11/03/2011 | BlogPost
I like to think of SEO as a way in which a website says, "Hello I’m here" to the web.
A new Website is like a new-born. It needs all the identifying details such as the name, the birth-date, the location; these could be compared to the website meta-tag definition.
Who is the target of this communication? Search Engines of course. But Why?
Search Engines are the main actors of the search process from traditional SEO point of view.
But in today’s world of social media, can search engines still be considered the only one way to get information?
The Web is constantly evolving
The way to communicate and look for information on the web has been changed significantly by the evolution of user behaviours, which in turn have been influenced by the advent of social media.
Because of this, it is my opinion that we can no longer ignore the impact of the social context when talking about the "findability" of information, nor can we rely solely on the use of meta-tags in the hope that our information will be found.
Considering the Social Media scenario, there are new approaches to "hearing" what’s happening on the Net.
Fact 1:
Users love interactions. Sharing ideas, opinion, photos, videos, feelings, position, users could be considered as being monitored by a lot of sensors: the social tools (a.k.a. weapons of mass diffusion).
Fact 2:
Users love telling their personal stories through social tools, and this is now made even easier with the advent of mobile devices.
Users are "mapped" by Social Networks that work like sensors, able to transmit and measure every detail of their daily activities.
In this scenario, there is no longer a single search engine pushing information, but everyone connected to a social network works like an engine, spreading contents by using its social media sharing tools.
Information has now become a part of the social dynamics we express through the social identity we share on the web. This provides us with a new paradigm for learning, knowing, expressing, and finding the things we are interested in.
In this case social tools could be considered as "weapons of mass diffusion", with tremendous power in the social context, because of their ability to spread information faster and more easily.
This is great! But how does it work?
Step 1:
Step 2:
So we have to extend the SEO concept as [SEO] - Social Engine Optimization, because: humans are wired to trust other humans — a concept known as social proof.
It is no longer possible, nor advisable, to ignore the social dynamics when we create content that we want people to find on the web.
Physicians spend 48% of their online time on professional sites.
Almost two-thirds of US physicians currently own smart phones.