• Econsultancy, Monday, May 18, 2009 4 PM

Linus Gregoriadis asks Warren Cowan, CEO at Greenlight, how closely SEO and social media work together to get a different perspective provided by bigmouthmedia, iCrossing and Guava, which promote the marriage. Cowan plays down the importance of social media for search engine optimization, and makes it clear that his agency will stay focused on "traditional SEO."

What's the biggest issue? Cowan doubts whether social media can drive valuable link equity. The shortened URLs used on Twitter to stick to the 140 character count undermine the anchor text benefits of links and reduces the ability to rank for anything specific. He does, however, identify two areas where social media makes an impact. The first relates to Google's universal search updates. This means "non-core" listings such as images, blogs, news, maps and shopping listings have prominence in search engine result pages.

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