My experiences about website traffic and monetization » Social Media

Hype or reality: How is real time search affecting SEO?

Ash — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 22:32:28 +0000

What is Google real time search and how is it going to change the rules of engagement when it comes to SEO?

Real time search is the big talk of the day at the moment. On December 7 Google announced the release of their real time search in this blog post Relevance meets the real-time web. This is what Google says:

“Try searching for your favourite TV show, sporting event or the latest development on a recent government bill. Whether it’s an eyewitness tweet, a breaking news story or a fresh blog post, you can find it on Google right after it’s published on the web.”

So let’s put this to the test. Basically to see real time search in action I went to Google.com and searched for “social media”. The search results initially appearing is the normal good search results so no difference yet.

To see the real time search I clicked on Show options and selected “Latest” from the left menu. The result is what you see on the picture above.

You can see that on top there is the a tweet about social media posted 6 seconds ago. Then there is one from Friendfeed posted 18 seconds ago and we have a blog post about social media posted 57 seconds ago. I think you get the pictures. To me real time search is up to the second coverage of what is being said in social media and blog sites.

The real time web casting and search was really started by Twitter. Also referred to as micro blogging, the concept is around short posts about something that is happening right now normally posted via mobile phones. For example I was at the SEO Pro seminar a couple of months ago and people were tweeting about some hot topics being discussed at that very moment. Another example was the post election results in Iran, you could get the latest news in tweeter as it was unfolding in the streets of Tehran.

Talk about entertainment and well real time search is going to provide a very fertile ground for up to the second gossip and news. Good example was Tiger woods accident. Socialmediatoday.com covers what happened in twitter in this post Why Twitter Wins: Tiger Woods’ Accident.

Twitter, along with other social media tools such as Facebook has become essential tools in the distribution of news. The Tiger Woods’ accident further exemplifies that the Internet is squeezing the life out of a traditional medium such as newspaper industries by bringing dishing up-to-date reports of the incident. This is why Google don’t want to be left out and their real time search is primarily about integration with Twitter.

So how is Google real time search going to effect our organic SEO strategy?

Since real time search is very new, it is currently under constant updating and fine-tuning by Google. As yet I can’t see many real time search results in the standard organic listing, but Google says based on relevance they will include this.

Rand Fishkin from seomoz.org talks about real time search in his post 8 Predictions for SEO in 2010 and predicts that the implementation in the actual search results is something that is going to fade away. He goes as far as saying “This is, in my estimation (and many others), the worst implementation of new results Google’s ever implemented”. So to make sure we are clear here, what he is referring to is the search results without clicking on Show Options and selecting Latest.

My own take on this? I agree with Rand to the extend that I don’t believe Google will sacrifice quality for PR in the sense of just tapping into this new and popular phenomenon. On the other hand the additional filters in the options left menu is certainly a useful feature for people who want to narrow down their search results and peak into what is currently covered in social media sites such as twitter.

The partners that Google announced as supporting in their real time search results are:
Facebook, MySpace, FriendFeed, Jaiku and Identi.ca — along with Twitter

My conclusion?

In my opinion businesses should definitely plan to engage and contribute in websites Twitter, Facebook, FriendFeed and mySpace. SEO starts with good content and social media sites are a good means of spreading the word for your content and building buzz. This not only creates brand awareness and brings you visitors but also will improve your SEO ranking. However, when engaging in social media sites it is important to get the balance right. If you focus on selling that will defiantly turn many people off. After all it is called social media because it is supposed to be sociable. It’s a bit like going to the pub. You need to go every week to start building trust and making friends. In the long run those friends can then work as a good connections for business referrals.

How I got my first 100 Twitter followers

Ash — Sat, 05 Dec 2009 17:42:23 +0000

Photo by Todd Barnard

7 easy steps to your first 100 twitter followers. For those of you who are new to Twitter (like me), here is how I got my first 100 followers. Tips for twitter newbies.

I am reasonably new to twitter. I opened my twitter account about four months ago and really started tweeting a couple of months ago. It took me a bit over a month before I had my first 100 followers. You can achieve this a lot quicker if you spend the time. A bit of a late starter I suppose. I am not one of those who quickly jumps on the latest band wagon. I most say I am still trying to get the hang of it and find the 140 character limit a bit frustrating. I mean how can you have conversation with the limit. Anyway that is beyond the point. Here I want to share with you my journey so far and how I built my first 100 followers.

So down to business now. Here are the 10 steps which I went through in order to get my first 100 followers.

1. Open an account. If you haven’t already signed up for an account go to http://twitter.com/ and sign up.

2. Create your profile. As a bear minimum these are the fields you need to complete.

Name: Use your real name and make sure you separate your first and last name. This is how people can find you.

Username: This is your display name in Twitter, which will show up against your posts and also in the web address for your twitter: http://twitter.com/DynamoAsh. DynamoAsh is my username

BIO – Write a strong bio. Make sure it is relative to what or who you are.

Photo: Go to the picture tab and upload a nice picture of yourself. It is very important to have a photo, otherwise you are trying to socialise without a face!

3. Follow people you already know: Ok so now you have your profile setup and want to start getting followers. Before you get followers you need to start by following people. It’s a bit like you follow them, then they follow you. So click on Find People and start by following the people you know, then go to “Find on other networks” tab and import people from your email address books (these are people that already have twitter accounts). Because these are people you already know you can be sure that almost all of them will also follow you in return.

4. Follow people you like and admire: Basically these are people you like to get to know or quite simply want to follow their posts. These can be leading figures around your topic of interest or business related people whom you admire.

5. Discover people who share your interest: Say for example if you are into marketing you can quite simply search marketing in the Find People search box and this way find people who have mentioned marketing in their profile. The second search you can do is to search for marketing in the search box in the side bar. This search box will search all posts that contain marketing. So here you can listen to discussion going on around your searched topic and find people you find interesting to follow.

For more advanced users try Twellow.com . Twellow has a category function that you search for individuals within certain markets or categories. It is really good, and will give you tons of people to pick from.

Pick your target guru, and click on his/her followers ‐ Click as many as you can, add every single last one of them if you can. I know it seems like a lot of work, but it’s worth it. About 40% of the people you follow will follow you back.

6. Post interesting tweets. This is a bit then up do you whether you are so passionate about one topic or your business that that is all you want to tweet about or maybe it is more your personal thoughts and quite simply what you are up to. Personally I tweet about things that I believe are worth sharing and as yet I am not doing high quantity of tweeting just about everything that comes to my mind.

This is what @SeanMalarkey, who has101K followers, says: “Live and die by this ‐ Give 80% and take 20%. In other words, don’t sell sell sell. Give back, believe me it works.”

I’ve given you some ideas on what to tweet – but try and be personal – tweet things that are relevant to your niche or target audience.

What gets re-tweeted

Funny tweets
Cool articles
Quotes
RT of other good tweets

The more you post good tweets the more people will find you and follow you.

7. Start conversations.

Generally conversations start in two main ways

1. You retweet somebody else’s tweets. Twitter has just released an updated version to make this easier. Up to now the way it has been is that you copy the original message and Add RT to it. Twitter has just released an updated version which automates this. You can find out all about it here http://bit.ly/7q1hQl.

2. Start or engage in a conversation using the # tag. See the picture below. You can see that OscarDS has re-twitted a message with hash tag #CGWhiz. If you were to click on #CGWhiz then you will see all the tweets with that hash tag. In other words all the tweets from people engaging in this particular conversation.

TIP: for steps 3-7 I would recommend setting aside a little time everyday or every other day. Don’t rush through it trying to do it all at once. Building followers takes time. The more you engage the more followers you will have.

Some useful tools:

http://tweetlater.com Once registered, click on “add account”, add your Twitter account and it will give you an option to automatically send a DM to all new followers.
http://www.tweetdeck.com. Makes browsing and organising your tweets easier. Also you can add your Facebook and myspace account here.