The Future of Search
Interesting news out of the Search World this week. According to Hitwise, Facebook accounted for more traffic last week then Google did. Let that sink in for just a minute, more people connected with friends last week, then searched for stuff. Is this the end of Search? Of course not, but it is an interesting trend, Search will be around forever, it’s dominance however will not always be as front and center as it is today. This is not a bad thing either, it’s just part of a larger evolution, a movement to a more open and transparent network, a network that relies as much on influence as it does link popularity. Does this mean you need to go out and setup a Facebook Fan Page for your business? Do you need a Twitter Account? Should you have a YouTube Channel? The answer to all of these questions is ‘Yes’. Will this help with SEO? Probably not.
I just returned from Austin TX at South By Southwest (www.sxsw.com). I consider SXSW the best Interactive and social media related conference in the country. The weeklong conference brought in over 20,000 attendees, and for the first time in my history, there were sessions at SXSW that you couldn’t get into because the room was packed to capacity. The overall message of the 2010 SXSW show was about the future, most of what was discussed in session was what is on the horizon. Evan Williams one of the founders of Twitter talked about the new Twitter Ad Network, and there were several sessions on productive uses of Twitter.
As social media continues its rapid progression into mainstream business and life, it was refreshing to hear that content is still king, the methods for distributing content are changing, as is the content itself, but in the end it’s got to be great. So what’s the most important thing for you to consider in your business and how does it relate to SEO? It’s time to start to look at getting engaged with social media, you don’t need to go out and start a blog tomorrow, although it wouldn’t hurt, but you do need to go out and register your company and your company name with Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube, even if you are not ready to publish anything on it. If you need any help setting up your “Social Media Starter Kit”, please contact SearchRankings.Net and we would be happy to help you set it up. By the way, we are also launching a number of our own Social Media Initiatives, and I fully expect to fall flat on our face a few times, in the end I find that more refreshing then negative, this new media is so new, mistakes are expected. Truth be told, I’d rather make my mistakes sooner rather than later.
