In a recent Wired article,  http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2011/05/bing-facebook-google/

Google inadvertently has gone to great lengths to define SOCIAL MEDIA SEO for us. The article said:

“Google will study the clicks on +1 buttons as a signal that influences the ranking and appearance of websites in search results,” a spokesman wrote

What this means is that, reminiscent of the old page rank algorithm, +1 clicks will be used as a quality signal and at least theoretically the URL with the most +1 clicks wins the organic placement race. Of course this will do little but open the door for bots and tools to manage fake sites, pages, profiles, and comments. I would assume in the beginning the algo will lack the sophistication required to actually monitor and enforce stringent quality guidelines BUT, just like with PR, it will get better all the way up to trying to mold human behavior to their will by inventing some kind of +1 no follow tag.

They are taking steps to insist on only real names being used but I personally think that only illustrates their lack of confidence in their own tools to algorithmically monitor for quality.

BUT the bottom line is of course there will be SEO's chasing the lowest common denominator as cheaply as absolutely possible BUT at the end of the day it will be a constant war between Google and the dark side and every time a new tweak comes along, the winners will be the ones who practice real social media optimization and not just spamming more profiles. 

My own definition, and they way Techndu will approach the situation, is

that Social Media SEO is merely a 4 step process of making sure the proper keywords are targeted, the on site data is optimized, (title, url, meta desc. tag, headings, etc), securing relevant, quality links with the proper anchor text pointing to the right place saying the right thing, and here is the kicker that makes Social Media SEO bigger than Page Rank (Page Rank is dead Now), making sure people known to the search engine as having an interest or expertise in the topic ENGAGE with the social media content using the signals offered by the target social platform.

With FaceBook it is the like button, with Google it's +1 but they all have a way to allow people to ENGAGE with likeminded people. Why? Because that is what can easily be perceived as relevant and perceived relevance sells ads! That is why every comment, every post, every visited url, every download, every search, and every email they can get their spiders on is being tracked, analyzed and assigned a score. 

This makes researching to locate the appropriate venue a crucial step in Social Media SEO. If your social media outsourcing team does not have the tools, staff or training to properly research and effectively engage likeminded people in a way that gets them to respond, your results will not be as good as they could be. At this relatively new stage of this game, the quantity seems to be playing as big a role in organic placements as the quality BUT I can assure, this too shall soon pass.

If they remain using quantity instead of quality for very long, the noise to signal ratio will get so high it will make the data already collected as well as the work done to write the programs virtually worthless. Advertisers aren't stupid and you can be certain that someone paying a half million dollars on a campaign is damn sure going to be watching conversions and if the numbers don't add up there will soon be some budgetary adjustments. 

So, if you are going to take advantage of Social Media SEO, I urge you to verify the ability of your prospective SEO outsourcing provider to do the research to locate the proper targets and once located, has the skills to engage that target in a way that gets them to respond by clicking social signals without creating fake profiles, comments or anything else fake!

When you have that provider, you have a Social Media SEO!

Peach Y'all
Bob Massa, CEO Techndu Internet Services, Pvt Ltd

Proud Parent of Blikini - the Social Media SEO Management Machine

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