Social Media - The Future of Search Engine Marketing
By Jordan Garn

What SEO was like not so long ago:

When I created my first website I got first page ranking for high traffic keywords in little under a month, a result any website owner today would crave and disbelieve. How did this happen? I used a technique that today would not even get to first base, and would probably also put you on Google's Blacklist (with good reason). I put a thousand and one hidden links in the bottom of my site of the keyword phrase I was targeting, and not to long after my site started showing up in Google. Any experienced Search Engine Marketer would know that today using that technique is a definite no-no. The fact that the technique did work 7-8 years ago shows that the playing field is constantly changing. When Search Engines were first conceptualized their wasn't too much of a worry about quality control. Either the oldest or newest website was shown first and the main criteria for Keywords was based on the title. (it's kind of interesting to look at earlier forms of Google, the earliest form of Google I can find is called BackRub and can be seen using the WayBackMachine, See Link Below) With only 16 million pages indexed quality control was only slightly becoming an issue (which quickly changed). Google and other major Search Engines started to track links from websites to other websites, internal links, titles. And used all of these factors to rank a website as most relevant and reliable. At first it was relatively easy to manipulate (as seen from the example above) but quickly Googles algorithms became more and more advanced and "black hat" techniques were quickly becoming non-effective. I like to look at this as Google's quality assurance, after all if anyone could easily manipulate a Search Engine it would quickly lose its power. These algorithms bring us to the more robust Search Engines that we have today that aren't so easily manipulated.

What it's like today:

Today most people will tell you that back-links control the system, which is mostly correct if you look at the George Bush/Michael Moore 'Miserable Failure' Google Bombing which Google recently changed (do a search for Miserable Failure in Google to find out more). Another factor in the Google ranking equation is the content of your site and how the Search Engine reads it (Title tags, anchor tags, and header tags being the highlights). So the two biggest factors for SERP (Search Engine Ranking Position) is people linking to you (votes from other webmasters), what words those Webmasters link to you with is also important (if Website A links to Website B with 'hello how are you' Website B would essentially get a 'vote' for the keyword phrase 'hello how are you'), Google also checks the content of a website to see if the website is actually related to the keyword phrase (although that can be overridden as seen in the Miserable Failure case) so if I had a thousand links from big websites with the phrase 'The best website' I would probably rank for that keyword phrase whether or not that page even mentioned 'the best website'. In a smaller example if I only had 100 websites linking to my Page with that phrase, I might only rank for it if my website also talked about it in the websites content. While there is a bit more to it than that, that essentially is the main things to consider when trying to get ranked well in the Search Engines today.

What it will most likely soon become:

As discussed earlier quality control with Google is currently pretty much like this: Website A get's a vote from Website B, in the form of a link inside of Website B's content. Website B's content is controlled by the Web Owner or Content Publishers. This almost completely shuts out the person who actually uses the content, i.e. the end user. Social Media aims to change that; Instead of Webmasters controlling who get's ranked in the Search Engines the power of ranking a website is put into the hands of the end users. Del.icio.us is a perfect example of this, in Del.icio.us you first go to a page then 'Tag' that page with certain keywords. Later on someone comes along and types in a search phrase and the page that has been 'tagged' the most with the keyword phrase get's shown first. As you can see this puts quality control directly into the hands of the user, making it quicker and easier to find high quality information that non-byast people recommend (usually). Currently I find that most people use Social Networks like Del.icio.us and Twitter to search for things that Google can't find because Google might be cluttured with Advertising or misleading links for that particular search.

Right now the power of ranking websites is being shifted from the Webmasters to the End User, is your website ready for this change? Soon writing quality and helpful content will be the only way to rank well.

WayBack Machine: http://web.archive.org/web/19971210065425/backrub.stanford.edu/backrub.html

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