SEO Benefits of Twitter

First, if it does fly and becomes a real competitor to Facebook, the spoils are obvious. More eyeballs, further Web dominance, plus a brand new avenue for their very lucrative advertising programs. But, how would they benefit if it fails?

Even if it goes down the tubes, they get one thing they are always after – behavior data. And they’ll get it in spades. Let’s say they only get 1 million people to sign up and participate on their platform. That’s a pretty good sample for reliable marketing, and market, research.

Facebook is already benefitting from the HUGE amount of knowledge they’ve built up from their members declaring exactly what they like, their political preference, what they don’t line and even their ‘orientation’.

If Google could add similar data to their already huge storehouse of search behavior, they’ll have a huge advantage for serving their ads. They’ll know that much more about targeting messages, services and products to the right person.

So what if Google Me dies after a few years of comparatively low use? They’ll still walk away with a mountain of data to use and benefit from in the years ahead. They may take a loss on one hand, but the other hand, Advertising, will make up for that. And fast.

On top of that one very good reason, they’re going to have to offer something incredibly advanced over Facebook to get people to change over. After all, people are pretty entrenched now on Facebook, at least for the foreseeable future.

One could say that people were saying the same thing about Facebook when they were the new kid and MySpace was the standard. But MySpace lost the lead because of a lot of things they did, rather than just because Facebook was overwhelmingly better. MySpace and its crazy quilt backgrounds – which made reading anything impossible – and their inability to police behavior were major factors to their decline.

Facebook, though they’ve hit some potholes, has maintained general good will with their users. Even if some of the potholes were of their own making.

So why would search engine giant Google be entering this race? Although it doesn’t make a lot of sense at the moment, I can see exactly what the reasons would be. And it has everything to do with their bottom line. More in the next post.

Yes, it does raise Facebook’s importance to even greater heights than before. It means more business will be, and should be, trying out Facebook’s advertising program. Going where the eyeballs are is always a good strategy. But what about our SEO and search engine marketing efforts, including PPC?

Facebook’s win shouldn’t change that at all, at least for now. When people go to Google they’re actively looking for a product or service. It’s still an incredible system that gets you in front of real prospects. If you’re doing it right.

The Facebook visitor is, by definition, a lesser prospect. Their main intent is to connect with friends, play some games, upload photos from a trip. They’re not in the frame of mind of someone who’s ready to buy.

Is there still a lot of potential to marketing and advertising on Facebook? Absolutely. But it’s not a replacement of AdWords or Google rankings. It’s another avenue that should be pursued, though. It just might be a very lucrative one, but don’t expect it to replace Google for getting customers through you door.

My friend made the good point that Hawaii business is conducted on a word-of-mouth basis. Success locally often comes down to recommendations and referrals, one person to another. That’s true in most places, but it takes on a whole new dimension in Hawaii.

Therefore, many Hawaii businesses see little use in the Internet, and that includes SEO. Hawaii runs differently so Internet/Search Marketing are seen by many as something mainland companies do, but it serves little purpose here.

I don’t share that view wholly. In fact, SEO and Internet Marketing can reinforce that word of mouth, which is so important here. Hawaii consumers/clients are turning to search engines more and more. The younger generations here are building the same Google habits their mainland counterparts have had for some years.

A Hawaii business, with a strong SEO driven presence, can capitalize on the local ways by using testimonials, the ‘social’ web (such as Facebook, YouTube, etc.) and other internet tools in the traditional local business ways.

Another use would be to reinforce their local presence. A Hawaii searcher might look for a business or service and THEN ask around for opinions. If you can get in front of them, you have a much better chance as they’ll be asking around about you, not your competitor. Just make sure to keep your business clean so that any feedback they get is good.

Hawaii SEO has arrived as a viable local business tool. It just needs the right people to realize it before we lose more of our valued Hawaii businesses. We’ve lost enough of them already.

Tags: hawaii, seo, search, engine, optimization, marketing, internet, web, online, business, advertising, ranking, positioning

One thing many businesses forget is that social networks and online social avenues are good ways to benefit your SEO presence as well. Many, understandably, believe that:

1. Social marketing doesn’t do much for their website directly, at least for search engine purposes. That’s precisely the point, though. SEO is about search presence and positioning and these social outlets, whether they are a MySpace page, a YouTube video or Flickr photos, are cataloged by Google.

Google, in this age of Universal Search, often delivers these results with the formerly dominant web site listings. At the top of the search results, in some cases. Why wouldn’t you take advantage of that?

2. Another mistake businesses make is thinking that it isn’t appropriate for them. One prospective client, a law firm, didn’t see the use of YouTube since their concentration was representing businesses. They couldn’t get past thinking that the only use for YouTube would be putting up copies of TV commercials. Since they didn’t do that kind of advertising, they threw out the idea.

A well-informed SEO strategy would have had them doing informational videos or some kind of introduction to their firm for prospective clients to view. But they wouldn’t hear it. It could have not only been good search marketing, it would have been good SEO. It might have been another listing in the results for them, reinforcing their search presence. It was not to be.

The survey that kicked off this post was centered more on small businesses advertising on online social outlets. But that ties in to the point of this post. They’re missing the other side of the coin completely – being in and on the social outlets themselves. Not just as advertisers, but as participants.  Their SEO would benefit, but what they don’t do can only make more room for you in Google. So maybe their slowness isn’t such a bad thing.

Tags: seo, , search, , engine, , optimization, , ranking, , google, , marketing, , social, media, , online, , web, , internet, , sem