Get a social strategy or lose out on search

Before long, SEO will not be enough to secure high-ranking search results. The amount of approval a brand wins on social media will also be a crucial factor.

/r/l/g/gplus.jpg

Search used to be relatively simple. Although Google and Bing have tinkered many times with the algorithms that determine a site’s position on their results pages, the underlying principle has remained constant. The more people link to content, the further it will be pushed towards the top of search results.

With the rise of social media, however, people are increasingly discovering content not via internet search but through networks such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.

Search engines are evolving to catch up. Google has launched Google+ to invitees and is expected to open it to the public soon. Bing is experimenting with social search, combining Twitter conversations with general search results, and its findings are likely to be fed into a full-scale launch in the near future.

Google+ is widely seen as the result of Twitter refusing to sell to Google and Facebook appointing Bing as its search engine. The moves have prompted Google to end its deal with Twitter to index real-time posts and launch its own means of collating what people are discussing so that the information can be displayed in search results.

Google+ allows users to build up ’circles’ of friends and contacts, which can be divided into discrete groups, such as school pals and work colleagues. It enables users to ’like’ a page by clicking a ’+1’ icon. This is then considered when someone in their circle or another Google+ user conducts a search on that subject. So a page on mending a broken window that one of your friends found useful will be prioritised next time you turn to a Google search in need of help to replace a pane.

By pressing +1, people are helping Google to personalise search results

Google spokesperson Anoek Eckhardt explains that there are several elements to clicking the +1 icon that brands need to consider. The action influences search on three levels.

“First, +1-ing something is a public action. People you know, and potentially others, will see your +1 as an annotation when the page or ad you recommended appears in search results,” she says. “Second, by pressing +1, people are helping Google to personalise search results. You might see the pages you’ve +1-ed appear more prominently in your search results, along with a note that you’ve +1-ed them. Third, Google will incorporate clicks on +1 buttons in our ranking. As with any new ranking signal, we’ll be starting carefully.”

The weighting for +1 pages has yet to be finalised but the implication for brands is clear those which produce content that is liked will feature higher in search results for individuals and their circle of friends and contacts.

Microsoft group search manager Colm Bracken agrees that going social is the biggest change search has seen. “Search was about algorithms, but now it will also be about someone’s ’sociograph’.” He says this will make search more relevant. Consumers might see a product on a site that has been highly rated by a lot of people, but that’s not always as useful as knowing what their friends like because they know whether or not they are likely to agree with them.

/i/m/n/ok.jpg

“This is going to be a massive opportunity for people to invest in their brand proposition in social media,” says Bracken. “This will feed into improving natural search results. I can see natural search becoming all about branding, where results are improved by people liking what you are doing in social media and recommending your content, at the same time as paid-for search will be about tactical marketing.”

Lindsay Neal, SEO manager at insurance firm Swiftcover, argues that its eye-catching Iggy Pop ads exemplify the direction brands should take with their communications if you entertain people, they will share and ’like’ or ’+1’ your content and propel it up natural search results.

“It is the most exciting time natural search has seen. Brands that don’t entertain and engage their audience will struggle against competitors whose content is liked and shared.”

The potential for a virtuous circle between shared content on social media and natural search is also being explored by Viacom International Media Networks, which runs MTV.

Director of digital media Dan Patton advises brands to integrate the +1 feature now because it is already starting to make a positive difference for the broadcaster. “Social media is at the heart of everything we do at MTV,” he says. “We have massive reach on Facebook and Twitter but search still provides the largest chunk of the website audience. So we’re very interested in social search, which seems to provide the best of both worlds by giving a social authority to our search results in addition to their link authority.

“We have integrated Google +1 into mtv.co.uk and, with the help of agency VCCP Search, we are building an integrated search strategy that incorporates natural, paid and social search.”

Travel deal hunting brand Travelzoo is already integrating the +1 button. Travelzoo UK marketing manager Glyn Owen, says: “We welcome the integration of social media by search engines because we expect that both our paid and organic search listings will have improved click-through rates due to the social proof and endorsements from our subscribers.

“Having links with personalities behind them offers users something more reliable and trustworthy than SEO results from companies that spend thousands on building links. In travel, word-of-mouth is very powerful; it is a high-value, emotional purchase for consumers who have to choose between hundreds of options.”

/r/s/j/Amy.jpg

Social search also enables brands that have been proactive in social media to capitalise on the positive image they have built. This can allow newer market entrants to catch up with more established players, who have yet to launch a significant social media strategy.

Geoff Marsh, online editor at Northern & Shell, says this has been the case for OK! magazine. Its digital and social media agency, MediaCom, claims that since building up its Twitter account to more than 150,000 followers in the past year, there has been a 160% rise in natural search traffic to the site. Social media now accounts for 15% of site traffic, which should lead to further increases in natural search click-throughs.

“It’s the next logical step in search to keep up with how people are now discovering content through social media,” he says.

“We have not yet seen a major effect on our traffic as Google+ is still invite-only and Bing has yet to launch its social search. However, we’re finding that social media is allowing us to rival magazines for traffic that have been established far longer than OK!. This will be increasingly the case once mainstream search goes social.

“It’s allowing us to capitalise on the hard work we have put into social media, but you can’t rely on this alone. We’re still working hard to build up bibliographies and galleries of well-known celebrities so that we feature well for searches on relevant keywords.”

At the moment, the ramifications of Google and Bing moving into social search are not being fully experienced. This will change as Google+ goes mainstream and Bing’s social search comes to the UK in the near future.

Brands that have already invested resources in building social media equity which has led to loyal followings on the major social sites, consuming, sharing, liking and commenting on content are sure to see further dividends. They are already experiencing raised traffic levels via clicks earned through social media link sharing, but now people liking that content is to be considered by the search engines.

For those that have yet to embrace social media, the message is clear. Get a presence and develop it, or drop down the natural search results pages as rivals with loyal social media audiences find all those ’like’ and ’+1’ clicks turn into better SEO performance.

Viewpoints

/f/e/r/Jenny_Smith.jpg

Jenny Smith

Brand manager

Regis UK

We have noticed a shift away from audiences conducting generic online searches in favour of a more social way of searching. This means that, in addition to people searching more frequently on social sites such as YouTube, brands that are liked, shared or mentioned by a user’s social network are being seen as more relevant results by search engines, leading to them appearing higher up in search results than brands that a person’s social graph hasn’t engaged with.

Our creative and social media agency, Photolink Creative Group, is working to generate as much engagement as possible with the videos it produces and publishes on our YouTube channel, Facebook page and our ’Have a Great Hair Day’ blog, so that they appear in more ’social graphs’ and have a better chance of ranking in the results of the person initiating the search query.

Social search helps audiences to discover content deemed relevant by their own social connections. Content with this ’social proof’ is favoured both by the person doing the search, as they trust their peers’ opinions, and by search engines, which are wising up to our social networks and how much value we place on what they validate as ’good’.

Our videos cover a range of topics, from new hairstyles and tutorials to celebrity looks and new techniques, to appeal to as many potential viewers as possible and encourage them to like, share and engage with the content. Social search has been a key tactic in building our brand awareness and positioning Regis as a leader in fashion hair, and we would urge brands to integrate this into their own online strategies.

Since Google and Bing began including social metrics in their algorithms, a strong presence on networks such as Facebook, YouTube and Twitter has become increasingly important in gaining visibility and brand interaction against our competitors online.

/s/b/j/Jack_Wallington.jpg

Jack Wallington

Head of industry programmes

IAB

When Google+ launched, there was a flurry of excitement in the IAB office as we rushed to use our invitations. A week later I was searching for “Bavarois cream” (don’t ask) when I was drawn to a search result that had been +1-ed by a colleague. I paid no attention to any other result.

Bing is getting in on the social action too by integrating Facebook into results in the US, showing sites your friends have liked and so on. Of course, search is important outside of the main engines too, such as Twitter’s real-time search.

A Microsoft survey discovered that ’Friends and family’ was the most important source of information for respondents when making purchase decisions, at 67%, while search was the second most important at 60% (March 2011). Search has always been about getting people to their destination as quickly as possible and social media can help speed up that process by incorporating our friends’ opinions directly.

We’ve seen social media’s influence on search results grow over the past year and the integration of both media continues to amplify this impact. Now we’re on the brink of social media optimisation (SMO) becoming as important as search engine optimisation (SEO). That’s a big deal.

But there is a bigger issue. This year, on behalf of our Search Council, I’ve researched and written the IAB Search for Integration report, investigating search’s role in the wider media mix. It exposes how much we as an industry still need to learn about search’s true role alongside other media, including social. This will be the case for the foreseeable future because search will continue evolving.

Social media will play a starring role in this evolution, but search integration must be investigated holistically. By its nature, search is the most integrated medium in existence whatever you do, search will touch your business.

Viewpoint

Ed Stevenson

Managing director Europe

Marin Software

The combined power of search and social is an area marketers need to understand. Recent research by GroupM showed that consumers are 50% more likely to click on a PPC ad if they have seen a brand’s social media activity first. While social media is a standalone opportunity, it can also drive incremental revenue for search.

However, the interweaving of these channels creates a challenge around attribution. Advertisers need to move away from last-click to multi-click evaluation or they risk missing the value of social media. Search engines don’t come up with their own ideas for searches; the words that people type in come from other places, so it’s crucial to be able to measure social media’s impact on that.

The other big change is around personalisation. Google+ is looking at serving results in a different way, moving away from the mystery algorithm in SEO. It’s the most significant change to paid search since quality score was introduced into the auction model. That ’old world’ is very different to rankings based on recommendations and personalisation.

So marketers need to recognise that these channels can’t be dealt with in silos everything influences everything else. You have to align your PPC, SEO and social strategies because if you’ve got a solid social following liking you and +1-ing you, that gives you a big advantage in areas such as driving higher click-through and conversion rates in paid and organic search.

There are many things marketers can do, but the key is what they should do first in this changing environment. Start by being ruthless with efficiency around managing the more mundane parts of search, social and display campaigns, in order to focus on understanding and optimising the interplay between these channels.

You should have a dashboard covering all your online advertising channels so that you can measure everything side-by-side and move towards being able to attribute value to everything you do.

There tends to be a lack of visibility as to what is being done in the individual channels, so you need to be able to map the value of what’s happening online against your bottom line at the end of the month.

This top-level view of how your marketing is impacting bottom-line revenue has long been a marketer’s dream. It is now a reality.

Topline trends

  • If you do not yet have a social media strategy, start building followings on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.
  • Ensure every page of content can be referred and ’liked’ to a person’s social media circle with Facebook and Twitter share buttons and Google’s +1 logo.
  • Keep an eye on search results to see if +1 logos are starting to appear on your links. If not, step up social media to encourage more sharing and liking of content.
  • Do not take your eye off the traditional SEO work of link-building and incorporating keywords in content.
  • Go to Bing.co.uk/social and experiment with your top keywords.
  • As natural search will increasingly reflect popularity of content and message, it is likely to become a branding vehicle, while paid search (PPC) will be more tactical.
  • Paid search is still likely to become more effective for brands whose content is shared and liked in social media as web users will trust the name more.

 

Recommended

/t/j/u/pricepromotions160.jpg

Price promotions are here to stay

Rosie Baker

The economy remains sluggish, which means that price promotion will continue to be a prominent tool for retailers and brands despite concerns that it erodes brand equity and margins. Brands, however, are finding alternative promotional methods to deep discounting, to attract customers. As much as 60% of goods are now sold on promotion. This rises […]

/g/k/v/espn.jpg

How a digital focus will help ESPN prove it is a worthy UK contender

Lucy Handley

ESPN International’s head of digital media Tom Gleeson and ad sales chief Alan Fagan present the sports broadcaster’s plans for gaining ground in the UK against major players Sky and the BBC, and using interactive elements to up the stakes. MW: Tom Gleeson, as vice-president of digital media for ESPN International, you look after the […]