Subscribe in a reader
HOME
How will social optimization change the SEO industry?
As bloggers we understand the importance of social optimization and what types and volumes of traffic it can deliver. The possibilities are seemingly endless; you can write a simple post about new products and drive 10’s of thousands of clicks to the point of crashing web servers, the most amazing part is that article probably only took 15 minutes to write.
I have recently spoken with several companies that are looking for help from SEO’s. As I review the strategies that are proposed to them the most common item missed, even with all the so-called top SEO firms is a social media campaign. With the value of paid and reciprocal links dropping, social and PR based linking strategies is one of the few venues that still has massive long term value.
Many companies that handle SEO in-house these days are also so focused on the old school practices that they are completely missing the boat changing course. If their senior management knew how much this would cost them, I am sure they would motivate this type of change if they are open minded enough to have an in house department in the first place. This observation also clearly opens up the fact that in-house SEO’s are not spending enough time online researching changes and trends in the algorithms. In most cases in house SEO’s only go online to research after problems arise and the cost of repair is dramatic.
A great example of not changing course fast enough was the BMW debacle of last year that got so much press. It is also fair to note that most of the German SEO’s promote cloaking and shady linking strategies. At least half of the ones I have met tried to convince me that spamming was the only way SEO works, which is sad when you are trying to hire a contractor to help you remotely. If the industry is not capable of moving as fast as the search engines the industry will tank and a rise of new firms will take over.
The best sign of blindness is the social content sites, which as long as they are optimized correctly typically drive a lot of algorithmic traffic. Imagine not having to generate your own content? This is a huge cost savings! Now that your user bases are such fanatics about your site, they are also going to drive half of the links you could ever need to your sites. Why is it that big business understands this concept, but completely misses the concept of Digg or Reddit?
Aaron Shear, Director of Natural Search Shopping.com an eBay company. My views are not the views of eBay and in no way endorced.
More: Optimizing Large Sites with Aaron Shear
February 6th, 2007 at 8:38 am
OUGH! That picture is horrible, I need a new one.
February 6th, 2007 at 9:59 am
I think it looks great, in business who would you choose to do your SEO, the harvard professor with the tie or the trash talking google spamming link building attention getting social media optimizing underpants wearing SEO?
Great article BTW, thanks. :)
February 7th, 2007 at 10:42 pm
It’s true if you are doing a work for general people, and they are gaining. Then you may need not to make more efforts to promote yourself. Social Optimization is one of the “hottest seo techniques” to promote a business website.