Why Search Needs Social (Wappow)

Why Search Needs SocialAnd how marketers can gain a competitive advantage in both

Download: http://bit.ly/mozsearchsocial

Rand Fishkin, CEO & Co-founder, SEOmoz

May 2011

Google’s had many other big shifts over the years, but I wanted to call out these specifically. See http://www.toddnemet.com/timeline/ for more.

2004

1998

2001

2003 2005

2007

2009

2009-10

2011

PageRank

WebSpam Team

Florida Update

Sandbox

Nofollow

Maps + Local Results

Vince (Brands)

A Little Google Algo History

Caffeine(Freshness +

Speed)

Panda/Farmer

What is Google Trying to Do?

Unfortunately, none of these are comprehensive or accurate enough to fulfill what I’m looking for (and many use affiliate links, calling into question their motives.)

Make Better Results

I’m actually looking for a good

grill for this summer. Google’s not very helpful.

Why Social?

Social signals – Facebook Likes, Shares, Comments; Twitter tweets; LinkedIn Status Updates; even references from smaller social platforms (Quora, StumbleUpon, Flickr, Blogs, etc.) can help Google gain more relevancy by showing what users really enjoy and share!

These results are quite good; mostly because I’m connected to people who share useful, interesting

stuff in this niche. I need to find some grilling experts.

Let’s explore how search and social are

merging and talk about some cool tactical wins

for marketers, too.

You can see and connect your own social accounts to your Google profile via https://profiles.google.com/connectedaccounts

Google’s Accounts Deliver Social Integration

You can see and connect your own social accounts to your Google profile via https://profiles.google.com/connectedaccounts

Now When I Search…

Geraldine’s blog is awesome, but it would never rank on page #1 for this query without

the power of the social connection.

More info on the Bing/Facebook integration: http://searchengineland.com/bing-now-with-extra-facebook-see-what-your-friends-like-52848

Bing Does this Too (at least with Facebook)

Wait… Doesn’t that mean?

Bigger Social Network +

More Social Sharing

=

More Search Traffic & Better Rankings

That’s Not All…

Controlling for links, social metrics are well correlated with higher rankings in Google. This strongly suggests a direct influence. More http://www.seomoz.org/blog/facebook-twitters-influence-google-search-rankings

Social Signals are Likely to Be Directly

Influential, Too

Let’s Expand Our Network!

Using the query string parameter for profiles, you can find people to connect with across networks who will then see your shares in Google, e.g. http://www.google.com/search?tbs=prfl:e&q=seattle+blogger

FollowerWonk makes it easy to find and connect with Twitter users in the same fashion: http://followerwonk.com

Using http://bit.ly for tracking can help us see when/where we’re effective with shared content and track clicks that Analytics can’t. BTW – You can use + with goog.gl or bit.ly to see other people’s shared links, too, e.g. http://goo.gl/BMIGz+

By aggregating your metrics from bit.ly (and twitter/facebook/etc), you can see patterns that can suggest better ways to share content. More here: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/calculating-and-improving-your-twitter-clickthroughrate

Analytics on Socially Shared Links Matters

Speaking of analytics, Facebook’s Insights widget can be installed on your site to see data about your visitors who are logged into FB: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/4-facebook-marketing-tactics-you-might-not-know-about

Facebook Offers Direct Insights

Namesake is an emerging discussion network that looks very promising: http://namesake.com/

Newer Networks Offer Outsized Returns

Answering a few questions on http://www.quora.com send us several hundred visits a month already

Newer Networks Offer Outsized Returns

Tools like http://trunk.ly and http://summify.com can help you discover great content to share + spread, as well as learn what types of content performs well in your niche.

Check out http://blog.okcupid.com/ and http://www.conversationmarketing.com to see these in action.

OKCupid has this awesome drop-

over box after you finish reading,

encouraging you to share.

Ian Lurie’s blog uses a subtle, single message that “likes” his whole site’s profile, so that anything he shares in the future appears in your search results.

The Possibilities for Social + Search

Synergies Have Never Been Better.

Rand Fishkin, CEO & Co-Founder, SEOmoz

• Twitter: @randfish

• Blog: www.seomoz.org/blog

• Email: rand@seomoz.org

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Download: http://bit.ly/mozsearchsocial