# Social signals that Google and Bing use to influence search results
# Using social sites to own search results and gain impressions for your brand
# Leveraging social sites for brand impressions and a traffic channel
# Tips for search & social cross-channel optimization
5. What happens when you own SERPS through social? You control what people see in search results about your brand. You have more brand impressions in search results. You encourage direct traffic (to your site directly from SERPS) and indirect traffic (to your site indirectly trough a social network). www.lauralippay.com
10. kirby vacuum = 90,500 searches a month www.lauralippay.com
11. The website is listed three times on the first page of SERPS. Good. Local Kirby stores and service centers appear in Google places results. Good. Kirby vacuum images appear in SERPS. Good. But where are the social SERPS? Guess what’s below the fold…
12. More page 1 SERPS: People bashing Kirby. No social presence. Site with thread of complaints from their own salespeople. Derogatory news investigation reports Complaints on Consumeraffairs.com
13. There are Kirby brand pages on Facebook… ...none with many members or likes. Tough for people or search engines to determine if any are official… …which is likely why their Facebook page doesn’t rank as well as more content-rich slanderous forums (which are likely visited and shared more often).
14. They don’t seem to have an official Twitter account. www.lauralippay.com
15.
16. 2 Visibility in social can = visibility in search.Optimize for social. www.lauralippay.com
18. Whole Foods Whole Foods has a blog, YouTube channel (and videos on their site), Twitter account (w/ 1.8 million followers), Facebook page, and forums on their site. They are extremely community-oriented and cross-promote their social networks. www.lauralippay.com
26. Their videos inspired new searches No one was searching for blending iPhones before the Blendtec videos. (They’re still searching in 2011). www.lauralippay.com
28. Sites are optimized, all channels cross-promoted BLENDER SITE FACEBOOK PAGE VIDEO SITE YOUTUBE CHANNEL www.lauralippay.com
29. Good incoming links: Blendtec.com 19,366 external links. To a blender site. Links from valuable sites. Links from relevant sites.
30. Good incoming links: Willitblend.com 36,761 external links. Links from relevant & valuable sites. This stuff is sharable. Lots of diggsw/ good titles www.lauralippay.com
32. Example: Mint.com.A great product = natural search (links) and social (sharing) success.Content shared in social appears in & drives traffic from search.Social-focused content strategy represents the “new SEO”. www.lauralippay.com
33. THIS is (post-Panda) SEO. Audience-driven approach rather than strictly search-driven approach creates natural buzz around product which influences rankings without having to build content and links specifically for search engines. www.lauralippay.com
34. Q&A: Search & Social Visibility UGC question w/ dedicated URL on site. Question asked on May 11, 2010 www.lauralippay.com
35. Q&A: Search & Social Visibility Well optimized Q&A pages allow Mint.com to appear in search results for popular financial questions and for tail queries. www.lauralippay.com
36. Q&A: Search & Social Visibility Q&A pages also appear in Google realtime search because people are tweeting the content. Notice they’re still tweeting it 7 months later. www.lauralippay.com
38. Infographics = social & search visibility People love infographics. Mint.com prompts people to share them, and they do. www.lauralippay.com
39. Infographics = social & search visibility Popularity of this content in articles and social spaces created measurable buzz around the site. And the page tops rankings for the query in web search. www.lauralippay.com
41. Infographics = social & search visibility And in realtime search. www.lauralippay.com
42. The process without the social prompts 1) Page exists. Gets indexed by search engines. 3) Page will appear in search results. Ranking dependent on popularity. 2) People read it in their feeds. Some might link to it in article & share on FB and tweet it even without social share button prompts. = average visibility & traffic. But why settle for average? www.lauralippay.com
43. The process with the social prompts 6) More widespread popularity = higher search volume = more potential for visibility & traffic. 7) The page will rank better b/c of social signals and for more searches b/d of higher search vol. 8) It will also appear in realtime search and your networks social search results. 5) Page gets several times more visibility and links. This influences performance in search results. 4) Social buttons prompt sharing. = More popularity generally = higher search volume More social popularity = better search performance High search volume + high ranking = traffic www.lauralippay.com
56. Leverage hot trends to appear in realtime SERPS Lots of people searching. Your tweet = visibility. (No tweet = nothing). www.lauralippay.com
57. Incorporate keywords & link Keywords in the post help the post appear in Google SERPS for those queries. A link to your site in the post will take people from Google to your Tweet to your site. www.lauralippay.com
59. According to Facebook Almost 65 million Facebook users “Like” things daily. http://www.allfacebook.com/2010/07/almost-65-million-facebook-users-like-things-daily/ www.lauralippay.com
60. When someone “likes” your article, these things happen: The “like” activity appears on their Facebook profile page The activity appears in the news feed of the liker The liker’s friends click on the news feed The friends “like” the article The cycle continues www.lauralippay.com
61. But that’s not all. You can appear in Facebook searches. Links to Mashable articles from Facebook search. Mashable article titles are optimized (relevant and descriptive). This can help clickthrough. www.lauralippay.com
62. Optimize your ‘like’ for search. Make sure your page titles are relevant, catchy and contain keywords. Choose the type of content correctly, so it shows up in the right types of searches on Facebook. http://developers.facebook.com/docs/opengraph/ www.lauralippay.com
63. Different ‘types’ of Facebook search results Blog post title is used in the shared post title by default. Meta descriptions are used in the shared post description by default. www.lauralippay.com
64. Overwrite defaults by using open graph protocol (og:). This can increase clickthrough from social networks and search. www.lauralippay.com
65. Tip: Writing a title for visibility + clickthrough. www.lauralippay.com
66. Let’s say you’re writing a blog post* about Jennifer Lopez’s record-breaking sales of a newly-launched women’s sandal called “Lo”. What title would you use? Jennifer Lopez Launches a New Sandal Called ‘Lo’ We Can’t Live Without These Shoes! Jennifer Lopez’s New ‘Lo’ Sandals Stomp Shoe Sale Records! J-Lo’s New Shoe Launch Breaks Sales Records! * (that will likely be shared on FB & Twitter) www.lauralippay.com
67. A title should: Directly tell what the content of the page is about Incorporate keywords relevant to the page content Use relevant keywords with the most search volume (latter optional). Attract attention www.lauralippay.com
68.
69. but it’s not exactly what the content of our article is about
70. and is not descriptive – might be passed over in search resultswww.lauralippay.com
71.
72. This could show up in search results for people searching for shoes she launched last yearwww.lauralippay.com
73. Use relevant keywords with high search volume More searches = more opportunity for search traffic. Make the best decision related to your blog post content. Using Google AdWords Keyword Tool: SEARCH RESULTS www.lauralippay.com
74. Use relevant keywords with high search volume Still leaves these two headlines: Jennifer Lopez Launches a New Sandal Called ‘Lo’ Jennifer Lopez’s New ‘Lo’ Sandals Stomp Shoe Sale Records! www.lauralippay.com
81. Widgets can provide contextual, indexable links in the copy & paste code. Be careful though. Spam is spam. www.lauralippay.com
82. Widgets with links <script type="text/javascript" src="http://cdn.widgetserver.com/syndication/subscriber/InsertWidget.js"></script><script type="text/javascript">if (WIDGETBOX) WIDGETBOX.renderWidget('241866d6-7737-410b-af96-036a50675257');</script><noscript>Get the <a href="http://www.widgetbox.com/widget/health-news-webmd">Health News - WebMD</a> widget and many other <a href="http://www.widgetbox.com/">great free widgets</a>at <a href="http://www.widgetbox.com">Widgetbox</a>! Not seeing a widget? (<a href="http://docs.widgetbox.com/using-widgets/installing-widgets/why-cant-i-see-my-widget/">More info</a>)</noscript> www.lauralippay.com
Of course there is drop-off along the way (not every one of the liker’s friends sees the activity, and not every one that does clicks on it, and not every one that clicks on it also “likes” the article). But just the brand visibility alone is free, and any traffic it results in is also free traffic, just from placing a Like button on the page.
But that’s not all. When someone has “liked” your page, it can also appear in search on Facebook, linking out to your actual site from the Facebook search results, giving the page even more potential exposure and traffic. In the screenshot below, a search for Mashable on Facebook returns pages on Mashable.com that have been liked by people in my network, and clicking on the result takes me straight to the Mashable article.