There’s a sea of change in the search engine optimisation world, those that embrace it will survive the change and those which continue to offer the old school search engine optimisation will become extinct.

What am I talking about? Read on and I’ll explain all.

There’s been a rise in the use of social media sites by businesses, but they see to be doing it in a haphazard way – a blog here, a you tube channel there, twitter here, flickr there. To get the optimum out of using these channel you need to ensure that they are linked up and optimised.

Optimising your Blog
Rather than posting to your blog and hoping people find it and read it. Go to Google Keyword tool and look up the niche key phrases around. Then think about what blog posts you can do around those niche search terms. That way your blog articles will rank in the search engines, and hence will drive traffic into your site……BUT integrating your blog into your company website is crucial, as that way they can then navigate into your website and look at your product and services.

Commenting on blogs and participating in forums will generate inbound links into your website. Getting your blog articles re blogged or commented on other peoples blogs would be another step in the right direction.

Gone are the days of getting your website listed in a directory (as anyone can do that!). Getting inbound links from the community you are involved in is not as straight forward and shows that you are involved and committed. Over the next few months, I can see that Google will be putting more emphasis on inbound links from social media sites as compared to directories.

Optimising your You Tube videos
You Tube listings are now appearing in the search engine listings – so when you upload your videos, ensure that you are putting a targeted description and tags on the video.

Optimising your Tweets
Tweets are now appearing in search engine listings, especially around searching for an individual. So make your tweets count – don’t waffle about your dinner or that you are walking the dog. Talk about your passion and what’s important to your business. Don’t just broadcast the information, engage with other people in the same space and start those conversations.

Put your Twitter account on your email signature so your contacts can start following you on twitter as well.

Optimise your Linked In Profile
If people are searching for you by name, make sure your Linked In profile is up to date and as complete as possible – as that also gets indexed by the search engines. Ensure that you have put in your company URL and your twitter account.

Finally…….
Sticking your head in the sand and saying ‘I’m just not doing the social media stuff’ is not an option. I remember when Google was launched and people said ‘who’s going to use a search engine with no advertising on it?’. Weirdly, the search engine has now got the largest market share. But those companies that saw the search engines as another sales channel and started using it effectively, soon got good rankings and driving new sales leads from there site.

The rise of social media resonates so much with how search engine marketing became an established and proved form of marketing.