Search Marketing News

Businesses should ignore social media 'at their peril'

December 15th 2009
Social Media Optimisation News

Ignore the recent revolution in social media at your peril, is the advice from industry experts to companies hoping to boost website search engine optimisation (SEO).

Google and other search engines will rank pages higher if they have other sites linking to them - and the more on-topic links the better - according to TechRadar.com.

However, writer Adam Stafford says that, from an SEO point of view, it is also important to be aware that a lot of user-generated links in social media, such as Twitter profile links, have a 'nofollow' tag which do not affect search engine results.

Therefore user-generated links are useless for boosting SEO (search engine optimisation), although the launch of Google's new Real Time Search - which integrates search results with real-time content from social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter - is an important tool for connecting with existing and potential clients.

Mr Stafford recommends building relationships with bloggers and the rest of the online community, and giving them good content to which they can link.

That way, he says, "you've got an entire network of people within a niche to connect with".

• Businesses should ignore social media at their peril
• Businesses reluctant to invest in social media
• Marketers have forgotten how to have conversations with consumers
• Google rolls out real time search