With the unveiling of Google’s Social Search on Monday along with the announcement last week that Bing has signed deals with Twitter it would appear that the world of search is moving into real-time. Even Yahoo has moved in on the action by joining forces with real-time search engine OneRiot.
What do these new features actually do though? Well Google’s Social Search allows you to find information from your friends and associates. Social Search aims to find information specific to the users’ interests, by including blog posts written by friends’ and information gathered from social networks. The idea behind it is to make the results even more relevant for the user. The Twitter / Bing deal is about sharing information between the two parties, or more specifically Bing using twitter as a database. Bing offers a real-time search of twitter updates through bing.com/twitter where you can use bing to search Twitter.
The big question is how will this affect SEO in the future?
Well unfortunately I left my crystal ball at home, but I can give an educated guess. I simply say social media is going to play a bigger and bigger role in SEO. This is good because social media is quite transparent at the moment.
We recently released ‘The SEO Song’ on YouTube and have successfully used Twitter, blogs, facebook and other social media networks to promote this example of pure musical genius. The interest in The SEO Song has been quite impressive (with 6000 views reached today), and we simply couldn’t have done this without Social Media.
My advice to anyone starting out in the SEO industry would be to get into Social Media. Today. Use it to it’s full potential, because over time that is where the trust will be, and everyone knows you can’t market anything without trust.
In another step closer to real time search, it was announced yesterday that Bing would be adding a new option focusing on updates made through Twitter. If the Twitter search option is selected when Bing is used, it will provide links to individual Twitter feeds that reference the key phrase in question.
A subsequent deal has also been made with Google, although their results will not be made available immediately. The aim behind these changes is to ensure that web users have even more information available to them through using search. Looking at Twitter as a data source essentially shows it to be a website which is constantly processing an incredible level of information – information that can be used to strengthen search engine results.
Although the first set of Twitter search results on Bing will be ordered with regard to the time at which the updates were posted, there are further developments also being implemented. This includes the option to find the best possible match to your search, in addition to prioritising results by measuring the influence of the individual Tweeter.
Any move towards real time search is incredibly exciting for SEO and the use of social media sites in this development is even more interesting. Social media has been a key concern for SEO companies for the last few years – not only does it help establish corporate authority and build links, it also allows you to introduce your brand to a much wider audience.
With the integration of social media and search engines, the opportunities provided only seem to multiply and this particular move forward certainly deserves plenty of attention from SEO companies who like to keep up with these developments. For all the details, check out the blog post on Bing!
Hello and Welcome to Creare’s SEO Video Blog.
At the moment Nick is on holiday so I will be filling in for him this week. My name is Pete Campbell and I’m one of the Search Engine Optimisation Consultants and Web Designers here at Creare.
Twitter, the immensely popular micro-blogging website, can be an engaging resource and fantastic marketing tool for any website. It enables you to directly target and appeal to your visitors alongside effectively contributing towards building your websites brand.
Today, I’m going to talk about how to optimize your websites twitter profile so that it gains maximum exposure, gains you more followers and ultimately drives potential customers or visitors back to your website.
BUILD A COMPREHENSIVE PROFILE
Firstly, ensure your profile appropriately represents your business or website. If you haven’t already, set your name, website address, one line biography and your location within the settings panel.
Next, customise your profile design by navigating to the ‘Design’ tab. Twitter allows you to set any custom background image, alongside the individual styles and HTML colours for each element.
Branding is an important element of any website, and within Twitter you can carry yours across quite simply.
SYNC YOUR RSS FEED
Using Twitterfeed, you can sync up your websites RSS feed so that it automatically updates your Twitter profile everytime you make a news update.
All you have to do is register and provide Twitterfeed with your Twitter Account & RSS Feed details. In true Blue Peter fashion, here is an account I setup earlier.
In your account you can customize the ways in which your RSS updates will be published to your Twitter profile.
We’d suggest setting your post content to publish the news titles and a frequency of one hour to ensure your profile is always up-to-date. You can also set prefixs, suffixs and even a keyword filter.
ADD A TWITTER WIDGET TO YOUR WEBSITE
Twitter offers several types of widgets or ‘badges’ that allow you to easily display & embed your latest tweets onto your own website.
Find these by logging into your Twitter account and navigating to the ‘Goodies’ link within the footer. Choose the option called ‘Widget’ and select the type of Widget you are looking for, in our case, you first need to pick ‘My Website’ option and then ‘Profile Widget’ option.
Within here, you will find an easy-to-use wizard that allows you to customize and define the look and feel of your chosen Twitter widget and also give you instructions on how you can simply embed it within your website.
For a more in-depth tutorial on how to add Twitter to your Website, check out my recent blog post on the Creare Design website, which I’ve linked to in the YouTube description.
TWEETING TIPS
Lastly, here are some tips on how you can maintain an engaging and resourceful Twitter profile.
Encourage Conversation: Pose questions to your followers, this will gain you @ tweets back and drive attention to your profile
Offer Unique Insights: Show you’re the expert of your industry, offers tips of the trade. On the Creare Group Twitter we often update with Web Design & SEO tips for example.
Follow Influential People in your Industry: This will help gain you more followers, tweet the people you follow, say hello and they may even tweet back, giving your account even more exposure.
Overall, if you have a Twitter profile, you should be encouraged to use it as an active resource to gain feedback off your visitors or customers. Simply put, you should consider it as a vital extension of your website, business or brand.
The buzz of twittering has swept the national and we are all getting in on the act, The SEO community has been using twitter as a mini marketing tool for some while, unfortunately most of the large SEO companies are just using their Twitter accounts to promote their blogs. (I am sure that Google follows the links back and is happy to award points for the use of one of the largest social networking platforms around, which makes it a good idea).
What i personally want to see is the big SEO companies providing snippets of high quality information for us all to read. I have done some research and thought i would put a little list together.
And the winners are:
1.) SE Roundtable:
Massive website and a massive twitter community following them, easily the winner. Constant updates to their quality blog posts means they are defiantly worth following.
2.) Web Pro News:
A blog site i regularly read, they always provide good quality content, their twitter account is constantly updated and well worth adding to your list.
3.) Big Mouth Media:
Using their twitter account to cross links to their articles and blog posts, providing mainly information based on new customers and business information. Not often giving away valuable information.
4.) Just Searching:
They use this to promote both their main blog, which is easily visible from their site, but also to promote labs.justsearch….. , both of which provide content worth reading.
5.) SEO Consult:
Regular use and good informative blogs mean that they are well worth a follow, the guys at SEO take time and input a lot of effort into maintaining the content of thir blog and it shows.
What i have found is that all the information they provide is just New Blog Posts: URL here, I think they have all followed suit. I currently have a personal twitter account https://twitter.com/nickrinylo which i used to promote Creare Communications blog posts (Following suit). I have just set up the official Creare Twitter account and i intend to break the current trend by providing quality info regarding SEO.
If you which to follow Crearecomm the details are:
Creare Communications:
Starting with the intention to provide information worth reading, after all we can all subscribe to the RSS of the big SEO companies blogs, which means their is no need to follow.
