SEO For 2011 – Expect More Social Search Integrated Into Google

Christmas is so close that you can nearly smell the mulled wine and mince pies, and for marketing websites and news sites alike that means one thing – it’s time to muse over the marketing landscape for next year.

2010 has definitely seen the advance of social networking and social marketing for businesses; a trend that’s likely to increase but it can prove difficult to find viable social avenues that generate a return on investment. In fact, research by EpiServer shows that nearly half of executives they questioned said that websites and email would remain their focus of attention next year. Businesses appreciate the potential of social marketing but aren’t sure how to leverage it to their benefit.

Social media can be used to generate good SEO results which means obvious benefit to a company website.

Social bookmarking, for example, helps to drive traffic and build links while some social network profiles offer dofollow links, which are also good for your link building practices.

As search becomes more social you can bet that services like Facebook and Twitter will become even more heavily integrated into organic search results. Most search engines, including Google, are already doing it.

There tends to be different names applied to what is effectively the same thing. About a year ago, Google talked about universal search and how that would bring together various forms of media. Social search is pretty much exactly that but with a more relevant title.

Search Google today and you may be presented with Sponsored Ads, organic search, book results, shopping results, blog search, news results, local business listings, pictures, and video results. There’s even some Twitter results creeping in with a timeline of the latest Tweets relevant to your search.

While some companies have complained that this means there websites are suffering, what it is likely to mean for an effective SEO campaign is identifying ways to harness these media channels and adding your own slant to them.

With some effort it could be feasible to completely dominate a search page with numerous results linking back to your website. It also means that sites that could otherwise struggle to hit the upper echelons of the search results will have new and innovative ways of getting strong organic search presence.