The effect of Social Media on SEO

March 15, 2007

Jeremiah Owyang of PodTech.net posed some interesting questions intended for some of is SEO buddies.

Based on my rather small (but always growing) understanding of SEO, these are how I would answer his questions.

Jeremiah’s Question 1)
“Because blogs score high in Google Search results, how does this impact corporations who spend resources on SEO campaigns for their websites?”

Blogs are another tool that corporations can use to increase their visibility. If used as a vehicle to drive trusted links to targeted pages within their sites, blogs can certainly help in SEO efforts. The key is having the blogs targeting the right audience - as an optimum link would be one that is from a website that has related content.

Jeremiah’s Question 2)
“If Social Media is an effective way to gain in SEO (as well as engage an audience), should we increase Social Media Program budgets and reduce SEO budgets?”

Depends.  Social Media can be an effective tool in gaining viewership and attracting quality links. SEO, as I understand, is all about increasing the amount of quality traffic that will more likely “do something” on your site.  This entails having targeted keyword optimized content that drives traffic to your site from the search engines, as well as attracting quality links that help increase your rankings in the search engines. If social media can be utilized to do the later, then I would consider it as a valuable SEO tool for the corporation - Given the other link-building strategies, I would not consider it as an alternative to traditional SEO methods.

Jeremiah’s Question 3)
“The word of mouth network is becoming more and more efficient. Communities are forming and networks are formalizing, these networks allow users to share info about products and services without using search. (Twitter, blogs, myspace are good examples). update: If these word of mouth networks become so efficient and content is shared amongst a common group, will this reduce the need for searches?”

What I believe you are talking about is social networking and how these networks provide an avenue for viral advertising. I’m gonna go out on a limb and say that social networks and social media in general actually increase search traffic. To give you an example lets say someone in one of your social networks tells you something that sparks your interest.  How is it that you act on this new interest?  You do a search about the topic in google, yahoo, msn, aol, etc. As you learn more and more about it, you have more focused searches until you find trusted sources.
 

Jeremiah’s Question 4)
“I state that Web Marketing is not on Two (corporate and google) domains only. Some savvy companies are realizing the Web Marketing battle isn’t on the corporate domain only, as the word of mouth effect becomes more important, do companies really want visitors to come to their site? Or will the savvy company realize that the most effective web marketing is using advocate customers to turn cold and warm prospects. How does this impact the SEO industry?”

There are several different web marketing strategies a company can take.  Certainly blogging about your product offerings in an effort to attract visitors is one method.  Social networking community sites are another avenue. Forums are still another avenue.  All of these methods can be used to increase the number of backlinks to web pages - the savvy Search Engine Marketer will recognize this and utilize these new methods of social media marketing  in their SEO strategies.

Sphere: Related Content

Posted by Rick Garcia in Social Media, Search Engine Optimization, Search Engine Marketing