How Social Media Drives Search Results
Written by Martin Wong on February 29, 2012
If you need yet another reason to invest in social media, here’s one: search engines are evolving to favour social media. Furthermore, social media sites are changing on-site search to account for member recommendations.
The goal of search engines has always been to deliver the most helpful and relevant information to users. Google’s success came from taking an approach that was radical in those early days: to curate for content quality by measuring the number of links to a page. The assumption was that if other web sites linked to yours, it counted as a “vote” of confidence. The more often other pages linked to yours, the higher your search ranking.
Google and its emphasis on links changed the search landscape. Website owners paid more attention to content, creating useful, quality content that was formatted in compliance to Google’s standards. Social media is the new game changer and businesses who want to rank high in search results need to pay attention to their social presence.
How Does Social Play into Search?
In a previous blog post titled Conversion Optimization: Testimonials are Dead: Long Live User Reviews, we wrote about the way user generated content (UGC) sold products more effectively than anything else. UGC matters more and more in search, and not just for product reviews. If you think about it, social media is all about user-generated content.
Search engines now are trying to incorporate people’s opinions rather than rely exclusively on mathematical algorithms. Search results can be affected by the number of tweets, retweets, Facebook likes, and +1 votes – all with the goal of delivering more personalized results to the user. Both Google and Bing have stated publicly that pages whose URLs are shared on Twitter and Facebook will rank higher.
Microsoft Bing has a partnership with Twitter and is a major investor in Facebook, giving the search engine provider ready access to real-time data from both social network sites. Bing factors in Facebook “like” data. So pages that a user’s friends have liked will rank higher, and you are able to see who has voted for something you’re searching on, such as a product or a hotel. Bing also mines Facebook data so that pages with high popularity overall in Facebook show more prominently. They call this leveraging the “Collective IQ”. As for Twitter, Bing has been experimenting with a “Social” category that pulls up the latest tweets and news on a topic, similar to what social monitoring tools provide.
Google incorporates publicly available reviews from sites such as Expedia, Tripadvisor, and other sites with rich UGC into search results and into Google’s Hotel Finder and Shopper features.
Unfortunately for the alpha dog of search, it never reached a deal with Facebook; and ever since the company’s deal with Twitter expired in July 2011, it had to take down Google Real-Time Search. Google has been using a “scraper” to collect and process publically available social media information. This takes longer than direct feeds from Twitter and Facebook, but Google has launched Google+, its own social networking service. A social network’s value lies in its user population and it will take some time before Google+ users reach the same levels as Facebook or Twitter.
So What Can You Do?
Social media does not replace good SEO practices – it does enhance what you are doing to drive up your search rankings. The direction search engines are taking is nothing but good news for companies who want to improve their rankings organically, because it means that taking care of your social media program also benefits your SEO efforts. You still need to:
Build great content: this is the cornerstone of good SEO. A good website that’s easy to navigate and which provides information that is useful and well-written will make it easier to convince visitors to “like” or tweet your URL.
Research keywords: when you write your content, use keywords that are meaningful to your target audience. Make sure you also use keywords in your page titles, image alt attributes, and URLs.
Build links: where appropriate, reference other pages within your own site and use links. For external link building, here are some common tactics:
- create pages with useful information that other sites will want to reference
- submit articles and press releases to online news sites that are relevant to your industry
- submit your site to reputable online directories
- review related products or articles on other sites – often people who read the reviews will also come to your site
- maintain a blog and link to other blogs that you feel are good resources for your audience; often the other blog will return the favour
Why have all those ingredients in place before making use of social media? Because the Internet is instant. If your site contains high quality, useful content, the visitor who tweets about it informs his social network in real time. If your visitor gets a bad user experience or thinks he’s been misled, well, one bad tweet that gets re-tweeted can ruin your whole day.
Build a professional Facebook page: think of your business Facebook page as a mini-site, one where you can invite your audience to share and comment. Post useful information daily. It can be as easy as posting a link to an interesting article that’s relevant to your audience. Monitor posts from your Facebook friends and “like” or write comments on their posts. Build up trust with your audience and you’ll get the “likes” and comments you need to bump up your social cred.
Tweet useful stuff: the goal is to generate conversation around your brand, so tweet a couple of times a day about industry news and events, not just your own products and services. Respond and engage with individuals that want to talk to you; and announce contests or special deals (deals get re-tweeted a lot).
Most important of all – remember that the primary goal of your social media program is to be helpful to your target audience, not to bump up your search results. If you do a good job of providing useful information, you’ll get the “likes” and re-tweets you need to increase your search ranking. If you tweet and post trivia too often, you’ll just annoy your audience.
How to Establish a Local Presence on Google Search – and Why
Written by Martin Wong on February 10, 2012
Back in May 2011, Google shared some statistics that showed 20% of searches are local, and that for mobile search the number climbs to 40%. Google Search for Mobile has certainly helped bump up those figures, especially with helpful features such as “near me now” that complement its Local Search for Mobile. Then last year the struggling Yellow Pages Association had a makeover and rebranded as the Local Search Association.
Given those facts, it’s time once again to stress the importance of local search, particularly for brick and mortar companies that rely on walk-in business. If a potential customer is in your neighborhood hunting for a product that you sell, you want to pop up on their “near me now” search with a useful, informative listing.
Does having a presence on local search really help?
Try this simple experiment using Google: search for “Vancouver restaurants”. You’ll see a map with red balloons that represent the many restaurants near the city’s downtown core. You’ll also see that some of the restaurants shown on the map pop to the top of the list.
This is based on their proximity to Google’s reference location for “Vancouver”, number of reviews, and other factors. If you click on one of the balloons, the address, phone number, and reviews for that restaurant come up. Other search providers, including Yahoo, Bing, and Yelp, also have this type of feature.
Small businesses are the ones that need the most help when it comes to search marketing, yet many neglect the simple step of creating a local presence on Google. Don’t wait any longer. You may not have the time or expertise to do everything you need for local search, but you certainly should take those first, simple (and free!) steps.
What is “Local Search”?
Google already performs a level of local search. If you live in Vancouver and search for a retirement planning consultant, Google will bring up a list of local financial advisors. The search engine knows your location and assumes you are less interested in dealing with businesses farther away. If you type “retirement planning consultant near Boundary and Lougheed Highway”
Your goal is to build a strong presence on local search, to increase the odds that when someone searches for your type of business, your business location will pop up on Google Maps alongside the local search results.
Fill Out Your Google Place Page
The way to do this is through Google Places for business. It’s a very simple sign up page and absolutely free. The result is a free ad page which Google calls your Place Page. Google provides helpful guidelines for the information you enter, but here are a few tips for where you need to put some extra effort:
Categories and keywords
Make sure you select all categories relevant to your business and add all related keywords for your company’s products or services. This helps Google determine when to display your listing on Google Maps. In less competitive markets (with few and unique keywords), just doing this can help you rank higher in local searches when a user searches for one of your keywords.
Business description with keywords
Boost your ranking a little more when you write a business description that uses some of your keywords, including location (city or region you serve) – but make sure it makes sense. Avoid sacrificing a well-written business description for the sake of search ranking alone. You do want potential customers to understand what you provide.
Photos. Lots of them.
The limit is ten, so upload ten high-quality pictures. You can use photos of your store, your products, the location and storefront. Google likes it and more importantly, potential customers like it. Visuals are friendlier and your click-through rate will improve with better digital “curb appeal. In fact, if you have a product or company video on YouTube, enter the URL. It all helps.
Reviews. Time to cash in those customer relationships
Ask your customers to write honest, helpful reviews of your products or services. Google tries to serve up the most relevant listings, and more reviews show that your business is legitimate and has been rated by customers. Believe it or not, Google doesn’t distinguish between positive and negative reviews. It just cares about the number of reviews. It’s a different matter for customers of course! What reviews say affect their buying decisions more than Google rankings.
Off-page citations
Citations are mentions of your business in reputable directories, consumer review sites, or professional listings. Think YellowPages, Yelp, the website for your industry’s professional association. Many trade publications offer online listings for businesses in their industry. Off-page citations bump up your credibility with Google – and with users.
For a list of sites, visit our blog post A Canadian Guide to Google Local Business Citations.
Once your business is on the Google map with its own Place Page, your website can take advantage of local pay-per-click (PPC) and social media campaigns. You can target local keywords, which typically cost less than generic terms in Google Adwords because there is less competition. Since local keywords are more targeted, you’ll get a higher click-through rate, which also helps raise your quality score in Adwords.
Blog Your Way to Success
Written by Martin Wong on November 23, 2011
We always recommend blogging to our clients because it delivers proven results. A good blog increases credibility with your target audience by positioning you as an expert in the field. In addition, blogging helps your SEO results, social media visibility, and increases website visits. It’s an essential component of digital marketing.
As a result, clients frequently ask us, “How should we blog? What are some best practices when it comes to blogging?”
The best business blogs provide regular, valuable information to their target audience. This means you need to determine:
- Who are you writing for?
- What topics will you write about that will keep readers coming back?
- How often will you blog?
