Team Creatives

April 16, 2010: Social Media Integration And SEO

In the past few months, many of the major search engines have undergone a major revamp in their rankings systems in order to reflect the new trends that are coming up in the online world nowadays. Perhaps one of the most noticeable of these changes is the prominent inclusions of social media sites in the search results. However, this one is actually just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the relation between social media and the search engines.  

The entry of social media sites into the search engine results is not really that surprising. Ever since Friendster made its debut on the internet about a decade or so ago, preople immediately got so hooked into this kind of sites that it launched these sites into the top of search rankings. And with the launch of more and more new sites, the social media phenomena became larger such that the search engines themselves took notice.  

Now, not only are search engines including social media pages in the results, they're actually integrating it into other search engine features as well. One particularly good example is the the tie up between Yahoo! and Twitter. With the new set up that both companies have agreed upon, users will now be able to read and update their Twitter feeds through their Yahoo! Accounts. Feeds will also be made available on other Yahoo! Services. 

On the other hand, Yahoo!'s rival, Google, has already been well ahead in the race to make the most out of social media sites. In 2006, Google was able to acquire Youtube, the first and largest video sharing site to date. Users are now able to access Youtube services through their Google accounts, which amounts to ease of of use for many users. Google has itself also joined the social media bandwagon when it launched Google Buzz as its social networking arm. 

While these developments are very much welcomed by both the SE's and the social media sites themselves, one can not help but ask how this one will impact the work of search engine optimizers. As many have already known, optimizing for the search engines themselves is not really an easy task. Now, SEO's also need to contend with optimizing for social media sites in order to make good use of the current trends. And with the way that social media is being integrated into the search engines, the task is now proving to be even more difficult.  

However, this phenomenon is not really some hing that SEO's should worried about. Instead, they need to look into the bright side of how a good social media optimization will be able to deliver the needed boosts to their search rankings. This way, it would be easier to make good use of both methods in order to achieve the desired results.