Should You Social Media Optimize For Google?
Yesterday we discussed whether you should optimize your website for Facebook in light of the social media leader’s relationship with Bing. Today I’d like to discuss whether you should get ready to optimize your social media campaigns for Google.
Well, I’ve been reading a few places today that Google is launching its own social network through Gmail. So does that mean you should go all out and plan a social media marketing campaign to target Google?
Not so fast. Give them a chance to prove themselves first.
Personally, I think you’d do better to spend your time optimizing web pages for Facebook. Google may have some nice social features, but it’s not a social network. And I think it will be a long time before it will compete with Facebook and Twitter.
Should You SEO Your Site For Facebook?
According to WebProNews, Facebook and Microsoft are extending their relationship, which will be a big boost to Bing’s search share. Or Facebook’s search share. However you want to slice it.
This is obviously good news for Bing since Facebook is one of the Web’s most trafficked websites – more so even than Bing itself. To get the exclusive on the search feature of Facebook should do wonders for the search engine’s search share. But what will it do for website owners?
I think it could mean that search engine optimization for Bing will become even more important. It’s already important though not quite as important as SEO for Google. But I can see that this relationship with Facebook could make it just as important to optimize for Bing as for Google. That is especially true if Facebook manages to overtake Google as the No. 1 most trafficked website online.
But here’s the catch: Optimizing your web pages for Bing won’t be any different than optimizing them for Bing right now. It will just be more important.
Search Engine Marketing: Who’s In Control?
Are you in control of your search engine marketing campaigns? If not then who is?
The key to getting ahead and staying ahead in search engine marketing is to know the game. If you are not staying on top of changes in the industry – and they happen every day – and adjusting your marketing based on the direction of the search engines then you are not really in control of your marketing. You can be in control or the search engines can be in control, but not both.
Of course, you could give control of your marketing to someone else entirely and hope things go well. But it needs to be someone you trust. Is there a search engine marketing company you trust well enough to run everything without question? If you do hire a company to run your marketing campaigns, make sure you hire a company who is knowledgeable of the latest search engine marketing tactics and is good at communicating with you. They’ve got to keep you informed.
Old Content And Reputation Management
There is more than one way to manage your online reputation. When it comes to content promotion, you don’t necessarily have to stick with creating new content. Of course, you should, but you can also promote your old content and continue to boost your reputation.
Old content is like a jewel lodged between the wall and and old piece of furniture. It may be stuck in a bad place, but it’s still a good thing.
Take an old piece of content you’ve created and that had a nice shelf life. Let’s say it received some initial popularity then over time faded away. However, every now and then you get a new link to it and some new traffic based on other people who find it in the search engines or who find it through an old link pointing to it. Can you use it?
Yes, I think so. There are two ways to take this old content and re-promote it for increased reputation.
- You can write a new blog post and link to the old content so that your current readers discover a gem from the past. This will bring new attention to the old content and might even get it some new links.
- Share the old content on your social media sites and create a new Twitter link for it. New social media traffic could get some new links for that old content and resurface it if it has lost any search rank.
Online reputation management is not a static game. You can manage your reputation just as well with old content as with new.
Why PPC Is A Good Place To Start
If you have a new website that you are trying to promote and believe that a targeted SEO or social media campaign is going to help you reach your desired ROI sooner then you are in for a disappointment. It’s not search engine optimization and social media campaigns don’t have value. They do. But they usually take a while before the value starts to show.
With an SEO campaign, it really depends on the competitive playing field. But if the competition is average then you are likely to wait a year before a hard-hitting SEO campaign really starts to pay off. You might get some results within that first year, but it takes a while before you achieve respectable rankings for competitive keywords. In some industries that one year becomes two or three.
With social media, it might not take that long or it might take longer. There are a lot of variable factors that can influence the success of your marketing campaigns. One of those is your choice of social media platforms. If you show up at the wrong place then you’ll find the wrong party. Plain and simple.
With PPC you have a lot more control over the outcome than you do with social media and you can achieve much quicker results than you can with SEO. The biggest problem for many advertisers is budget. But if you can get a handle on that, running a PPC campaign right out of the starting gate should get you a quicker ROI. Are you in a hurry?
The Internet Marketing Tip You Should Never Forget
Internet marketing is ever changing. If you’ll remember that then you should do well. And be prepared to adjust fire based on the latest trends.
In 1995, if you were doing anything online then you had your business listed in Yahoo!s directory. If you didn’t, you might not have got found.
In 1997, you spent your time tweaking your meta tags and working to get listed in the major search engines of the time. HINT: Google wasn’t around then. So you were likely trying to get your site listed in Alta Vista and a few other search engines that aren’t around any more.
In 1999, you were working hard to get links back to your site. Google was up and coming and heavily biased toward websites with lots of inbound links and strong anchor text.
In 2003, you were heavily focused on keyword-rich content to go with those inbound links.
In 2005, it was social bookmarking.
In 2007, viral marketing was the big shot.
Now, in 2010, if you are a web savvy Internet marketer then you know that you’ve got to be doing video marketing to be going anywhere. And probably have a presence on either Twitter, Facebook or both.
See how the Web has changed? It’s always changing. No one can predict what will be the top Internet marketing strategy in 2012, but you can bet one thing – it won’t be the same thing that it is today.
Keep this in mind. Internet marketing changes. You must change with it.
Using Google’s External Keyword Research Tool
No Internet marketing campaign is complete without keyword research. Google has a great keyword research tool for anyone just starting out on their journey and who hasn’t built their website. If you’re just getting started on the planning of your site then the Google AdWords External Keyword Research Tool is the right tool for you.
What I like about this tool is you can search for keywords by descriptive phrase or by associating your research with a website. If your website is already built and you want to see if there are any keywords you may not be targeting then you can check the Website content box and generate your list of keywords specifically for a website you own.
Otherwise, you can enter your keywords and phrases, check the synonym box and filter for words you don’t want to use. When you click the “Get keyword ideas” box, the keyword research tool will generate your list of keywords based on what you enter in the words and phrases box above. Then you can play around with the data by measuring the keywords and phrases against each other in three columns:
- Advertiser competition
- Local search volume
- Global monthly search volume
This tool is useful if you are running AdWords campaigns or if you are just conducting initial keyword research. I highly recommend it as a free tool.
Posing As A Customer
One way to spy on the competition to see how they handle customer service and to check pricing is to pose as a customer. Many companies do not disclose prices publicly. And if you are in an industry that typically keeps prices under wraps so that businesses can sell directly to consumers using consultative practices and hide their pricing models until it’s time to close, you can always have someone pose as a customer for your competition.
This is a highly risky endeavor. If the competition believes that you are spying on them in this manner then there might be repercussions. But if you do it right then it’s possible to get the information you are looking for.
Of course, there is the concern of expenses. If your competition’s services are expensive then it could you just to gather information. Some businesses, however, are willing to hire secret shoppers to spy on the competition and let the shopper keep anything that is purchased for personal use.
We don’t necessarily recommend this strategy for your business, but if spying on the competition is a necessity then keep in mind that someone can pose as a customer and gather the data.
Social Apps To Add To Your Web Design
Now that the Web has migrated into a fully social platform, modern web design necessitates that webmasters include some social aspect into their websites. Invite people to participate in what you are doing at your website and to become a part of the content production process. There are a number of ways you can do this. Here are some ideas:
- Start a blog – This is the most basic social media application and if you want to make your website more social, this is a good place to start.
- Create a forum – Forums are old school, but they are still valuable places to connect. They are difficult to manage, however. Nevertheless, if you can get people to participate, a forum is a good social tool.
- Open a chat room – This is another throwback to the earlier Web days, but a chat room is a good addition to any website.
- Google Friend Connect – Google’s own do-it-yourself social platform. It has its weaknesses, but it’s strength is ubiquity. This is social web on the go.
- Facebook Connect – Where Google Friend Connect is social across multiple websites in unrelated niches, Facebook Connect is proprietary and makes your website an extension of your Facebook experience. This is truly a social app you should not ignore.
- Twitter Widget – Share with your site visitors what you are talking about on Twitter.
- Amazon Wish List – Amazon actually has several widget you can incorporate into your website. The Net’s largest book store can be a part of your website.
- Any Ol’ API - Take any social app with an API and add it to your site. You’ll need some development experience or a developer at your disposal. Turn your site into what you want it to be – a social center of its own.
Today’s web design incorporates elements of the social web. If your website isn’t social then you’re behind the times.
The Key To Successful Viral Marketing
There are as many ways to succeed at viral marketing as their are people doing marketing online. There is no one right way to conduct a viral marketing campaign. But there is one common element to every viral marketing campaign and there always will be. If you can tap into that one element then your chances of succeeding are greatly enhanced.
So what’s the key?
The key to any successful viral marketing campaigns to solicit others to do your marketing for you. How do you do that? There’s a real simple way to get others do your marketing for you – offer something of value.
Yes, that’s it. Make sure you offer something of value for free to those other people and they will do your marketing for you if they believe in what you are doing.
It is getting harder and harder to conduct a viral marketing campaign online due to the low barrier to entry and the number of people competing for attention. Your offer has to be outstanding. You have to offer something that is free and that people will find of value. Strike a nerve and they will promote your offering for you.
Will Social Media Overtake SEO As The Primary Driver Of Web Traffic?
An excellent article on social media by Greg Sterling got me to thinking. In the second paragraph he says:
One day in the very near future Facebook is likely to supplant Yahoo as one of the top two Internet destinations, the other being Google.
At first, I didn’t think anything of it. But then I got to thinking on it. He’s right. Facebook and Twitter continue to grow (though Twitter is a long way off from overtaking Yahoo! in traffic while Facebook is within driving distance). It is quite possible, and maybe even likely, that Facebook will become the second most trafficked site on the Web. And if that happens then it is feasible that it could become the No. 1 site as well.
Spammers continue to bombard the search engines with bad results and the search engines find it more difficult to filter the spam out. Several popular SEOs have pointed this out. Given that, the mood of the public could shift from confidence in search to confidence in social media. But when will that happen? Could that happen? What do you think?
How Phrase-Based Indexing Influences SEO
If you’ve never heard the term “phrase-based indexing” then let me give you a quick primer. The concept is based on clustering. Google’s search bot will go out and analyze pages that use certain phrases together. For instance, “baseball” and “home run”. Add to that the key phrases “base hit” and “strike out” and you’ll start to get a picture.
If a large percentage of pages on the Web that discuss baseball also use the other key phrases in the cluster then you have a high value set of phrases. Google can use this information for several purposes.
One purpose is to identify phrases that are popular among spammers. If the search engine can identify those then the spam can be filtered from the search results. But another purpose is to use the phrase clusters themselves for ranking purposes. A web page that successfully incorporates the cluster of phrases into its content could rank higher for the initial key phrase – “baseball” for instance – than a web page that simply re-uses the initial key phrases over and over again attempting to achieve the right density.
This is particularly telling because what it is really saying is that natural language writing is preferable to stilted keyword-based writing. The search engines have been treating content this way for several years. Understanding this will improve your SEO.
Will Social Search Change Search Engine Marketing?
Search engine marketing has been going strong for a few years now. Social search is just getting off the ground. In fact, Google has made it a point to tackle social search and lead the charge. Only, there are some people who aren’t so impressed with how they’re doing it.
But let’s say that social search were a perfect animal – like organic search (I’m kidding, OK?).
At any rate, let’s just say that social search was at least as good as organic search has been when at its best. Would search engine marketing be any different? Would social search change the nature of search engine marketing? I’m betting it would.
Remember, there are two branches of SEM: Paid search and organic search. How would each of these change with social search? My guess is that each would change in a real sense, but not necessarily in a fundamental sense.
Here’s what I mean: PPC is based in large part on the principles of organic search. You do your keyword research, write a few targeted ads, and watch your rankings based on search engine ranking factors. Social search, however, isn’t anything like that. You still might do your keyword research, but you aren’t so much concerned with rankings. You are concerned with connections. So how will that change search engine marketing?
I think one very important way that search engine marketing will change when social search reaches full maturity is that brands will no longer need to feel threatened by lesser companies who are better at SEO. Brands can actually put more emphasis on their company culture and focus on the benefits of doing business. That’s as it should be.
How Many Ways Can You Manage A Reputation
Reputation management is often thought of as nothing more than increasing the number of ways you rank in the search engines for your name or brand while reducing the number of negative results for the same. While that is certainly one way to approach the subject of reputation management, it isn’t the only way.
Online reputation management is really about building trust. And it’s your job as a member of your team to help boost the company image and brand recognition through the tools at your disposal. Much of reputation management is simply interacting with your audience and engaging them in conversation on your blog, through social media, and using other online tools to reach your audience. Reputation management should be seen as an extension of your online marketing efforts.
In truth, everything you do (and everything anyone in your organization does) is reputation management. It all affects how your audience views your brand. Whether you are writing a press release and sending it out or engaging through Facebook and Twitter, you are trying to send a positive image. Succeeding at that is the best reputation management tool you have.
How To Budget For PPC
If you’ve been advertising off line for some time then you are likely familiar with budgeting expenses. There are several strategies for setting advertising budgets. Which one you choose depends a lot on your business goals and your comfortability.
One way to budget for PPC is to take a percentage of your off line marketing budget and dedicate it to pay-per-click marketing. But how do you determine that percentage? You could just pick a number out of thin air, but I’d suggest that you take a number equal to an aggregate of marketing channels that are not working for you or that have not produced any positive results in a while.
Another way to budget for PPC, and this works well for fairly new businesses, is to take a percentage of your revenues and devote that to pay-per-click. Many companies use a 20% benchmark and adjust for their costs. You might be more comfortable with 15%. Pick a number and go with it.
Pay per click marketing should be seen as any other marketing channel. If it works for you, keep doing it. If it isn’t working, try to figure out why and change it. But do budget it.
Is Internet Marketing Really All You Need?
If you are a small business operating locally and beginning to take an interest in Internet marketing then you probably have a ton of questions on your mind. You’ve likely done some off line marketing and have probably achieved mixed results. If you’ve done any newspaper advertising recently then you have probably not done so well. What else is there?
We’re not so bold to say that Internet marketing is all you need. You should probably do some off line advertising, but you have to be picky about where your money goes. Internet marketing can generally deliver better results on fewer expenses than print advertising or other off line alternatives.
Still, it’s best if you augment your Internet marketing efforts with a few off line or print ads, carefully selected, of course. Make your website the hub of all of your marketing communications and branch out from there.
Metrics: The Key To Effective CI
Competitive intelligence is one thing. Comparative intelligence is quite another and if you want to really understand what your competition is up to then you need to have a basis for the comparison. There should be a benchmark.
A benchmark is a basis for comparing data. Your benchmark can be anything that makes logical sense, but it is generally one of two things:
- An internal metric or milestone of which you are proud off or that you would like to test
- An industry norm
Which ever benchmark you choose is up to you, but both of them require that you have a set of metrics in place to test your progress. While you are testing your own progress, you should also be testing your competition. How do they measure up against your benchmark? How do they measure up against you? How do you measure up against the benchmark?
These questions can only be answered with a quantifiable metric tool. Competitive intelligence is your best comparative measure.
Web Design: Deceptively Easy
Web design is deceptively simple. You’d think that all you have to do is design something pretty and people will flock to it and click the buy now button. But it isn’t really that simple. There is a lot to think about when designing a website for any business.
No. 1, design issues are just one concern. Not the only concern. Web designers and business owners also need to think about the following concerns:
- Search engine optimization
- Social media marketing
- Paid advertising models
- Driving traffic
- Navigability
- Metrics
- User perception
- Cost of development
Web design is a whole marketing plan, not just a one-time event. You can’t just throw up a web page and forget about it, hoping the world will come to see it. Just as important as design attractiveness are visitor ease of use, search engine optimization, and page-to-page navigation. Just for starters.
When it comes to web design, you can’t afford to leave it to amateurs. Let a professional handle your design work and increase your odds of profitability.
Why Viral Marketing Isn’t Bad
Mention viral marketing in a crowded room and you are likely to create a stampede. People will run to get away from the virus. But viral marketing is not bad. It won’t make you sick and it won’t spread to make anyone else sick, though it might spread to make them happy.
In a word, viral marketing is simply a method of getting the word out about what you have to offer that utilizes other people’s resources to spread a message quickly. The latest tool that has been used for this kind of communication is Twitter. This social networking tool has been used for everything from selling products and services to warn people of impending disaster, or spreading the news about disaster that just happened. It’s a powerful tool.
Though Twitter is a powerful viral marketing tool, it’s not the only tool that can be used for this purpose. Other social networks like Facebook and YouTube can be used as well. When you use these types of services to spread your message to others and persuade them to help you, that’s viral marketing. It’s fun, it’s catchy and it’s good.
The Simplest SMO On The Planet
Social media optimization (SMO) has come into its own. Not only do most webmasters today try to learn everything they can about search engine optimization and the methods the pros use to get ranked for their most important keywords, but they are also learning everything they can about social media optimization. Some webmasters actually spend more time on the latter than on the former.
The best SMO in the world is also the simplest. You don’t even have to leave your website. The goal is to get your site visitors to do the work for you.
If you’ve visited many websites at all then you’ve likely seen the share buttons. They come in various sizes, shapes and colors. Some say “share”, some say “bookmark this” and some use another phrase. But there is almost always an icon, a chicklet, and a link that allows your site visitors to easily share your content on their favorite social sites. And some even allow your visitors to e-mail your content to their friends.
The key is to learn your audience. Are they heavy Digg users or Stumblers? Are they Twitterers? Do you use e-mail more frequently?
If you learn the online social habits of your visitors and provide them an easy way to share content in their preferred content and at their preferred online haunts then you’ve got a big piece of the social media puzzle solved. The rest, as they say, gravy.
Do Article Spinners Work?
There is a new practice in article marketing using SEO tactics on the cheap. It’s called article spinning. The practice is simply taking an old article and putting it through a computer software program that mixes it up and changes the sentences around so search engines don’t recognize it as duplicate content. The problem is, it is duplicate content and usually the articles don’t make a whole lot of sense.
For instance, the article spinner will take a sentence from the third paragraph and make it the opening paragraph. It might even exchange a keyword for another pre-selected keyword. Then it will take a sentence from the bottom of the article and make it the second sentence while moving the first sentence of the original article to the third sentence spot and thus forming a new paragraph.
The article spinner rearranges the entire article this way. And marketers actually use them.
I’m not going to say that the articles are poorly SEOd. By bot standards, the SEO isn’t bad. But the writing is usually horrendous. I don’t know how people make money with these articles, but some do.
It’s almost always better to use original articles. Original content in any format is always best. The search engine optimization will almost always be better, but the writing, which is always for humans any way, will nearly always be a big step up. And your reputation will go along with it.
Why Search Engine Marketing Can Save The World
If you’ve been watching what’s going on with Google lately, it looks as if the company may pull out of China over cybersecurity and human rights issues. If it happens, that will drastically change the dynamics of the world wide web. It will certainly be noticeable in China where Google has 30% of the search market share.
Today I noticed on Google a link below the search box to “Information, resources, and ways you can help survivors of the Haiti earthquake.”
Search engine marketing is more than buying clicks. First and foremost, it’s about using the search engines to get your message across. That includes organic search and paid search.
Both of these incidents – the large one and the small one – affect search engine marketing in some way. If Google pulls out of China, that will leave a lot of businesses in China with one less alternative for reaching their customers. It could also slow down progress toward a more open China. And Google’s link to more information about helping the Haitians is the perfect example of how search engines can be used to make a difference in the world. That’s true even if, maybe especially if, you own the search engines.
Search engine marketing continues to be a growth industry. It is not today what it used to be and it won’t be tomorrow what it is today. Keep you eye on the changing nature of the web and look for opportunities to make your search engine marketing efforts better and more effective than ever.
Why Facebook Is Good Reputation Management
Online reputation management is really about one thing. Presenting yourself in the best light possible. Also known as “putting your best foot forward.”
It really doesn’t matter what tools you use. The whole point is to make yourself look good. You are running a business.
Reputation management can best be described as a positive and a negative. The positive is you telling the world who you are and what you do. What you’re good at. The negative is combating negative reviews or comments about you or your business. The reality is, most businesses don’t have to worry about that last part. Still, it’s good to be prepared in case you have to.
The best negative defense, of course, is a positive offense. You want to make yourself available in as many places as you can and in as many high profile places that you can. That means Facebook.
Facebook is a good place to meet people. All you really have to do is make friends and interact with them by writing on their wall and responding to what they write on yours. Post photos and videos and links of your favorite places. By simply doing what you do best and sharing who you are with your friends and contacts you are performing the best reputation management that you can in a natural way. It’s really that simple.
Is Now A Good Time To Stop Pay Per Click Marketing?
Yesterday we discussed recessions and Internet marketing. The same rule that applies to Internet marketing in general also applies to pay per click marketing specifically. A recession is when you should step it up, not slide it down.
Many of your competitors have already slowed down on pay per click marketing. They’re spending less than they were a year or two years ago, and some of them aren’t spending at all. That means you have less competition for your keywords.
Less competition in the pay per click arena typically means lower CPCs and higher CPRs. If you do your marketing well and keep your quality score high then you can manage a pay per click advertising campaign to the best success ever.
Pay per click marketing isn’t voodoo science. Nor is it rocket science. All it takes is a good head and a good plan. A recession can very profitable.
Have You Slowed Down Your Internet Marketing?
During a recession or a slow economy one of the biggest mistakes that businesses make is to cut down on the amount of spending they do on marketing and advertising. This is a mistake because most of your competition is doing the same thing, but customers still spend money in a recession. They just spend less on the essential services. Chances are, they will spend money with your business if they know it is there.
Internet marketing is usually one of the first expenses cut because so few businesses really understand it. They’ll continue spending money on Yellow Page and newspaper ads, which are not trackable and cost more in the long run, even though Internet marketing can bring in more lucrative results.
Instead of cutting your spending on Internet marketing, try finding new ways to get more for the amount of money you are spending. For instance, if you are spending $500 per month Internet marketing services like pay-per-click and article marketing, try diverting that money into other services like blogging and Twitter instead. Test your results and track every move, but keep your message in front of eyes that want to see an opportunity to do business.
How To Use Twitter For Competitive Intelligence
Competitive intelligence is gathering information on your competition that can help you be a better competitor. You should know that there are legal and illegal ways to gather this information, ethical and unethical. Twitter presents a great opportunity and is an ethical, legal way to spy on your competition.
When you set up your Twitter account, be sure to follow your competitors so you can keep track of what they are saying. Use a desktop application like Tweetdeck or Seesmic Desktop. Create a panel just for your competition and add your competitors to that panel so you can track them more easily. This allows you to see the tweets that your competition put out without being mixed in with all the other tweets you see in your tweet stream.
Another way to spy on your competition, and this works if you want to be clandestine, is to set up a dummy account on Twitter. Your dummy account should have an innocuous name that doesn’t connect any way to your company. In other words, don’t use your company name or a variation for the Twitter account name and don’t put your company’s URL in the profile. For e-mail, use a separate Gmail account. You don’t want the Twitter account traced back to your company in any way.
Next, subscribe to all of your competitors. Don’t subscribe to anyone else. Just subscribe to your competitors and keep an eye on what they are tweeting.
That’s two ways to use Twitter to spy on the competition. What tools do you use for gathering competitive intelligence.
A Web Design Tip To Keep You In The Social Loop
If you are a heavy social media user (and I highly recommend that you be) then I have a hot web design tip for you. Add a widget to your sidebar or a prominent position on your website that shows your latest tweets and social media activity.
These widgets are relatively easy to make. If you use WordPress as a blog or CMS then you can add a plugin that does this for you. If you are designing your website with straight HTML then you can go to one of the many widget websites and create a widget.
The best placement for your social widget is at the top of your sidebar or the bottom of the right-hand sidebar. If your social reputation is important to you then prominent placement of your widget above the fold will make sure it is visible to all your site visitors. But if you take a look at eye tracking software then you’ll find that the most looked at parts of a web page are the top left corner and the bottom right corner. People tend to scan from left to right and top to bottom starting in the top left corner.
A widget showing your latest tweets and social media activity can get you more followers on your social networks and on your blog. I highly recommend this web design tip.
What Will Viral Marketing Look Like When …
Google controls the social web?
It’s not hard to imagine. Besides the search engines, the most popular websites in cyberspace are social sites (Facebook, YouTube, Twitter). And Google is in the race to control the social web with such tools as Google Wave and Google Friend Connect. Plus, real-time search, personalized search, Google Reader, and the list goes on. What will happen when Google controls the social web?
Viral marketing will always be the same. Friends tell friends and they tell friends. But I have a feeling that when Google is involved the terms and results will explode beyond imagination.
Is Twitter Necessary?
Chris Crum of WebProNews interviewed Matt Bailey, who said that you can run a successful business online without Twitter. Really? I thought Twitter was all that and a bag of chips.
Actually, he’s right. You CAN run a successful business online without Twitter. In fact, everyone did before 2005.
When it comes to social media, there’s a new brand of hype. What happens is, the online equivalent of the jet set (the early adopters) do some experimenting. When one of them finds a workable formula for a new social tool they start to tell their friends. Their friends do an experiment and confirm the report. They tell their friends. Before you know it, the news steam rolls and the spammers start moving in. Hype builds more hype.
But the reality is, you can do without the hype. What I mean, don’t get sucked into it. You should start the hype, not follow it.
Hype is really another word for viral marketing. It works. When you are the subject of the hype you’ll know it works. When you are the one being dragged around by the hype, all you can think about is, “Man, this sucks.”
Well, let’s not get dramatic. Social media optimization is not about following the hype. It’s about creating it. And you can run a successful business without Twitter. Of course, you can run a successful business with it too.
Will SEO Ever Die?
Veteran folk rocker Neil Young sang a popular song in the 1970s and 1980s that went something like this:
Hey hey, my my
Rock and roll will never die
Later, King Missile made a hit with a song titled “Rock and Roll Will Never Die.” The message has become a clarion call for rock musicians who want the romantic dream to live forever.
SEO is no romantic dream (and some would argue neither is rock and roll), but you could apply this message to it just as well. SEO is a marketing tactic for online businesses that involves writing your web content in such a way that search engines rank that content against other web pages for specific keywords. If you do it well then you rank high. Bottom line.
The reason SEO will live forever is because search engines rely on content. Searchers thrive on it. Robots feed on it. Webmasters provide it. If you provide what human searchers need and what search engine robots feed on then you’ll always be in business. SEO is a necessary tool for doing business online.