Social media becomes even more important for business as search engines begin indexing social media content—and it can affect the way your target market sees your business. Find out how search engines work, how they view and index social media, and what you can do to positively influence the conversation and your visibility online. Plus, you’ll learn about tracking tools (many of them free) that help you track, manage, and enhance your presence in the social mediasphere.

1. Social Media and Search:
Tying It All Together for Increased ROI
Sanger & Eby
24 May 2011

2. About Sanger & Eby
• Strategic design & technology firm focused on specialized
business communications
• Services Include:
– Strategic planning and research
– Social media strategy and execution
– User experience planning
– Print and interactive design
– Interactive and multi-channel marketing
– Content development
– Search marketing (SEO & SEM)
– Website development
– Custom business and web applications
– Mobile applications
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3. Sanger & Eby Fast Facts
• Founded in 1988 by Lisa Sanger & Donna Eby
• Certified Women’s Business Enterprise (WBE)
• Staff of 21 Employees
• All strategy, design, programming done in-house
• 15 years experience creating websites
• 700+ Sites designed and developed
• 95% client retention rate year over year
• Clients include:
– Macy’s
– Fifth Third Bank
– Luxottica
– AT&T
– RotoRooter
– Crayons to Computers
– Children’s Hospital
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4. What is Search Engine Optimization (SEO)?
• The process of improving the visibility of a website or specific
page in search engines through natural or organic search
• Utilizes search engine algorithms to elevate a site to top
rankings in search results
• Considers how search engines work and what people search for
• Ongoing process (search engines continually refine algorithms)
• Key techniques include:
– Editing content and HTML within a site
– Increasing relevance for specific keywords and phrases
– Removing barriers to search engine indexing
– Building link popularity
– And now, social media and social search
• Related negative category: Black Hat SEO
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5. Some Key Facts on Search
• SEO drives 75%+ of all search traffic
• 50% of consumers start buying cycle with online research
• 63% of B2B buyers start with online research
• 85% do online research during buying cycle
• To buy from you, they have to find you
• 75% don’t look beyond the first page (~10 listings)
• Rankings 1-5 are 10 times more likely to be clicked
• Yields the highest ROI of all online marketing
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6. Benefits of SEO
• Powerful branding and messaging to target audience
• Increased targeted traffic to your website
• Increased visibility and awareness for products & services
• Perception of leadership & increased credibility
• Improved quality of leads
• Increased conversion rates for call to action
• Drives more sales
• Decreased cost per sale
• Take market share from competitors
• Long-term visibility (SEO)
• Measurable
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7. How Search Engines Work
• Automated site crawlers (AKA “spiders” or “bots”)
• Index content in database
• Thousands of factors involved in algorithms
• Algorithms differ by search engine
• High level of complexity
• Continually evolves based on market, competitiveness,
technology and new engines
– Better user experience
– More relevant search results
– Personalized search results
– Level playing field
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8. So, How Does Social Media Affect SEO?

9. Search Behavior Is Changing
• 61% of consumers rely on traditional search to find websites
– Down from 83% in 2004
• Following the content to new engagement platforms
– Social sites
– Peer recommendations, likes, shares
– Apps
• Search engines leverage social media to remain relevant
• Provide an increasingly personal search experience
• Savvy marketers are including social touchpoints in their search
and marketing strategies
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10. Driving Referral Traffic: Social v. Search
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11. The Impact of Social Media on Search
• Search engines are indexing social media content
– Facebook
– Twitter
– LinkedIn (particularly Groups and Answers)
• Social media influences search rankings
• Impact is increasing
• Increases visibility and inbound links
• Generates multiple and unique listings
• New Category: Social Search
– Google +1 Initiative
– Bing Facebook Social Graph Tie-In (Universal “Like” Button)
– More personalized search results
– Shows users content friends have “liked”
– From page 89 to page 1
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12. The Best Social Media Platforms for Search
• Blogs
• Twitter
• LinkedIn
• Flickr
• YouTube
• Social bookmarks
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13. Blogs
• Platform for sharing expertise
• Continual source of fresh, updated content
• Content rich
• Strong opportunity to showcase keywords
• Search-friendly
• Tagging
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14. How to Leverage Blogs for Search
• Make content value-added and compelling
• Use strategic keywords in blog posts and tags
• Use HTML header tags (H1, H2)
• Find and include relevant links
• Provide permanent links
• Share across social media platforms
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15. Twitter
• Used by Google and Bing’s social components
• Google indexes Tweets
• 140 character limit (including spaces)
• Breaking news platform
• 165 million users
• 95 million Tweets per day (up 250% from 2010)
• 51% of Twitter users follow brands
– 3x higher than for other social media platforms
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16. How to Leverage Twitter for Search
• Memorable, relevant handle & account name
• Optimize Twitter bio
• Integrate Twitter presence into website
• Make it stand out!
– Users scan results quickly
– Only the most eye-catching get clicks
– Opening words are the most important
• Integrate keywords into Tweets and hashtags
• Include links to drive traffic to your site
• Make sure you’re adding value
– Users will tweet content that’s useful or entertaining
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17. LinkedIn
• Very high page rank(1st Page Results)
• Company and individual name searches
• World’s largest professional networking site
• 100 million+ users
• 1 million new members per week
• 2 million company pages
• Members in 200 countries
• Members and executives from all Fortune 500 companies
• Affluent, influential membership
• 2 billion people searches in 2010
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18. How to Leverage LinkedIn for Search
• Use strategic keywords in profile
– Company
– Individual
• Participate in LinkedIn Answers
• Join LinkedIn Groups (or start your own!)
• Start and maintain conversations in groups
• Use your status updates
• Share value-added content
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19. Flickr
• Online photo and video sharing site and community platform
• Community tools allow browsing, comments, tagging of photos
• Very highly indexed in search engines
• Major factor in Google & Bing’s social component
– Photos liked by individuals rank higher in friends’ search results
• Bloggers use to host images they embed in blogs, social media
• Great way to showcase company photos
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20. How to Leverage Flickr for Search
• Categorize and tag photos with keywords
• Optimize images and videos for search
• Filenames and file types (.JPG or .GIF)
• Include ALT Text (but don’t overdo it)
• Caption images with your strategic keywords
• Watch image size (fast downloads rank higher)
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21. YouTube
• Second largest search engine
• 20 billion searches per month
• Great for link building
• Videos rank very well (Google owns YouTube)
• YouTube channel
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22. How to Leverage YouTube for Search
• Establish a YouTube channel for your business
• Title your videos and include your keywords
• Use descriptions and tagging
• Link back to your website
• Encourage likes and shares
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23. Social Bookmarks: Share and Like
• Most popular: Facebook, digg, StumbleUpon, Tumblr,
Del.icio.us
• “Like” and “Share” work together
• “Like” an object (I “like” peonies)
• “Share” an action (I bought peonies from dutchbulbs.com)
• Likes are published to a user’s Facebook feed (driving
referral traffic)
• Share provides a way to express something when it’s not
appropriate to “like” it
• e.g., Joplin, MO tornado or Japan tsunami)
• Both increase search visibility
• Crowdsourcing relevant and interesting content
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24. How to Leverage Social Bookmarks for Search
• Make it easy: Add single click sharing tools to pages
• Ask for it! If a user has taken the time to do something on your
site, they’re likely to share it with their networks
• Provide multiple options (and to multiple feeds at once)
• Optimize content and make it value-added
• Shorten links (do the legwork for them)
• Do it now—while they’re on your site!
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25. How to Track It
• Google Alerts
• Social Mention
• Twitter Search
• Facebook Search
• Hoot Suite
• Tweet Deck
• Radian 6
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26. Want to Know More?
Kat Jenkins
Vice President of Strategic Planning
kjenkins@sangereby.com
513.784.9046
Twitter: sangereby
LinkedIn: Sanger & Eby
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