One of the reasons for attending SMX was to hear close-up some more opinions on the role of social in search engine optimization.
Gillian Muessig put this eloquently and I’ll paraphrase: five years ago every internet journey began with a Google search. Now, many trips begin within a social network then migrate to a Google search when that’s necessary. So you might ask your Facebook friends to suggest a holiday destination or a web designer before you start Googling.
The effect of this is to shift some power away from we clever pants SEO people who understand how to build links, to the regular people who surf the web. In Gillian’s words, ‘your momma don’t link. She don’t know how’. But she knows how to Facebook.
Another strong thread in the conference was the flag-waving for Google Plus. A no-brainer, since G+ content goes straight into Google’s index. Some also say this content will enjoy privileged SEO status. In some areas I think this is likely.
Google already weights Twitter links favourably for “breaking news” topics. I can imagine them saying, we’re getting good quality tech content shared in Google Plus, so we’ll weight that for tech searches. If Google can persuade other communities to jump in, and the content is good quality, they’ll privilege that as well. They’ll use the SEO community as one of their communication channels.
See you on Google Plus.
