Saying It Social

It’s Time to Think about Integrating Search & Social Media

Google and Microsoft’s Bing recently struck deals to incorporate social media into their real-time search results. Google signed a deal with Twitter that will add tweets to search results. Microsoft signed deals with both Twitter and Facebook to incorporate tweets and status updates into Bing. Microsoft recently expanded the arrangement with Facebook, making Bing its default search engine.

Have you integrated search with your social media? Marketing divided into silos is inefficient and only lets you reach narrow goals. Don’t delay, because the major players in search and social media are getting better at integrating the two disciplines everyday.

Here are a few tips to get you started integrating your search and social media marketing as well:

Use keywords in tweets and status updates. Social media is a great keyword suggestion tool; let social media help your SEO. These days, it’s critical to use the right keywords with every tweet and status update. Don’t just apply the same high-level phrases to every update. That will bore your audience, or worse still, scare them away. Use the long-tail phases that apply to deeper pages, and then link to those pages with strong anchor text. Search engines like this and reward it. But don’t stop there. Keep on linking, provided there’s something interesting and relevant to say.

Link from profile pages. Social media provides many linking opportunities and one of them is the profile page. Let everyone know where else to find you. People use various social media sites in different ways. Be there, and tell them you’re there. The links from the profile page may have nofollow tags, but they will drive traffic and different search engines treat the nofollow tag differently. There could be an SEO boost in it for you.

Expand your social network. Google is already beta-testing the inclusion of blogs from your social circle in search results. Tweets can’t be far behind. Your social circle includes:

• Direct connections from Google Chat and Contacts.
• Direct connections from links on your Google profile.
• Secondary connections publicly associated with your direct connections.

The bigger the social circle, the more likely your content will appear in the search results of those connected to you. Expanding your social circle will help get you found.

So what are you waiting for? Get out there and be social, but be smart about it.

March 22, 2010 - Posted by AK Stout | Uncategorized | search, search marketing, social media, social media marketing, social search