Though a lot of different metrics have come and gone in the social media world, there’s still no definitive way to measure the return on investment in the social sphere.

So is social media worth the investment? The key thing to remember is that social media really isn’t a ROI-based activity. Here are a few things to keep in mind when you’re trying to decide whether or not social media is a good investment for you.

#1: You’re Beginning a Relationship

Think of social media as if you’re paying to go to a party where many of your customers will be at. How do you measure that in terms of ROI?

It’s extremely difficult, in large part due to how difficult it is to quantify relationships. Someone you meet at the party could introduce you to a new friend, who 6 months later refers you to a big client. If you had never gone to the party you wouldn’t have met this person, but it’s very hard to quantify that client as a “return” on your investment in going to the party.

Social media is very similar. It help you create and cultivate social relationship, which can have a domino effect that can’t always be measured.

#2: Learn From Your Customers

Social media differs from traditional media in one important way: You get to learn from your customers.

If you were just running TV ads, you’d get the same branding effect, but you wouldn’t get to hear back from your customers about how you’re performing. You won’t get to hear suggestions about how to improve your product or get early warnings of potential problems.

Social media is one of the purest ways you can stay in touch with you customers. It’s just not realistic for most businesses to stay in one-on-one contact with their customers; but through social media you can easily stay in touch with a lot of people at once.

#3: Social Media is Branding, Not Response

Trying to measure the direct effects of social media on the bottom line is very difficult. It’s no different than any other branding oriented marketing.

Let’s say you decide to run a new TV ad campaign for 6 months. TV ads do need to run for a long time before they begin to take effect; as you need to make sure it saturates your target market and give the branding message time to sink in.

Within those 6 months, any number of things could change. The economy could tank or take off, news relating to your company could be good or bad, a competitor could launch a new product or go out of business, so on and so forth.

While you can easily track a correlation between a TV ad campaign and sales, it’s hard to track causation.

It’s the same with social media. Social media doesn’t result in direct sales. Instead, it changes the way your viewers see your brand.

If someone has a relationship with you on a social media website, they’re a lot more likely to want to buy from you or visit your website again in the future. Much like TV is difficult to track, social media is also difficult to track because there’s no way to tie customers directly to sales results.

Tracking Social Media ROI

In summary, how can you track social media ROI? You have to use indirect metrics.

Using metrics like how long visitors stay on your site, how often they pass on your content, how engaged your customers are and how many replies you get when you post a piece of content, you can get a rough gauge of how your campaign is performing.

That, when combined with the total impressions your media generates, can help you get a rough sense of what kind of returns you’re generating.

Tracking social media ROI isn’t an exact science. There are many ways it can benefit your company that can’t be measured. However, by and large, the consensus is that investing in social media makes sense. That’s why it’s such a hot topic today in the world of business.

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14 Powerful Tips for Marketing on Facebook

This article is a follow-up to our earlier post How to Use Google+ to Promote Your Product or Service.

In social media, Google+ brand pages are the way of the future. Using Google+ brand pages, you can create an informative, interactive profile for your fans on Google+ to connect with you. Few companies today are taking full advantage of what Google+ brand pages have to offer.

The easiest way to access your brand page is to go to your own Google+ page. Just click the drop down menu under your username to switch to your brand page’s view. Here you can edit the page, add people to circles and post status messages.

Here are top 9 tips & tricks for using Google+ brand pages to their full potential.

#1 – Creating an Easy to Reach URL

By default, Google+ gives you a custom URL that’s fairly difficult to read or remember. For example, your URL might be something like “plus.google.com/8723570370197390157.”

To make this easier for people, create a redirect on your own website to your Google+ brand page. For example, people should be able to reach this page by going to www.yourwebsite.com/googleplus/

You can also use Google+’s URL shortener to create a better URL on Google’s domain.

#2 – Add Buttons to Your Site

Want to make it easy for people to find your Google+ page on your site? Want to put live feeds of your status updates on your sites? Want to make it so people can re-post whatever you said with one click of a button?

It’s easy. Just add the respective Google+ buttons or widgets to your site. Access these under the “Get Started” menu in your brand page.

#3 – Don’t Share Your Visitor Count for the First Few Months

If you see that a page only has a handful of visitors, chances are you’re not going to want to visit that page. In other types of social media, like Facebook or Twitter for example, there’s not a whole lot that you can do about this.

However, with Google+, you can choose to hide your follower count. While this isn’t a good long term strategy, it can be very useful in the short term.

#4 – Give Great Resources

Google+ gives you the ability to add as many links as you want to your profile. The links can point back to content on your own website or to other people’s sites.

Make liberal use of this feature to point your users to the best possible resources for their problems.

#5 – Upload Stellar Photos

Some people like to interact with brands through status updates, but a lot of people prefer to use photos. They get much more of a visceral experience from seeing photos of an event or of a product than just reading a description.

Upload professional photos to your Google+ page to create a more lasting impression

#6 – Scan Your Circles Regularly

When someone adds you to their circles, you’ll have the ability to then add them to your circles in return.

If you don’t add someone to your circles, they won’t see anything you post. If you have people who’ve added you but you haven’t added them back, you’re “wasting” social goodwill.

Make it a habit to check your friends list regularly and add people who aren’t already in a circle.

#7 – Segment Your Readers

Perhaps Google+’s most powerful feature is their ability to segment where each post goes. You can post different things to your list in New York versus San Francisco. You can say one thing only to newcomers and different things to long time followers.

Use circles to craft the most powerful message possible for each group of your audience.

#8 – Hide Tabs That You Aren’t Using

By default, Google+ chooses what tabs it displays along the top of your profile. If it’s using tabs that you don’t want to be there, you can choose to disable it.

Just click on the specific tab and uncheck the box that says “Show this tab on your profile.”

#9 – Post Regularly

Much like any other kind of social media, Google+ has a running feed. If you post often, you’ll ensure that your content will frequently land in front of your visitor’s feed. If you don’t post often, your page won’t be on your visitor’s radar at all.

These are a few ways you can make sure you have a top notch Google+ brand page. Spend some time perfecting your Google+ page. After all, Google+ is the fastest growing social media network in history.

If you want to network professionally online, there is no better place than LinkedIn. Spending time to perfect your LinkedIn profile is therefore a high ROI activity.

Here are seven quick tips to help boost your LinkedIn profile.

Tip #1 – An Attention Catching Headline

Your headline should be written so that anyone who sees your profile in the search results would want to click on your profile and learn more about you.

It should say something either unusual or incredible about you. It should stand out from all the other results. It should speak directly to your target audience.

Tip #2 – Have Someone Proofread Your Profile

Your LinkedIn profile is your chance to make a professional impression. Having misspellings, grammar mistakes of factual inaccuracies on your LinkedIn profile is like going to a professional networking event with a mustard stain on your shirt.

Don’t blow the all-important first impression. Even one little mistake you miss could cost you a future job or client. Hire someone to proofread your profile before going live.

Tip #3 – Make Liberal Use of Recommendations

Recommendations are one of the most powerful things you could have on your profile. It’s the one thing that people trust the most on a LinkedIn profile, because it involves other people recommending you.

Getting a few good recommendations can change your entire profile. Contact a few former employers, employees and co-workers to ask them to leave you a recommendation. Most of the tie they’ll be happy to do it.

Tip #4 – Sprinkle In a Bit of Personal Info

While the majority of your LinkedIn profile should be professional, remember to also put in a pinch of personal information as well.

If a company is looking to hire someone, chances are they’ll be faced with their pick of the litter of highly qualified candidates. Though having solid qualifications is important, the personal touch is often what makes the difference.

Tip #5 – Make Your Profile Stand Out

Speaking of competition, it’s important to note that LinkedIn really is a competitive marketplace like any other. If you want to get picked, you have to stand out.

Try to have at least one or two things on your profile that sets you apart. Do you speak four languages? Say so. Have you helped build a non-profit organization? That might help set you apart. Have you been mentored by a famous figure? Put that on as well.

Anything that’s out of the ordinary or shows unusual positive traits, put that on your profile.

Tip #6 – Be Clear About What You Want Them to Do

Your profile should have a crystal clear request. Do you want them to call you? Email you? What should your target audience do if they’re “sold” on you based on your profile?

Be explicit in your request. Don’t assume that your reader knows what to do.

Tip #7 – Study LinkedIn SEO

LinkedIn’s search engine can be optimized for, just like any other search engine. Though the factors that determine your rank in LinkedIn are different than Google’s ranking algorithms, the mentality of systematically getting yourself to rank highly is similar.

Read up on all the different things you can do to improve your rankings in LinkedIn. Make sure you choose good keywords to rank for, so that when your rankings improve you’re more likely to show up in front of the right people.

Here is a presentation for you all to learn how to optimize your LinkedIn Profile to Improve SEO for your company

These are seven different things you can do to improve your LinkedIn profile and hopefully you can use these Linkedin profile tips to further boost your profile. When it comes to professional networking, there are few tools on the planet more powerful or more versatile than LinkedIn.

By learning about Google+ today, you’ll put yourself ahead of the curve. Not only will you be seen as progressive, but you’ll be able to establish your brand long before others have even realized the importance of Google+.

Here’s how to use Google+ to promote your product or service.

Create Meaningful Circle Segments
Perhaps the most valuable thing Google+ offers that Facebook doesn’t is the ability to sort your market by different segments. Using Google+’s circles, you’ll be able to choose exactly who gets to see what messages.

So how should you segment your customers?

Ideally, you should create a different circle and therefore a different segment for each different kind of “mindset” of customer that you have.

For example, you might have one circle for people who’ve bought your product, one circle for people who haven’t bought yet, one circle for people who’re affiliates of your product and one circle for people who’ve entered into a contest but didn’t win.

Each of these people might respond to different messages. For example, offering customer-only discounts to your past buyers could be a stellar strategy to get repeat buys. On the other hand, with people who haven’t bought yet, you might want to provide primarily trust building content.

Take Advantage of Google+’s Posting Features

One thing that’s inherently different about Google+ than Facebook is the length and style of your posts.

On Facebook, you can only post 420 characters in a status update. That really puts a limit on what you can post. Essentially, you can only post short thoughts, short content and links.

On Google+ however, the limit is well over 2,000 characters. (There’s no set limit yet.) In addition, you can link to several videos, links and pictures within your post.

That means that unlike Facebook, on Google+ you can post entire pieces of content for your network to see. You can use Google+ as a direct way to publish useful information to your circles without having to refer people to an outside link.

Use this feature liberally. If you want to build a brand as an expert, Google+ offers a much more suited style than Facebook does.

Take Advantage of Hangouts

Hangouts are Google+’s impromptu video sessions. It’s also the first major free video conferencing software.

Google+ hangouts really changes the game when it comes to interactive marketing. Instead of having to schedule webinars or teleseminars, you can easily just host an on-the-spot video lesson, without or without notice.

Here are a few ways you can use Google+ hangouts to promote your business:
•    Teach a class. Use the video conference to teach a class and let your students ask questions on video or chat.
•    Discuss videos on YouTube. Google+ hangouts allow you to share a YouTube screen, so you can easily watch educational videos and talk about them.
•    Host a Q&A. If your audience has questions, you can answer them.
•    Have a spontaneous meetup. Do unannounced hangouts so people who’re lucky enough to be online can get to know you.

These are just a few potential ways you can use the new Google+ hangouts.

Using the Google+ Widgets

There are quite a number of Google+ widgets you can place on your website.

You can place a widget to have someone add you to their circles. You can place a widget that publishes your Google+ stats. You can even place a widget that grabs a feed from your Google+ posts.

Integrating a Google+ widget onto your existing website will allow you to get more traffic from your website to your Google+ account. This in turn will allow you to promote to that viewer over a long period of time, rather than just having them come to your website and then leave.

These are a few of the many ways you can use Google+ to promote your business. Though this social network is still young, it has many competitive features that make it an ideal marketing arena for serious business people.

This was recently witnessed by the website SEOmoz.com, which not only got a huge surge in traffic after one of its posts “Beginner’s Guide to SEO” was tweeted by Smashing Magazine and then retweeted by followers, but it also reached among the top results (No. 2 in the 1st page as of today) in the Google search for the unusual term “beginner’s guide”. While the initial surge subsided after the first few days, the page nonetheless continues getting consistent traffic weeks after the initial tweet by a figure of authority such as Smashing Magazine.

The more number of times a particular page gets linked through the “Share” feature for various social websites, the higher the chances of a better search ranking. In fact, for the search engine Bing, the higher the number of “followers” or “friends” for a particular account or website on a social media site, the easier it is for the website to achieve a higher search ranking.

It is clear then that the importance of social media websites like Facebook and Twitter can no longer be ignored. SMO thus has to be a crucial component of your Search Engine Optimization (SEO) strategy. Let’s take a look at how you can optimize your activities on websites like Facebook and Twitter to get the best search ranking.

•    Stay Active
Having a presence on social media alone is not enough. You need to add meat to the bone of your online presence. This can only be done by staying active consistently, by posting or tweeting content, relevant images, and informative videos. You can also supplement this activity and stay active without too much effort by responding to comments, commenting on other relevant posts and pages, using the “Like” feature on Facebook, and retweeting. By investing a few minutes every day (as opposed to being online only once in a while) you can see really good, long-term results.

•    Yes, Content Is Still the King
For an optimal search engine optimization strategy, content is still king. Ensure the content you publish is good quality content. While posting often is good, ensure you don’t lose grip on the type and relevance of your content. If the content is interesting and informative, the hits will appear. For example, the Travel Channel has managed to make the most of their Facebook profile by asking readers who enrol as “Fans” to share their Facebook-related travel stories. Needless to say, the content is interesting, unique, and highly relevant to the readers themselves.

You also need to ensure your content is free from plagiarism, is 100% original, and does not violate any copyright laws. In addition, your posts need to reflect an optimal density of keywords related to your business for search engines to take note of your website. Make sure your tweets or posts consistently talk about your business and do not lose focus, subject-wise. Examples of the type of content you post could be updates from your business, changes on your website, offers, deals etc. This will increase your brand value as well.

•    Long-Term Content
A way of ensuring consistent, long-term top ranks is to have posts that are popular for long stretches of time. While having blockbuster posts and tweets that are popular briefly but intensely, i.e., immensely popular for a short time is great, it’s the posts that continue getting hits for weeks (even if the hits are fewer than the “blockbuster” short-term posts) that actually strengthen page rank. A way of ensuring this is to revisit, tweak, and update popular content regularly and post it every now and then for long-term benefit.
For example, for a health and fitness website’s posts related to healthy weight loss and good dietary habits can be created and published regularly since these topics are a universal concern.

•    The More (Followers) the Merrier
Search engines like Google and Bing take serious note of a website faster not only if the number of people following it is high, but also if the same people following it themselves have a huge following. Thus, when you share links across your long list of “friends” on Facebook, and they themselves have a huge set of friends, then the search engines will give far greater weightage to the link. To get the benefit of this search engine strategy, make sure you have at least a few friends in your list who themselves are trend-setters and opinion makers, and have a huge following.

•    Popularity and Interactivity
A measure of popularity for any website or post is the number of times it is retweeted or “Liked”. Retweets can greatly increase the search rank of a page. This works because search engines typically view a post or tweet linked again and again as significant enough for a higher rank. Interactive responses such as retweets on Twitter and “Like” labels on Facebook rely completely on the quality of the content to become popular, which is noted by the search engines. Also, once again, the popularity of the individuals themselves retweeting also helps get a better rank.

It can also happen that a URL posted by a business itself counts for less than the same URL posted by people from other than the business itself. The greater aspect is the popularity of these very people posting, tweeting, or retweeting a link. For that reason, many businesses get popular stars to “endorse” their products on these social networking sites. Not only does this directly help sales, but it also affects the search ranking of their websites. For example, when Hollywood actor Charlie Sheen recently endorsed and tweeted for the website Internships.com, the first tweet generated over 95,000 clicks in the first one hour itself. In the next 48 hours, it generated over 400,000 clicks with responses from 181 nations around the world!

A variant of popularity is the weightage given to “reputed” opinion-makers and authoritative figures. Tweets by well-known journalists and public figures, for example, stand to hold higher weightage for search ranks. For example, on the Bing Social Search or the Google real time Search, posts and tweets from these opinion-makers will move to the top of search results.

•    SMO: Side-Benefits
A good social media optimization strategy has other benefits too. Not only does it guarantee more hits on your website’s pages and more publicity and sales, but it also takes you closer to your target audience. By maintaining an active and creative online profile for your business, you also invite users and your audience to share feedback and other important information. For any business, this type of highly specific data can be a rich resource.

Plus, by getting closer to your actual users through these social networking websites, you can ensure greater interest and customer loyalty through continued and quality interaction. You can also share with your audience and users the business’s plans for the future, invite recommendations and input, and solidify the customer relationship. This continual interaction can be extremely rewarding for any business.

The Road Ahead for Social Media Optimization…
As you’ve seen, a carefully created social media optimization strategy needs to give the necessary importance to social media sites like Facebook and Twitter if they want to get ahead in the race to get good rankings, increased exposure, brand building and improved traffic. Fortunately, social media marketing through Facebook and Twitter is not very difficult and can, in fact, be a lot of fun. As more and more people across the world begin sharing information, queries, and updates through these social networking websites, the importance for businesses to be active and SEO savvy on these social networking sites in the correct way cannot be stated strongly enough.

If you don’t want to take my word for it, here are five compelling reasons to optimize and calibrate your site for mobile devices.

1.    Mobile Search is for Mobile Sites – That’s right, when one searches from a mobile device, the query accesses a separate index maintained for mobile content. And mobile search being still in its infancy, the indices are relatively smaller, and what that means is, way lesser sites to compete with. So, optimizing your site and building a mobile presence will certainly help you rank high now, and in the future too when the indices get bigger and the competition grows fiercer. You’ll still have a better chance of ranking high, thanks to the authority you would’ve built over the years.

2.    Think of your Customers – Non-mobile sites or ‘full’ sites, to put it bluntly, are a pain to access from mobile devices, and greatly hamper usability. Full sites are often rich, usually include flash and video content, and do not render correctly on a mobile platform. By not making available a mobile version of your site, you are deliberately providing poor user experience to customers who may access your site through mobiles, and thereby risking customer dissatisfaction. And dissatisfied customers mean only one thing – lost sales leads.

3.    Targeting The Mobile Demographic – The number of mobile web users is expected to hit the one billion mark by the end of 2010,  factor in the burgeoning smartphone market and one can easily envision mobile web usage reaching an unprecedented high in the next few years. If you don’t optimize your site and target this mobile demographic now, you’ll be wasting a great opportunity to tap into a mother lode of traffic.

4.    High Click Through Rates – Various studies conducted over the last few years have revealed that when compared with online ads, mobile ads have better click through rates – mobile CTR fall between 5% and 15% while online CTR average at 2%. The mobile space is inarguably the new frontier in internet marketing and offers you a great opportunity to take your search marketing efforts to a new level.

5.    Target The Mobile Junkie – You are sure to have seen them, those people who can’t bear to be separated from their Blackberrys, PDAs or iPhones even for a minute  – ‘the mobile junkies’ – they spend more time using their mobile devices than they do with their PCs. They prefer to access the net via their mobiles, are upwardly mobile urbanites not averse to spending money, and as several studies reveal, targeting them through any other media will be a waste of time. If you don’t build a mobile presence and calibrate your marketing efforts accordingly, you’ll miss the only way to reach a demographic with high spending power. And what a shame that will be.

Pretty compelling, aren’t they? That’s what I thought. The mobile marketing space, to put it mildly, is growing at an exponential rate, and doesn’t show any sign of slowing down. So, if you are in anyway involved in Internet Marketing, you should stop ignoring the mobile space (like, right now!). Expend a little effort and create a mobile presence for your site, you and your site will be the gainer at the end of it.

It is heartbreaking to see the number of blogs out there that have excellent content but can’t seem to succeed. They have rotten rankings and fail miserably. Don’t let same fate plague your blog, kick back and crack the Technorati 1000 by getting your house in order.

1. Make Your Blog Successful Or Die Trying: First thing to remember is to never give up, to keep on trucking, or rather writing, and remember that if the content is crap, no marketing effort will make it a success. No one starts a blog just for the hell of it, ensue that you have something to say. More publicity, promotion and, consequently, traffic will come your way, but only if the content is truly great. If you cannot write, get a writer to do it for you. There are loads for freelance sites online, where a blogger will write for you at a small cost.

2. Be An Expert: You know the old saying jack of all trades, master of none, become the master of your subject matter. Read and learn; write with intelligence and knowledge about your subject; with experience, your reputation will grow and people will seek you out. This will attract more comments in your blog, which can help you get cross promoted; always respond to your comments too, it is vitally important.

3. Be A Better Publisher: Publish full feeds particularly on controversial matters, this gets the attention of content scrapers which re-post your content and creates traffic. Use Feedburner too as this will allow you to find out how many people are subscribing to a particular feed.

4. First Impressions Always Count: Do you remember your mother telling you this? Well she was right and design matters. Set yourself apart from every other blogger with your design and be serious about it. If you cannot afford a professionally developed blog, then learn about photoeditors and CSS. You can also tweak your Wordpress theme, your blog, when done, has to scream out loud to people, READ ME AND LEAVE COMMENTS. A professional theme will get more readers to your blog.

5. Get Up-To-Date With SEO: Find out what makes it tick and what will make your blog tick too. Your blog needs to be tricked out with unique title tags, and keyword rich headlines to enjoy complete SEO wellness.

6. Be A Good Host: Host contests, polls and other interactive features to encourage even more participation in your blog. Make them fun or funny, controversial or challenging, but keep your readers interested. Your little corner of the blogging happy-hunting-ground needs to buzz with a life of its own. Make your blog successful, it will pay dividends.

Get your blog in order using these six tips, then set about promoting it using the prevalent internet marketing methods like social bookmarking and other means of social media,  and you’ll find your blog flooded with traffic in no time.

To say that the question is at the forefront of the minds of several SEO mavens would be an understatement. The ever-rising popularity of various social media channels (read Facebook and Twitter) and the resultant flurry of activities (read real-time search) happening there have, evidently, been causes for concern for many in the search business (Google included). Many of them don’t just raise the question; they are convinced that there is no light at the end of the tunnel for SEO, and that the SEO-Armageddon is upon them!

SEO Vs. SMO: What They Say?

This undeclared war between search and social media has the grapevine rife with rumors – that Facebook is all set to vanquish Google, that Twitter is already beating the search engines at their own game, and here’s the whopper, real-time search on social media has all but replaced the traditional and ‘slow’ search engines!

Since I just don’t see the SEO-beast rolling over and playing dead (Google.com is the most visited site on the web), I am not holding my breath. A bunch of over-zealous early-adopters and a few million users thundering towards the latest social media sites may cause it to break out in sweat (by their own admission, Google had been a tad complacent, and hadn’t really anticipated the developments at Facebook and Twitter) but kill it? I don’t think so.

Yes, things may look a little worrisome, the as-yet-undisclosed search aspirations of Facebook, who is practically nipping at Google’s heels in the race for web domination (Facebook clocked 2.6 billion visitors in November, falling short of Google’s traffic volume by just 35 million) and the almost unanticipated success and as-yet-untapped potential of Twitter Search (which has seen a 477.25% increase in unique visitors in the last one year, as opposed to Google’s 11.77%) appear to paint a pretty bleak SEO-picture. But, can Facebook and Twitter push the behemoth Google out of the picture? Will they prove to be the fabled Google-killers? Let’s be real people, Google’s an old hand at search, no logic suggests that these search-wannabes can do what Microsoft and Yahoo together couldn’t achieve.

What Actually Is

Real-time search on Facebook

I am not alone in my opinion that all the hype surrounding real-time search is preventing us from seeing the ‘real’ picture. Real-time search, more than anything else, is based on ‘freshness’ of content. And unfortunately, in real-time search, freshness often precludes relevance. Therefore, the search feature that social media sites like Facebook and Twitter offer is based largely on the ‘age’ of the content and user preference, and seldom, if ever, relevance. Yes, I’d probably see my friends and zillion other Twitter or Facebook users talk about guacamole, but would I finally learn that it is actually a Mexican-dip and not a single-celled animal like I’d originally thought it was? Probably not.

My intention is not to dismiss all the virtues that real-time search may possess. I happen to agree with the experts, that when it comes to gauging user reaction and preferences, real-time search is a handy tool to have. But, for all its ability to make search ‘fresh’, real-time search is just far too vulnerable to spam.

Twitter Search is already plagued by spam issues; it is not too much of a stretch to imagine that the same fate can befall the other engines. If they can’t successfully weed out the spammy ‘noise’ and throw up clean ‘signals’, real-time search will barely outlive the hype it enjoys right now.

Relevance! Thereupon lies the secret to the continuing life of search engines, and therefore, of SEO. Search engines aren’t just gateways to the enormous amount of information available on the Internet, they are essentially watchdogs of quality on the net, they ensure that when someone uses search, only the most relevant and ‘clean’ content reaches them.

This reason alone will ensure that these users continue to use the traditional form of search, even if they dabble in some real-time search for kicks.
In light of all this, doesn’t the question of real-time search replacing traditional search appear rather irrelevant? Also, can you seriously imagine the Internet without Google?

The web has constantly evolved – from Web 1.0 to Web 2.0, with the digerati now eagerly waiting for the third avatar – and with it, search has evolved as well. It is not amiss to suggest that what we have now is an evolving searchscape, and that the real-time search ‘threat’ posed by social media sites appears to have accelerated this round of its evolutionary process.

We’ll soon see real-time search factors integrated into the traditional search algorithms. The Bing-Twitter deal and Google’s move to show real-time content from Facebook and Myspace in search results are just an indication of how things will be. Twitter’s topic trending feature is unmatched by anything on the Internet today, and has its finger on the pulse of everything current. Search engines have already taken note of this and there is even talk that it could significantly impact ranking.

It’s safe to say that these developments will add more dimensions and depth to search. Search will be faster (it has no choice but be) and social graph metrics will find their way into the algorithm, if they haven’t already. Google has already rolled-out Social Search, that allows you to “find more relevant public content from your broader social circle” and they are all set to give their search engine a jolt of Caffeine and make it faster and better than ever before. Far from things dying, I see the birth of a new search era (and the search junkie in me rejoices).

What Will Finally Happen

An evolving, multifaceted searchscape, quite naturally, will necessitate a thorough SEO overhaul. Change in algorithms will certainly mean change in SEO practices as well. The current search scene, where social media has increasing relevance, demands that Social Media Optimization (SMO) have a bigger role than before in SEO (but not replace it entirely, as some fear). This is not really surprising, as it was understood, even before real-time search, that SEO and social media would lead a close existence – experts have always maintained that one could be used to better the other. The best results are achieved when SEO is done in conjunction with SMO – because, though social media may not be very helpful for building crawlable links, it helps build authority (oh, does it ever!), and with authority, SEO is as easy as pie, well almost.
Try building links using old-school methods like Directory Submission (because nothing works like the old-school methods, when it comes to building crawlable links) and increase and improve your social-media presence by engaging in social bookmarking and being active on social sites like Digg and Stumbleupon, and see if it doesn’t work wonders for your site!

Coming back to the original question, the doomsayers may be partially right after all, the end of SEO as we know it may be near, but you can rest assured that a newer, and more robust version is waiting to take the baton and run with it!

Photography is also one of Richard’s interests, so when not at work he’s also reading up on the latest lens in the market, apart from different photographic techniques, participating in several activity forums, to mention a few. With the desire to share these sites with his like-minded friends in the future, he saves these bookmarks as well on his browser.

With his findings running into hundreds in a few months time, Richard is beginning to realize the need for a more efficient system as with time, it’s only becoming increasingly difficult for him to locate his bookmarks. This apart, every time he steps out of home, he doesn’t have access to his system, so just in case he’s forgotten to email the researched information to his students, sharing his findings becomes an issue.

On one such day, that he’s forgotten to email his previous evenings findings, he discusses this issue with his class. At that time, Andrew tells Professor Richard about this site called Del.icio.us, which he uses to manage his bookmarks of gaming sites. Whenever Andrew finds a great gaming website that he’d like to bookmark, he just clicks on the “Tag” button on his browser to add it to his Del.icio.us account and enters a few relevant keywords that can help him find this bookmark at a future date. Not only this, since his list is public, he also directs his friends and college mates to it, which they can then find through keywords. Del.icio.us being online, also means that Andrew’s bookmarks aren’t just restricted to a single system.

On listening to this information Professor Richard’s heaves a sigh of relief, for he knows that this is exactly what he’s been looking for. He goes back home and spends the next few weeks reorganizing his bookmarks taking them online to Del.icio.us for his respective groups.

As you have understood we are talking about Social bookmarking. To summarize, Social bookmarking can very briefly be explained as a method where users of the World Wide Web save, organize, search, manage and share bookmarks of pages on the Internet with the help of tags or in simpler terms, keywords.

www.SocialMaximizer.com

This new phenomenon we are talking about is called ‘Social Bookmarking’ & it has taken the web by storm.

Social bookmarking can very simply be explained as a method where Internet users store their favorite pages on these “bookmark” sites online. Users also have the option of sharing these pages with their network of friends.

In other words, you store your favorite websites or web pages as ‘bookmarks’ or ‘favorites’ on Social Bookmarking sites online instead of your desktop computers or laptops, making them accessible anywhere you go. With Social Bookmarking you can store, organize and manage your bookmarked sites for social viewing and also browse through others’ bookmarks and add them to your list of bookmarks. Not only that you can also share your bookmarks with your friends or a network of people. Gone are the days when you needed to call or email your friends to tell them about your favorite sites, we have moved to better times now!

Here is a video to show you how social bookmarking works. In this video, delicious has been used as an example of a social bookmarking site. I’m sure that all your doubts about social bookmarking will be cleared after you see this video.

Social bookmarking has given people a huge opportunity to show off & share their ‘favorites’ with the world. You don’t have to go through a long process to share it with your friends & you can access the list anytime from anywhere.

So now that you know all about social bookmarking you can immediately start bookmarking your favorite sites & articles. I’m sure the 1st bookmark will be for this article right?

www.SocialMaximizer.com