There’s been a lot of debate in the SEO community lately regarding social media versus traditional linkbuilding methods. While some SEOs argue that social media links are the wave of the SEO future, traditionalists staunchly maintain traditional, authoritative links from quality sources are still the best way to go. Whatever your stance, I think it’s easy to agree that gaining links from trusted authorities is desirable for any site -- but that doesn’t mean the rise of social shouldn’t affect our outreach methods. We’ll start with the obvious: social sites allow you to network [...]

Related Topics: Search & Social

There is an ongoing discussion trying to better understand what Google+ brings to the table. Recently, the stats were released that Google+ now has 90M users and about 60% log in every day. Will Google+ ever be that “Facebook killer” that everyone keeps speculating? That has yet to be demonstrated. My hunch is that it won’t. Not because it can’t, but because I am not convinced that was ever the goal of Google+. Recent algorithm changes, namely Google + your world, support what I am speculating. We are seeing a cross between Search and Social like never before. Not A Facebook [...]

Related Topics: Featured | Search & Social

Anyone—anyone—can make a website. Anyone can create a Twitter account, start a blog, or launch a Facebook fan page. And anyone—from 13-year-old girls to 45-year-old men—can pretend to be an attractive 20-year-old woman on the Internet. In the world of Internet spam, scams, and shams, we’ve learned to be wary of what we find online. Search engines are no different. Too often we forget that search engines aren’t just a tool to help us find news articles or guacamole recipes. Search engines are running a business—a business whose success relies on providing you legitimate, rel [...]

Related Topics: How To | How To: SEO | How To: Social Media Marketing | Intermediate | Search & Social

In my previous post on ensuring your open graph tags were properly set up, I stressed the importance of having these tags in place so as marketers we can stay in control of the message we send to our audiences. I suggested that a simple solution would be to have your open graph tags reference your title tags and descriptions, and you will be broadcasting a message which you have (hopefully) hand crafted, which aligns with your business message. Optimizing The Open Graph To further support just how important controlling your message utilizing the open graph tags is, a recent study which wa [...]

Related Topics: Search & Social

The social media experts who write for this column week in and week out don't just talk - they walk the walk in social media and search marketing. In 2011, we saw interest spike in our Let's Get Social* column as social media became a significant ranking factor in organic search results, following Danny Sullivan's December 2010 report, What Social Signals Do Google & Bing Really Count?. As social media grew in popularity during the year, along with Google's +1 and Google+ launch, it's evident how important social sharing became to developing audience reach and driving more traffic to c [...]

Related Topics: Search & Social