Google’s new rules and the impact on social media

Google’s recent announcements will have a big impact on how we all approach SEO and social media in 2010.  The first change is that Google will now include real-time data in search, including status updates from Twitter, Facebook, Linked In and blogs.  So your ‘tweets’ need to be brand aligned, relevant and timely! A recent article in B2B Marketing magazine describes tweets as needing to be ‘mini-press releases’ – a really good description to follow if you’re new to the social media arena.  However, be careful, don’t just make your updates sound like a list of keyword search terms as users will know what you’re up to and you could risk damaging the value of your brand.  You should always strive to be authentic and useful to your audience.

The other major change from Google is the implementation of Web History, an opt-out personalised search feature which remembers the sites you visit and places them higher up the search results.  Smaller companies will be affected more by this move as it becomes harder to enter the marketplace where there are larger, more well-known players, who will appear more consistently in page 1 of Google. These businesses should perhaps look to more traditional methods of marketing, such as direct mail to get potential clients to search for them by name rather than by service. Funny how things eventually always come full circle!