How Could the Social Graph Work?

Last time we covered linking and how the search engines use linking to understand more about your website; both from a “popularity” perspective and content perspective. So how would a social graph compare and will it take over the link graph? Although I cannot answer these questions 100% because I do not have insider knowledge from the search engines…I do have ideas of how it may work.

Overall I believe the way search engines gather and use the data will be similar. The more related and reputable people discussing, mentioning, and linking to specific sites, brands etc., the higher the likelihood that those “links” will affect search engine visibility.

A few years ago, social bookmarking was all the talk about how the social world would be used similar to linking. For the most part, that never happened. Yes…you could get traffic, they provided little if any link value. Nofollows were added because of spam. Yes, spammers ruin pretty much everything, they also change the way SEO is performed.

So where have we come since social bookmarking? Well, everyone and their grandparents have a Facebook account, Google created one of the largest social networks nearly overnight with Google Buzz, many people still have a hard time grasping the idea of Twitter (but use it anyways), and real-time search using social media has become a reality not just speculation…and yes, social bookmarking is still around.

Again, I come back to the thought that the technology behind the social graph will be similar to the link graph. People share nearly everything through social media. Some things extremely small and unimportant, sometimes breaking news stories, sometimes the latest music trends, etc. Whatever it may be, there is text or a link track what people are talking about. Whether a user is using Twitter usernames, brand names or a shortened URL, the search engines will have the technology to compile that data. Real-time search may even be the foundation of the social graph. Most people think Google real-time search was a flop and takes away the integrity of search results, which whether or not this is true, Google is using incredibly advanced technology to make it happen. Once a search engine can understand what people are talking about or sharing across various social landscapes, it can implement that data into algorithms.

The link graph will not go away entirely. As Rand at SEOMoz mentioned on a whiteboard Friday, not everything is shared through social media. There are just certain types of things that you don’t mention or link to on Twitter and Facebook, yet this is information that still needs to be ranked.

To sum everything up. I do not believe the social graph will completely remove the need for inbound links for something to be visible within the search engines. Although, I do believe as more “partnerships” are made between search engines and social media venues, the more that information will be used to determine where something should rank organically (not including real-time search). It will be important for a business/website to be involved with social media in some way. Have a Facebook page with all of your information and a link to your site, fill out your Twitter profile completely, and just become active. I do believe in the future your social popularity, good or bad, will come into play and directly correlate with SEO. There will be challenges with Spam, but this is a obstacle search engines, users and marketing professionals have to deal with. This may not be the perfect explanation of how the social graph will come into play, because I just don’t have all of that information. Some of this is speculation, but the usage and technology is already in place. It will be surprising if the search engines don’t take advantage of that to make organic search more relevant.

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Understanding Links

How often do you hear, SEO is all about linking (aside from good content of course). I hear this all the time from  clients, they understand they need links to their site, but do they know why? Furthermore, what role will links play when if search engines fully adopt the social graph? I for one am not very fond of the “act” of link building. I find it to be tedious, stressful and mind-numbing. But, I do not think it will go away completely.

Let’s talk about links.  Without technical jargon (or as little as possible), the original purpose for following the link graph system was for the search engines to understand what a site was about, as well as use them as a reputation gauge. Anchor text became so important because it said, “hey Google, if Googlebot follows this link they will be visiting a site that provides information about the best hot dogs in Chicago”…or whatever the anchor text might say. Googlebot would then use the reputation of that site to determine whether or not to take their word for it that it is the best hot dog in all of Chicago. If coming from a reputable source, this anchor text would be much better than “visit them here”, because that text essentially provides little value. Hopefully after Googlebot crawls the link and the content on the site correlates to the anchor text. This is how a link is used to provide some background of the website to Googlebot or a user before/as they visit it.

In terms of reputation, search engines would take into consideration how many websites were linking to a specific  website while taking into consideration the reputation of those websites as well. To put this in an everyday scenario: a bunch of people are always recommending Josh Curcio for some reason or another. Ambassadors, Deans of Universities, reputable people within the SEO industry, and some guy that has been following Phish around for the last 15 years. While the recommendations from the ambassadors and deans would provide some clout, ultimately the recommendations from reputable people within my industry would go a much further if the recommendation is related to SEO. The guy following Phish around for the last several years may be saying wonderful things about me, but everyone knows he says that about everyone and is not the most trustworthy source; therefore, his recommendation is taken with a grain of salt.

Linking is the same way. Yes, it is important to have various links, but ultimately the highest quality and most relevant links will provide the most benefit. Links from unrelated and/or unreliable sources that are linked to every site the webmaster comes across will provide little or no weight and could even harm your ranking (Link Farms).

That covers how a search engine uses the anchor text of a link as well as the volume, reputation and relevancy of inbound links to aid in your search engine visibility. In part 2 I will discuss how adopting the social graph could change our focus on link building.

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I find this quite interesting and somewhat amusing. This was pointed out by Amit Singhal of Google, in a post called “This Stuff is Tough”.

What does Bing have to say?

And let’s go out on a limb here…Alta Vista?

I find it quite interesting that the most popular search engine only ranks in the top 3 in Alta Vista. I guess this proves that popularity only gets you so far in the world of SEO. No offense Google, I still love you.

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Google announced today that they will include real-time search results in their search engine that will also work on iphone and android devices. Google real-time search results will show the most current news and information for your searches. They announced the real-time search results will include news, Tweets, blogs and more. If people are still unsure of the importance of Twitter for business, this should convince them. Twitter will be a great way for you to communicate with the world in real-time.

Also announced today was Google Goggles. Google Goggles allows you to search for things visually. Using your Android smartphone you are able to snap a picture and pull up search results based on the picture you snapped. This is very exciting! I have already installed it on my Droid!

These new technologies released by Google will present a new, but exciting challenge for web marketers. What is next to come in the world of search?

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In today’s busy world, not everyone can check their analytics on a daily basis to ensure all is going well on the site. If your site is down…hopefully one of your loyal visitors will notify you, but that is not always the case. To help you monitor your website traffic to ensure nothing fishy is going on, Google has released Intelligence in Beta form within Google Analytics. Intelligence allows you to create custom alerts on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis. For example, if you want an alert when your site receives no visits on any particular day, you can create an alert that will send you an email notifying you of the situation. This will give you a slight jump on contacting your hosting provider before you lose too much traffic.

Google has also provided several alert templates that are very easy to copy/modify in your alert list. Some of these alert templates include:

• Total visits decreases by more than 50%
• Unique visitors decreases by more than 50%
• Average bounce rate increases by more than 50%
• Goal conversion rate decreases by more than 50%

In less drastic cases as mentioned in my previous example, many of these pre-made templates can be very useful. For example if you see a drastic change in a specific goal day-over-day, there may be something wrong with your checkout process, email sign-up sheet, etc. depending on your conversions. To make things even easier, Google has created automatic alerts that will send you alerts if atypical traffic patterns arise as long as you opt-in to receive these alerts.

This is a great free tool to use as an aid in monitoring your everyday web traffic and site usage. I have incurred any problems with intelligence, but remember it is still in Beta and should not be an excuse to completely ignore your metrics.

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Social media tools are really a time-saver…and they can help you avoid getting side-tracked. Website Magazine released some data regarding the most popular Twitter clients available. Without further delay, the list:

As I have said in previous posts, I am partial to TweetDeck. Although not uncommon anymore, TweetDeck allows management of multiple accounts, Facebook status updates, pictures and videos, easy RT, direct message and more. My favorite “tool” on-the-go is still Zannel. Although not considered an actual “tool”, it is very easy to update your status from a mobile device while including pictures and video with Zannel. Picking a tool for your social media marketing campaign is an important, but fun step!

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In the past, social network demographics were mostly made up of 18-25 year olds, but those days are quickly changing. While the 18-25 demographic still has the highest rate of users, others are quickly growing. Check out these recent statistics provided be eMarketer.

What does this mean for marketers? I think many businesses have put social media marketing on the side burner because they did not believe their target demographic was active on the sites. It turns out that these businesses are most likely wrong. Although these statistics show changes over the past 30 days, the older age demographics have been turning to Facebook for the past several months.

Aside from age, businesses also avoid social media marketing because it is difficult to monetize its effectiveness. It is important to look outside the box with social media marketing. Companies are often set on seeing hard conversions because they can see the money coming in immediately, but soft conversions are key in the social networks. Pay attention to activity, followers, re-tweets, etc. Like never before advertisers can communicate with their audience on an extremely personal level. And while they may not turn into immediate sales, your company is building brand awareness, trust, loyalty and you will receive constant feedback from your customers.

If your company is staying away from social networks because of either of these reasons, it is time to reconsider. With an appropriate social media marketing strategy, this type of inbound marketing can pay off tremendously down the road. Start building your strategy today.

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Have you tried the ‘inspired search’ engine, Spezify? Don’t worry, I hadn’t either until the other day. Spezify gathers their information from all media types and displays the results in a unique way. I don’t see Spezify as the next big thing in search…but it is pretty cool. It’s like taking universal search to the max. If you have a couple free minutes, check out the somewhat visually appealing, but not that extremely useful search engine, Spezify.

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As you probably know, people spend a lot of time online. More importantly, these people are likely your customers. As the popularity of user generated content grows, the more chance your customers will have the chance to find reviews of your product or service. The bad news? People are more likely to post their comments of feelings if they had a bad experience than if they had a good experience.

You can’t stop them from creating the content, so the key is to monitor it. Anything has the chance to go viral, if it does and you haven’t taken the proper steps to resolve the issue, things can get ugly. Last month the Marketing Pilgrim made me aware of a video that went viral on YouTube. A music video called ‘United Breaks Guitars’ portrays an experience musician, Dave Carroll, experienced while flying United Airlines. Currently there are nearly 5 MILLION views for the video. This does not look good for the Airline. Also, it is important to understand, you don’t have to be a business the size of United for someone to make a video or post a blog about you. Even if it doesn’t go viral, you still may be losing business over bad product reviews.

So how do you handle something like this? First you have to be aware of it. Make sure you set up Google Alerts for your brand name or product name. This is an easy and free step in monitoring your online presence. Also make sure you monitor your brand name and products on micro-blogging sites such as Twitter. It is quite probable that before something goes viral there will be a Tweet about it somewhere. Second, make sure you handle the situation itself properly. In this case, United Airlines refused to pay for the broken guitar. David Carroll already had the attention of viewers and decided to post a follow up to the video. I’m not convinced that United understands the power of a viral video…and now a viral figure. This will not put United out of business, but a video like this could have enough power to force a small or medium size business to close their doors.

Bottom line is a business must monitor their online reputation. For a small business it could take less than 10 minutes a week, while companies the size of United will have to provide much more time to online reputation management. Comcast began monitoring their online reputation in the early stages of Twitter. They obviously recognized the importance and handled the situation in a timely and professional manner. Instead of further negative exposure, the blogs posts about Comcast quickly turned positive.

It is important to understand you can’t resolve every single issue that is posted online about your product, but a quick response to serious ones can certainly help. For more information about online reputation management contact us today.

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A deal between the #2 and #3 search engines was announced today. Microsoft and Yahoo! have agreed to a 10 year deal, hoping to compete with search giant, Google. Some of the details about of the deal are:

• Shortly after the deal is finalized in early 2010, Yahoo! results will show ‘Powered by Bing’
• Yahoo! will continue to receive 88% of the search-generated ad revenue for the initial 5 years
• The deal will allow Yahoo to focus on other areas such as display, the mobile web, and audience properties
• Bing should be able to improve search results, as they will be able to gather information from the newly acquired Yahoo! users
• Everyone at Ask is very happy [RT @dannysullivan over at ask.com, they're prepping the "we're #3" banners]
• Danny Sullivan also provided a great chart at Search Engine Land detailing more changes.

My Question is Obviously…What Will This Do for Search?

At this point much of this is up in the air, but I do have some guesses. It’s a given that focus on Yahoo! optimization will move to Bing. Because they will providing the Y! organic results, optimization should be the same. I also assume that there will be overall changes in Bing optimization practices as the technologies of the 2 engines will apparently be blended. As technologies change, search professionals must adjust. As far as market share goes, I still doubt much will be taken from Google, but I do think that the general public will see this as a positive given the general idea that 2 heads are better than 1. I predict that some people will try switching away from Google simply because of the merger, which may stick given the new Bing look.

As for PPC, I am unsure. According to the Search Engine Land chart (which will be continually updated throughout the day), advertisers may have to purchase ads at both Yahoo! and Bing although Yahoo! will be targeting ‘premium’ users. For the most part, I don’t see a huge problem with this, as it really isn’t a change. There will still be users at both engines, so if you want to reach them through paid advertisements, it’s a necessity. I don’t foresee much of a change in CPCs, at least in the near future. '

What About Google?

Google is not the type to just sit back and let this all happen without some sort of fight. I assume they will have changes or ‘news’ to release in the near future. They do not want their users to have the perception that Bing results will be better because they are now combining technologies with Yahoo!. As I stated before, I don’t expect them to lose much, if any market share because of this deal. I assume that our potential clients will still come to us saying ‘I want my site to be found on Google’ not, ‘I want my site to be listed on the top search engines including Google, Yahoo!, Bing, and Ask’. Only time will tell, but Google always has something up their sleeve…even if it is not evil.

What else?

Well the first thing that comes to my head…Is Yahoo! really ready for this?

Honestly, I don’t think anyone can really be ready for that. But, we at protocol 80 hope the best for Bing and Yahoo!

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