Posts on State of Search about ‘Social Media’

Social Media Readiness Tips for Affiliates

Social Media can be a bit of a difficult space for an affiliate business. An affiliate website acts as a conduit to a merchant website; thus by that very nature much of “the story” belongs to somebody else. It must therefore seem to some that the only opportunity is the following: create multiple profiles – use automated software, or rent-a-fan packages to generate an audience of followers – publish automated messages containing links to your site – get clicks.

If short-term traffic and revenue boosts are your goal, then this may look like success to you. I’m not here to debate the morality of the numbers game or lament “there goes the neighbourhood”. I have no interest in lecturing an audience on the proper way to use a product which does not belong to me. I do however, know through experience that there are more benefits to participating in social media to be had.

At theMediaFlow we help develop affiliate websites into brands. We’ve seen how a true social media strategy brings many rewards and opportunities time and again. Many successful affiliate experts do this well, and generating an identity and buzz to an affiliate business seems to come naturally to them. On the other hand, some affiliate site owners may not feel disposed to social media or may not feel comfortable measuring “guru-touted” conceptual benefits of the conversation. It is not true that social media is difficult to measure, or that returns are less tangible.

Here are just a few of the immediate additional opportunities and benefits social media has delivered for one client… (more…)

New changes could mean massive changes for SEO

Its been quite a month for search, including significant changes to the search engines pages, as well as a number of noticable acquisitions for the mighty search behemoth that is Google. In particular Google’s recent acquisition trail would tend to suggest very much a focus on search and social – something we haven’t seen recently with a number of Google’s acquisitions.

This would sugget that Google very much appreciate the threat of a united Bing/Yahoo alliance – a move I can’t help feeling still has a lot of mileage in it despite many recent studies suggesting that Bing wins have mainly been the expense of Yahoo (Neilsen and Holistic Search) – and that social contnues to be a medium to long term target – particularly if you look at three of the acquisitions made durint the last month alone – those of Like.com and Angstro in particular (and even more so if you look how some of Google’s past acquisitions are now coming to fruition – such as Android (acquired August 2005) and Doubleclick (April 2007 – and now being expanded to include natural search tracking)

However whilst those acquisitions suggest social may be an integral part of Google’s future, search remains a fundamental part of their present – and it is here where we have seen a number of significant changes and tests within the Google search pages. One of the most notable was that of the Google local testing results – where many of the Google organic results pages were limited and local/paid search results played a more integral part of these pages. (more…)

Are social signals ever going to usurp links

There has been a lot of noise over the last couple of weeks regarding Google Patents such as those on dynamic linking, which have prompted conversations on whether SEO as we know it is due for a significant change. In particular the advent of social media is one that many experts in the sector have suggested is likely to see greater infliltration into the mainstream algorithm, particularly should Google start to look at other factors to replace the existing heavily link centric framework.

There is no doubting that social media already has a significant place within SEO, and the search engines themselves. Take a look at many results – particularly in logged in accounts – and you will notice features such as ‘Social Circle’ included within your search results – and allowing peers and friends to potentially recommend and influence your decisions based on previous behaviour. This adds a new layer of complexity to many search campaigns, and a new consideration in terms of channel choice and integration. Further to this Real-time search, which includes data from social networks such as Twitter, Facebook and Friendfeed has also seen a lot of exposure over certain months, and looks a feature permanently included within the organic search results. (more…)

Facebook easing up privacy issues: just a diversion

“Privacy”, people seem to have always been concerned with the matter. The fact that people had to give up their privacy during different wars and especially during the second world war (and even more the period after that where the communism allowed almost no privacy) probably plays a big role in the restraint people have on the matter.

With the ever growing web the privacy questions grow. And as you can expect the ‘big boys’ are the first to be running into the issues concerning privacy. Google has been under fire before in the last couple of years, mostly in Europe with their Streetview products, with Google Buzz and data storage, but Facebook now has the bigger mountain to climb. Their recent changes have set off the media and even politicians to question what is right or wrong when it comes to online privacy. Facebook now seems to be taking a few steps back admitting their privacy changes ‘missed the mark’. (more…)

Jason Calacanis fires at Facebook, should we follow him?

Jason Calacanis has a reputation of a loudmouth. That reputation makes that many people either hate him or love him. But it does make that he gets attention at those moments he wants the attention. And Calacanis has done it again, this time by pointing his guns at Facebook. As always he doesn’t hold back, but we also have to wait and see if anything will actually come from it.

So what is going on? In his newsletter, which he started when he decided to stop blogging (which in fact he didn’t, his e-mails go straight to his blog), he makes the analogy between a poker game and what Facebook is doing. Calacanis claims Facebook is overplaying their hand. (more…)

Facebook turns web upside down, watch out Google, watch out privacy

The world wide web used to be simple: you had websites and you had Google indexing them. Based on the ‘Google formula’ they would rank in a way Google thought was best, and we’d agree. Ok, this might be a little bit exaggerated, but its the essence of how we work with Google. Yesterday at the Facebook f8 conference however things changed.

Google is one of the biggest players, if not the biggest player out there. There have been many over the past decade who have tried to compete with the search giant and none of them really succeeded. Bing probably made the most impact, but only because it won a few percentages of market share in the search area. But now Facebook has stepped in. And they make a very good chance of ‘beating’ Google when it comes to web dominance.

Facebook announced several new features with the new Open Graph API, the social plugins and the Open Graph protocol as biggest changes. These elements are supposed to change the way we look at the web. Using this API Facebook will try to integrate websites and applications with your social network. This will mean different ‘points’ on the web you use are connected using your social circle. As Zuckerberg said: people are connecting the web, not links. (more…)

Is Twitter @Anywhere Bad News For SEOs?

There was a huge amount of anticipation for Ev from Twitter’s Keynote at SXSWi, and though it didn’t quite reach Apple levels of frenzy, it did upset a few people when the announcement didn’t reach expectation. The Chirp development conference promised similar levels of hype.

Rather than the much-anticipated Twitter ad platform, they announced @anywhere. Most of the web sighed and said a collective “So What?”, but I think this has a much bigger impact than most SEOs would have initially realised. (more…)

Brand SEO: Tips for building equity off-site

We’ve all heard how important it is to “own your page one” and “lock out your brand SERP” and suchlike. I am a big believer in brand SEO myself, as from my perspective the plus-sides are not just limited to the ability to dominate a few pages of Google for a search on your brand name. Numerous additional benefits can be had, from the SEO benefits of citation/link matrix – to the traditional marketing benefits of brand and message ownership; most are pretty simple to achieve… (more…)

Social Gaming – The Next Web Economy

An interview with Oliver Lo, Senior Marketing Manager, XPD Media/Vojo World – creators of Medical Mayhem, Vice Central and Pixie Pets.

Oliver is Senior Marketing Manager at Vojo World. In that role he oversees brand positioning, viral marketing and monetization strategy for their social gaming products. Previous to that Oliver worked in advertising in London where he worked on brand campaigns for clients such as Ikea, Lloyds TSB and Virgin.

I recently met Oliver after seeing him on a panel at Social Media World Forum in London a few weeks ago. I was struck by how passionately he spoke about the phenomenal growth in this sector; plus the opportunities for brand marketing that such micro-finance models have opened up. When I saw him in the bar at the post-show networking event, I just had to bag an interview!Oliver Lo (more…)

Social networking it’s just a matter of connecting the dots

Today we welcome Jeroen van Eck as a blogger on State of Search. Read his bio here, and enjoy his posts! Welcome Jeroen!

Everyone wants a slice of the social pie. While the classic social networks like Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter keep developing by adding new functionality, other companies are trying to create their own social networks. But building a valuable social network takes an enormous amount of time, or does it? Building a social network could be as simple as connecting the dots, all you need is a lot of dots.

The value of a social network is in the amount of users and the amount of usage. So all you need is a large group of users with an account on your social network and a user friendly interface with the proper functionality. A user friendly interface and proper functionality can be developed with a good analysis of the behavior and wishes of your users. Creating a large group of users takes a lot more time. It took Facebook almost three years to reach 10 million users while Twitter reached the 10 million users at the beginning of their third year. To start a new social network with the potential to grow to such amounts your platform needs a major benefit in usability or functionality. Therefore the secret is not in building a new network but connecting the existing dots. (more…)

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