A lot of people expend resources (time, money and effort) on improving their SEO. But SEO is no longer as important as it once was. Businesses need to shift their focus to improving their “social influence“.
Here’s a quote from an article entitled “Die SEO, die!” that looks at how and why the Internet is shifting from search to social:
SEO is to social influence what the typewriter is to the PC
SEO: A eulogy (eugoogly ;)
The above analogy is a good one because, like the typewriter, SEO was extremely important at the time. I’m referring to when search engines were the only way to find information – unlike today where more and more people are finding information through social networks.
SEO, while taken to extremes by some, was really about structuring your webpages and their content in such a way as to make them as valuable as possible to readers and easy to index by the search engines.
People soon realized that by employing some SEO tricks, you could leapfrog up the SERPs (search engine results pages). This is where the problem came in. Search engines can’t actually determine the quality of the content they are indexing. They don’t understand it, in the sense that humans do. They rely on tricks to rank the importance of pages.
But things are changing…
Social influence: A greeting
While it was possible to fool the search engines to some extent, it isn’t possible to fool people as easily. Content that is shared socially will only become popular if it holds value for that audience.
Check out this article entitled “Social catalyst: One blog post; ten thousand Twitter followers” for more information on how to create socially catalytic content.
This means that, on average, the quality of information that is shared via social networks is higher than that returned by search engines. People are better than machines at knowing what they like.
As more and more people start finding what they want socially, so search, and in particular SEO, is going to dwindle in importance. That’s not to say you can ignore SEO completely, just that once you have the basics (which are very easy to grasp), you need not waste more time and money on it.
Check out these articles that will tell you much of what you need to know about SEO:
So, understanding that we are at the start of a fundamental shift from the old model of “many individual websites discoverable via search“, to “influential content shared via social interaction“, we can now take a look at why this change is good.
1. Social content is more relevant
Social
Social networks allow us to decide who to follow. This determines what content we receive. By following friends, colleagues and social influencers we can ensure that the vast majority of “noise” is cut out of our content stream.
SEO
Search engines decide the content we are exposed to. This is not necessarily the best content for us. Often financial resources and SEO manipulation can distort a search engine’s picture of which content is the best.
2. Social content is more current
Social
People tend to share content that is socially relevant to them at the time they share it. This means that the content you receive socially is also likely to be relevant to you at the time you receive it.
SEO
Pages that are ten years old and may have been extremely popular at the time can still be returned at the top of search results. This is because longevity is an indicator of quality. It is difficult for search engines to determine whether fresher webpages are more relevant than older ones.
3. The quality of social content is determined by humans
Social
If you find a cool webpage, you share it because you know that your friends and colleagues will also find it interesting. You’ve applied your own best judgement as to the value of that content.
SEO
Search engines rely on complex algorithms to decide which content is of quality. One of the metrics used is how well that content is received socially (i.e. how many backlinks it gets). This basically acknowledges that humans know best.
4. Social is less ambiguous than SEO
Social
Let’s say I write an article on becoming “socially empowered“. In the context of this website, it is likely that I am talking about social media and social marketing – a social strategy for building authority, trust and influence. Empowering yourself to do business via social networks.
The people I share this content with, already know who I am and what I write about, so they understand this. Google might think I am talking about social empowerment in a cultural, financial or political sense.
SEO
Check out this article entitled “Weird, odd and downright bizarre SEO keywords that drive my traffic: SEO gone wrong” that highlights the weird and wonderful keywords that drive traffic to Site prebuilder.
Search engines do their best to determine the context of your content. But fundamentally, humans are better at doing this than machines because English, as a language, is full of nuance and ambiguity.
5. Social influence is a far better metric than SEO
Social
Social influence is becoming the yardstick by which authority is measured online. By building up your authority and reach through quality content and social interaction via the social networks, you become your own best marketable asset.
Check out this article entitled “Social marketing: How influence is overtaking traffic as the new web currency” that discusses social influence in more depth.
SEO
SEO is rapidly becoming outdated. Who cares if you have the world’s best SEO enhanced website if less and less people use search to find their information?
SEO is how we pander to machines, and is not a good way to produce content. It’s far better to take your content straight to the audience, cut out the intermediary, and let people decide if they like you or not.
If you don’t start becoming social, then you risk losing out big time. You’ve been warned.
Don’t forget to be social
I hope you’ve learned something useful in this article. If you have, I ask you not to forget to be socially pro-active and do one or more of the following:
- Share this article with your friends
- Follow me on twitter
- Follow me on Google+
- Get my RSS feed
Remember, that I have pledged to provide only unique and original content – you can view my badge at the bottom of any page at Site prebuilder. As a result, you can be assured that you will only ever get socially empowering, unique, original, engaging, relevant and current information by following me.
I’d love to hear your thoughts on what I have come up with here. Please leave a comment below or join the conversation on Twitter and Google+.
I’ll start of my saying I am biased and work in the social space, but I have to say, I hope this article opens people’s eyes as to how important it is to have a solid, thoughtful, dynamic and engaging social experience for users, customers, etc.
We have to stop trying to make social simple and systematic. This is the first step. You have to work and probably hard on what’s best for your company or brand, but the results will be worth it, for all the reasons mentioned above, and more!
Yes, you´re right: Things are changing… But SEO isn’t dead. Still alive and changing too -at least the “white-hat” techniques.
Social could be more relevant: but people don’t search on Facebook.
Social content is more current: PANDA is taking away old-longevity pages with tons of in-links from the SERPs.
The quality of social content is determined by humans: Google Raters are humans too. This isn’t a full algorithm behind.
Social is less ambiguous than SEO: no doubt. That´s why you can get personalized results right now based on your thoughts and people you trust.
Social influence is a far better metric than SEO: yes, you can make Facebook the referral #1 of your site. But, what about conversion and basic signals like the bounce rate?
Don’t forget to be social: of course not. That’s why Google it trying to be more social with Google+
My title suggestion of this article is: “5 Reasons How Social can complement your SEO strategy”… both are important.
I’ve stopped using SEO when I describe to potential customers what I do. I consult, which basically means the whole Plethora from ‘solid & essential’ SEO to social & media marketing.
But too often you here this cry that SEO is dead (I liked your initial quote ‘Die SEO, die!’ – I took this as its German translation), you see if no one in my social circle is into hi-fi’s and I need hi-fi equipment, how am I too find it, well exactly the way I did this week – I typed my request into Google Search, had a good look at the top 5 ranking sites, made my choice and went and made a purchase.
Now if none of these sites had good solid & essential SEO I would never have found them and they wouldn’t have made any money out of me.
So I think social is super important, but you definitely can’t overlook SEO.
Hi David,
As someone whose livelihood depends on this revelation, I am so happy you know ‘what’s up’ and are telling the world about it. Old habits die hard and people are not easy to let go of what they know, but (today) social influence is much more powerful than search engine metrics.
My company, exploreB2B, has created a content-based social/professional platform in light of this idea – in order to cut down on “noise,” increase access to relevant information and to enhance the quality of social media relationships (in a professional way).
Keep up the good work, we hope to read more from you.
Best,
Erin
Great article! It was insightful, interesting and well-developed.
For a company that gets most of its customers from search engine traffic, is it equally important to invest in SEO while investing in social media?
I agree Social Media will obsolete some searches for sure. We are very big n social media and 50 % of our traffic is derived from non-search engine type vehicles.
I think they are inseparable. In SEO you are building links to get that number 1 page rank in a search engine. In Social Media, you build your reputation by constantly engaging with people.
That SEO will be replaced be Social is an over simplification. When I try to solve a problem that none of my circle has expertise in how will social help me. When the answers I am looking for are beyond the experience and output of my social peers what then. When the iPhone came out the # of tweets was so large and repetitive, and frankly, useless that the value of social input was reduced. How do I find the information in the stream of social output? In a word: search.
Search and SEO will change but they are still integral to the social effort and still have value in the broader context of the web in general.
David,
Very thought provoking article. Content becomes stale and discarded almost as soon as it’s created in the social sphere if it doesn’t catch onto the wing of an RT or reblog. I always expect the most relevant search results from a search engine and of course time relevance plays a part in that. However, the eratic bursts and bubbles that characterise discussion within social media will make it a consistently shifting platform with little consistency over time. For that reason I’d be hesitant to write SEO off completely for the future.
Luke Winter
Community Manager
OneDesk