It seems that social media marketing may be passing SEO in terms of importance for internet marketing professionals. But it remains to be seen if social media marketing will maintain its momentum. Jon Rognerud gives a list of top social marketing websites for those interested. The list includes:

1. Twitter *See more below - specific for twitter
2. Facebook (download toolbar)
3. YouTube (toolbar exists, but have not tried)
4. Del.icio.us (download toolbar)
5. StumbleUpon (download toolbar)
6. LinkedIn (tip: use the Q/A section to gain readership and clients)
7. Flickr
8. Digg
9. Reddit
10. Technorati
11. Secondlife (3D)
12. Meneame (spanish, translate title and synopsis before posting)
13. Newsvine
14. Tip: Subscribe (RSS) to Techcrunch!

I’ll have to take issue with some of these on this list. For instance, if you don’t speak Spanish or cater to a Spanish audience then Mename may not be for you. I’ve also never used Secondlife and I’m not sure that Reddit or Newsvine is necessary for everyone. In a word, which social media sites you use depend a lot on the nature of your business.

I’ve also noticed that some social media sites give link juice while some do not. StumbleUpon doesn’t, but I’d still use it. Furl and Propeller do, but they may not be great places for networking for everyone. You have to do your homework when it comes to which social sites you want to take advantage of. Personally, I’d add Mixx to the list as well.

No matter which social media sites you use, however, you’ll still want to use SEO. It’s not a matter of either/or. It’s really a matter of how you employ the mix. You want your SEO to compliment your social media marketing and vice-versa. Otherwise, you could be just peeing in the wind.

Yahoo!s most innovative idea yet has to do with cell phones.

The idea is called OnePlace and is a bookmarking site for mobile phones.

OnePlace, to be launched in the second quarter of this year, allows users to mark links, news feeds or search results that lead them to fresh information on favorite topics when clicked.

OnePlace is supposed to look a bit like del.icio.us, also owned by Yahoo! It at least will have a similar interface and will allow users to bookmark their favorite news items and links. One feature that I like about OnePlace, due to roll out in the second quarter of this year, is the syncing ability between PC and cell phone. I guess that means you can migrate your bookmarks from PC to your cell phone. Cool, huh?

For a society that is increasingly mobile, this is an idea whose time has come and I for one think it will make a great product. Now, if mobile content producers can use it as effectively for marketing and Search Engine Optimization as Internet marketers are currently using social bookmarking then it will truly prove to be a useful tool.

YouTube is rolling out a beta version of a personalized home page. I think this is great and could have implications for Search Engine Optimization.

I think this is a sign that Google sees its personalization efforts as successful. I assume I don’t need to remind you that Google now owns YouTube, which means the move is a Google executive decision. So the Search Engine Optimization implications are even more far reaching than one I’m about to tell you.

In terms of Search Engine Optimization, since many webmasters use YouTube videos as embeds on their blogs and websites, personalization could make these embeds more accessible. If I, for instance, have a tendency to embed videos about search engine optimization and internet marketing on my blog then when I log into my YouTube account I should get recommendations for videos tagged as search engine optimization or internet marketing. These will mostly be videos I haven’t seen yet.

The personalized home page, according to YouTube’s blog, will focus on three improvements:

1. Recommendations
2. Subscriptions
3. Activity of Friends

What this means for active YouTube members is you will get recommendations based on past videos watched, but you’ll also be given the latest uploads from your subscriptions and be able to keep track of the latest videos uploaded by your friends. That’s three ways that you can use YouTube for Internet marketing purposes.

Recommendations will be taken care of by YouTube, of course. But subscriptions can be targeted. And friends, too, can be targeted. Plus, you can use YouTube’s internal messaging system to let your friends know that you’ve uploaded a new video.

While none of this is Search Engine Optimization-related per se, you can increase your Search Engine Optimizationsimply by networking through YouTube. Whenever a friend uses a video on their website or blog they may, and you can make it available through your profile, decide to link to your website or blog. When used as a networking tool, YouTube can become another method of increasing your Search Engine Optimization benefits. Personalization will go a long way to helping you do that better.

Wow! Andy Beal whipped out the Bible on Steve Rubel.

Of course, it was warranted. Rubel is all over Search Engine Optimization experts about using social media.

What I don’t get is what Uncle Sam and the Good Book have to do with Search Engine Optimization or social media marketing. OK, I do understand Beal’s scripture banging a bit. But what is the deal with Uncle Sam at the top of Rubel’s blog post? Is he telling us it’s unpatriotic to engage in Search Engine Optimization or to engage in social media marketing as search engine optimization?

Just listen to Rubel’s snarky mandates:

Search engine optimization professionals of late seem poised to take over blogs, digg, StumbleUpon and other sites with a range of tactics, some legit, others more questionable with the intent of building Google Juice and nothing more.

To be clear, I do not object to the way that blogs, digg links and Wikipedia rank highly in search results. What does get me hot and bothered is when consultants and bloggers propose launching such an initiatives solely for influencing search. Search Engine Optimization, like word of mouth, should be a byproduct outcome, not a primary objective.

But the Search Engine Optimization shenanigans for the sake of SEO has to stop. If you’re going to play in our sandbox, follow the community’s (unwritten) rules.

I’ve always had a problem with unwritten rules. If they’re rules, why not just write them down? Let’s codify them so that we all know how to break them more easily.

So Rubel is pretty clear: SEOs performing social media marketing for the primary purpose of achieving Search Engine Optimization results are anathema. Uhhh, I disagree, but that’s his opinion. I like the way Beal has answered him, however:

Oh come off it Steve. What about the multitude of PR firms that flood social media with company profiles of their clients–all with the sole intent of building their brand recognition. They want to “appear” as if they’re engaging their customers, but really they’re just jumping in so they can figure out how to push their brand on users.

Steve Rubel is right. He’s not the only one that feels that the way he does. But Beal is right as well. He’s not the only one who feels the way he does. There are plenty of blackhat SEOs out there making the rest of us look bad, but this really isn’t about blackhat Search Engine Optimization. It is about any type of Search Engine Optimization. Rubel says, in one breath, that he doesn’t mind Diggs and other social media getting Google juice, but he does mind people pursuing Search Engine Optimization results through those media. Well, if there is Google juice to be had then people will pursue it. It’s human nature. You can not like it all you want, but there is clear Search Engine Optimization benefit from some forms of social media marketing. It isn’t exploiting the media to seek out the benefits. It’s just plain smart.

With all the talk about Microsoft acquiring Yahoo, Yahoo acquiring somebody else, AOL wanting a piece of Yahoo pie, and Google sniffing the behind it can’t get, you might be wondering what to make of all this noise. I know I am.

There does appear to be some shuffling going on. Just within Yahoo itself, there is some asset maneuvering - acquisitions, resettings, layoffs, etc. Microsoft is looking to make a big move. Some say they will get Yahoo and others say they will buy more Facebook. Some say they just want something and will get whatever they want. Meanwhile, Google continues to dominate.

I think the cold, hard truth is the future is hard to predict. Next to impossible. But if I were to gather up the mojo to make a prediction, I’d say the most likely scenario for the future of search is that it will merge with social media.

I know, I know; it sounds crazy. These two worlds - search and social media - seem to be two separate worlds within the universe of cyberspace and Search Engine Optimization. You’ll find search kings who hate social media and social media queens who despise search engines. Then there’s the rest of us, trying to make the best of both tools. I think in the long run your big players in both markets will see the potential in combining the two for maximum user experience.

Microsoft already owns a small part of Facebook. Both Google and Yahoo and reaching for their pieces of the social media pie. Yahoo has del.icio.us, but is that enough? Rumors have started about Google and Yahoo wanting Bebo. Google has a deal going with MySpace. It’s just a matter of time before the two worlds merge completely. Then what?

For the past year-and-a-half about all you’ve heard is social media, social media, social media. Either it’s StumbleUpon, or it’s Facebook, or it’s Digg. Now it’s MySpace.

The once wacky hangout for high school kids with nothing better to do is now developing its own development center. The strange this is that back in November of last year MySpace and Google announced that they were partnering in a join social application called OpenSocial. With MySpace stretching out to improve its social networking capabilities and partnering with Google - in fact, all the search engines now seem to be interested in social media of some kind - it only makes sense that the search engines and the popular social media sites will start figuring out ways to work together to increase member benefits and improve user experience. The big question is what will that look like?

Google now owns YouTube. Yahoo! owns del.icio.us. MSN adCenter is partnering with the Wall Street Journal. Ask has 3D. Google has universal search. The race is on to get social media and search engine optimization mixed together in some fashion.

If natural language search ever catches on, and I think it’s just a matter of time, then I say watch out. Web 3.0 will be at our doorsteps before we can say Google. I’m already all google-eyed over it.

Jane Copland at SEOmoz doesn’t like seeing Diggs in the SERPs. I’m actually of two minds on this one.

On the one hand, I can see her point. If I, as a searcher, find information that has been Dugg then I have to click on the Digg page in the SERP then click on the source link in Digg to get to the original source. It’s two steps. On the other hand, my experience has been that those Digg results are for Diggs that are popular and not just Dugg once or twice. That means that either they are older Diggs or recent Diggs that are very popular. If they are older and just hanging around then I don’t want to see them because they likely are not relevant, or at least not recent enough to be good sources of information. On the other hand, if it is a recent Digg that is very popular then I could be finding information that is a good source of information that I likely would not find otherwise because the original source was not SEOd well.

OK, so there are two hands of the first hand. Now there are two hands of the second hand, which makes for four hands.

Second hand: From an SEO perspective, I’d like to see my original page ranking above Digg. Who wouldn’t? I worked hard to SEO it and now I’ve got an aggregated source beating me in the rankings for my own content. That’s not good. On the other hand (Hand No. 4), this could be telling me that I didn’t do a good enough job SEOing my content. I really should take another look at it and see if I can improve the SEO of the original content. But then (Hand No. 5?), maybe the search engines do need to tweak their algorithms. If Digg outranking a lot of sites for useful content then maybe the algorithms are weighted toward age factors and authority sites too much. If that is the case then Jane’s argument of canonical sources vs. aggregators is right on.

OK, now how many fingers am I holding behind my back (on all hands).

Early bird Aaron Wall started the day telling Yahoo! how to run its business. He actually made some pretty suggestions on ways that Yahoo! can improve its brand and take back some of that market share it has lost to Google over the years. But one point stood out to me - in fact, it stepped up and kicked me right between the legs.

Let users comment on search results AND on listings in search results. Controversy surrounding this will lead to more people talking about and evaluating Yahoo! Search for quality.

I can’t help but think what an explosive buzz that would create to allow searchers to comment on search results. There have already been search engines, or aggregators, that allow people to vote on results. Aftervote comes to mind. I wonder if that is where Aaron Wall got his idea from?

Anyway, while Yahoo! wouldn’t be the first search engine to implement commenting on search (Aftervote also includes this feature), they would be the first major search engine to have that feature should they implement it. I doubt that they will. Yahoo! has never been an innovator. They have always been a market follower, even in the days when they told Google founders that they search technology wasn’t good enough for Yahoo! That proved to be the biggest mistake in search history.

I liked Yahoo! as a directory. These days it’s hard to tell they even own a directory. It isn’t all that prominent. But neither is their search feature, which is prominent in the usual sense of the word, but it isn’t prominent in practice - and that’s what matters.

If any of the major search engines actually went social - I mean, really social - then it would be all over. Social media is where the game is at right now. Nearly all of the top sites online these days are some kind of social media. All a search engine would need to do is add a comments feature and a voting system to their search results and all the others would, by the rules of survival, have to follow. But will it be Yahoo!? I wouldn’t hold my breath.

Most Internet marketers place social media marketing in a category all by itself, separate from SEO. That’s fine as long as you realize there are distinct SEO benefits from social media marketing, especially social bookmarking.

I’ve noticed that when I bookmark certain blog posts that I will rise in search engine rankings for the targeted keywords based on how many other people at the bookmarking site agree with me on the bookmark-worthiness of the post. Probably the most effective social bookmarking sites for SEO purposes are StumbleUpon, Digg, and del.icio.us, but I haven’t tested them all. In the Internet marketing field, Sphinn is a good one as well.

When it comes to social bookmarking, the primary SEO benefit is content on your page. Whether you are bookmarking a web page or a blog post, you still want your content to be SEOd properly just as you always do. But bookmarking your content can go a long way to increasing your search positioning.

I noticed this because I wrote about a particular topic and saw a blog post rise to page 1 in the SERPs for the key phrase that I was targeting. Then, other bloggers started writing about the same topic. They pushed me down to page 2 because they had higher site authority, age factor, back links, and several other SEO points going in their favor. That’s fine; those are the rules of the game. But I noticed something else happen when I bookmarked my post.

Just one bookmark won’t help much. But other people started voting on my blog post and as more people voted on my blog post the higher in the SERPs I rose. I didn’t get enough votes to push me back up to page 1, but I did rise three or four positions on page 2 as a result of a few meager bookmarking votes. I could just imagine what would have happened had I had a thousand bookmarking votes.

WebPro News ran a story from Lee Odden on search marketing trends:

What will be the big stories in search marketing in 2008?

* Heavier Integration of User Data and Personalized Search in Standard Results (21%)
* Mobile Search Explodes (15%)
* Death of SEO as we know it (13%)
* Social Media Marketing Explodes (12%)
* Social Media Marketing Jumps the Shark (8%)
* Google Winning/Losing Market Share in a Big Way (6%)
* Social Networks as Search Platforms (6%)
* Record Search Marketing Budget Levels (5%)
* Increasing Searcher Sophistication (4%)
* New Paid Search Channels (4%)
* Search Engine Consolidation (3%)
* Death of Universal Search (3%)
* “Real” Solutions to Click Fraud (1%)
* Search Marketing Agency Consolidation (0%)

This is an interesting list. I particularly like “Google Winning/Losing Market Share in a Big Way.” I take it that so many people think Google will gain market share and so many others think it will lose. I really take issue with the people who say Google will lose market share. To whom? There is no other search engine on the horizon who even comes close to having anything that can take share away from Google. Ask.com waged its campaign to get share from Google and ended up taking some away from Yahoo! and MSN. Recently, Google gained and all other lost. Yahoo! has been playing catch up for years. In order for any new start ups to wage war on Google and win, they will have to fight a strong, hard uphill battle against consumer loyalty. Fat chance.

Then there’s the “end of the world as we know it” crowd. SEO will die, SEO will die, SEO will die; so they chant from their front row seats in the bathroom stalls. Funny stuff.

What I agree with most on this list is the social networks as platforms prediction and search engine consolidation. We’ve seen that last one before. MSN Live is struggling, several smaller search engines can’t compete, and Google just keeps pulling out ahead. There will definitely be some acquisitions in search real soon.

But even more interesting than that is the concept of social networks becoming search platforms. If that happens, it will likely happen through partnerships. I can see Yahoo! and MSN partnering with Facebook or LinkedIn to a mutually beneficial and satisfying relationship. Google will likely just buy a social network and turn it into another vertical search to be included in its dominance strategy. At any rate, I believe search is only going to get better.

Social marketing is huge and to give you an idea of how huge take a look at the following passage from Web Pro News:

When it comes to advertising revenues, eMarketer estimates that global online social network ad spending will grow from $1.2 billion in 2007 to $2.2 billion in 2008. Worldwide spending will hit $4 billion in 2011.

In the U.S., spending is projected to rise to $1.6 million in 2008, from $920 million in 2007. “MySpace and Facebook together receive more than 70% of all US social network ad spending,” says Ms. Williamson. “And they are hard at work to convince marketers to allot more of their budgets to social network advertising.”

MySpace and Facebook are obviously the big players in the social advertising market, but don’t discount the other options. What is to say that the next MySpace or Facebook cannot come out of any of the new social networking sites that are on their way up at this point in time. The benefits of Facebook and MySpace is that they provide a large “captive” audience and targeted advertising. If you are looking for a social market, these are perhaps the best markets at this time. With social networking options coming from both Yahoo and Google, there should be a range of similarly attractive options on the way. With social marketing it never hurts to play the field.

If you are a StumbleUpon user then you are probably already aware of SUs new toolbar, version 3.15. If not, then I’d suggest that you download it right away. If you’re not a StumbleUpon user then I’d recommend you start using it, and StumbleUpon’s new toolbar is the reason why.

Seriously, this is the coolest new tool. The toolbar will tell you when one of your friends has a new stumble. Not only that, but when you perform a Google search, you’ll be told on the SERP how many StumbleUpon users reviewed the websites that appear on the SERP. All you have to do is one click and you’ll be taken to StumbleUpon to see the user reviews. Furthermore, the toolbar will tell you if any of your friends stumbled a particular result. That makes stumbling all the more fun and all the more essential.

Thanks to the StumbleUpon toolbar, you can now optimize your website for stumbling. Here are a few tips to help you make your website more Stumbleable:

• Make sure your web pages have great headlines
• Add a graphic enhancement or photo near the top of your web page (Stumblers love photos)
• Be entertaining
• Provide useful information of interest to Stumblers
• Lay out your web pages that they are easy to read

If you have a web page that you think Stumblers will love, Stumble it yourself or ask a friend to Stumble it. Once a web page has been Stumbled one time, it becomes better Stumble material and it will be added to the StumbleUpon toolbar rotation. That means the website is more likely to be seen by more users. By coupling great SEO with excellent StumbleUpon mojo you’ll make your websites better all the way around - good for search engines and good for viral marketing too.

(Source) “Yahoo is ready with a new social-networking service that would let you update and play around with your friends’ profiles.”

With Yahoo! and Google both getting into the social media arena, does that mean SEO is dead? Will search engine optimization be replaced entirely by social media marketing? Already, you can see people online who succeed primarily from their social marketing efforts, with their SEO acting as a supplement to the social marketing. Will that the trend of the future?

I don’t think so. It’s been said before, and every once in awhile someone else will pop in and start telling us all why SEO is dead or dying and will soon be replaced by social media marketing. It’s usually done by someone who isn’t very good at SEO. Here are five reasons why SEO isn’t dying:

• The search engines are built on SEO. If SEO dies, Google dies
• At least 80% of traffic for most websites come through organic search (re: SEO)
• SEO and social marketing are different strategies that compliment each other
• SEO is the underpinning for other forms of online marketing such as PPC, directory listings, and blogging
• SEO came first, it will die last

SEO is far from dead. Every day we hear about a new search engine that is revamping search to make it better. Most of them are just blowing smoke, but the fact that so many people are interested in improving search technology is proof that SEO is nowhere close to being dead.

I learned about it from Andy Beal at Marketing Pilgrim. Gooruze is a new online community for Internet marketers. And it looks pretty cool. This is the part that I like:

Using the same robust platform that already powers the successful Minti.com network, Gooruze brings a blend of Digg, Sphinn, Webmaster World, and SEOmoz. The community launches with a fine group of “Founding Gooruze” (of which I am one of them) but offers a level playing field for all members.

Those are Andy’s words. Now you can’t beat the services mentioned above - from Minti to SEOmoz. And if there is another service that utilizes the same platform as these then that service has built in merit. Gooruze, however, is more than just a nameless platform behind a cool new website. The great thing about it you can actually network with industry leaders like Andy Beal, who seem all too willing to spend a little time to help those a little further down on the social scale. That alone is a benefit worth any amount of time or money.

I’m heading over to Gooruze right now to set up my profile and start networking today.

This question pops up often: Which is better, SEO or Social Marketing?

Well, I say, define better.

It is hard to imagine doing any kind of Internet marketing without SEO. The Web, essentially, has been built on it. In 1995, it wasn’t called SEO, but people were building websites and getting them indexed according to keywords on their web pages and meta tags. From there, the developments came and eventually Google introduced link quality and relevance. SEO is free and relatively easy to understand, though it is hard work. I wouldn’t ignore it.

But don’t think that just because SEO is the natural platform for the Internet that social marketing isn’t necessary. In the same way that the Web was built on SEO, it was also built on social media. What I mean is, the Internet is intrinsically social. It always has been.

Websites don’t exist in a vacuum. There have always been communities online where people could gather, communicate, and get to know each other. The specific media have changed over time. But it’s always been available. Forums, for instance, have been around for a long time - forever and day, it seems. Online Web communities like Geocities and Angelfire allowed people to build free websites and network through those communities. Today, people do virtually the same thing through social sites like MySpace and Facebook.

So I would say build your Internet marketing plan around both of these necessities. Just as you cannot market your business online with SEO, you can’t market yourself without social marketing either. You need both to truly succeed.