Mediarun Search Marketing News

Social media is changing search engine optimisation

June 17th 2010

Search Engine Optimisation News

It wasn't long ago that search engine optimisation strategies involved little more than stuffing websites with keywords and carrying out link-building. Google could be fooled and website optimisation - no matter how underhand - meant even the least likely of businesses could make it to the top of search engine results pages.

The customer was a secondary consideration in this search engine optimisation equation. Once a web browser was at your site then the hard work was done. If the products and services on offer were relevant then a conversion was close.

It didn't take the advent of social media to make these black hat website optimisation techniques unfashionable, but it certainly didn't do them any favours.

Search engine optimisation for the sake of SEO failed to tick one of the most important marketing pre-requisites - engaging the customer. Getting your website to the top of Google with a cunning search engine marketing campaign was all well and good, but when people opened up pages filled with nonsense interspersed with keywords it wouldn't take them long to navigate away.

Once every single SEO agency realised that quality content was vital if users were to have an engaging - and hopefully extravagant - internet experience, websites began getting more sophisticated. Social media has helped spur on this evolution of search engine optimisation and more and more companies are starting to realise the benefits of extending quality content from their corporate website to their Facebook and Twitter pages.

Speaking to BtoB Online, marketing expert Steven Abramowitz said: "Social media is really the game-changer at this point."

"Social marketing is still a little young and Wild West, but the ability to target keywords in Facebook, tweets and so forth will be increasingly important," he added.

And it seems that it is not just natural search engine optimisation that is benefitting from the proliferation of social media websites. According to the Internet Advertising Bureau, online display advertising is also set to proliferate as social media continues its meteoric rise to the top of the world wide web's food chain.

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