SEO + SMO= The future of online marketing.

Most internet business owners are very familiar with the term SEO (Search Engine Optimisation). They may have spent thousands of dollars to ensure that their business would rank highly on the Google search engine directories or with one of the other search directories that are used regularly by millions of people. But, as with any market that becomes saturated, SEO is not a panacea for guaranteeing that an internet business with grow and thrive and other methods for reaching a target audience must be explored.

With the growing use of social networking tools such as Facebook, Twitter, etc., a new marketing avenue has been introduced to business owners to reach their audience through Social Media Optimisation. This type of marketing will increase a business’ ability to reach their potential customers on a more individual and personal level and will also provide instant feedback to the owner of what their customers want or need from their products.

Developing an effective marketing strategy using Social Media Optimisation will require internet business owners to learn a new method for connecting with their customers. While articles and advertising work very effectively as marketing tools for SEO, there is a more personalized and targeted method for reaching customers through social media outlets such as Facebook. In order to be effective, an individual will need to search social media blogs, chatrooms, forums, etc., that discuss the specific product or service that is being offered on their website. The social media network is not one that will respond to a global mailing to every source of advertising. The approach is much more personalized and will require a dedicated amount of effort to establish and maintain.

While social media optimization may add an extra tool to the internet business marketing strategy, it has been indicated by Facebook and Twitter advisors that it will be most beneficial when used in tandem with other internet marketing strategies that are employed.

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Miss spellings are common place in internet search, however, one company; www.comparethemarket.com, came up with a solution and a funny word play on this problem that has taken them, and their sister website www.comparethemeerkat.com to unbelievable new heights. This stroke of marketing genius could only have happened in the UK.

Alexsandr Orlov, is the host of www.comparethemeerkat.com. His creation includes a long family line, a tradition, work ethic, fashionable clothes (for meerkats), and all of the tags that humans subconsciously associate with “life”. This, coupled with Alexs’ personality has created a marketing fever in the UK which has increased the popularity of the car insurance company’s website considerably since his first appearance.

From the introduction of the Alexsandr Orlov campaign by www.comparethenmarket.com, there has been continued growth beginning with a 100% increase in traffic in the first five months of the campaign. Internet advertising costs of the “cost-per-visit” have been reduced by 75% however with the increased traffic, “comparethemarket” has increased their insurance quotes by 100% also. Market share has tripled and continues to rise.

Compare The Market on Google Insights

Besides his world wide popularity and the creation of meerkat cults around the world, the Compare the Market Insurance Company has also become well known and has grown in visibility and popularity as quickly as Alex. When visiting Alexs’ site individuals are directed from the first scene to the last to the www.comparethemarket.com website and encouraged to visit that site following the performance being given by Alex and his staff. In addition, Alex has photos and a page dedicated to his family which draws the observer further into the fun world of meerkat manor.

Alex has a daily following of several thousand fans on both Twitter and Facebook as well as media advertising throughout the UK. But, in conjunction with this popularity and fan following, Compare the Market has also gained fans along with Alex.

Popularity: 4%

Popularity: 9%

Did you know you can search for trends on Facebook? This is a very smart tool which was actually shown to me while back by my old work colleges at Shopzilla. I remember spotting some trends mainly across social activity based keywords (eg party, drinks etc). These were obviously used mainly before weekends and bank holidays, I used the tool for a while then bookmarked it pretty deep in my bookmarks folder along with my 1000’s of other sites, after a while I forgot all about. Recently when I was doing a combination of bookmark cleaning and work on some advanced keyword research I re discovered Lexicon.

Lexicon can be found at http://www.facebook.com/lexicon/. You’ll need to log into your Facebook account before being able to use the tool. Lexicon is a Facebook trends search tool that, when used correctly, can be a very powerful SEO tool indeed, you can view the social keyword trending of real conversations across Facebook. The tool scans over what people are writing about on their Facebook walls and displays it in graph format, much like Google Trends does for searches performed in Google.

It’s very interesting to search for buzz trends and breakout keywords. Think you’ve spotted a niche breakout in the market? Why not check it out on Lexicon to see if people are talking about it, if so, optimize for it! Currently you can compare up to five different words or two-word phrases. Either way this is another great tool for your SEO work. The only downside I’d say to watch out for is the time adjustment slider along the x axis of the graph, sometimes it’s a bit slow to respond in Firefox and can lock up, so rather than just zooming straight in to a specific week slowly adjust the bars.

Whether this SEO tool is for the Coolest Geek on the Net! (primarily me ), for all you SEO’s out there, or just folks who wanna see when most people on Facebook are getting lucky this is a very nice fun utility that can be used to supplement to your arsenal of keyword research tools.

Popularity: 19%

This morning there was yet more publicity on the popular short text service “Twitter” if you don’t yet know what Twitter is, where have you been this past year?! This service seems to be taking the world by storm and has plenty more potential up its sleeve; however the reviews in the magazine “Shortlist” (a free London publication given out at tube stations) seemed to be less than optimistic with Twitter and its potential for success focusing more on its gimmicky side.

The reviews in Shortlist were written by Tech columnist at the Guardian, Paul Carr and Brent Hoberman founder of lastminute.com. Guardian doesn’t have a twitter account, which is strange to me as most of the main newspapers do? And lastminute.com is more like “lastdecade.com”, that said they had some interesting reports on the twitter business model and came to the conclusion where will it go now? And how will Twitter make money?

My current feeling is that with the idea of integrating Twitter into some form of search platform will establish the future within internet search. Real time search supported by a form of solid indexed search will be the next steps in my opinion.

Twitter is a search engine (the test).

I integrated the current twitter search results within my Google browser though a Greasemonkey script in Firefox. (I’ll explain how in a later video blog). The link and post on how to do this is available at mt-hacks.com

The results of this test have been incredible. It reminds me of the 1st time I used Google many moons ago before the trillions of spammy pages were indexed and when AskJeeves.com ruled UK search.

Over the three days I’ve been using the add on, each and every search I have ran so far on a specific niche has returned the best results in Twitter not Google. This in my opinion beats any of the “static” Google results pages in terms of both content and relevance.

My Twitter Search example

I realised how powerful this actually is when I wanted to step up my twittering. My Facebook account was linked to my twitter account, so each time I updated my status on Twitter, all of my Facebook friends were getting annoyed notified though a Facebook update.

Being Coolest Geek on the Net I really wanted to tweet about topics and issues that I knew would drive some of my “normal” Facebook friends crazy so I wanted some way of filtering what tweets update my Facebook updates.

I ran a long tail search in Google in the hope something might come up. This is my normal course of action when running a “niche” search. I then see what results are returned and retarget my search relative to the results.

My search was

“Separate my Facebook and twitter status update but keep them linked”

As you can see, long tail, the Google results were vague and uninteresting, not specific to what I wanted but sure enough the Twitter results were a totally different story!

Twitter showed me results on was what other people were looking for at that moment in time and after just one search I found the application “Selective Twitter Status” from the top twitter result.

This is not to say I’d not have found this program elsewhere with a bit of in depth searching but the point it, I didn’t need to! Twitter returned the results I wanted over anything Google had to offer! Twitter was my search engine!

The Twitter searching went on throughout the week and each time I’ve found more interesting and relevant results in Twitter search.

Twitter Search Engine Outcome

This is not to write off Google! Even though Eric Schmidt referred Twitter to a “poor mans email system” but I think everyone is overlooking (or playing down) the potential.

This really does highlight the forward path for search and I have to disagree with the writers of the Shortlist column. To think linearly about what this technology has to offer not the way forward it’s not simply that people will have to receive ads though Twitter. This is a very old advertising thought process.

Why not allow “the people” to build the content of the search engine and then monetize the search engine results pages just like Google do? Twitter Real Time Search Engine – This in my opinion for the future of Twitter.

Follow me on Twitter @Swimace

Popularity: 100%