How Does Social Media Affect Search Marketing?
Newstex – Social media and search marketing: Are they two peas in a pod, complimentary or two very distinct channels? The answer is all of the above, depending on the situation. The growth in attention to social media as a marketing, communication and community building opportunity deserves attention by all sorts of online marketers, especially those in search marketing.
Searcher expectations have changed. Searchers no longer have the sole expectation of searching to find information for a specific outcome. As people spend more and more time connecting, sharing and interacting with the social web, they now often expect to interact with what they find in the search results. Another aspect to searcher expectations is that consumers search social media sites (Twitter, Facebook, Yahoo Answers, MySpace) to a small degree, as alternatives to standard search for information, references and recommendations. There is something inherently more trustworthy about recommendations made by others willing to take the time to review products/services and share their opinions.
So, how do searcher expectations in regards to social media affect SEO efforts? Does it affect landing pages for PPC or other online search advertising? Keywords and links aren’t the only tactics SEOs employ with content optimization. Usability comes into play as well and making it easy for consumers of a web site’s content to socially save, share, submit and interact with that content helps meet increasing social expectations.
With PPC and landing pages it’s the same thing, but not to the degree that it takes away from the objective of the conversion of course. The objective for a landing page is to motivate a specific action, not bookmark the landing page – but why not make it easy if customers choose to do so? With online advertising, there are increasing numbers of companies enabling rich media ads with social features. Links are added so that viewers of the ad can share, rare or comment.
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