Post date: Dec 21, 2010 4:33:38 PM
In this new age of Social Media consideration, geographicalpersonalization and web history metrics all climbing theirway up the importance ladder in search engine algorithmsinternet users are presented with a much more personalizedand relevant search experience. Out with the days ofkeyword-stuffing webmasters with aged url's dominating thetop of search results. In with the days of your site beingon top because you have the most similarities in socialmedia circles, are just down the road from the searcher andhave a similar site to websites a user has visited before.Old School SEOThe old rules of thumb to get a website to the top of thesearch engines would be to maximize on-page seo and accruethe quantity of authoritative in-bound links. If youcovered your bases with keyword rich and relevant content,a properly structured website and had amassed the rightkind of links from high page ranking sources you could
guarantee that Jim and Sally would both see your website as
#1 for a particular keyword. It's now much different than
that. That top spot and the order of the pages listed on a
search engine results page can and will vary from user to
user depending on many more personalized variables. From an
end user point of view the logic in this is beautiful. Your
search results are tailored to YOU and your history of
internet usage.
This has become somewhat maddening for webmasters though.
Any internet marketer who promises a #1 position for a
certain search term is completely full of shit or not yet
educated on these findings. It's impossible as each users
search results are becoming more and more personalized to
them. Even the practice of keyword monitoring needs to be
scrutinized. Making it hard to believe in the value of
search engine optimization work. I picture webmasters world
wide shaking in their shorts wondering how they can justify
their price tags now without being able to honestly say that
they got a site to rank 4 for EVERYONE with a particular
key-phrase.
Spreading your Digital Footprint
I still believe in all of the best practices for search
engine optimization. I still believe in building back
links. These all still matter. There are just more things
now to consider when trying to grow your search engine
presence. You need to blog. You have to make a Facebook fan
page. It's necessary to Tweet, to make videos for YouTube,
put your images on Flicker, create slides for
SlideShare….on and on (#yawn).
Whats happening now is this. Someone makes a new web page.
They will then go blog about it, post it to their Facebook
page, Tweet back to the blog post, put up some images on
Flicker about it and make a quick video for YouTube about
it. Taking that single bit of content and spreading it out
to as many of the social media channels as possible.
There is nothing inherently wrong with this practice. In
fact someone really standing behind a new product, service
or post that they've created and wanting to promote it in
this way makes total sense. It's not an exorbitantly priced
TV commercial, a no-metrics-possible direct mail piece or a
radio spot that people tend to not be patient through
anyway. It's all free (except for time of course) and will
more effectively reach your target audience than the old
school way of marketing.
The Social Gray Hat
Sadly, like the days of easily tricking Google, people are
sometimes taking a less than honest approach to harnessing
this technique. They will produce utter crap then automate
spread their digital mess everywhere. Rinse and repeat. This
is digital littering in my opinion. It's still better if
you want to create a buzz or get some attention with social
media to….dun dun dun…have something that
people would actually like!
A good rule of thumb in my opinion is if you have to spend
more time spreading your word across all these channels
than it would take to produce another piece of equally
important content then you should examine carefully how you
should spend your time. Market your one piece of content
EVERYWHERE or have two equally worthy pieces to spread about
selectively.
About the Author:
Connective Web Design is a Denver Web Design Company
Specializing in Results oriented Social Media Marketing.
Visit us at http://www.connectivewebdesign.com