This document discusses whether social media is replacing SEO. It explores Google's definitions of social media and social networking, and examines if social signals are now ranking factors. While social media is an important part of marketing, the document argues that SEO is still essential for online visibility and that social media alone does not determine search rankings. Rather than being "killed", the document asserts that SEO is continuously evolving in response to Google updates that target unnatural links and low-quality content.

2. IS SOCIAL MEDIA REALLY
KILLING MY BELOVED SEO?

3.  Is Social Media replacing the need for traditional SEO?
 Are Social Signals now a ranking factor?
 How can Google trust social accounts and stats?
 What is social good for?
 Are companies investing too much in social?
 If Social isn’t killing SEO – what is?
 Is SEO being killed?
Breakdown

4. SOCIAL MEDIA

5. Google’s definition of social media
What is Social Media
Google’s definition of social networking

6. Is this it?
What is Social Media
Businesses are
not engaging
properly with
their brand or
product.

7. Looking Closer
 Are we using social platforms more to get information
from our connections?
 Does having personalised search give us a better
experience?
 Are less generic searches happening?
 Is social media killing Google?
 Is Hummingbird a way that Google is trying to become
your friend?

8. IS SOCIAL REPLACING SEO

9. How can you replace SEO
 Traditional SEO forms the core of an online marketing
campaign
 Search Marketing covers a wide set of disciplines
 Still extremely important to have good site structure
 Link profile needs to be clean and good quality
Social is small part of SEO campaign
But a LARGE part of marketing campaign

10. Social and Ranking
 Social Media companies like to sell their services by
saying it is a ranking factor
It isn’t …
 Hot off the Press from Matt Cutts at PubCon

11. Google’s definition of social media
What is Social Media
Google’s definition of social networking
2011 Google SERP’s for “coffee”

12. 2013 Google SERP’s for “coffee”

13. Zippy.co.uk/1
Is there any correlation?

14. Signal Strength
The Scale of Google’s problem
Twitter
# followers
# tweets to a webpage
# different webpages / news items being tweeted
Do they culminate it all for the brand?
Need to gauge the authority of each person who RT’s or
shares something
Cope with url shorteners
All in real time!

15. Signal Strength
The Scale of Google’s problem
Facebook
# likes to a post
# comments on a post
# shares of a post
Can they link the authority of a FB page as a brand signal?
Do they count the # likes a web page gets
Then do they need to gauge the power of who liked what
and their influence?

16. Signal Strength
The Scale of Google’s problem
Google +
Much easier for Google!

17. How can Google Trust You?
 Faking social profiles is the easiest thing to do, and to
Google it’s the next form of SPAM
 What is a REAL user?
 How can Google tell you are a REAL user?
 Can humans identify fake profiles?
 Does the amount of friends / followers you have mean
you should be more influential?

19. I DID A LITTLE TEST

20. @PMiDebs - Before

21. @PMiDebs – After
HiveLink

22. Fake Followers & Likes

23. Starbucks
Are these all real users, or just numbers?

24. WHAT IS SOCIAL GOOD FOR

25. Ways Social works
 As part of your SEO strategy
 Great for brand protection – taking up space in the
SERPS
 Cure for reputation management

28. INVESTING IN SOCIAL

29. Social Strategy
 Time and effort pushed into Social – having someone in
the office tweeting all day and sharing funny cat
pictures .. How much does that increase revenue by?
 Does it cover your social media person’s salary?
 Does it directly increase your conversions – does it add
value to your business
 Can you honestly say that you increased your Facebook
like and your rankings increased?

30. What should it entail
 Don’t have social accounts if you can’t run them well
 Only have it as part of your SEO strategy
 If you publish news, share the news, carefully follow
people who would be interesting in your products
 All about the interactions
 Social profiles used for customer services – make sure
you maintain your reputation
 Keep your social media personnel under control

31. BUT LET’S ROLL BACK

32. IS MY BELOVED SEO BEING
KILLED?

33.  Google started directly targeting
 Thin & duplicate content
 High ad to content ratio
 Content farms
 Over optimised link profiles
 Poor quality, unnatural links
Affiliates were hit the hardest, whether that had a good
social account or not
February 23rd 2011

36. THIS YEAR SO FAR

37.  Been a year of clean ups, reinclusions, recoveries and
rebuilds
 A year of unnatural link warnings, WMT’s messages,
manual penalties and disavow files
 Huge amount of sites still penalised and struggling
 More and more needing full clean up and strip back
My beloved SEO is tougher than ever
2013

38.  Ongoing Google updates
 Penguin releases May & Oct 2013
 Clean up, cut deep, rebuild
 Social Media doesn’t protect you against this
Many have seen this

39. SHALL WE JUST SAY SEO IS
EVOLVING (AGAIN)

40. THANKS FOR LISTENING
www.bronco.co.uk
@bronco + @davenaylor