Today’s keys to better SEO: Social and Mobile

The “optimization” in SEO is a moving target and moving fast. It’s nearly impossible to know what current set of algorithmic formulas will score with the crawlers. But here are two trends that are undeniable: the impact of social media and the migration to mobile. If you’re optimizing without them, you’re not optimizing.

SEO is one of the best reasons to go social.

If you’re like many of our friends in the Field, you’re still scratching your head: What’s my best use of social media and how do I measure it? Well, you needn’t wait for the perfect campaign to spark your viral wildfire. A much more important reason to adopt and promote a social presence is embedded in your online strategy. Quite simply, it will extend your reach and relevance. And it’s highly measurable.

Let’s start with user reviews, which are intended for customers to communicate with each other and therefore qualify as social media. To take a seasonal example, search for “coleman portable grill” on Google. As you might expect, Coleman is well optimized for this search – their domain occupies the first four search results. But after those first four, Google then shows “Shopping results.” Google itself and Amazon occupy the first two spots, in large measure because they both include user review scores.

Short & sweet, but no tweets.

A funny thing happened on the way to this issue of FieldNotes. Until last week, social “micro messages” (mostly tweets) played an important role in Google “Past hour” search results (soon to be “Realtime” with the imminent release of Google+). But then Google reported that as of July 2nd its contract with Twitter had expired, so suddenly tweets are not among these micro messages. That’s how fast things can change! We fully expect if these two leviathans can iron out their differences, tweets, a mainstay of social media, will once again abound in searches filtered for recent activity and real time.

If your SEO isn’t mobile, it’s standing still.

Do a Google search on your mobile device. Chances are you’ll see Google’s “Places” functionality right on the web page, allowing immediate access to the location, contact info and, yep, user reviews on a number of nearby venues.

Increasingly, the best-designed mobile webpages (and applications) are built with an understanding that mobile users are in a different space and headspace than when they’re on their laptop or at their desktop.

• They’re often in the field – maybe even near or in your brick-and-mortar location. Their phone knows this and can share pertinent data.
• They’re usually not interested in deep-dive product research. They’re looking for quick snacks of information that are easily digestible.
• They want their information with the fewest clicks possible. While this is also true for traditional web, of course, the need through mobile is usually much more urgent.

Already, there are more than 90 million mobile Internet users nationwide, and by the end of this year mobile browsing will make up as much as 15% of all web browsing.¹ These stats alone make a pretty strong case for SEO strategies that include mobile.

And don’t overlook OPO!

In your zeal to optimize, don’t lose sight of the basics, including “on-page optimization” (OPO). Increasingly, for example, an important ranking consideration will be download time. In an effort to reward good user experiences, Google has decided to penalize those sites that take too long to load. Demerits will also be given for improper use of meta tags in website coding. So before you put out an even bigger welcome mat, make sure your house is in order.

Let’s continue the conversation.
In the time it’s taken to read this article (certainly to write it, as we can attest!), some of the search rules may already have changed. That’s the nature of SEO. We’re keeping an eye on it and would love to hear your thoughts.

¹ © 2011 Jayde Online, Inc. and © 2011 Creative Development

Our thanks to Aaron Zwas, Director of Social Media at Digital Marketing Works, LLC, for his significant contribution to this issue of FieldNotes