Google To Enter the Travel Market

Google has paid $700m for a flight information company called ITA Software which provides software that organises travel information such as fares, flight and journey times. At the moment, this information is provided to businesses like travel agents, airlines, and flight comparison sites.

With this buyout it would appear that Google is looking to develop as an alternative source of direct travel information in the form of a new search tab – along the lines of its existing news, image, maps and shopping searches.

Google’s been increasingly expanding into search verticals over the past couple of months and this development is in line with that trend. There’s already separate support for news, blog, shopping, finance, videos etc and there’s even a recipe search in Google.co.jp.

Bing has beaten Google to the punch with Bing Travel, a service that presumably does exactly what Googe Travel will. And it isn’t just in Travel search that Bing is out performing Google in search verticals.

If you follow this Bing search for the seminal, androgynous rock-pioneer David Bowie, you’ll see a wider array of results displayed. We get standard pages, images and videos – like we would in Google – but scroll down a little and you’ll see song lyrics, album information, tour dates and a lovely little potted biography. In short, Bing is segmenting its results into semantically split search ‘verticals’. Is this a good idea? Only time will tell. It’s certainly useful.

Google News Looks Different Now

The people at Google say that the News redesign is supposed to make it more customisable and shareable. This it may do, but to us it just looks horribly cluttered – a bit like one of those American news channels where they have scrolling information tickers taking up three quarters of the screen – making everything too visually busy to be able to concentrate on any one thing at a time, so you just end up smashing in your TV and throwing it in the neighbour’s Koi pond. Again.

It’s the antithesis of Google’s otherwise ultra-clean design.

Submit Lots of Content Sitemap Types in Just One File

This is really useful information if you’re a webmaster or SEO type and regularly find yourself writing and submitting sitemaps to Google. If you don’t do that very often, you can go and make a sandwich or something.

Before now, if you wanted to flag up a piece of content (e.g. a video) for indexing, you would have to create a sitemap just for that piece of content. Now, however, you can submit a sitemap with multiple types of content included.

And that’s about it.

Thought of the day: The Future. IT IS HERE AND NOW!

Until next time.

In a single hit, everyone’s favourite media baron Rupert has stuck two fingers up at Google and those of us who are too tight to pay for his newspaper content.  Nobody can access his stuff anymore, unless they pay for it.

It’s a big move. The standard web marketing and Social Media handbook tells us to give it all away for free – in the name of better indexing, bookmarking, word of mouth, distribution and other good things.

This approach is proven but deeply troubling for most publishers.  Unlike Tescos, Sainsburys and ASOS – who publish free(ish) ‘value-added’ content (magazines, emails, style guides, recipe cards, wotnot) in order to get us moving with more zeal around their freezer sections and web sites – the only thing that traditional publishers have to sell is (by and large) their content.  The concept of ‘free’ does not sit well with them.

Likewise, ‘free’ is a bane for those traditionally responsible for creating content.  Writers, editors, musicians, games developers, etc.  Where goes the pay check?

Yet we’re stuck in a space race for ‘free’ content.  If you’re not currently doing it then you probably soon will be because your competitors are – right now – offering a variety of free and juicy value-added social networking widgets, reviews services, hints and tips and other content-based merchandise for anyone willing to part with a nano second of their attention on the Interwebs.

This movement and its consequences have been already been described by better people than me.  See here for Jaron Lanier on Digital Maoism.  And our good pal Ian Delaney on Valuing Content.

I’m torn.  At heart, C&M is a content marketing outfit.  We know that the best way to generate a righteous storm of fans, followings, and traffic is to create great content – and then to give it all away for free.  Most of our clients are, however, more than a little hesitant when we begin this discussion.  Content is, after all, their IP – whether they’re a content business or not.  It takes time to plan and produce.

So why give it away if it’s good?

The Times – and News Corp – has the answer.

Free content in the context of an iPhone > iPad > iSofa scenario isn’t ‘free’ as we might know it.  Our relationship with content is changing fast, and – subsequently – so is content’s relationship with our wallets.

News is now free.  This is old news.  Check the classic Clay Shirky for this one (The price of information has fallen…). Other forms of content, however, don’t need to be all free, all of the time.  Here’s how the Times Online’s strategy is unfolding….

Firstly, they’re part of a network. News Corp does (Sky) sports, Caitlin Moran (on Saturdays), and lots of other bits and pieces.  News Corp describes the Times Online brand proposition as follows:

Essentially, this is a (customised) chocolate box approach.  I love lots of News Corp ‘properties’: Ms Moran, Mike Atheton and Soccer AM; but I find the Times Weekend glossy magazines kind of obnoxious.  In other words, I have a relationship with bits and pieces, but I’m not a big fan of the mothership brand and I won’t pay for it.  But, hey, I’ll happily pick and mix if Rupert is kind enough to carve it up for me.  I’ll also pay for some parts of it – so long as I can avoid paying a ‘one size fits all’ bill and the coconut creams at the back.

If you subscribe to the new Times Online, this is what you see on the other side of the wall…

A variety of subscriptions, apps and services ready for use.  Access to some will depend on your subscription level – e.g. I can (soon) get the Sunday Times on my iPad if I go for the super-sized rate.  Some will be free ‘value-adds,’ others will be one-off paid for events and activities.

My hope is that I’ll soon be able to subscribe to Soccer AM (perhaps paid-for).  And a widget for the Soccer AM YouTube channel and Boston Goals (free).  Or a podcast from just one of the Boston Goals commentary team (free, probably).  This kind of thing is happening now.

When News Corp starts to understand my content patterns and usage preferences (and when they start to cut up their content assets accordingly), they have my attention and my wallet.  Call it narrowcasting, personalisation or whatever you like, the progression is logical.  New content channels and consumption experiences are here to stay – iPad > YouTube > Twitter > TEN SNEAKY MINUTES ON THE SOFA WATCHING EASTENDERS BUT HECK THE WIFE ISN’T WATCHING > WOW FREEEEEBEEEES > SOME PAID BITS > UH, WELL, OK > BAM! ……so let’s divvy up our content catalogue (and our brand assets) to match.  Some free, some paid for, but all mixed up into different versions, formats and channels.

The same is happening in TV and broadcasting.  Anyone for a spot of Project Canvas?

The value of content is shifting

In both TV and newsprint, the value of content – and our relationship with it – is shifting from the network provider to the individual asset (the Caitlin Moran column is more appealing to me than the Times on Saturday / the News Corp brand) or the author / producer (Caitlin Moran)… and prices are moving around in step.  Smaller payments for smaller slices.  This I like.  And I’ll probably end up spending more.

The challenge for publishers (and other brands that now publish) is to figure out where the most valuable pieces are in their catalogues and how to make money from them.  Bits need to be distributed for free (in the name of Google, ‘findability’ and great (Social) marketing) and bits need to be kept closer to hand and charged for (in the shape of £ pound notes and/or email addresses).

This I also like. It’s my business to help brands figure out what content goes where and how. In fact C&M has been doing a rather good job of this for brands such as Hackett for some time now.  Same challenge (get me noticed, get me distribution, drive traffic / revenue, but don’t give away the crown jewels), only with different content collateral (branded content, not ‘media’ content).

Beyond content serving, the challenge for the Times Online is, of course, acquisition.  They now have a catalogue and a set of services that speak to the Google generation (iPad in hand on sofa).  But fully appeasing Google will be hard because they are hiding a lot of their stash.  Social Media represents an opportunity to do acquisition and awareness effectively – but they don’t seem to be really embracing it right now.  (See here for a list of Times columnists that they’re hawking on Twitter.  A step in the right direction, I feel – get me access to the bits that I like best, and quickly.)

Having mentioned her a few times, I’ll let Caitlin Moran sign off.  She summed things up quite nicely in her column last week (yes, behind the paywall!):

“I don’t think journalism should be free, because, tbh, bitch got to make rent. I’ve spent 20 years clawing my way out of a council house in Wolverhampton to reach a point where I can now afford a Nigella Lawson breadbin. If I have to start blogging everything for free, I am simply going to have to fall back on Plan B, and go and hang about in a red-light district somewhere. Meanwhile, the only journalists left will be posh people who can afford to do it as a hobby, in between skiing or renovating a folly. This column would be written by Lady Helen “Melons” Windsor or George Osborne [….] As a society, we now charge for essential dental work, but somehow found a way to throw in HD spit-roasts for free. What does that say about us? And when someone works out what that says about us, will they get paid for explaining it?”

(She likes paywalls, by the way. She also has a huge Twitter following for lots of mini slices of Caitlin Moran content …every day, for FREE.)

Further Reading

Check out Chris Applegate’s review of the new Times Online service.  Soup to nuts good stuff – including a great commentary on design and user experience.

Check out this book – Information Rules – by Carl Shapiro. He called all of this before the last Interweb bubble popped in 1998. (And I’ll be forever grateful to my mate Doug Kessler for making me read it.)

• Will Facebook challenge Google?
• Is this something that I have to focus more of my attention on?
• Do I have to put ‘Like’ buttons on all my websites?
• Do I have to redistribute budgets?
• Do I have to spend time developing a graph of ‘Likes’?

These questions are being raised because some people argue that Google’s algorithm hasn’t evolved enormously since its initial development. These parts of the industry are claiming that the new offering from Facebook may pose a serious challenge to web search by providing more personalised and relevant content. To some extent, I think people may be jumping to conclusions.

Google and its Link Graph

In a nutshell, Google’s link graph works by crawling the web and measuring pages and links for connectivity. Among the hundreds of other factors that make up its algorithm, link analysis tells Google how important pages are, based on the number and quality of links to it and the keywords used within these links determine relevancy. On the face of it, it’s a pretty simple (but nuanced) system, which is probably why it works so well.

Google’s indexing of the web is the driving force behind web marketing and Search Engine Optimisation, influencing the techniques that are used to help pages rank better in Google SERPs. However Google’s methods have also influenced ‘black hat’ SEO approaches, where techniques such as buying backlinks are used to artificially inflate rankings.

These techniques have short term benefit and often have no real longevity (as search engines increasingly detect these techniques and penalise these pages), but they still add a layer of unwelcome spam to the Google SERPs.

Google has improved its algorithm with myriad changes and updates, but some detractors still claim that a more relevant, semantic, and connected means of searching is needed. Can Facebook provide the answer?

Facebook and its Open Graph:

Facebook’s Open Graph complements and develops the ‘social graph’ they currently have in place. While Google’s link graph maps connections between websites, Facebook maps connections between people, including the specific type of relationships; be they friend, family or colleague. Information about where you live, who is in your network, groups you may join, who your friends are, and who you talk to is all taken into account by Facebook if you own a profile.

All of this data is now shared with Facebook’s partners to better target the type of content that we are shown. However, that’s only a small part of it. With the introduction of the new ‘Like‘ button to any site on the web, Facebook now also knows the sort of sites, products and brands that we’re looking at when we’re not directly using Facebook. By ‘Like’-ing an off-Facebook site, you are effectively flagging it up and saying ‘This is the sort of thing I and my friends are interested in. Show me more of this.’

A major selling point for Facebook’s system is that their social graph is self-selected, it’s less likely to have ‘black hat’ SEO connecting the graph, and there are fewer links between people that are not accurate.

However, this is also the main point against Facebook’s system and it explains why Open Graph is not much of a threat to Google. The point is that people don’t and probably won’t ‘Like’ everything on the web. It will mainly revolve around popular culture and viral marketing – the sort of things that people usually share. What makes this fall short of competing with Google is that Facebook won’t be crawling and caching the entire web. They can only promote content that Facebook users are already looking at.

The main difference, and why those who see this as a threat to Google are wrong, is that Open Graph isn’t really a search engine. Rather than using it to look for content, Facebook will bring the content to you. Albeit a very limited, yet very targeted batch of content.

Also, there will no doubt be the potential for spammy abuse of the ‘Like’ button.

Microsoft’s Bing and Facebook

To complicate matters further: Facebook will probably keep the Open Graph data and the ‘Like’ figures from Google, but Microsoft’s investment in Facebook will mean they may be able to use this data in its search engine Bing, in a similar manner to how Google uses the social data from Twitter and Buzz, but with a more structured ‘link-like’ functionality.

Conclusion

In short, Facebook’s Open Graph will augment search, rather than replace it.

Still, companies should should direct some of their social media budget to incorporating or developing the ‘Like’ functionality if their content is suitable for sharing. The good thing about it is that implementing this system takes relatively little work to do – add a ‘Like’ button to you site and you’re pretty much done if you’ve already got a Facebook presence.

Our very own David Preece and head honcho Roger Warner have both blogged their reactions to Open Graph here and here

It’s been a while, but I’m glad I spent the time. (Generally, I find the content-related thinking that flows from these kinds of sources a lot richer and more direct than the stuff found on ‘Social’ consultant-style blogs…)

Anyways, I was drawn to this post about Content Mills.

What’s a Content Mill? I hear you say… Well, an SEO definition is as follows – something very relevant to those looking to Social Media as the next brand publishing frontier:

“A content mill is a site that publishes cheap content. The content is either user-contributed, paid, or a mix of the two. The term content mill is obviously pejorative, the implication being that the content is only published to pump content into search engines, and is typically of low value in terms of quality.”

A related idea is Social Media Optimisation – the mass production and publication of Social content to help improve rankings.

Both techniques work in varying degrees.  Google (and Social) can be gamed, and – when viewed purely as a volume-based activity – content for content’s sake can make a lot of sense (as SEO Book points out, content is a resource overhead… and these types of mass-content programs can in some cases prove cost effective in terms of buying some visibility – on Google, Twitter, whatever).

More interesting perhaps is the question of brand values and quality. A ‘Content Mill’ approach might create a footprint purely via persistence, but if the content sucks then who’s going to care (click, share, discuss, bookmark, Tweet)…?

So here’s a handy concept to keep your content strategy in shape: Information Quality. (Thanks again to SEO Book).

I recommend you have a browse. When it comes to quality, key things to keep in mind include:

• Authority
• Objectivity
• Comprehensiveness
• Validity
• Uniqueness
• Timeliness
• …and other things that ‘Content Mills’ (or any other low rent content strategies) are not very good at.

Quality matters. Stay faithful to this kind of stuff and you’ll probably do the right thing by your brand, Google, and Twitter, etc …and – most importantly – your audience will value your efforts in turn.

• “…trying to find the big influencer with big audience is really just old mass marketing in a cheap dress. Old mass marketing (go with the largest numbers … and breasts) isn’t economical; neither, it turns out, is marketing to just one or a few powerful people — the mythical influencer.“

and…

• “Is there more influence in the tail than in the head? If you talk to 100k people who talk to 10 people each, do you get more bang than talking to one person who has 1m followers?“

This line of enquiry asks all the right questions. The hunt for a mythical Social influencer is likely to be a) time-consuming and uneconomical (there’s a lot of effort/expense in trying to do broad marketing on a 1:1 basis); b) unscientific (no matter how many network-y flow charts and scatter patterns that get thrown around, this plan of attack will always be based on hunch-work); and c) a waste of time in the context of anything/everything else that you might be doing instead…

Yes, the hunt for the influencer (or a gaggle of them) really is another mis-guided quasi-targeting exercise by Marketeers passing themselves off as Quants (in a cheap dress).

It sounds superb: who resist doubt the pull of a Twitterer who has 35 zillion followers? But is the hunt really worth it and what’s attainable? I say this having sat through numerous identi-kit whiteboard sessions seeking to create programs around ideal user targets, their online social activity, media diets, favourite colours and inside leg measurements…. all of which tend to lead to a (financially large) exercise in designing a ‘user-centric’ web marketing experience (or, in common parlance – another goddam microsite, a fluffy PR stunt and/or another all-singing and dancing brand-based Facebook page/group).

This, frankly, is crap. The hunt for mythical Social influence is more often an excuse to build new stuff than to acquire new customers. In my book, when it comes to acquisition and awareness, our time and money would be better spent on attacking wider audiences via content- and conversation-based programs …i.e. simply rolling up our sleeves and diving in with good old fashioned content, and dealing with the dialogue once we’ve struck a chord.

My bet is that one analyst locked in a room could take your brief and target your market in less than a day based purely on an analysis of LANGUAGE and CONTENT and search and Social discussion trends.

Think about it. Chasing ‘influencers’ is (as Buzzmachine says) like hunting snipe – elusive and abstract to say the least. Identifying audience behaviours and creating a program around content trends is, by contrast, a rather exact science. Our most effective analytics tools help us to identify language, not people. Armed with a keyword (or hashtag) or five I can tell you exactly what and where your potential audience is, what content they care for and what you will need to do to engage with them…

A content-based approach leads to programs that can be implemented quickly and directly. Identify content trends/patterns > create content > strike! This is our method. Tell me if you know a more direct and measurable one. And good luck with the ‘influencer’ / snipe hunt meantime…

The Econsultancy piece deconstructs things nicely…. Essentially Gawker is making a deeper analysis of the traffic that either hits their sites directly (without the aid of search engine or other referral sources – i.e. by keying in www.gizmodo.com to start a browsing session) or uses branded search terms to navigate their way to their sites (i.e. taps ‘gizmodo’ into Google and goes from there).

Clearly this ‘branded traffic‘ is motivated. From a publisher/advertiser perspective it’s also more valuable. It sticks around on Gawker sites longer than the average bear. (In Pettigrew’s words “Branded traffic visitors spend more time on our properties (1 minute and 31 seconds more than average) and view more pages of our content (nearly 4 pages per visit at mutiple visits per day).)

The goal here is to create a new metric for selling display ads to advertisers. Gawker knows that a proportion of its traffic is very motivated to stick around and devour its content – therefore page impressions become easier to sell. This is good thinking – common sense and easy to grasp. I’ll buy it. But I’m also really interested in this statement from Pettigrew:

“While distributing content across the web is essential for attracting the interest of Internet passersby, courting these wanderers, massaging them into occasional visitors, and finally gaining their affection as daily readers is far more important. This core audience — borne of a compounding of word of mouth, search referrals, article recommendations, and successive enjoyed visits that result in regular readership — drives our rich site cultures and premium advertising products.”

This is in many ways an anti-Social (Media) play. When more brands fling their ad budgets at Social (dropping classic micro site / display ad combos in favour of ‘distributing content across the web’), publishers need to work harder for their ad dollar.

Meantime, Social Media generally struggles for a hands-down (meaningful) ROI metric that sets it aside from ad measurements – in order to better woo an advertising spend.

I’m struck by the fact that this is all becoming one large soup… A circular power play for metrics, ownership and budgets. Ultimately, every brand wants what Gawker talks of: successive visits (or at least visits that have people do the things they want them to…. read, buy, sign up, discuss, etc.) Publishers will deliver these types of visits by giving brands access to their ‘core audience’ via display ads / impressions – but data shows that this is happening in dwindling numbers. Social Media will deliver them via different (brand-owned) channels – such as dialogues on other platforms like Facebook.

Brands and publishers are now competing on the same terms for the same people. We’re all publishers now. We’re (mostly) aware of the need to ‘attract the interest of passersby’ through syndicated content and services. And naturally we all want to ‘gain affection’ and drive successive visits.

Alongside new metrics for audience engagement, I see situations where publishers give up some of their display-ad-cash-cows in order to work harder with brands on co-created content… because a brand’s Interweb destinations are everywhere – and they’re owned by lots of different folks…. the brand, the publisher, Facebook, me (the blogger), wotnot. Consequently, what brands really need right now is better content – across every property within their ‘traffic acquisition portfolio.’

In the meantime, though, ‘branded traffic’ makes sense – we should all be thinking about the difference between a motivated audience and the great (random) unwashed that might StumbleUpon us in a lunch break…

In a nut, we’re winning. In a bigger nut, we’re winning together in a tough, competitive business environment (property!).

Here’s what we did, why we did it and what we achieved as a result…

If you like what you see, then do let us know. We’re mighty proud of this one. And thanks meantime to the team at EOG – a superb client to work with… plus the team at Catch Digital, who are responsible for all elements of web design and implementation – again, a super talented team.

Meantime, here’s what they’ve been up to lately…

In light of Google’s increasing focus on Rich Snippets, I thought I’d revisit the topic.

Why are Rich Snippets used and what can they do?

When Google is crawling the web and comes to indexing a page, it can’t tell the difference between, for instance, someone’s name and just a standard bit of HTML.

In other words, it can’t understand context.

So, on a search for ‘Brazil’, Google can’t completely tell the difference between Brazil (the place) and Brazil (the kaleidoscopic Terry Gilliam film). With the ‘rich snippet’ tags that Google supports, webmasters can tag pages with this contextual information.

This cleverness is achieved through RDFa tags and microformats, which are little-bits-of-simple-code that tell Google about the context of the words.

Using these tags tells Google that sections of your site have context to one of the pre-defined ‘rich snippets’ (an event, place, person, or review). Which means that in the search results page, Google will know to show this sort of thing if required. As below.

Examples: Google and Bing

Let’s look at results for the same term on two different engines, Google and Bing.

If we do a search for our business and spiritual dictator leader, Roger Warner, on Bing, we get this for his LinkedIn profile:

If we do the same search on Google, this result pops-up:

Notice the difference? In the Google results we get tantalising little shards of information about who Roger is. That’s because LinkedIn now automatically adds rich snippet ‘hcard’ tags to profiles, so that Google can distinguish Roger’s name from any other bit of text

If we try another search for a restaurant in London, we get a similar results.

Here’s Bing:

And here’s Google:

If your site is the only one on a results page with this extra data, it instantly stands out and  should encourage more click throughs than the others. A nice bit of white-hat SEO.

Rich snippets also offer a real opportunity to connect SEO and Social Media. Content that is produced or inspired through socially activity and presence, can then be used to add rich snippets to your page. This content can then encourage users to click-through to your page or content. A virtuous circle.

While, at the moment, these is no guarantee that Google will show your Rich Snippets on its results page – they are still selected through proprietary algorithms – it certainly can’t hurt to include the tags in your site code to be ready when Google roll this out across their results pages more widely.

If you’ve access, you can add and test rich snippets using Google Webmaster Tools’ new ‘Rich Snippet Testing Facility’

We’ll be adding some of our own shortly.

Yours,
Richard Snippets BSc

Still, Google has recently jumped on the bandwagon by adding sentiment analysis to Google Map reviews. But does the industry-leading search engine perform any better than a spaced-out terrier? Is sentiment measured with any reasonable level of accuracy?

Let’s find out. Let’s find out now. And let’s stick to the dog theme.

There were no sentiment analysis reports on kennels; most reviews are of restaurants and hotels. So, I’ve tenuously chosen to analyse the sentiment reports of  ‘GreyStoke House’, a pet-friendly hotel situated in the idylls of the Lake District.

Before looking at the comments, it’s worth explaining that Google seems to pick out categories based on keywords within comments and reviews. Therefore, if a high proportion of reviews mention the word ‘hosts’ (as below), this becomes a category that reviews are extrapolated from.

These reviews are also chosen from a seemingly consistent and authoritative database of sites. TripAdvisor – one of the most respected travel communities on the web – features in most review listings, and most of the others sites are similarly respected and recurrent.

Moving on to the reviews, clearly the breakfast in this place is spectacular. Just look at the comments:

This many mentions of ‘breakfast’ has created a unique category. We can see that this morning meal is clearly life-changing, but what does Google think?

Superficially, the analysis is good. Most comments are positive (apart from the last if you’re a dog or dog-owner) and the sentiment gauge is accurate. So far, so good.

Second example: The ‘Dog House Hotel’ in Oxfordshire, “looks nice” but there’s a stunning caveat – “don’t expect to feel full after a meal”. The sentiment analysis reveals a shakier system than the first example.

For instance, the sentiment gauge for the ‘dining’ category is full despite the presence of some negative comments. One, regarding a cheesecake, is savage:

“The cheese cake desert was still half frozen, and the coffee cold.”

There are a few other interesting patterns to note. While some comments are ambiguously judged, others – like the enigmatically psychedelic comments below – are explicitly marked with sentiment.

1. “Negative: Room 7. Think should be put out of use.” – booking.com
2. “Positive: The wood effect surrounds of the room.” – booking.com

It’s also unclear whether the comments are being analysed in isolation, or the within the context of the overarching reviews. There’s little comment from Google on this, so inferences have to be made. This lack of transparency makes analysis difficult. There’s very little information beyond vague cryptic comments.

For me, the overall insight is in Google’s general approach. There are a few main strands to consider here. Google has achieved:

a) A decent grasp and understanding of which sites are authoritative in their field
b) The ability to determine what constitutes a review or subjective piece of commentary
c) The ability to (quite accurately) group comments semantically, based on keyword mentions
d) A basic grasp of sentiment

Conclusion

These insights speak volumes. The keyword-worshipping Google of old is evolving: interpreting conversations, analysing sentiment, collecting subjective information, and (potentially) assimilating this information into results.

The pretentious dandy!

Actually, why not? It makes sense. This information has to be included to produce better results.

The future will reveal how accurate this interpretation can be.

Social Media Insights (and Social SEO)

The age-old debate (well, relatively) on Social Media, Social SEO, Social Media Agencies, and our own social media ‘how to’ guides – the meaning of life may also be answered here:

• Social Media Agency: C&M is a ‘Social Media Agency.’ We’re also an ‘Online PR Agency’ and a ‘Social SEO’ firm …which is to say that we do great PR, acquisition, retention and SEO through the use of Social Media tools, platforms, channels, communities and so on. Confused? Yes, it’s all a bit mangled isn’t it? We figure this is to be expected in this brave new world of ‘Social Media’. So much noise, so many claims and – let’s be honest – so little substance. Our intention here is to share some learning with you. We’ve been around the block a few times with folks like IBM, Hackett and Expedia/Hotels.co.uk and we have Social scars and Social medals to prove it. Read post

• Online PR and Social Media Content Strategy Map (A New Cut Out & Keep…): Having dabbled with Facebook and made forays with Twitter, many brands are now stuck wondering how the hell to get any decent ‘play’ out of their Social Media assets and profiles. Oftentimes this is down to two basic things: i) a desire to crack on and experiment and ii) a lack of time. And this dilemma (particularly in a large, multi-brand or multi-business unit organisation) usually leads to a mild form of Social Media schizophrenia and diminishing returns. In other words, when you’re rushing to pilot stuff with a lack of time it can be incredibly hard to execute in an integrated fashion… which is why the chart above might help. Read post

• Social SEO: 10 Reasons Why Being Social can be SEO (Ch-Ch-Ch-Ch-Ch-Chaaaanges!): Kasabian are the new Oasis, with a psychedelic twist. A board of organic crumpets, olives, with a selection of cured hams, is the new all day breakfast. According to an audacious poster campaign – dreamt up by mentalists – Chichester is the new Copenhagen. Patrick Swayze and Richard Gere are the same person. This is unarguable and final. But is ‘Social SEO’ – connecting ‘Social Media’ approaches and SEO thinking – the new approach to doing SEO? How, and why, should Social channels be used? Where are the similarities, cross-overs, and (brace) synergies between SEO and Social Media? Here are 10 thoughts on the matter… Read post

• Social SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) Through Clever Content Creation: Creating optimised ‘Social’ content to rank for key terms isn’t a new idea but the search results are becoming more eclectic. With that fact in mind, we’d like to briefly run through which content types regularly appear and how to use this content to clamber through the sweaty throng of competing pages. Read post

• Beginner’s Social Media Guide – Free, Easy and Good to Go…: How to Win Friends and Influence People With Twitter, Flickr, YouTube and the Blogosphere. Here’s our simple four step plan for doing effective, results-driven Social Media and Online PR work… Read post

• More Free Social Media, Content Optimisation and Online PR Agency Papers from C&M: Here’s a roundup of some of our recent white papers, think pieces and case studies …all in a highly desirable, super sharable, PDF format. Read post

Social Media Measurement and ROI

This is an old topic, but an important one. Here’s our take on the issue:

• Social Media Measurement & ROI: New Tricks for Old Dogs, But Still the Same Old Dogs: We’ve had a bunch of really interesting meetings lately, many of which focused on the good old question of Social Media measurement. Here’s the view from our seat… Social Media is not the ‘new marketing’ per se. It’s just a different (exciting, potentially more valuable) way of doing things. The aims remain the largely same in marketing land. In other words, when it comes to measurement and ROI, teach the Old Dogs new tricks, techniques, metrics, etc. But they’re still the same Old Dogs – acquisition, interactions, awareness, SEO, etc. Read post

• Social Media Measurement – Some Thoughts from the C&M Online PR Stable: Everybody’s talking about Social Media and how to harness its potential for business – indeed you can hardly have failed to notice the almost daily Twitter/Facebook/NextBigSocialMediaThing stories appearing all over the news. From Daily Mail health warnings to academic controversy, there’s an awful lot of spin surrounding the subject, making it a real can of worms for companies looking to play the Social Media Game (and who isn’t?) Read post

• Social Media ROI: The Return of Identity and the Hackett Story: We met with the good folks at Hackett London recently to discuss Social Media and Online PR plans for the coming months. Much of the conversation centred around creative ideas and the role of key people within the organisation in content production. Which leads us to think that there’s a key value to all of this Social stuff which many of you may be missing – the Return of Identity (a different, but essential form of ROI)… Read post

New Tools and Technology

We love to noodle with new technology, and there’s a lot to noodle with. Here’s our take on a few that we found particularly interesting:

• Google Wave: First Impressions and Buzz Round-up: It seems the web has gone slightly bonkers over Google Wave. With invites being offered (rather duplicitously in most cases, I might add) across the Twittersphere, and enterprising/mercenary individuals putting them up for sale for as much as $50 each on eBay, what could possibly justify this incredible amount of interest? Read post

• Twitter Tools for the Masses: Fact: the Interweb is huge. A quick Google search for “Twitter Tools” gives 83 MILLION results. We’re constantly looking at new tools, so that you don’t have to… So here’s a few essential Twitter gizmos for you, along with a spot of explanatory text for each. Read post

So looking forward to 2010, we’re certain there’ll be many more learnings, insights and digital debating happening on this blog in the coming year. Stay tuned!

Here’s the view from my seat…

Social Media is not the ‘new marketing’ per se. It’s just a different (exciting, potentially more valuable) way of doing things. The aims remain the largely same in marketing land.

In other words… when it comes to measurement and ROI, teach the Old Dogs new tricks, techniques, metrics, etc. But they’re still the same Old Dogs – acquisition, interactions, awareness, SEO, etc…

As such, for those brands not yet up and running on Social Media, the most sensible way to establish value and ROI are via existing programs. i.e. it’s sensible (and simple) to ask what Social Media can do to help you rank on Google, build marketing ‘lists’, run more effective events, do acquisition campaigns, create better content, etc, etc. If done well, this ought to build the case for going Social across a wider front.

In my experience, many of the barriers to using Social Media sit within an organisation. Social requires more of a focus on content and much more integration across marketing disciplines. There may not be a magic wand to bring all of this together immediately (it’s a big ask for many Marketers to push this kind of thing upstream).

So next year I’d encourage all newbies to focus on what’s at hand and take practical strides to establishing a bigger, bolder business case… rather than looking to a new, all-encompassing, shiny new measurement rubric that will justify the effort before setting sail.

Here’s that in a couple of charts, plus a simple ‘Cut Out & Keep’ measurement diagram to stick on the wall.

NB: I don’t mean to call VPs of Marketing ‘Old Dogs’ (most of them are lovely). I’m talking about the aims.

PS: There are probably a bunch of other metrics to consider for other aims. ‘Support’ probably is the new marketing. But that’s another story…

PPS: I am an old dog. Have spent many an hour creating uber-plans for bold, new-fangled, seemingly world-changing projects as an employee in (very) large organisations. Only one or two of them ever saw the light of day.

Further Reading:

…via MeasurementCamp – an excellent communal effort to make sense of these things, run via Social folks NixonMcInnes.

Check out what it’s all about via the G-Monster’s rather (untypical) slick and sexy video:

Cool stuff, huh?

In essence, this new feature is both incredibly simple and incredibly powerful. Alongside our normal, time-honoured, static-ranked web pages, news pieces, vids and pix, we’ll now be presented with a ‘real time’ ticker of live Interweb updates in relation to our search queries. These will be fed via blogs and Social microblogging and status-update services like Twitter, Facebook, etc, etc.

Some of these results have been slowly creeping into the margins of Google’s SERPs over the past weeks, but now we are to be blessed with a slick interface to house it all – something that sets the ‘real time’ stuff aside from all the rest.

What does it mean to you? Social SEO

Well, this bit’s simple too. If you want to be omnipresent, then the general rule needs to be ‘Always Be Optimising.’ To appear in the live search results, you need to be thinking about staying on message (keyword) throughout all of your other activity on the Social web. In other words – you need a little Social SEO. One keyword plan, many channels… that sort of thing.

What does it mean to the Interweb at large?

If the goal is to stay on page one of the SERPs all of the time via this new feature, then no doubt we’ll see a raft of real-time-content-optimisation-update-bots that happily spew out a stream of SPAM via any Social Media profile you may care for… but to go this route would be short sighted.

Twitter et al are all about building followings, relationships and conversations and then doing smart things with these connections – and the surest way to nuke these brilliant new assets is to SHOUT, SHOUT, SHOUT lots of the same thing, most of the time (just try it – you’ll get un-followed in an instant).

Good ‘real time’ or Social SEO needs to be smarter than that. Optimisation should compliment the message, not rule it. We shall see…

The flip-side, of course is that everybody’s Tweets, rants and raves will now show up for any given search term – good, bad and indifferent. To this extent, any effort to be omnipresent is likely to be futile.

Context / try it!

This notion of ‘real time search’ is nothing new – the geeks among us have been using Twitter Search, Addictomatic, etc, as proper discovery / search engines for a while now. But this is different: this is Google. And everyone’s on it.

Meantime – hot damn, look here (that’s this post at the bottom of the list – I had to move quickly!)…. And click here (or the image) to see the thing in (real) action.

So, tell us your thoughts? What gives? Who’s off to build a new Twitter spamming app? (Oh, hang on – didn’t someone do that already…?)

PS: anyone remember Pointcast? Darn that 56k dial-up! Only 17 years too early….

And they’ve been especially busy recently, tinkering with their SERPs, adding new functionality and tightening up all the nuts and bolts on their search behemoth. Handily, we’ve rounded up some of these new changes and are going to share them with you… Yes, you.

Three Results in the SERPs

What it is…
Three results pages – due to a double indent – are appearing in Google (first position) results in response to search queries. This means that more than two pages can be optimised for a single term without ranking conflicts.

What it means…
You may be able to optimise more pages for similar terms in the future and also occupy more search space if you achieve first spot on the SERP: the position to aim for. However, this is a recent development and only present on pages that rank in first position or for branded searches. More reading here.

Meta Description Links (as well as Site Links)

What it is…
Links to other site pages are appearing below meta descriptions. Although the links that appear are determined by Google’s algorithms, they are influenced by the main links that appear on a given page.

What it means…
The most important pages on the site should be linked to using the main navigation. For instance, a link to a ‘Trade-In Offer’ page from the home page – within the main navigation – may encourage the appearance of one of these links on a SERP and result in better click-through rates. Read more about this here.

Rich Snippets

What it is…
Google is experimenting with rich snippets, in which additional content can be added to a webpage in a supported format (either microformats or RDFa), which is then returned in the search results near the meta description. At the moment, Google is mainly displaying reviews and people information.

What it means…
If positive information is displayed then it may encourage clickthroughs, as well as allowing a site to occupy more search ‘real estate’. More reading here, and here

Google SideWiki

What it is…
Google now allows users (who have installed the Google Toolbar) to install the SideWiki system and leave comments about a web page. These comments can then be viewed by other users. At the moment this is only available to users who have installed the toolbar – but this is not an insignificant number of users and will definitely increase.

This will allow Google to directly monitor sentiment about a given page and could even be used to rank pages in the future. This reinforces the idea that being useful (and indexable) is important.

What it means…
People can review your products, services within a SideWikis, and publicly comment on any part of your site. But be warned, this can of course, go both ways and you could receive negative reviews as well as positive ones. Find out more here.

Google User Data to Rank Pages

What it is..
Google seems to be developing its algorithm to take into account user search patterns, click-through rates and bounces, as well as traditional cues such as links. This is backed up by patent applications, as well as inferences from search results and the observations of the SEO blogging community.

What it means…
If – as public information seems to suggest – Google is boosting those pages that have better click throughs than others, then meta descriptions (the text that, by and large. features under a page title in a SERP) become an even more important factor for SEO. They need to contain keywords, and they need to be snappy enough (with a call to action) to encourage a a higher rate of click through. Whilst this is SEO / content optimisation 101, it’s a great reason to revisit any your more dusty metadata. Further reading on this can be found here

Google Blog Search Results Embedded in SERPs

What it is..
Check the bottom of your search results pages. The above example is a search for ‘Social Media Agency.’ As well as including ‘related searches’, Google is now including blog post results from its Blog Search index. In other words, it’s now inserting relevant, real-time results from a fresher content store (the two indexes are, of course, different – one deals with all web pages, the other deals with blog post pages only… which means that blog search results tend to be more up-to-date, real time affairs).

What it means…
Happily, against the search in question, we currently rank as both a web page in the main listing, but also as a blog post in the ‘Blog Post’ section. Over time, we need to work hard to maintain and improve our position in the main results. But it’s a lot easier to bolster this position by blogging regularly around our core keyword themes. Short term, if we don’t blog about being a ‘Social Media Agency’ we’ll be replaced in the Blog results by newer blog post content, whilst our position in the main listing is likely to be more stable. So, the point is clear: blog more about around your core keyword categories and feature twice on a page one SERP.

That’s all for now, but Google being Google, there will almost certainly be more changes on the way. And when they do, you know where to come for our thoughts and theories.

Turns out, we’re living in an age that’s much closer to 1960 than we think. The programmes we watch and listen to are still the things we tend to talk about the next day. The difference is that we now have Google and Twitter (etc) to turn to when we want to investigate some more.

In other words, you can bet your backside that searches relating to X Factor contestants are going to spike on a Sunday morning. And this is something we can tap into if we want to draw a little more traffic.

I’ll use my wife as an example…

She runs a web site called Skiff Vintage Knitting Patterns, which sells – guess what? – vintage knitting patterns. With Remembrance Day approaching she, and others around the web, have been busily knitting poppies to wear and promote the cause (a great initiative organised by KnitontheNet.com).

On Tuesday she blogged about her poppy – encouraging other knitting fans to do likewise.

On Wednesday, her site traffic peaked at around 600 visitors – almost double her average.

On Wednesday night she began to wonder why (something seemed out of whack – she often does similar cause-related things). Here’s a quick view of the search terms people were using to reach the site that day:

The blog post was (somewhat inadvertently) optimised around the term ‘Knit a Poppy’… and is now ranking extremely well on that term for Google UK:

On further investigation, she learned that “ace knitter Susan Crawford had a five minute spot on the Sarah Kennedy show on BBC Radio 2 on Wednesday morning to promote the KnitontheNet.com Poppy Appeal campaign.

So, listeners tuned in, liked what they heard and hit Google to find out more… Resulting in a healthy bump in traffic for my wife.

The learning here is not that we should rush out to hijack charitable causes and other trends that are unsuitable for marketing (see here for a quick analysis of how to mess up royally on this score, courtesy of Habitat)…

No, the point is that we shouldn’t forget mainstream media as a significant driver of public web activity…

And it works. From our own (silly) experiments, we tend to get a disproportionate amount of traffic from the search term ‘Susan Boyle’, recent X Factor star and flavour of the month in June 2009. Granted, nobody searching for Susan has ever bought anything from us (yet!), but you get the point. Seek out a traditional media event or happening, have something positive, helpful, interesting and relevant to say about it (in a non-spammy but well-optimised way) via blogs, Twitter, etc… and drive traffic. It’s a fairly routine PR / sponsorship tactic.

Meantime, the above shows that we should all be working harder to align what we do in marketing with good causes that capture the public imagination. Poppies are not just being knitted right now, they’re also being used for Twitter badges. Go get yours here if you want to show your support for war veterans.

And if you need a spot of knitting advice, talk to my wife : )

These links, rather than directing you to other pages within a site, now act as ‘jump to’ links within a single page. So in the above example, clicking on the main link will take you to the Wikipedia article about Rod, and clicking on the secondary links will take you to the section of the page about Emu, for instance. And who doesn’t love reading about Emu?

Google are also including links in this style that direct to deeper pages. The upshot of this is that it could now be possible to direct users to a particularly high converting page (a shop page, for instance), without a user having specifically searched for it. This addition to search snippets seem to be all about giving the user more options right off the bat; they can go ahead and read about Rod Hull, like they set out to do, or they can go down the other path of acquainting themselves with Emu, just like Parkinson.

At the moment, these links are generated automatically by Google, without your say so,  but there are things that you can do to encourage it to happen.

From the Google Webmaster Blog:

First, ensure that long, multi-topic pages on your site are well-structured and broken into distinct logical sections. Second, ensure that each section has an associated  descriptive name (i.e., not just “Section 2.1”). The new in-snippet links only appear for relevant queries, so you won’t see it on the results all the time — only when we think that a link to a section would be highly useful for a particular query.

The takeaway? This poses a great incentive to keep your page content neat and tidy, organised and with a disciplined keyword relevancy match for headers and subheaders… which has to be a great benefit for visitors once they hit the page as well.

With that fact in mind, I’d like to briefly run through which content types regularly appear and how to use this content to clamber through the sweaty throng of competing pages.

Firstly, here are some broad content principles that you should be focused on:

Keywords

…need to be selected, based on competitiveness, search volumes, and long-term trends.

Research

…the content themes and formats (eg, Videos, Blog posts, Tweets) that your target audience is most interested in.

Create

…good, interesting, valuable, sharable, content – and publish it freely where possible. Create something of unique value that can’t be found elsewhere.

Optimise

…this content. I’m not advocating a selfish SPAM approach, but why wouldn’t you want to give your content the best possible chance of being indexed, noted and linked to? Search Engines need to be given explicit cues (in titles, headers, links) – regardless of quality, content, and context.

Identify

…influential hubs and make sure that you promote your content within them (responsibly). The mantra of ‘build it and they will come’ won’t usually work.

Done That… What’s Next?

Here are the main forms of content you should be interested in. The key to a lot of content optimisation is getting search terms in a) The Page Title b) The URL, and c) including links to raise awareness, link equity, and the likelihood of others linking to you.

SEO Tip 1: Blog Posts

It’s also best practice to register your blog with Google and Technorati.

Why?: Good blog content can quickly appear on the front page.

Ideal when: Your blog is well-read, established, and has garnered some respect (from both users and Google).

Example: (Term = ‘Social SEO’, Results no 5/6 / PageRank 5)

SEO Tip 2: News Articles / Press Releases

Also, make sure you’re indexed by Google News and add selected keywords to your XML news sitemap if you’re using one.

As with blog posts, most CMSs can be used to add keywords to the most important places.

Why?: News articles rank (transiently) in most SERP sectors – increasingly at the pinnacle.

Ideal when: You’re regularly producing good, neutral, and newsworthy content and have the resources to continue to do so. Even better if your competitors aren’t using the same technique.

Example: (Term = ‘Hotels in London’, Result no 1)

SEO Tip 3: Facebook Pages

Why?: Social Profiles are becoming more prominent within the SERPs. Facebook pages are publically viewable and ranking with more frequency. Within pages, discussions and sub-sections can also infiltrate the results pages.

Ideal when: Your page has attracted high membership and you’re in a market that isn’t saturated with similiar pages. It’s also more auspicious for your page if your brand name is highly searched for.

Example: (Term = Hackett London, Result no 3 / 1,090 fans)

SEO Tip 4: Twitter Profiles

Don’t worry too much about links and the language used within them, they don’t pass any value or PageRank. However, I generally don’t shorten links unless I have to: user experience is improved if link text is explicit and descriptive.

Why?: Recent Google updates have led to Twitter profiles becoming far more prominent in the SERPs (although this trend has tailed off in recent weeks).

Ideal when: Your profile becomes established and linked to. Most profiles that rank are well established, highly followed, frequently updated, and continually on topic.

You’ll also stand a better chance of ranking with a valued brand name and a comfortable ‘social’ fit. eg, if you’re a known quantity in the Art or Tech sector, you’re likely to be followed in high volume.

Example: (Term = ‘Social SEO’, Result No 10 / 894 followers)

SEO Tip 5: YouTube Videos

It’s also best to include links back to your page in the video description and whenever possible.

As YouTube is effectively an independent search engine, make sure that tags are optimised so internal searches are returned in response to keywords.

Why?: Google owns YouTube and loyally places its video content within SERPs.

Ideal when: You’ve created a video that really is going to be viewed, rather than a thinly veiled corporate advertorial: most videos that rank are fairly popular.

Also helps if you’re in a relatively uncompetitive search sector and competiting against few similiar videos.

Example: (Term = ‘Social Media’, Results no 2 / 3 , 320,400 / 697,381 views)

SEO Tip 6: Images

Why?: Images regularly appear within the SERPs. Note, Google isn’t affiliated with one particular channel (like Flickr) and uses a slower bot (googlebot-image) to crawl images for inclusion within its image search index.

Ideal when: You’ve got a hefty selection of quality images to use on your site

Example: (Result no 1 for ‘Lesser Spotted Woodpecker’- the highest volume term on the teletext internet)

SEO Tip 7: PDFs / White Papers

Why?: Within niche, emerging, sectors, white papers and focused PDFs are vessels of valuable knowledge. Framing the paper by a key term also increases the chance of users linking using search terms as anchor text.

Ideal when: You’re in an emerging sector and have something interesting to say. As the sector grows, (early) established rankings can stick like muck.

Example: (Term = ‘Social Media Marketing’, Result No 7)

SEO Tip 8: Listings (Products/Jobs etc)

Why?: Product items feature heavily on the first page for specific search terms, and other items are Increasingly – but still sparingly – appearing.

Ideal when: You’ve got a steady flow of products to release onto the web that cover a wide range of long-tail search terms

Example: (Term = ‘Board Game’, Result 4)

There are a few other relevant content formats, but the principles remain the same.

Stick to the above and you’ll stand a good chance of ranking – even in more competitive sectors.

Adios.

As I write this post, at least two essential global inter-species combat tournaments are taking place. On the one hand, Microsoft has declared war on Google with its new(ish) search engine, Bing.  On the other, in a field in the middle of Kent, a Fox is locked in an epic battle against three Azure Winged Magpies and a Chaffinch.

And who cares?  Well, we do.  We have a vested interest in SEO, and we’ve just stuck a fiver each way on the Chaffinch. (Bite those ears! Bite them off!)

Back to Business:  Google vs Microsoft’s Bing

The rivalry between Google and Bing is now even more pertinent due to Microsoft’s recent alliance with Yahoo. A move which has also led to a plethora of bad portmanteaus – like Microhoo*

Nonetheless, If the Bing/Yahoo team does manage to wrestle more power from Google, then the algorithmic and presentation differences need to be analysed and understood. I’m starting here, through the nepotistic medium of C&M search queries.

Notes from the field…

Search Term 1: Online PR Agency

First things first: in Bing we’re first (and third) for the query and in Google we’re a shoddy second. And, In Bing our results generally seem higher, but our social content ranks lower.

Bing’s meta descriptions are neater than Google’s due to a less savage use of the guillotine. The handy pop-up meta description on the right hand side, with additional info, is useful.

A final quirk to observe: when I tried the query at an earlier date I was presented with a weird (but fleeting) local result at the top of the Bing SERP, concerning an Online PR agency from the hedonistic paradise of Preston.

The presence of this result implies that Bing’s either confused – interpreting the PR query text as a postcode – and/or approaching search from a more local angle and returning results to a wider range of queries. Local SERPs for local people.

Search Term 2: Social Media Agency

The key observation this time is in the way that Bing seems to be (non-) handling, and (non-) indexing, social content. Within the Google SERPs we rank for very recent posts and content, but in Bing, our results are older. The Bing result below is from January 2009.

Another historical observation: a few days ago I was presented with a Bing result referring to a blog post, but framed by the URL and title of the broader blog page – which is unusual, since SERPs usually just return the meta title of resulting page.

A final observation: Google’s content is also ‘richer’ – there seems to be a dearth of video, image, and news results in the Bing SERPs. However, this could be due to a lack of uptake for Bing’s ‘enigmatic’ listing services.

This, alongside the less prominent blog posts in the Bing SERPs implies that Bing is a) less social (it cares less for social content and profiles) and b) placing more filters on social content within it’s SERPs (it cares less for optimised social content).

Search Term 3: Social SEO

First shard of insight. It looks like Bing is less focused on exact keyword term matches – with four exact matches for this search phrase on the first page (within URLs and page titles), compared to Google’s nine.

The second thing to note is that Bing has less of a tendency to group results together from the same site. With Google, it’s common to see one or two pages smashed together, like this:

Bing has potential plus points here: if two results are grinning together like The Chuckle Brothers, then users are less likely to click through on both and, from a usability perspective, not using this technique will provide searchers with a more diverse selection of results (it becomes possible to render a more varied set of results on a single page).

Illustrating the increased importance of social content – and the need for SEO to embrace Social approaches, is the ninth result on Google (now 11th). It’s interesting to note that the ‘twitterer’ in question is an influential twittizen with over 1,000 followers, and a low following/follower ratio.

This content is transient, and won’t stick around on the first page for too long – however, it does show that Google is paying more and more attention to relevant social content and Social Media in general.

Meantime, Bing’s results are  – once again – far less rich and socially inclined that Google’s.

Once again, we rank higher in the Bing SERP: second as opposed to number six in Google.

Conclusions: The Bing vs Google Smackdown

This is a work in progress: Google is constantly evolving and Bing is still developing. These nuances could evaporate as new ones appear. There are already a few historical observations in this post.

It’s going to be interesting looking at the differences in the two engine’s differing approaches over time, and a full analysis of the importance of backlinks will be even more iluminating.

More soon…

*I like Yahmsoft. Or Yaft. Both could be successfully adopted by industry leading butter brands.

But is ‘Social SEO’ – connecting ‘Social Media’ approaches and SEO thinking – the new approach to doing SEO?

How, and why, should Social channels be used? Where are the similarities, cross-overs, and (brace) synergies between SEO and Social Media?

Here are 10 thoughts on the matter…

Social SEO #1: Social recommendations = the new backlinks?

Looking into a future that (disappointingly) looks nothing like Blade Runner but a lot like Brazil,  it’s likely that Google’s algorithm is going to place more importance on Social recommendations and pointers. Backlinks have held the power for a long time – and will continue to do so – but there’s an array of Social information available and practices such as URL shortening have mangled the language of the web. Google’s already placing more importance on sentiment related content – particularly reviews – and these cues are being assimilated to create a more Social approach to ranking pages.

Social SEO #2:  Brand updates = more need for Social SEO?

Google’s recent algorithm update has placed more emphasis on brand value in order to filter out the rivers of SPAM that burst from the levees of competitive SERPS. Although this update has only had a noticeable effect on a few competitive sectors, it does mean that SERPs are becoming more reliant on intangible ‘brand’ attributes when ranking pages.  How can these brand-dams be built? By being socially active and conversational on the web.

Social SEO #3:  Useful content (publicised through Online PR) = backlinks

Engaging content encourages backlinks: but consider the caveat that ‘build it and they will come’ won’t work. If your content is talked about by, and know to, influential Social hubs then backlinks will stream in like british-sunbathers-to-a-half-sunshine-sky. Crispy.

Social SEO #4:  Online PR and Social Media activity + good content optimisation = good backlinks

Aye. Further to the last point, if you use the language of search to frame your content and – crucially – get keywords into your URLs, then you’ll increase the likelihood of others using your key terms when linking to you. URLs are frequently used as anchor text (I’m briskly sidestepping URL shortening issues).

Social SEO #5: Content curation – a new affiliate channel?

Useful content shouldn’t be static or ephemeral. It should be gathered together and curated to expand its lifespan. Facebook, Netvibes, Ning, et al, all allow this to be easily achieved and when the container spaces can be optimised, a nicer, kinder, affiliate page is born.

Social SEO #6: Offline Marketing (and memorability) = SEO?

Just like the pre-Altamont 60s, all strands of content can exist in in peace, love, and harmony. Online and offline don’t have to be inimical and memorable TV adverts and catchphrases are still effective. Take my favourite shoulder-melting, appendix-assaulting, soft drink Red Bull: I like their sketchy adverts and their memorable catchphrase ‘Red Bull gives you wings’. ‘Offline’ content can quickly spread Online (when it’s good) and will be frequently viewed, searched for, and linked to. So, is it a step too far to SEO your offline communications in preparation for Online crossover using influential Social channels? Maybe. Maybe not. But there’s no penalty for framing your content in this way from the start.

Social SEO #7: (Social) semantic data is the new meta data

This deserves a post of its own – but the Web is changing and, in the (indefinite) future, we’ll be given much more than just meta descriptions and page titles in our SERPs. We’ll be presented with reviews, profiles, and all sorts of related content in response to keyword searches from dystopian devices. Being Social may be the future equivalent of writing a good (and more persuasive) meta description: those that add semantic data to their pages will have the advantage over their search competitors. Interesting developments on this score include the ‘common tag’ and Google’s recent support for rich snippets.

Social SEO #8: Good user experience – the new no-follow plugging?

This isn’t strictly a Social point, but there’s been a lot of wailing about Google’s recent announcement that nofollow links don’t actually conserve PageRank flow for ‘follow’ links on the same pages. This is a complicated issue. However, there is a solution: provide a logical, user-centric structure to your web site and make sure your most important content has single pages. Clarity, brevity, succinctness: these rules are good for users and for PageRank flow.

Social SEO #9: Well optimised content is the new… well optimised page

Simple one this – not at all new – but still important. Google (increasingly) likes placing all breeds and species of content – web pages, blog posts, video, images, etc – in its ‘standard’ SERPs. Content should be submitted to relevant search engines, talked about on as many Social channels as possible (eg YouTube, Flickr, etc) and Google’s probably-soon-to-be-more-important content database – Google Base.

Social SEO #10: Local and Social is the new Long Tail

With reference to semantic data, local and niche search results are becoming more important, widespread, and relevant. For instance, Instead of just search + location, Google is beginning to list local results for less strict searches such as ‘search near x landmark’ and this trend could continue to permeate its SERPs for anything that could be interpreted as regional. This trend could place some emphasis on building a brand with a strong regional (and therefore Socially-grounded) association, using Social channels and recommendations. Interestingly, Google also seems to be using user recommendations and reviews when returning local search results.

Conclusion: SEO has to be Social

‘Social Media’ and SEO approaches need to work together. They are two distinct entities but compliment each other like Yin and Yang, Superego and ID, Fab Morvan and Rob Pilatus from Milli Vanilli, Jimmy Page and Robert Plant from Led Zeppelin. Take one away and the other’s less effective. I’m just thinking through the connections – any other ideas about where they lie?

P.S. I’m leaving out a review of Google Wave here as it’s a whole new post and this one’s already longer than it should be….!

Over the coming months we’ll be helping the home of Essential British Menswear to break new ground in Social Media and to optimise its presence on the web.

Our brief is to enable the brand to engage with a new generation of customers on platforms such as Facebook, YouTube and Twitter, and to drive new online sales and bolster its position in Search.

Our work to date has seen the launch of a new Social Networking strategy and the re-optimisation of key areas of Hackett’s site. Both are already bearing fruit.

Watch this space: Hackett’s new menswear/kidswear Autumn/Winter season launches very soon and we’re building a stock of great Social Media strategies and Online PR campaigns that will open new doors for fans of quality, unique and distinctive, menswear and kids’ clothing.

Our Social Media Goal?

Like the clothes, we want the brand to develop Social Media assets and consumer relationships that “wear in, not out.”

Meantime, here’s what Hackett’s been up to lately…