The Internet is no longer the same that it was five years ago. Terms such as: Folksnomy, social media, Wikis were unheard then. From a tool of communication and simple data sharing it has been transformed in to an essential tool for many crucial activities in life. It’s a growing hub of activities that uses the latest technologies and influences all walks of life, especially business and commerce. The increasing utility of latest technologies provided on the Internet has given rise to the term Web 2.0. Using the web as the platform, Web 2.0 capitalizes on the strengths of the World Wide Web. Web 2.0 signifies the usage of the latest tools such as: audio, video, blogs, social networking, folksonomy, wikis, syndication etc. on the Internet to promote business. Web 2.0 encapsulates the idea of higher interconnectivity and social interactions.
Web 2.0 and Google Rankings
Many of the Web 2.0 features are favorable for better Google rankings. Google loves blogs. Wikis and blogs are primed for search engine visibility. Blogs and wikis have out performed and replaced comments, third party reviews, and forums. Why has this happened? Because blogs and wikis are textually rich, heavily interlinked, and rooted in semantic mark up. Moreover, they are frequently updated. All these are amenable for better Google rankings.
Not all Web 2.0 features work well for better Google rankings. AJAX for instance, baffles search engine spiders. Google uses AJAX in its gmail program where you can open or close threads of email conversations without reloading the page. But AJAX is rarely Google search friendly. However, XML and RSS are search engine friendly. Leveraging XML, RSS, mirror sites, and syndication services keeps the search-referred traffic flowing.
The evolution of pod- and videocasting has been possible because of RSS feed (Rich Site Summary). Google search picks up RSS feeds better. When you have audio or video files available for download it’s the RSS feed with audio or video enclosures that makes a podcast visible to search engine spiders.
Social Media Optimization and Google Ranking:
Web sites do not just provide information. They elicit opinions, encourage addition of value, and prod information sharing through linking. People have become more interactive on the Internet and they do not just download they upload too. This is where social media comes in to the picture. Internet users frequently visit social networking web sites and create their profiles, checkout others’ profiles, and post comments. Posting of pictures, audios, and videos have become the general practice. The idea is not to have a web site, but to take your web site to other web sites and encourage more visitors to the web site through high quality content and interesting pictures.
Social media optimization (SMO) is essentially a concept of marketing that is very similar to word-of-mouth marketing or viral marketing. SMO is a set of methods applied to optimize a web site or blog in the social media such as MySpace, Facebook, LinkedIn, Orkut, and other platforms and sites of social web communities. Unlike the direct method of marketing this technique targets social groups on the Internet. A profile or weblog may be created in any one or more of the web communities in the social media. The profile or weblog will have to be linked to other blogs and web sites. Alternatively a blog may be created on your own web site and that blog may be linked to other web sites and blogs.
Adding RSS feeds, “Digg This” button, Flickr photos, and You Tube videos are some of the essential social optimization techniques that leads to improved Google rankings. Submitting to blog search engine Technorati is as an important social media optimization method as is social book marking. Social media optimization frequently uses Web 2.0 techniques.
Adding RSS feeds, “Digg This” button, Flickr photos, and You Tube videos are some of the essential social optimization techniques that leads to improved Google rankings. Submitting to blog search engine Technorati is as an important social media optimization method as is social book marking. Social media optimization frequently uses Web 2.0 techniques.
Link exchange is a common feature of social media where users visit each other’s blogs and leave their comments and links back to their blogs. If you follow some of these web 2.0 and social media optimization techniques you will generate more unique traffic to your web site and gain greater Google rankings quicker.