The jist of the conversation (my wife’s with her pals) is that having vigilantly monitored the regularity, quality of content, hits, sociability, links and a host of other potential influencing factors, the sites in discussion moved nowhere. Or bombed. Or rose like a phoenix from the depths of the top 100.

Well, apart from wanting to offer these ladies, and their impressive monitoring capabilities, an SEO job working for me, it struck me that SEO and blogs still, in the main, share a pretty tenuous link. Sure, it is much easier nowadays to produce your own web site. It also pretty easy to make the damn thing reasonably attractive and WordPress et al, do provide the means to optimise pages properly for passing traffic.

But the thing still oft missing is a real understanding of why. Why do some pages rank better than others? Why does my competitors’ sites get more traffic than mine? Why after writing 10 blog posts in a week, do I not move up the rankings?

To me there is the biggest why of all. Why aren’t bloggers trying harder to aim for relevant organic traffic, not related to their social circle? This traffic is, of course, enormous in comparison to a relatively confined network of friends and competitors.

The title of this blog makes reference to Social Media and Web 2.0, which have both had a dramatic influence on the web development and internet in general over recent times. Everything is now much more accessible, our friends are easier to reach on a regular basis, our own views are effortlessly published into the ether and reaching like-minded people is a doddle.

But this new found ability brings with it the problem to which I refer. An inherent lack of understanding of what is required to push their blogs and ideas forward to the next level. This is not to suggest a lack of intelligence, far from it (my wife’s friends and fellow bloggers are all incredibly talented writers) it’s just they haven’t been taught the whys and wherefores. It’s the nature of business, you can’t be jack of all trades.

In conclusion

Social media is a powerful tool in marketing and is becoming one of the first areas many companies look to spend their marketing budget. My wife is a testament to that,  CLICK HERE to read about her all expenses paid trip to Walt Disney World. SMO helps build a brand by giving your customer the chance to tell their friends and colleagues just how good your service is (you had better make sure it is, of course!).

But to generate more sustained organic website traffic, SMO should be conducted in association with good traditional SEO. And that’s the part of the process our bloggers and website self builders need to take a little more professional advice on.


EDIT (09:00am the morning after this post was written). My wife read this post. But only this point. The references and SEO/SMO outlines I added for valuable insight went unread, until I pointed out she had just absolutely proven the case in point.

FOR REFERENCE – (as described by Wikipedia)

Web 2.0

Web 2.0 refers to a perceived second generation of web development and design, that facilitates communication, secure information sharing, interoperability, and collaboration on the World Wide Web. Web 2.0 concepts have led to the development and evolution of web-based communities, hosted services, and applications such as social-networking sites, video-sharing sites, wikis, blogs, and folksonomies.

My own view, for what it’s worth, is that Web 2.0 is only essentially an accessibility related ‘tag’. There isn’t anything ground breaking in the way that assisted the dot com phenomenon to leap on us in the mid 90′s.  Sure, it has had a big impact on social culture and increasing use of blogs, wikis, and social networking technologies, but the dot com boom and subsequent bust in 2000 will not be repeated.

Social Media

Social media is content created by people using highly accessible and scalable publishing technologies. At its most basic sense, social media is a shift in how people discover, read and share news, information and content. It’s a set of technologies, tools and platforms facilitating the discovery, participation and sharing of content. It is transforming monologues (one to many) into dialogues (many to many) and the democratization of information, transforming people from content readers into publishers. Social media has become extremely popular because it allows people to connect in the online world to form relationships for personal and business.

Social Media Marketing

Social media marketing is an engagement with online communities to generate exposure, opportunity and sales. The number-one advantage is generating exposure for the business, followed by increasing traffic and building new business partnerships.

Common social media marketing tools include Twitter, Blogs, LinkedIn, Facebook and YouTube.

In the context of Internet marketing, social media refers to a collective group of web properties whose content is primarily published by users, not direct employees of the property (e.g. the vast majority of video on YouTube is published by non-YouTube employees).

Social media optimization

(SMO) is a set of methods for generating publicity through social media, online communities and community websites.

Social media marketing has two important aspects:

(1) Adding links to services such as Twitter, Digg, Reddit and Del.icio.us so that their pages can be easily ‘saved and submitted’ to and for these services.
(2) Building ways that fans of a brand or company can promote it themselves in multiple online social media venues.

Search Engine Optimisation

See the SEO page on this website.

Taking the plunge to retain a specialist SEO is a big decision. It provides you with the potential to dramatically improve your site and cut down the time it takes for your site to climb the search results ladder. But, an irresponsible SEO, can also cause damage to your site and reputation that is difficult to recover from.

Before beginning your search for an SEO, you should strive to become an educated consumer and familiarise yourself with how search engines work. Taking this time will not only give you an insight into how difficult the process is, but also ensure you’re better prepared when discussing the strategy behind SEO that is specific to your business.

Good search engine optimization should always be used in conjunction with your existing marketing. It is not a replacement for your tried and tested routes to market, it is complementary.

A lot of businesses believe search engine optimization is a simple process of choosing keywords and including them in your website. Well that’s a start. Good SEO takes into consideration numerous other factors such as; what popular phrases and keywords are searched for in your industry, link building to aid PageRank™, ensuring regular and accurate spidering by the search engine bots. Well optimized websites are built on excellent coding, structure and presentation.

But always remember. Content is king.

Providing the visitor with exactly what they are looking for on the page they click through to, is paramount. People who are performing a search are already interested in the services and products you offer; this makes them a hot lead and a potentially active buyer, which will increase your conversion rates and ultimately the success of your website.

Striving for rank on broad search terms (for smaller businesses) is the kind of toil that makes big SEO companies lots of money. You must optimise your site according to the size of your site and budget. It is a fruitless task trying to take a new site, with no history, with a small budget and optimising it for the most generic search in its field. It is simply unrealistic.

Breaking your product/service down into more specific search terms such as ‘brown leather, 3 seater sofa’, as opposed to ‘sofa’ is achievable and ultimately more beneficial. It’s widely recognised that this kind of searcher is more likely to buy as they know exactly what they are searching for. This is known as a long-tail and generally traffic from these terms converts at a much higher rate.

Good SEO takes longer to deliver high search results, because it is a natural process, especially when compared to PPC search marketing, but the results are greater and ultimately cheaper than PPC.

Drive, measure, and optimise traffic by using one of the following online marketing solutions…

• Affiliate Marketing
• Banner Advertising
• Conversion Tracking
• Email Marketing
• Search Engine Marketing (SEM)
• Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)
• Viral Marketing
• Social Media Marketing (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn)
• Web Analytics

Effective Search Engine Optimisation is a creative process in its own right. Finding new ways to rank a website for its desired keywords and traffic is the job at hand.

So, ADD CREATIVE SEO to the equation and watch your results soar.