Wednesday, December 12, 2012

SEO in the age of Social Media & Content Aggregation

SEO - Search Engine Optimization, refers to the act of making a particular website easily accessible on various search engines. 

If I am looking at buying an LCD TV, I would most likely type 'LCD TV Review India' on BING or Google to find out the best LCD TV on offer with the most favorable reviews. This search should find the SEO optimized website among the top three search results for me to read on.

As an experiment, when I searched for 'LCD TV Review India' on Google, the results thrown at me completely surprised me. It led me to this blog in an effort to re-think on the SEO strategy in the age of Social Media and Content aggregation.


SEO - Search Engine Optimization
Google Search Results for "LCD TV Reviews India"

Shockingly, I didn't find a single television brand website. Lets assume that SEO strategies of brands have not evolved in India and that it is a simple scenario of bad SEO practices on the part of the television brands. But , there was another surprise. The search results had social media, verticals and content publishers. 

So the pertinent question to ask is that even if some of the brands had done a great job of SEO, would that have been enough for brand recognition and engagement?

If you see the search results, we see www.techradar.com, www.mouthshut.com, www.cnet.com and the likes offering content of importance and relevance for the customer. If this is the pattern of search results that search engines throw up, the presence of the brand in these websites would become a must for a better search marketing strategy.

These websites form the eco-system called Social Media and Aggregated Content. Social Media is primarily user generated content and content aggregation is about websites publishing reviews, opinions, comparisons etc.

And yes, social media is not only about Facebook and Twitter !!

It is important for a brand today to have a search strategy that involves SEO, Social Media such as blogs, user review websites and content aggregation. It involves writing content, placing content and coordination with content aggregators.


Next Blog: SEO & Inbound Marketing



The author has an experience of 12 years in the integrated communication domain involving traditional as well as digital media. He can be contacted at durlov@kuhipaat.in for consultancy and project execution.

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