Next Level SEO: Social Media Integration

Bill SlawskiSEO by the Sea

http://www.seobythesea.com

Internet Summit 2011 Raleigh, NCNovember 16, 2011

“Social media has changed the expectations of searchers.

Searchers want fresher content, they want to see what their friends and contacts have to

say, and they want access to experts and authority figures and their thoughts on

timely events and news.

Search engines have no recourse but to respond.”

As searchers and search engines change, so does SEO

“Fail fast, fail smart.”

• Original Choice of name “Eden.com” not available• Inexplicably popular in Brazil???????• Sloooooooooooooooooooow

• Mobile Friend Location Service• Under Supported by Google• One original founder left to start Foursquare

• Micro-blogging service acquired by Google in 2007• Open sourced by Google in 2009• Filled with spam, more spam, and even more spam• To be closed in early 2012

• First Google Q&A site, Google Questions and Answers lasted 24 hours• Knowledge Market with $ bounties/tips for answers• Closed in 2006 though Google code named “Confucius” Q&A sites remain in 68 countries

• Google developed APIs to be used by many social sites (but Facebook stayed away)• Originally part of a larger social network initiative from Google

• Attracted Google’s attention with the publication of “Anatomy of a Large-Scale Social Search Engine” • Social Search Integrated into Gmail• Abandoned with Google’s “More Wood behind Fewer Arrows” movement

• Social Local Recommendation Service• Confusion over name (hot spot?) • Integrated into Google Places

• Search Annotation Service • Share and rate comments left on web pages• Victim of “More Wood behind Fewer Arrows”

• Confusing social communication and collaboration tool• Support as a standalone product ended in August 2010• Parts of Wave now part of Google Plus

• Tool for social networking, micro-blogging and messaging within Gmail• Buzz about Gmail contacts being added by default became a privacy nightmare Buzz never recovered from

Socially Transformed Search Results

Old School Social Networking Looking New

Before there were social networks, there was social networking on forums, Q&A sites, blogs, and more…

Forum Listings in Search Results

• Shows relevant snippet• Lists number of posts and authors• Shows date of last post• Includes links to additional results• Don’t need to be logged in to Google

Q & A Listings in Search Results

• Shows Question• Shows number of answers• Shows a snippet of the best answer• Shows the date the question was asked• Includes related questions

Real Time Results (on hiatus)

• Google Deal w/Twitter expired• Google has pledged to reintroduce w/Google Plus• Results very timely, covering recency sensitive queries• Didn’t need to be logged into Google

Should I tweet about the earthquake first?

Or run outside really really really fast?

Real Time Search

• Address recency-sensitive queries [earthquake]

• Avoid zero recall problem (no relevant search results)

• Present novel, interesting, relevant results

• Hard to use an “authority rank” when social sites not controlled by search engine

http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/12/relevance-meets-real-time-web.html

Social Search Results• Need to be logged into Google Account• Known social connections +1’ed the page are shown• A number of unknown others are also listed• Will show when contacts shared posts on Google Plus

Social Search

• Search Results based upon intimacy and trust• Includes social sites such as Twitter and Flickr

(Need to connect these to your Google Account) • Now showing +1 activity and Google Plus Sharing• Results based upon relevance, and perhaps a

User Rank• Number of contacts = number of people who

may see you in social search results

http://www.google.com/support/websearch/bin/answer.py?answer=165228

Google Plus in Search Results

• Author profile picture• Link to Google Plus Profile• Listing of number of circles author is within• Link to Google Plus post w/number of comments listed• Everyone sees profile picture, number of circles, links to profile • and thread, without being logged in

http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=1408986

Authorship Markup

• Must follow steps to connect Google Account to authored content

• All Blogspot and Youtube contributions automatically incorporate authorship markup

• Some threshold contribution score in place may determine whether profile picture and other information appear in search results.

http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2011/06/authorship-markup-and-web-search.html

User Rank and Confucius

http://infolab.stanford.edu/~echang/Confucius-VLDB10.pdf

http://infolab.stanford.edu/~echang/CIKM-keynote.pdf

http://infolab.stanford.edu/~echang/CIKM-keynote.pdf

User Ranks and Credential Scores

An Authority score would be based upon an analysis of the quality of responses that

someone makes on a social networking site and the contributiveness scores of the

people who posted that content.

Contributiveness scores would be based upon the quality of something that you

post or upload to a social network and the authority scores of people who respond to

that content.http://www.seobythesea.com/2011/07/how-google-might-rank-user-generated-web-content-in-google-and-other-social-networks /

Why Google Plus > Twitter + Facebook

• Google has more access to collateral data about social network interactions on Google Plus

• Google can create a credential score or User Rank based upon meaningful contributions and interactions

• Google authorship markup assigns a digital signature to content you create inside and outside of Google Plus which impacts search display and likely rankings (especially with recency sensitive queries)

SEO and Social Networking

• Promote your business and yourself through both SEO and Social Networking

• Learn how best to use both together• Develop best practices and strategies for clients• Teach and coach clients on how to social

network instead of networking for them• Use Social to build meaningful and interactive

relationships rather than buying followers

Thank You!

Bill SlawskiSEO by the Sea

http://www.seobythesea.com