Most social media sites link back to a particular web site, and even though a lot of sites have adapted no follow links (meaning you will not benefit from inbound links), they are increasing your visibility in the search engine results page.

So what does this mean?

Social media can and does influence search engine optimization. However, the goals for a brand may determine what strategy works best for them.

If your brand is already well established, you may want to leverage social media to help you optimize for other keywords and phrases. For example, if Coca-Cola decided they wanted to enter the dessert game and offer a new drink, simply putting this new drink on their website may not be enough. As part of their marketing campaign they may leverage a blog to discuss the finer points of the new drink or even YouTube videos about how to make and enjoy the beverage. These social media tools in conjunction with a larger marketing campaign will help Coca-Cola rank for dessert ideas and new coke drinks.

On the other hand, a less well-known and established brand may take a different approach to utilizing social media for SEO. This may include a startup company looking to push their brand awareness. They may focus all of their social media and community building on branded items that help push their name to the top of the search engine results page and help fill out all of the results when someone searches for them.

Focusing strong efforts in some channels is definitely better than spreading your channels. I believe everyone should get a blog because that is the social media channel that anyone can most easily utilize to help influence search engine ranking.

Beyond a blog, if Facebook doesn’t make sense for a company, wait to use it. But if Yelp or Twitter does, make sure to not only leverage that but to build those communities into strong locations for the brand.
Finally, it is important to understand Social Media and how this practice effects SEO. It is not enough just to have a website if you do not attract visitors to it.

SEM (search engine marketing) is the effective use of on-site SEO and other techniques to promote and increase the traffic of a web site. You can exploit SEM by using techniques such as: articles, back links, forum postings, press releases, and online ads. SEM is not a one-time task; you continually need to update the site with new information and make sure it stays optimized for the search engines.

On the other hand, SEO is the process by which you make your site optimal for rankings by using things like: content, titles, headings, and keywords. In addition, it refers to making your site desirable to the search engine. SEO is not a one-time task, but rather an ongoing process where you add, update or change content on your website in order for the search engines to crawl and index your information.

SEM and SEO are long-term processes that complement each other. Success entails merging your marketing on other sites with optimizing your business’s own site in order to get higher rankings in the search engines. No SEM campaign is complete without SEO. In any case, the advantages of SEO over the other aspects of SEM make it clear that, even if you are going to spend additional money on advertising and paid placement, SEO must be your first step in promoting your site.

As of March 10th, 2010, Blackle.com has saved 1,746,870.447 Watt hours. Blackle is the black “green” Search Engine Powered by Google.

How is Blackle saving energy?

Blackle was created by Heap Media to remind us all of the need to take small steps in our everyday lives to save energy. Blackle searches are powered by Google Custom Search.

Blackle saves energy because the screen is predominantly black. “Image displayed is primarily a function of the user’s color settings and desktop graphics, as well as the color and size of open application windows; a given monitor requires more power to display a white (or light) screen than a black (or dark) screen.” Roberson et al, 2002

In January 2007 a blog post titled Black Google Would Save 750 Megawatt-hours a Year, proposed the theory that a black version of the Google search engine would save a fair bit of energy due to the popularity of the search engine. Since then there has been skepticism about the significance of the energy savings that can be achieved and the cost, in terms of readability, of black web pages.

We believe that there is value in the concept because even if the energy savings are small, they all add up. Secondly, we feel that seeing Blackle every time we load our web browser reminds us that we need to keep taking small steps to save energy.

How can you help?

We encourage you to set Blackle as your home page. This way, every time you load your Internet browser you will save a little bit of energy.

Help spread the word about Blackle by telling your friends and family to set it as their home page. Or, put the following text in your email signature: “Blackle.com – Saving energy one search at a time”.  Remember every bit counts!

#1: Name your pages strategically! The filename of your page tells the search engine a lot about what you are displaying to the user!  Break down pages into “specific” product and/or service pages rather than creating a single page that lists all products and services.  Be sure to name the page based on the keyphrases you are targeting for that page (the product or service offered).

#2:  Title your page strategically!! Use the keyphrase(s) you are targeting in your URL (see #1) in the title element in the <head> section.

#3:  Write good meta description tags! Search engines take into consideration the abstract you create to describe what the page is representing.  The abstract is placed in the <head> section as well inside of a <meta name=”description” content=”<<<your abstract>>>” />  Keep your descriptions specific to the keyphrases you are targeting for each page.

#4:  Create links with keyphrases as the anchor content! Anytime you are creating links within your site or to your site from other websites, be sure to include the keyphrase you are targeting for that page inside the link.  An example is: <a href=”www.yoursite.com/the-seo-friendly-page”>[keyphrase included link]</a>  Search engines are more likely to rank you higher for a particular keyphrase  if they see links with the keyphrase pointing to your seo friendly page for the service or product.

#5:  Write good, relevant, key phrase related content… content is king! Contrary to what you may think or believe, having too much content is rarely ever a bad thing in the SEO world.  Although, balancing design and text on a page becomes a more delicate issue.  We don’t want to confuse or lose visitors because the page feels too congested, but we want to give more than one paragraph describing the product or service.  Don’t take the easy way out with content; make sure you create strong, keyphrase-rich content talking about your products and/or services.  If you can find a way to add dynamic, changing content to each page, it will give the search engines a reason to return to your page(s) frequently, thus giving them a reason to believe your site is more useful/relevant site than those that never change!

The creation of the internet is arguably the most important advancement for humanity that we have seen or will see in our lifetime.  While the previous statement is debatable, there is no argument that the internet is hands down man’s crowning achievement in regards to mass information dispersion.  The only thing that even comes close is Johannes Gutenberg’s invention of the printing press in 1440.  While the printing press did allow for mass information dispersion, it doesn’t hold a candle to the internet in terms of timely information dispersion.

While the internet itself is a great median for storing information, it couldn’t have staked claim to the title “man’s crowning achievement in regard to mass information dispersion” without the help of Google.  Google was not the first company to jump into the web indexing and search industry by any means.  But, since its inception in 1998, Google has been exponentially improving its search platform and has become, overwhelmingly, the search industry leader.  So much so, that the term “Google” has transformed into being not only a proper noun, but a verb as well!

Google’s search engine algorithm has become so efficient that it now takes less than a second to search the entire internet for a search query:

Not only is it fast but, more importantly, its search results are extremely relevant to the term being searched for.  This is in part because Google is often a main influencer on how websites are designed.  Web masters try to create sites that adhere to the strict rules of Google’s search algorithm (more on this in another post).  What this results in, thankfully in my opinion, is that the (very, very, very) smart people at Google force the general masses to create websites that are technically efficient with relevant content.

So, next time you’re in a heated argument – instead of trying to physically beat your point of view into your ignorant antagonist, find the closest computer and “Google” the answer.  Thank you, Google, for providing the world with timely information and for helping to prevent violence at the same time!