correlations to try and detect emerging trends. This can lead you to the source of the conversation, and help understand where you need to be involved.

Your site is so nice. Esperially it is nice as visual.

People in the SEO community include as a default, certain social media channels as part of their content promotion and link building tactics.

However, what SEOs consider "social media" is not the same as how many other marketers define it. SEOs tend to focus on whatever will give them links and traffic over building community, branding or relationships. This perspective is crystal clear by conference sessions, blog posts and forum threads on the topic within the SEO industry.

The opportunity for many of the digital marketing, interactive, PR and advertising efforts is to consider SEO as an additional channel when creating social media strategies. In the context of content publishing, social media efforts provide crawlable content (text, media) as well as signals (links) affecting how those assets are sorted in search results.

As the social web grows, the expectation for consumers in their information discovery and recommendation habits will increasingly involve a combination of what's available via search and social media. Just remember, if it can be searched on, it can be optimized.

Check out "How Does Social Media Affect Search?" for more thoughts on that.

Your site is so nice. The old methods of building phony links and trying to game Google just don’t work any more (and if you want to bet on anything, bet that Google will just keep getting better at sniffing out illegitimate link building strategies).
I really enjoyed it and I’m starting to use some of the tactics taught in it.
Thanks..