As search and social become ever more entwined in Google’s and Bing’s algorithms and search results, search engine optimizers cannot afford to turn a blind eye to social media. Bing incorporates Facebook data into its search results. Google has taken another big step with the introduction of Search, Plus Your World. Last week Practical eCommerce explored the social media impact of Search, Plus Your World, in “Google Integrates Google+ in Search Results.” In this article, I’ll focus on the search-engine-optimization impact of this new feature.

Visibility in Search Results

The biggest impact SPYW has on SEO is the visual and personal nature of the results it returns. Compare these two search result sets for a very common search phrase: “shoes.”

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Optimizing title tags is a bit like eating your vegetables. No one wants to do it, but everyone knows it’s good for you. Search engine optimization professionals universally agree that title tags are the most influential on-page element. SEOmoz recently confirmed the importance of title tags in a report that strongly correlated title tag optimization to higher rankings.

The guidelines for optimizing title tags are simple, but that doesn’t mean it’s easy. Begin the tag with the most valuable and relevant keyword phrase, use the exact keyword phrase, end with the brand, and keep the length to 70 characters or less.

Read more about the finer points of optimizing title tags »

How etailers manage their social media marketing channel has a growing impact on organic search results. Google and Bing have both incorporated social data into their algorithms to signal content freshness and quality. While the datasets each engine has access to differ, the fact remains that search marketing and social media cannot be managed in silos.

According to the presentation given by Andrea Fishman, vice president of global strategy at BGT Partners — a marketing and design firm — at Search Engine Strategies Chicago 2011, “57% of digital marketing impact is derived from SEO.” But search engine optimization also has a symbiotic relationship with social media, press relations, paid search, offline advertising, and other marketing channels.

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From Google’s +1 FAQ:

However, your site may make the same content available via different URLs. For example, your site may have several pages listing the same set of products. One page might display products sorted in alphabetical order, while other pages display the same products listed by price or by rating. For example:

http://www.example.com/product.php?item=swedish-fish&sort=alpha
http://www.example.com/product.php?item=swedish-fish&sort=price

If Google knows that these pages have the same content, we may index only one version for our search results. As a result, +1′s for the other versions may not appear in search results.

You can make sure Google displays +1 annotations for the most search results possible by adding the rel=”canonical” property to the non-preferred versions of each page. This property should point to the canonical version, like this:

This tells Google: “Of all these pages with identical content, this page is the most useful. Please prioritize it in search results.” Now, when a user +1’s a page with a non-canonical URL, Google will associate that +1 with the canonical, preferred version.

All you need to do is share a post with someone who isn’t a Google+ member yet. I just share the same post over and over from my profile stream. Here’s what I use.

You can paste in their emails individually or create a Circle of unregistered friends and invite that Circle all at once.  When you add unregistered friends an option appears at the bottom of the share window next to the Share button to confirm that you want to share with these unregistered users by email. YES, you do! Check the box and hit send.

Google+ will send them an email work the first words of the post you’re sharing as the subject line of the email. It looks like this.

All your friend needs to do is click that orange-red button to start the registration process. New users are rate limited by hour so if they can’t get in at first tell them to try again later.

This is a Google+ invitation loophole, so be warned that it may stop working temporarily at any time. Good luck!

Oh and if you don’t know anyone who can invite you, leave me a comment here with your email. My comments are moderated so no one will see your email but me. PieRat’s promise not to use them for any purpose except your Google+ invite lest I be keel hauled.

Why was it so hard to find anyone else on Google+? How long would the typical new user really put up with this sad experience on a new social network? Not very long. But I’m a geek. And I want Google+ to win with an unreasonably strong desire.

Then I discovered the “Nearby” screen in the mobile app’s Stream. When viewing your Stream in the Google+ Mobile android app, just swipe to the right to switch to the Nearby Stream. At least now I could see comments from people I didn’t know physically nearby having conversations I didn’t really care about. But they were people — I’m not alone anymore!

Better than skulking around after random people, today I discovered that Mashable and The Next Web are on Google+ and followable! Following them led me to discover their writers, such as my favorite Mashable author Ben Parr. Ben is single-handedly lighting up the stream with Google+ chatter, Hangouts and generally helping folks practice their Google+ing. Now my stream has content in it, and I can see the appeal of Google+ a little more clearly. I’m more eager than ever to invite my friends so that I can use Google+ how it was actually intended.

Today Google+ is a mini-Twitter to me. Content streaming in from a couple of blogs I already follow in my feed reader.  Not that interesting, but a novelty.

In the future, I can see Google+ as a maxi-Facebook. Google+’s sharing and communication features are superior to Facebook’s. Hangout is brilliant, and I don’t even like video chatting. The idea of “hanging out” with a group of friends near and far online over video somehow seems more desirable than video chat, even though I know it’s the same thing. Incorporating it into a social experience where I’m likely to be signed in most of the day anyway on my PC and phone, though, makes it somehow feel more interesting.

All I need now are my friends and family. And guess who has them: Facebook. No, you can’t add your friends directly from Facebook to Google+ since Facebook and Google don’t Like each other. But Mohamed Mansour developed a Chrome plug in that let’s you export your Facebook friends to CSV or Google Contacts, from which you can add them to your Google+ Circles. Way to go! I’m trying it out right now. With 400+ Facebook friends, it’s a slow process, but it’s working in the background so what do I care. Hopefully someone I really care about out of those 400+ friends will be on Google+ too.

LinkedIn also allows you to export your connections here http://www.linkedin.com/addressBookExport. I should do this anyway, but importing these 460-some connections into my Google Contacts now will likely yield a  few more Google+ers.

Aside from those import options, I wait for invitations to open up again. Care to follow me? Jill Kocher on Google+.

Google has taken a lot of criticism for failure to launch in the social sphere. Some cite the launch of +1 for websites as the most recent example of missing the boat. But I say it’s ok to launch a social signal before a (second) social platform. They serve different purposes.

I agree that Google Wave was awful, at least in terms of roll out. How can you possibly expect a social platform to succeed when users’ friends and coworkers don’t receive invitations? Social just isn’t social without your network. Not to mention its freakish complexity.

So how, then, can +1 succeed without a social network behind it? In its far more limited scope, just having contacts in Gmail constitutes a network.

As someone who uses Google products regularly, from Gmail and Google calendar to Google docs and Android, not to mention AdWords and search, the number of people associated with my Google account is lightyears ahead of the number I could find on our invite to Wave. Which was 6. And they weren’t the 6 people I needed to collaborate with most. Shrug.

The lower threshold of participation in +1, as well as its simplicity, is already a big step in the right direction. While +1s won’t impact rankings (today), the potential for searchers to see their friends’ and coworkers’ +1s in search results would be a powerful way to encourage click through to your listing vs. a competitor’s.

With a single click you can recommend that raincoat, news article or favorite sci-fi movie to friends, contacts and the rest of the world. The next time your connections search, they could see your +1’s directly in their search results, helping them find your recommendations when they’re most useful.
– Google Blog

Granted, the effectiveness of +1 as a differentiator for your search marketing efforts depends on your audience’s (and their networks’) adoption of Google products. But for the relatively low price of adding a button, it’s worth a try in my books. I’ve got the request in to my dev team already.

Now the problem is juggling all these darned buttons without hopelessly cluttering the design – 2 for Twitter, 2 for Facebook, one for email, now +1. Isn’t there a more elegant solution that doesn’t just roll them all up into one invisible “add this”? Bueller?

I’m no social media expert, but as an SEO professional I know what is like to work ethnically and methodically in an industry with a sometimes-shoddy reputation. Like social media, SEO has its fly-by-nights and pretenders, but it also has experienced professionals with real results to boast. Instead of tearing down an industry, we need to educate businesses on what constitutes expertise in an industry.

Hint: It’s not calling yourself an “expert.” On that point I agree with Shankmann. You would never expect to make a friend by walking up and saying that you’re super cool, because friendship is in the actions you take. You have to prove you’re super cool and friend-worthy. It’s the same with social media, SEO and every other profession. Prove your expertise, don’t claim it on a business card. Ick.

So what constitutes proof? Results. Period. We’re talking results that matter, here. Not the creation of a Twitter account or acquisition of x number of Facebook friends. Those are nifty, but they don’t pay the bills. Show me results in engagement, brand recognition, traffic generation, sales, referrals — whatever the true goal of the campaign was, the goal that contributes to the business’ bottom line.

The true value a social media professional brings to the table is found in his creativity, his network, and his ability to plan and execute all the details of the campaign to contribute actual business value in the business’ marketing mix.

Which brings me to the second point on which I agree with Shankmann: Social media is not a stand-alone, bolt-on project to mark of your list. Like all marketing channels it has to be integrated with the overall marketing strategies and plans to be successful.

Social media is like every other marketing discipline — anyone can do it, but few do it really well. I can send out emails to a list, but that does not make me an email marketing expert. I can dump keywords into AdWords, but that doesn’t make me a paid search expert. I can whip up a nifty banner in Photoshop but that doesn’t make me a graphic designer. Seriously, people, only proven results would convince you of expertise in any of these areas, not a business card merrily proclaiming “Expert.” If you don’t apply that same common sense to working with social media consultants… Well, that’s just a bad business decision.

Do I cringe when I see the title of guru or expert? You bet. Do I wish “experts” would stop overpromising and underdelivering because it tarnishes our industries and makes it harder for true professionals to do what they do best? Absolutely. But if businesses continue to hire on hype rather than meaningful expertise and demonstrated results, who’s really to blame?

Previously this was only easily done with JavaScript applications on blogs hosted on other servers. I for one had a superkludgy Word Doc saved that included a snippet of HTML in which I would search-and-replaced URL & post title and then paste the resulting mess into each post by hand. How very 1996. Let’s forget for a moment that I’m foolish for not hosting my blog on my own server for various reasons of SEO goodness and control, and think about the positive impact on the multitudes of bloggers out there hosted at WordPress.

The Good:

• Add other sharing icons: I added Sphinn. As long as you can figure out the URL required to trigger a post, you can add a link, the anchor text and the 16×16 icon of your choice. Very cool.

Could Be Better:

• Header styling: I added a header in my blog’s style above the icons: “Share Web PieRat, Matey.” I could have used the tool to add this text, but there’s no control of the styling. It’s inline with the icons, plain old bolded black. Boring! I’ll have to do that manually in each post, but I like the look of it much better.
• Positioning: Only at the bottom of the post/page? I’d love the ability to have a ribbon at the top of the post as well for folks who don’t make it all the way to the bottom. Sharing is sometimes done before full digestion, as much as we’d like to think that readers are absorbing our every word.

I’m sure you can do both of these with the custom CSS upgrade, but I haven’t played with that yet. Seriously, though, how many folks who host a blog on WordPress’s servers are well versed in CSS? I’d bet that default hosting and less familiarity with HTML/CSS go hand in hand. Anyway. Offering the icons to folks of lesser technical experience (or time to manage our own hostings and technology) is a great step for WordPress. Thanks guys.

Share Web PieRat, Matey

The folks at Necco developed a sweet link bait campaign for Valentine’s Day to celebrate the introduction of new social messages like “TWEET ME” and “TEXT ME” — design your own Sweethearts conversation hearts.

This fun little bit of link bait gives you the power to say whatever you want in your candy heart conversation! Feeling romantic? Bitter? Sad? Witty? Sweet? No problem, say it with digital candy in public on Twitter or in private via e-mail.

Dear search geeks, here’s a sample Valentine for you and our favorite search engines. Try it yourself; the app is available free for the iPhone as well as at the campaign’s microsite.

From a link building standpoint, Sweethearts is putting a lot of effort into generating buzz for the app and the launch of the new candy messages on their Sweethearts Twitter profile and their Sweethearts Facebook profile. Nicely done, Sweethearts — good interaction with fans and frequent but not overly repetitive tweets and posts about the app and the launch.

The piece I see missing is consistent cross channel promotion. There’s a blog / Twitter contest that doesn’t mention the app and some strong news articles focused on the new candy messages that may or may not mention the app but don’t include links to it. So there’s a some promotion of the candy and the new messages happening, but it’s not being tied consistently together to also promote the link bait outside of Twitter and Facebook. In addition, there’s no mention of the app on the official Necco Sweethearts product page, or the games page, or the news page. The Necco homepage does have a large image feature and link, but that’s the sole mention as far as I can see.

The app is one piece of the launch’s promotional campaign, but it’s an inconsistently mentioned piece. From a link building standpoint, the app represents sweet link bait. But it needs promotion to succeed as link bait. Without promotion, link bait is like a tree falling in the woods. If no one sees it fall or stumbles over it later, it may as well not exist. Which means it won’t drive the quantity of links that it could with stronger promotion. Stronger ties with press relations, online marketing for the necco.com site, e-mail campaigns and other marketing channels would strengthen consistency of promotion for the app and naturally generate more links.

I only stumbled over the app as I was tweeting something else. I happened to notice the small suggested app link on my Twitter homepage and clicked it because I love Sweethearts. They were my favorite Valentine’s candy as a kid. The Twitter link is a boon, but it rotates with 15-20 other links. It’s not a persistent, visible presence to drive eyeballs or link juice to the app’s microsite.

Maybe the app wasn’t designed as a link building tactic. That seems likely since it has no links to pass link popularity in to any other Necco or Sweethearts web content or social profiles. I find that extremely surprising. The app developer gets a link, iTunes gets a link for the iPhone app store, but Sweethearts doesn’t link to its own site or profiles. OK, perhaps SEO and link building weren’t taken into account at the beginning. But since Necco has already spent the resources to dream up and develop the app, why not link back to the primary Necco site, promote the app more strongly with the promotion they’re already doing for the new messages launch, and get more buzz and link popularity for the campaign’s cost?

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Thanks for sharing.