Social Search - Why Your SEO Agency Needs A Background In Social
When personalised search was introduced in 2009 only a minority of search agencies and online businesses blinked; the same is now happening with Social Search which is an even more radical change. Essentially, when you are logged into your Google (plus) account, your search results will start to highlight and recommend the activities of people in your social circle - unique to you - rather than a more traditional, personalised SERP. Social Search is becoming the new normal and that means that your SEO agency must deeply understand how social works in order to integrate it into your search strategy.
This is why I’ve recently partnered up with the guys at Square Social. I run an online marketing agency called http://www.reasonably.so where I do social & search campaigns for clients on monthly retainers. I’d got to the point where I’d brought in more work than I could comfortably do myself but did not want the responsibility of taking on employees and having to potentially train them up. I met with James & David who discussed their ambitions for growing a large agency rooted firmly in the new Social Search space and it was clear to me that outsourcing to an already successful agency hungry for growth and continued success was a net net. Having built their business on social media management I know that they will deliver the best results for my clients through social platforms.
Social is the new discovery space. For live news updates for breaking global events we instinctively look to Twitter and not to Google for our content. Moz (previously SEO Moz) has recently created a new tab on it’s Open Site Explorer software (predominantly for SEO agencies) called ‘Just discovered’ where you can see recently created URLs from being shared on Twitter.
Outsourcing the operational and client management work to experts enables me to start operating as a business owner rather than a freelancer and allows me to work on other projects and income streams to get me to the next level. I’m currently writing a book about the lessons learned since quitting my job and starting up my company at the end of 2009 to enable people to do the same in less time and to thrive in this new digital and mobile economy. I’m also able to focus on building more passive income streams in the form of niche sites using the keyword research and content marketing skills developed from running campaigns for clients. Gary Vaynerchuk famously said that content is king but marketing is queen. Social appears to be the empire.
Richard Patey
Richard Patey is from Norwich, UK and makes a living from blogging, search, social & ecommerce. He is passionate about being location independent and is building a global community of coffee shop entrepreneurs who work from their laptop anywhere in the world.
