Search Goes Social

Using Social Media to Gain Visibility in Search Engines

Who am I?

Kasi Gajtkowski aka “Casey Ja-cow-ski”

• Search Engine Marketing Coordinator for PowerPay• SEO, PPC, Link Building, etc• Lover of all things Internet Marketing

facebook.com/kasimarie linkedin.com/in/kasimarie

twitter.com/kasi_marie

What We’ll Cover• Why search engines are starting to use social signals

• How social media is being incorporated into search results

• Using the following channels to help gain visibility in SERPs:

Blogs YouTube Facebook Twitter LinkedIn

Search Engines are Important

• Have a website to be found when people are looking

• Over 50% of online adults use asearch engine every day

• Over 3 billion searches done on Google per day worldwide

Photo Credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/matthamm/2945559128/#/

• Brand Awareness • Customer Engagement

• Humanizing a company

How About Social Media?

You may view Social Media as a headache:• Not enough time/staff• Too many profiles (twitter, facebook, foursquare, etc)• What’s the ROI of all this work?• I’m not social; I don’t know what to say!

Photo Credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/exalthim/2150224411/

Social Media is Not Going Away!

• Search engines see many prominent social media networks as an AUTHORITY

• Starting to use social media activity as a signal of TRUST in their algorithms

• Eventually, just having a website may not be enough to have it rank well in a search engine

Traditional Search Engines Have Pitfalls

1. We want our information NOW! As it’s happening. (News, events)And we want to get information from our friends that we trust.

2. People understand that certain ranking signals are important andtry to manipulate them. (Crappy search results, spam)

1. Search Engines Lacked “Real Time” and Your Friends

• When Michael Jackson died in 2009, news spread like wildfire through social media networks just 41 minutes after 9-1-1 call.It took Google News 1 hour and 20 minutes to report the story after tmz.com posted it; it took 3 hours and 17 minutes to be an auto- complete suggestion for search queries.

• Also in 2009, a well-known blogger tries to find out what’s going on at the Waldorf Astoria while he’s there (due to a ruckus).A Google search turned up nothing; a quick search on Twitter revealed that Matt Damon was filming a movie there.

• With the explosion of social media use, people were turning to their social network for help, general questions, referrals, etc.Why ask Google for plumbers in your town when you can ask your friends who they recommend?

• Search engines had a hard time displaying situations and events in a real-time fashion.• Google didn’t let me see what my friends think about a particular topic.• Maybe “Googling it” wasn’t the only way to get answers. (gasp!)

Photo Credit: http://flickr.com/photos/crimfants/327861820/

Search Addresses the Pitfalls:Real Time & Social

• Launched in December 2009• Scrolling results for Twitter, FriendFeed, News Articles, other web pages, etc. as they are shared

• Launched October 2009 – “Results from your social circle” at bottom of SERP• Integrates search results from friends: Flickr, Twitter, Quora, blog posts into SERPs in February 2011• Linked from Google Profile and contacts from other social networks you have linked there, Gmail, Google Reader – must be signed in to see this

Google Social Search:

Google Real Time Search:

Search Addresses the Pitfalls:Real Time & Social

• October 2010 Bing added “Liked by your Facebook friends” at the bottom of SERPs• February 2011 they are integrated within the search results like Google’s friends results• You have to link your Facebook account to Bing (you can sign in with Facebook)

• Launched October 2009 – Started with real-time access to Twitter feed• Added aggregated data and updates from public “Pages” on Facebook• Has its own “Social” section, like Google’s “Real Time”

Bing Social:

Bing-Facebook Partnership:

2. Search Engine Manipulation

How Search Engines Work

Type in a search query at Google

Search goes to Google’s

database*

Google searches

database for relevant web

pages

Secret ranking algorithm

applied to web pages

You get your results!

* Database is compiled by software “spiders”

Start Here

How Search Engines Rank Pages

Algorithm – Formula that a search engine uses to determine how a a web page ranks in Search Engine Results Pages.

(SERPs)

• Each search engine has their own algorithm

• Google uses over 200 variables in its algorithm

• Algorithms are “secret” but some of the variables are knownLike backlinks

Links: Original “Trust” Signal

Joe Schmo’s Blog about

SEO

Wikipedia Entry about

SEO

Websites

Less Links = Less trust & authority = possibly lowerrankings

More links = trust & authority = possibly higher rankings

Which website will rank better for “SEO”?

Getting Backlinks to Your SiteThe “Good” Way

The “Bad” Way

Websites should have such totally awesome content and information, other websites will naturally want to link to them!

Buying link placements on websites, link exchanges, software that spams blogs & forums, any way that is “manipulative” and done with the sole purpose of getting a link back to your site. These are “web spam” tactics.

It can be hard to resist temptation…

Natural Links Spammy Links

Photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/josevnz/8030459/

Recent Headlines

“How Organized Spam is Taking Control of Google’s Search Results”

“Why Google is Choked With Spam”

“Google’s Decreasingly Useful, Spam-Filled Web Search”

“Is Google Losing its Fight Against Spam?”

“How Google is Creating a Web of Spam”

“Why We Desperately Need a New and Better Google”

Photo Credit: http://blog.random-squeegee.com/labels/spam.html

Search Addresses the Pitfalls:Changing Algorithms

Mentions on Twitter, Facebook, and potentially others about a brand or website may be a part of Google’s algorithm in terms of how websites rank:

“We do use Twitter and Facebook links in ranking, as we always have in our web search rankings, but in addition we’re also trying to figure out a little bit about the reputation of an author or a creator on twitter or Facebook.”

- Matt Cutts, Google (December 2010)

• Looks like search engines are playing around with using social media mentions as trust and authority signals – like they do with links.

• Maybe “Likes” will be the new links?

What Do These Changes Mean for You?

If you have a website, your social media participation and mentions (or lack thereof) may affect how it ranks in search engines for your keywords.

Your videos, blog posts, tweets, facebook shares could potentially show up in search engine results, expanding your reach.

Photo Credit: http://www.psfk.com/2008/07/pronoun-of-the-moment-me.html

“Sites that aren’t getting some social exposure (mentions and links from social media sites) won’t do well. (Yep we keep saying it, and it’s true – you need to be on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn).”

- Search Engine Journal

Things You Can Do to Help You Be Seen in the SERPs

Blogging• If you have a current site, set up a blog on it if possible (www.mysite.com/blog)o WordPress or maybe BlogEngine.NET for sites hosted on Windows servers

• Write about things in your industry that people are searching for

• Search Engines love blogs - Use keywords in your titles

• Blog platform should have the ability to make friendly URLs for SEO purposeso (www.mysite.com/blog/i-love-chocolate/)

• Get over not knowing what to write about

• Write about questions you commonly answer

• Keep ‘em updated so Google keeps crawling them

YouTube• Gets over 2 million views per day (and it’s owned by Google)

• Keyword-rich title for video and use “tags” to list your keywords

• Instead of writing a blog post or an FAQ, turn it into a videoo You don’t need studio-quality production to make one

• Example: “how to train your dog” returns 10,500,000 results in Googleo That’s pretty competitive!

• Add your website or contact info in your description on YouTube

Facebook• Over 600 million active users as of January 2011

• Fill out all your business information completely, including web address

• Having a business page will most likely give your business another search result for searches on your company due to the authority of Facebooko Good for reputation management

• Commit to interacting on a regular basiso Through informal testing, lack of activity on facebook page may not always

equate to a search result for a search on a business nameo i.e., don’t just make a page and do nothing with it

Twitter• There are 1 billion tweets per week as of March 15th, 2011

• You can use Twitter’s internal search to search for your keywords and follow/engage people that are using them

• Having a twitter account for your business will most likely give your business another search result for searches on your company due to the authority of Twittero Good for reputation managemento Individual tweets can show up as a search result in some cases

• Don’t forget about tweets in real time results!

• Use keywords in the bio section – Google will sometimes use this as the description in the SERPs

LinkedIn• Over 100 million users – it’s like Facebook’s professional older sibling

• Fill out all your business information completely, including web addresso The website links can have anchor text (i.e. “merchant account”) that can

link to whatever address your specify – good for SEO if you have a websiteo There are many new features, including embedding videos, showcasing

products and services, and customer recommendations

• Having a company page will most likely give your business another search result for searches on your company due to LinkedIn’s authorityo Good for reputation management & credibility

• Use keywords that you’re targeting in your company’s description and productsand services

Photo Credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/programwitch/1483037699/

Don’t let all of this stress you out.

Wrap Up

• Don’t overwhelm yourself by trying to be on every networko Find what works for youo Stick to it

•Use social networks to:o Gain more visibility in SERPs – control your own brando Help out your website for the long haul

Photo Credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/greenlagirl/2129972742/