• TopRank Online Marketing, Tuesday, September 23, 2008 1:45 PM

Social media optimization (SMO) has seemingly been assimilated into the search marketing lexicon, and Lee Odden uses this post to examine just how and why social media has affected search from both a user and marketer perspective.

First, social media has changed searcher expectations. "Searchers no longer have the sole expectation of searching to find information for a specific outcome," Odden says. "As people spend more and more time connecting, sharing and interacting with the social web, they now often expect to interact with what they find in the search results."

Odden also suggests that social media efforts can have the same "push and pull" effect on search results and query volume that other forms of media do. But if advertisers want to make the most of that effect, they can't just use social media sites as a place to "dump" their content. Instead, they should "consider understanding what is important to social communities through content, link and tag analysis (a keyword based listening exercise) and create content that meets those needs."

Read the whole story at TopRank Online Marketing »