Are Social Networkers Bypassing SEO?
Social networking is growing more popular as more and more people flock to using Facebook and Twitter. Facebook recently topped a new high in user numbers. And many social media users go online to find new products and services to use. Are they finding them there?
They may be. And worse, or better for the brands that end up getting the business, is that they could be connecting via e-mail with those brands that gain consumer attention via social media. Is this bypassing search engine optimization?
That’s a difficult question to answer. It really depends on how consumer and brand initially meet. If they meet through friend introductions and that leads to business then it could very well be bypassing SEO. However, Facebook pages do often appear in the SERPs, and quite often very high in the SERPs. That means brands could be found through search despite the fact that the connection is taking place on social media sites. It is likely that a certain percentage of those connections are as a result of search queries while another percentage is due to brands and consumers connecting wholly through social media.
I think you’ll see, more and more, brands meeting up with consumers through social media sites. But I wouldn’t discard my search engine optimization strategy yet. In fact, social media and social networking should work together with your search engine optimziation efforts.
9 Responses to “Are Social Networkers Bypassing SEO?”
The Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Journal is Written by SEO Expert:
Nick Stamoulis
Tel - 781-999-1222
nick@brickmarketing.com
Brick Marketing - SEO Company
During the first week of September, Facebook captured nearly 58% of visits in the social networking custom category, according to new data from research firm Hitwise. MySpace — which was the top dog in social networking as recently as May — now trails Facebook significantly with a mere 31% share of the market.
Visits to the broader category of 155 social networking Web sites increased 53% during the first week of September year-over-year.
During the past 5 weeks, visits to the category reached the highest levels of the past three years. The previous peak occurred during the week ending June 23, 2007 when visits to MySpace reached their highest point.
Hitwise attributes a number of factors to the rapid rise of Facebook, such as a cleaner layout and mobile applications on the iPhone and BlackBerry mobile phone.
Another is certainly the Facebook Connect program, which allows users to share stories in their news feed and make comments on Web sites and blogs, according to Hitwise. The program launched in beta during July of last year, then officially launched to developers in early December.
The number of Web sites participating in Facebook Connect has grown quickly to over 15,000 Web sites globally including CNN.com, NBC.com, ABCNews.com, Hulu, WashingtonPost.com, and The Huffington Post.
What is really interesting, according to Hitwise, is to look at the year-over-year growth in the market share of visits to Facebook because there is a clear uptick in the growth rate following the launch of Facebook Connect.
A clear benefit of Facebook Connect is the ability of the user to use a single portable identity — and most importantly, one password, rather than logging into multiple accounts across the network of Web sites.
Facebook’s recent purchase of FriendFeed is also expected to help to aggregate this single portable identity across the Internet.
Participation from Web sites in Facebook Connect also has strong implications to appear more often in the search results executed on Facebook resulting from member postings as search becomes a more prevalent activity within this large audience.
Social has not circumvented SEO, social marketing simply compliments and optimizes ROI. Another marketing tool that is useful.
Jeffrey DeArmond
Social Search Marketing & SEO Expert
Local Edge SEO, Inc.
http://www.LocalEdgeSEO.com
727-278-6295
Hi Jeffery – Thanks for the additional data and your comment, I think you have hit on several excellent points and I agree with that social networking and marketing does indeed compliment SEO…
Social Media and SEO are just two components of an Internet marketing campaign that a company needs to utilize to insure optimum results. Companies need to look at Social Media sites as outposts that can direct traffic back to the main site and vice versa as well. Smart companies practice interconnection of all profiles.
Hi Nick.
I am probably splitting hairs here with my definitions, but it seems if social networking on Facebook (or wherever) gets you noticed by google, then it IS SEO.
If I drop my link all over some social networking site, how does google interpret that? How does that differ from a link back from building a hub page or distributing an article?
Thanks
Lorraine
Hi Justin,
Very good point, effective social networking does include the interconnection aspect…
Hi Lorraine,
The important thing to understand is not to abuse any one source of link building (whether it is social networking or article marketing) and to promote your website to build trust and gain visitors from your efforts…thanks for reading!
Great points by everyone.. thanks for sharing. What I think is interesting is how Facebook is evolving, trying to figure out how to make money .. as they do this they become more commercial and less social. Being social, free, and without advertising is largely responsible for their popularity. It will be interesting to see how it pans out.
As someone who uses facebook purely for social reasons. Im already getting annoyed at the requests to back products by other users and facebook themselves. What exactly do you obtain by “being a fan”
Hi Max,
Thanks for the message! I agree it is going to be an interesting road for Facebook to become a profitable company. Becoming a fan is almost like subscribing to an opt-in email newsletter to receive updates, offers, etc from a product or company…
Good idea! I can’t agree more on the balance in using them parallel to each other. Besides, they cannot conflict or compete as people try to know some brand in and out and listen to others’ recommendation in social media while at search engines ranking matters.
Hi Website Promotion Blog,
Thanks for the comment and for reading! It is amazing how many companies still don’t realize that a true balance is extremely essential…