This year was the first time I attended the SMX London event and I was very impressed with the number of attendees coming from all over Europe. It’s one of those conferences where every speaker is expected to innovate by providing examples and research demonstrating why things worked the way they did.

The session about “Social Signals & Search” looked at how social signals are currently being used with search. It’s no longer theoretical. Both Bing and Google factor social signals into their ranking algorithms for “regular” search results. Who you are socially, your authority, the authority of those who talk about you (or your company) all play a role.

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Speaking at the event, Cedric Chambaz, EMEA Marketing Lead, Microsoft, Marcus Taylor, SEO & Social Media Executive, SEOptimise, Bas van den Beld, Owner State of Search, State of Search, Jim Yu, CEO, BrightEdge. This panel was moderated by Massimo Burgio, President, Global Search Interactive

First up was Bas Van den Beld (State of Search). According to him, the “6 connections theory” is now at play with search engines. People are all connected to each other. You can see who from your circle shared or liked a site. Your profile is not only accessible to your friends, but also to your friend’s the social network!

Next on stage is Marcus Taylor (SEOptimise) who tells us that Facebook “likes” are important for search and tried through his experiments to show the correlation between pages that rank well and pages that have been shared or liked.

Jim Yu (BrightEdge) also backed up Marcus taylor’s argument telling us that there is a significant correlation between Facebook likes/shares and Page ranking and that we should make sure to link our main profile, and to make it easy for visitors to like, share and Re-Tweet. As we go deeper to the pages and we are trying to optimize, we should align content with tweets, like, shares, so that we can engage more with our community.

The last speaker was Cedric Chambaz (Microsoft). For him, search results should be personable and relevant.

The web has evolved in the last 10 years with a growing number of sites on internet. Users need search engines to understand where they want to go. But 25 % of the time you need to refine your search because the original keywords didn’t help you find what you want. It brings frustration to users. A very simple query for example a cheap running shoes could have different meaning for a student or a banker.

Search should be personable yet the engine to provide you only 1 page result. So how can we make it more personable?

What if you could make a more informed decision knowing what your friends like? That’s exactly what Microsoft announced few days ago with their partnership with Facebook, the web results on Facebook are served by Bing and monetized by adCenter.

By adding this level of information, your search is correlated to your social media and you are more likely to make an informed decision knowing what your friends like. It could help for example when you want to decide where you want to eat tonight!

If you go on bing.com/social you can see what’s happening in the moment within your social network. If you search your company, you can get the twitter feeds about your brand per location.

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To conclude: everything you do in the social media sphere will appear in the search engine at some point, and reciprocally, what happens in search can influence your social media. We should make sure to not be left behind and use social media to gain more visibility.

Read our other blog posts on SMX Advanced London:

SMX London May 2011 –Remarketing For Fun And Profit

SMX Advanced London Day 2: Competitive Analysis and Optimisation for SEO

SMX Advanced London: Opening Keynote on Instant Answers, Social Search and Mobile

SMX Advanced London – Bringing you the Latest on Advanced PPC, SEO and Social Media Marketing Techniques

 

Thanks,

Nadia Hamraie, EMEA Web Marketing Manager, Search Advertising

 

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