Blue Wave Concept's Blog

Scott Gerber is the founder of the Young Entrepreneur Council, a nonprofit organization that promotes youth entrepreneurship as a solution to unemployment and underemployment. The YEC provides young entrepreneurs with access to tools, mentorship, and resources that support each stage of a business’s development and growth.

It goes without saying that entrepreneurs know the importance of search engine optimization, and how to boost their Google search rankings. Right? Or is SEO a foreign language that you haven’t quite mastered?

Google rank is critical to a business’s success in this digital age. Savvy entrepreneurs know that search engine optimization is a necessary part of the marketing toolkit — and it doesn’t have to be difficult.

Instead of letting your Google rank get you down, apply these tips and techniques from a group of successful, young entrepreneurs in order to boost your company’s SEO results.

1. Create Evergreen Content
You’ll want your content to take the top slots for your name and various keywords and phrases, so you’ll want to have high-quality, authoritative content. The best way to make sure your content is seen this way to is create content that is forever useful, not trendy and disposable. Create content that people will be reading 10 years from now, and you’ll be getting linkbacks for a decade.

2. Audit Your Online Profiles
Take a few minutes to login to each of your company’s online profiles. Is the biography up to date? More importantly, is your website’s URL listed somewhere? The incoming links from these profiles may not weigh too much in Google’s mysterious algorithm, but you’ll be surprised what it can do if you have more than a handful of accounts online.

3. Think Like Your Customer Types
Think about what your ideal clients and customers might be typing into Google, and then find out if your hunch is right by looking keywords up in Google’s free Keyword Tool. Keep in mind that 25% of keywords have never been typed in before, but you’ll want to aim for popular keywords with low competition if you can. Then write content around these keywords and learn to optimize.

4. Hire an Expert
I suggest hiring a search engine optimization company or freelance specialist to develop an effective strategy to improve your rankings. The Google Panda updates has made the SEO space even more challenging to produce results, so I suggest outsourcing this task to the professionals. Look for individuals or companies with proven track records, and monitor their bi-weekly reports closely.

5. Guest Post
Start guest posting on tons of relevant blogs. Blogs love fresh content, and for you it’s a great way to build links, which will boost your rankings on Google.

6. Content is King and Links are Queen
Yes, creating good content is very important to make your business rank higher in Google. But links are even more important. Google loves links, especially those from other relevant, authority websites. Join any and all industry associations, guest blog with a link back to your website, and submit your site to any relevant directories to grow your backlink profile and your searches.

7. Bust Out the Camera
Video is such a huge thing now for business owners. Not only does it give your company personality, but it can also be spread across networks while linking back to your site. Create great videos filled with information people can share and then repeat. Now videos can be distributed across multiple platforms from one single platform, causing Google to love you.

8. Colleges and Universities
The biggest SEO secret is that when .edu sites link to your website it gives you a higher Google ranking. Contact college and universities and find a reason for them to link to your site by running a special internship opportunity, for example.

9. Update Your Site Frequently
The more often you update your site, the more important Google thinks it is. If you can publish content to your blog every day, Google will start to recognize you as a great source of information for whatever your keywords are. With every blog post, you have another chance at ranking for new search terms, so each article increases the odds of your site being found.

10. Use the Right Keywords
Two effective ways of increasing your SEO rank are tagging articles and keyword analysis. You want to make sure your headlines are descriptive. You should also choose keywords that people are going to look for — so imagine yourself as a searcher.

11. Move Away From Flash
Many small businesses, especially restaurants and bars, use Flash for their sites because it’s easy to launch, looks good and is fairly cheap. While the sites might look decent, they rank really poorly in Google (without doing some tricks). Change your Flash-based site to WordPress or another platform, and you’ll rocket up the search engine rankings.

12. Have You Taken Advantage of Local Search?
Are you a local business? Have you claimed your listing on Google, Yahoo! and Bing? If not, stop reading this article now and go claim your business listings immediately! I’ve seen a huge jump in traffic for businesses by simply claiming and filling out all the fields on these local profiles. The future of search is personalized local results, and these valuable profiles are often overlooked.

13. Know Exactly What Words People Use to Search
The biggest mistake people make in trying to rank high in Google is having no clue what people are actually typing into search engines to find you. An easy way to find this out is to go to the Google homepage and slowly start typing in your phrases. You’ll notice Google suggested searches come up. Use those exact phrases in your titles. That’s what people want, so give it to them.

This client has returned to us to completely overhaul their six year old site. When the first mockup is done it’ll be posted here.

1. Determine Organizational Goals
Ask yourself: What is my goal, and how is my content marketing plan going to help me accomplish it? These are things that need to be thought out before determining your content. By doing so, you can tailor your content marketing plan accordingly.
Each goal should be measurable and have a deadline by which you perform this measurement. For example, increase website traffic 25% by Jan. 1, 2012.

2. Identify Target Audiences
The next step is to figure out exactly whom you are targeting. This means researching everything about the audience to whom you will be delivering your content. Ask them questions, research website traffic data and determine their demographic information, including age, gender, education, location, etc.
From there, you need to figure out what your audience is interested in, both online and offline. What are they reading? What are they talking about? What are their likes and dislikes?
In this step, it is helpful to think like one of your clients or customers. Envision that you’re writing for one specific person, and then tune in to his thought process in order to succeed. Above all, listen to what that person wants, which is not necessarily the same as what you want. After all, you want him to be receptive to your content.

3. Develop Key Messages
What exactly does your audience want/need to hear? In general, determine what will differentiate you and your product, as well as what will help you to achieve the goals you have set. The end result should be one to three main messages, each with one to five sub-messages that offer a bit more detail.

4. Decide on Overall Content Marketing Strategies
There are three different types of content marketing strategies: long-form, short-form and conversations (e.g. sharing).
Long-form includes blog posts, articles and press releases — basically, anything longer than a couple of sentences. Short-form includes tweets, Facebook and LinkedIn status updates and graphics. Conversations and sharing includes participating in and driving conversations through blog commenting, link sharing and comments on videos. This type helps to encourage discussions between other thought leaders within your industry.
You can stick to one of these forms of content marketing, or you can use all three. They are each effective on their own, but they are also powerful when used together.

5. Draft an Editorial Calendar
Developing a plan is one of the most important steps to content marketing. However, it should be flexible. After all, things can always change.
This is where an editorial calendar comes in. It should include strategies, specific tactics, suggested headlines, content deadlines and allocated responsibilities. This is a fairly major undertaking, but you’ll be thankful for your hard work once it’s complete — and you’ll save time in the long-run.
Not sure where to begin? Check out The Content Grid V2 by Eloqua and JESS3.

6. Develop Content
In order to even begin the marketing aspect of a content marketing plan, you need to develop the content you are going to use. It needs to be unique and different. Go back to your key messages and subtly incorporate them into the content without overtly selling your product. Content marketing is about creating trust through education and information, not using traditional sales tactics.
The infographic Is Your Content King? is a great visual of how important content is, especially for your marketing plan.

7. Establish Relationships
It’s time to start building a relationship with your target audience. This means tapping into existing communities by sharing and commenting on their content, as well as establishing your own communities across various social networking platforms.
Remember, content marketing isn’t just about you. Like all relationships, you should aim to give more than you receive. Be sure to use the 80/20 principle: 80% of the content you share should be curated (in other words, not your own) and 20% should be your original content.
Find brands that have successfully made a name for themselves, and mimic the steps they’ve taken — but make sure to add your own unique flare. For ideas, check out how these three companies took content marketing to the next level.

8. Spread the Word
Determine industry keywords that are not only relevant to your product, but also are going to generate enough buzz. Search engine optimization (SEO) can play a huge role if you research thoroughly. For example, make sure the tags you’re adding to your blog posts are going to generate traffic, since this can help you get found in the first place. I’m a huge fan of both Scribe SEO and InboundWriter to help you accomplish this.
Also, spread the word through Twitter, Facebook, e-newsletters, etc. But be careful not to force your content where it doesn’t belong. It may seem like you’re trying too hard, and in turn, people may not be interested in what you have to say.
Eloque came out with a free ebook, The Grande Guide to B2B Content Marketing, a helpful read when it comes to content marketing. Plus, it’s useful for deciding which platforms you should employ and how to effectively use them.

9. Measure Effectiveness
Although this is one of the last steps, it’s one of the most important. By measuring the effectiveness of your content, you can determine whether or not your plan needs to be altered, or whether it’s working in the first place.
Keep an eye on pageviews, retweets, Likes, +1’s, shares and so on. Anything your audience can take action on is something, you need to pay attention to. Figure out how well everything is working — or why it’s not working at all.

10. Change the Plan As Needed
If something isn’t working, change it up. Be sure to pay attention to results, and then use them to your advantage.
The most important thing to remember about content marketing: It’s all about building connections and improving your audience’s product loyalty. One of your goals should be for people to recognize your product based off of the content you’ve been placing both online and off.

For a more in-depth look into how to create your content marketing plan, check out: Content Marketing For Dummies – Cheat Sheet.
Have you used content marketing in order to launch a product before? What were the steps that you took in order to do this successfully?

Click the link to read more about the Mobile App Market

7 Reasons to Use Google+

A bulk of the small businesses we spoke with said they feel Google+ is an important social platform because it was developed by Google, one of the Internet’s favorite brands and one of the most influential websites when it comes to site referrals. But small business owners gave a plethora of reasons for being early adopters of the platform. Here are some of the top reasons we heard for using Google+.

1. Get an SEO Boost: Bob Shirilla, director of marketing at Simply Bags, says that his business joined Google+ because he relies on Google search referrals for sales conversions. “Google+ influences search for all the people who have included my business in their circle,” he says. “We have also put a +1 button on each product page. This is a great way to get free promotion from people who like the product to people with similar interests.”

2. Host a Hangout: “Hangouts offer an amazing opportunity for businesses to engage in a highly personal way with clients, customers and industry thought leaders,” says Roger Friedensen, president and CEO of Forge Communications. “Plus, employees in remote locations can hold team meetings to brainstorm with one another from an interface that affords them immediate and easy access to share and collaborate on most of the information materials they might need, such as documents and spreadsheets.”

3. Expand Content Distribution: Phyllis Khare, the social media editorial director of iPhone Life magazine, says that Google+ is a great platform for expanding the publication’s content distribution. “It took us almost a year to get 1,000 Likes on our Facebook Page, and three days on G+ to get that number to Circle us,” she says. “We are gearing up for Hangouts with some of our writers in 2012 to answer iOS questions and a few other fun things with contests and giveaways.”

4. Connect with Early Adopters: If your business falls in the Internet or technology industries, Google+ could be a great place to connect a tech-savvy audience. “The people that are on Google+ already are most likely going to be early adopters of other technologies and marketing channels,” says Jason Pinto, CMO at interlinkONE. “When we look at what defines an ‘ideal customer’ for our products, that criteria is certainly high on our list.”

5. Segment Your Audience: “The obvious benefit of Google+ is that it allows us to share select content with specific audiences,” says Chad Udell, managing director of Float Mobile Learning. Google+ makes it easy for businesses to segment their audiences and share content directly with those certain groups of followers.

6. Use Google+ to Network: David Greenberg, president of Parliament Tutors, says that his business does not have a Google+ page, but that he uses his personal Google+ page to network and gather contact data and research the “personal side” of relevant contacts, such as journalists and potential clients, so that he can better create a connection with them. He adds that the “About” section of a contact’s Google+ profile is usually a great start.

7. Just Explore: Netronic Managing Director Martin Karlowitsch says, “We currently use Google+ for exploratory purposes. It is still a niche platform, but quickly growing and with a platform giant behind it. Knowing the impact that Google has on the way people find relevant information on the web, Google+ soon can become significant by combining social and search. I want to start early using this platform to be prepared when this inflection point arises.”

Branding and social media — they seem to go together so well, yet they’re both widely misunderstood. While social media can serve as a gigantic megaphone for your brand, social media tools such as Facebook and Twitter can also give a company a golden opportunity to shoot itself in the figurative foot.

How are people using social media to interact with brands, and how are companies using the power of social media to reach more customers? Who is most receptive to brands on Twitter? How about on Facebook?

read more by clicking this link.

1. Determine Organizational Goals

Ask yourself: What is my goal, and how is my content marketing plan going to help me accomplish it? These are things that need to be thought out before determining your content. By doing so, you can tailor your content marketing plan accordingly.

Each goal should be measurable and have a deadline by which you perform this measurement. For example, increase website traffic 25% by Jan. 1, 2012.

2. Identify Target Audiences

The next step is to figure out exactly whom you are targeting. This means researching everything about the audience to whom you will be delivering your content. Ask them questions, research website traffic data and determine their demographic information, including age, gender, education, location, etc.

From there, you need to figure out what your audience is interested in, both online and offline. What are they reading? What are they talking about? What are their likes and dislikes?

In this step, it is helpful to think like one of your clients or customers. Envision that you’re writing for one specific person, and then tune in to his thought process in order to succeed. Above all, listen to what that person wants, which is not necessarily the same as what you want. After all, you want him to be receptive to your content.

3. Develop Key Messages

What exactly does your audience want/need to hear? In general, determine what will differentiate you and your product, as well as what will help you to achieve the goals you have set. The end result should be one to three main messages, each with one to five sub-messages that offer a bit more detail.

4. Decide on Overall Content Marketing Strategies

There are three different types of content marketing strategies: long-form, short-form and conversations (e.g. sharing).

Long-form includes blog posts, articles and press releases — basically, anything longer than a couple of sentences. Short-form includes tweets, Facebook and LinkedIn status updates and graphics. Conversations and sharing includes participating in and driving conversations through blog commenting, link sharing and comments on videos. This type helps to encourage discussions between other thought leaders within your industry.

You can stick to one of these forms of content marketing, or you can use all three. They are each effective on their own, but they are also powerful when used together.

5. Draft an Editorial Calendar

Developing a plan is one of the most important steps to content marketing. However, it should be flexible. After all, things can always change.

This is where an editorial calendar comes in. It should include strategies, specific tactics, suggested headlines, content deadlines and allocated responsibilities. This is a fairly major undertaking, but you’ll be thankful for your hard work once it’s complete — and you’ll save time in the long-run.

Not sure where to begin? Check out The Content Grid V2 by Eloqua and JESS3.

6. Develop Content

In order to even begin the marketing aspect of a content marketing plan, you need to develop the content you are going to use. It needs to be unique and different. Go back to your key messages and subtly incorporate them into the content without overtly selling your product. Content marketing is about creating trust through education and information, not using traditional sales tactics.

The infographic Is Your Content King? is a great visual of how important content is, especially for your marketing plan.

7. Establish Relationships

It’s time to start building a relationship with your target audience. This means tapping into existing communities by sharing and commenting on their content, as well as establishing your own communities across various social networking platforms.

Remember, content marketing isn’t just about you. Like all relationships, you should aim to give more than you receive. Be sure to use the 80/20 principle: 80% of the content you share should be curated (in other words, not your own) and 20% should be your original content.

Find brands that have successfully made a name for themselves, and mimic the steps they’ve taken — but make sure to add your own unique flare. For ideas, check out how these three companies took content marketing to the next level.

8. Spread the Word

Determine industry keywords that are not only relevant to your product, but also are going to generate enough buzz. Search engine optimization (SEO) can play a huge role if you research thoroughly. For example, make sure the tags you’re adding to your blog posts are going to generate traffic, since this can help you get found in the first place. I’m a huge fan of both Scribe SEO and InboundWriter to help you accomplish this.

Also, spread the word through Twitter, Facebook, e-newsletters, etc. But be careful not to force your content where it doesn’t belong. It may seem like you’re trying too hard, and in turn, people may not be interested in what you have to say.

Eloque came out with a free ebook, The Grande Guide to B2B Content Marketing, a helpful read when it comes to content marketing. Plus, it’s useful for deciding which platforms you should employ and how to effectively use them.

9. Measure Effectiveness

Although this is one of the last steps, it’s one of the most important. By measuring the effectiveness of your content, you can determine whether or not your plan needs to be altered, or whether it’s working in the first place.

Keep an eye on pageviews, retweets, Likes, +1’s, shares and so on. Anything your audience can take action on is something, you need to pay attention to. Figure out how well everything is working — or why it’s not working at all.

10. Change the Plan As Needed

If something isn’t working, change it up. Be sure to pay attention to results, and then use them to your advantage.

The most important thing to remember about content marketing: It’s all about building connections and improving your audience’s product loyalty. One of your goals should be for people to recognize your product based off of the content you’ve been placing both online and off. For a more in-depth look into how to create your content marketing plan, check out: Content Marketing For Dummies – Cheat Sheet.

Have you used content marketing in order to launch a product before? What were the steps that you took in order to do this successfully?

Google+ has opened the doors for business and brand pages.
In this article I show you how to set up your Google+ page and provide examples.
If you haven’t already created a personal Google+ profile for yourself, you’ll need to do that first (you cannot simply sign up a business page from the main Google+ signup screen).
Check out the How to Get Started With Google+ for more on personal Google+ profiles.
If you do have a personal profile, here’s how to create a page for your business.
Visit Create a Page on Google+ to begin, and follow the steps below to get started with Google+ pages.
The first step in getting started creating your Google+ page is to choose from the following five main categories.

#1: Local Business or Place
Local Business or Place includes any local business—hotels, restaurants, places, stores or services. If you choose this category, you will be asked for the country in which your business is located and the primary phone number.
If Google finds a matching result in Google Places with your phone number, it will use this information for your Google+ profile. If not, you can add your business info to Google and continue.

#2: Product or Brand
Examples given by Google+ of pages that would fit under Product or Brand include apparel, cars, electronics and financial services.
Here, you would enter your page name and website, and choose an applicable category which includes anything from Aerospace and Defense to a Website, or you can simply choose Brand, Other, Product or Service.

#3: Company, Institution or Organization
The next category, Company, Institution or Organization includes pages for companies, institutions, organizations and non-profits or similar entities. Here you also enter your page name and website, and choose an applicable category with the same options as a Product or Brand page, or you can simply choose Company, Institution, Organization or Other.

#4: Arts, Entertainment or Sports
Pages for movies, TV, music, books, sports and shows are considered a good fit for the Arts, Entertainment or Sports section. Again, you will enter your page name and website, and choose an applicable category—this time with options ranging from Album to Website, or you can simply choose Entertainment, Other or Sports.

#5: Other
If you don’t feel your page fits in any of the above-mentioned categories, you can simply select Other, where you can enter your page name and website without any additional narrowing of category selection.
For pages in any category, you must also choose whether your page’s content is suitable for any Google+ user, users 18 or older, users 21 or older or specifically note that the content will be alcohol-related. Then you will tick boxes to opt-in to updates for Google+ pages and agree to terms and conditions to continue.

Be sure to actually check out the Google+ Additional Terms of Service to see their notes on Authority, Access, Content, Data, Contests and Suspension & Termination.
Customize Your Page’s Public Profile

Once you’ve selected your page’s category, you can start customizing your page’s public profile.

#1: Add Your Profile Photo and Tagline
First, you will be asked to add your tagline (the 10 words that best describe your page) and your page’s profile photo.

After you have added these items and clicked on Continue, you will be asked to spread the word about your new page through your personal Google+ profile. If you’re not ready yet (which you probably aren’t, since you haven’t completed your profile), click on Finish to be taken to your new page.

#2: Editing Your Page Information
Once you’ve perused your page’s welcome screen, you will want to edit your page’s information. Go to your page’s profile by clicking on the Profile icon at the top, left of the Search Google+ box. Then go to your About tab and Edit Profile.

Here you will be able to click on everything from your page name to your links to enter relevant information about your page within Introduction, Hours (for local businesses or places), Website and Contact Info (phone, email, Skype, etc.). Also be sure to enter additional links to your page in the Introduction section using the Link button and under Recommended Links to link to your other social profiles, blog, blog posts and so on.

#3: Adding Your Photostrip
Last but not least when it comes to your Google+ page design is filling in your photostrip. These five photos will be displayed underneath your page’s name and tagline.

It’s similar to the five photos you can have on your Facebook page. While editing your profile, click on the photo area where it says “add photos here” and upload a photo in each of the five photo spots. You can use different photos that represent your business or creatively cut one photo into five pieces and spread it across the area.

Congratulations! Your Google+ Page Is Ready.
Once your profile is ready, you can start posting to your profile by adding status updates, links, photos and videos just like you do on your personal Google+ profile. I would suggest writing a post or two before you use the “Spread the word” option in your right sidebar to announce your page to your personal profile connections.

Following and Engaging With Your Fans
So what’s the difference between a Google+ page and a Facebook page? The big one I’ve noticed so far is the fact that you can follow your page’s fans back and add them to Circles.
To find out who has added your page to their Circle, you can check your Notifications under Stream in the left sidebar. You can also look under your Circles > People who’ve added you area by clicking on the Circles icon.

Do you own a small business? Are you tired of hearing how big businesses are succeeding with social media?
If so, Social Media Examiner has some exciting news…
But first, much has been said about big companies such as Red Bull and Cisco, and how they harness social media to drive massive traffic to their sites and generate enormous sales.
But when small business owners are asked about social media, many have no idea how to use it in a practical way that can impact their business goals.
And frankly it’s hard for small businesses to get ideas from the big guys that seem to have unlimited resources.
Small Businesses Thriving With Social Media
Not knowing “how” to leverage social media is a huge problem for small businesses, because they typically get most of their customers through word-of-mouth referrals.
Savvy entrepreneurs are tapping the power of social media marketing.
Take Curtis Kimball, for example. In the Mission district of San Francisco where he’s known as the Crème Brûlée Man, Curtis uses Twitter to advertise his daily specials, “secret menus” and specific locations where his cart will be parked.
Curtis, who says he has no marketing budget, currently has more than 20,000 followers, many of whom literally follow him around from neighborhood to neighborhood to get a taste of his delicious custard treats.
And then there’s the story of Alex Morrissey. He leveraged Facebook to garner 500,000 fans and a very successful business called JamaicansMusic.com.
Responding to his social media experience, Morrissey said, “It’s better than traditional media or even advertising.”
What about you? Has your small business really tapped into the massive opportunities presented by social media marketing?
Small Business Social Media Stats
Here’s evidence of the opportunity for small businesses:
Mass consumer adoption of social media: There are more than 800 million active Facebook users, 80% of all Americans use a social network and Americans spend more time on Facebook than any other U.S. website (Nielsen). Your customers are there.
Small businesses see big results with social media: A significant 61% of small businesses are landing new customers through social media activities (CrowdSPRING). Plus, more than 70% of small businesses using social media see increased traffic and more than 60% improve search rankings (2011 Social Media Marketing Industry Report).
Smaller businesses find social media costs very low: Nearly 60% of small- and mid-sized businesses spend less than $100 to market via social media (Marketing in a Digital World, Zoomerang).

Old school SEO pros cover your ears, or be prepared to adapt your craft: Search engines are changing, and social media is a huge part of that change.

Bing, Google, and an increasing swath of nimble little search engines like Blekko and DuckDuckGo are incorporating social data into their results. This is potentially great news for new businesses trying to achieve visibility in search. It’s less great news for sites that rely heavily on link buying (illegal, but hard to catch), producing huge volumes of borderline-useless content (long-tail, content farm approach), or just really old domains (previously an SEO trump card).

Both Bing and Google admitted in interviews that their search results are positively affected by social signals, such as tweets, Facebook Likes, and +1s.

“As ideas, thoughts, questions and answers are shared more freely and easily than ever, the increased amount of information from social sources provides great benefits to users,” says a Microsoft spokesperson for Bing (who asked to remain anonymous).

“The links that you build through social media, the references, the authority — all can have an impact in various ways on how you are ranked and listed even in ‘regular’ search results,” says Danny Sullivan, Editor-in-chief of Search Engine Land, in an email interview. “Social media allows for people to provide more trusted signals.”

Search Engines Adapt to Survive

Since the early Internet days of Excite and Webcrawler, the principal goal of search engines has been to help people find what they’re looking for. Google rose to dominate the industry by tracking better indicators of content quality than anyone else. It developed a complex algorithm that measured which websites were “voting” for others by linking to them.

Essentially, it was social media, but for websites rather than people. If your site had lots of links from relevant sites, your Google rank climbed. Plenty of other factors, like putting keywords into headlines and titles, remained in play (and continually evolved), but the game changer of the last decade was links.

The Search Engine Optimization (SEO) industry emerged to help webmasters play the “me rank higher” game with Google. On the one hand, website owners attempt to adhere to Google’s standards and prove they are high quality (creating relevant, high quality content and formatting it to Google’s taste). On the other hand, shadier sites try to trick Google’s secret formula, “pretending” to be good content without having to bother with creating useful stuff.

The spammers have done well for themselves. Over the last few years, searchers have increasingly complained about the number of irrelevant or spammy results returned in searches.

The battle to the top of search keeps search engines on their toes. Every so often Google, makes an abrupt change in its algorithm, like the “Panda Update” of early 2011 that wiped out a significant number of content farm results. Periodically, new search engines launch to try to outdo Google. Bing, Microsoft’s search engine, has climbed to 30% market share since its launch in 2009. Blekko, an “anti-spam” search engine, has climbed to a million searches a day since its launch in 2007.

And now, social media is factoring in to make results even better.

Social Media Changes The Game

Social networks produce an immense amount of data about what real people like enough to share with their friends.

Today, people share 30 billion pieces of content on Facebook and over 5 billion tweets — about a quarter of which contain links to content — per month.

In an industry where knowing what humans like is crucial to success, search engines have figured out — and taken to heart — a delightfully simple mantra: If people share your content, it’s probably pretty good.

In a white paper called New Signals To Search Engines, Search Engine Strategies Advisory Board chair Mike Grehan says, “End users who previously couldn’t vote for content via links from web pages are now able to vote for content with their clicks, bookmarks, tags and ratings. These are very strong signals to search engines, and best of all, they don’t rely on the elitism of one website owner linking to another or the often mediocre crawl of a dumb bot.”

We’re already seeing proof of search engines taking social data into account when serving results.

Social Data Is Personalizing Results

Last year, Bing started incorporating Facebook like data into its search results. Results for pages that a searcher’s own friends had liked show up more prominently.

And more recently, Bing announced better results through Facebook data and “collective IQ,” meaning that things popular throughout Facebook (not just among your friends) rank more prominently.

“Search is better when it’s not just based in math and algorithms, but also infused with the opinions of people,” writes the Bing team in a blog post.

Google answered back to the Bing-Facebook deal with its own +1 button, and subsequently Google+. When searching as a logged-in Google user, you now see this social data personalizing your results.

Sullivan recounts how automaker Ford rose in his Google results after he added Ford to his Google+ account. “Ford gets into the top results for cars not because of links, not because of the content on its page, but because I was ‘friends’ with it,” Sullivan says.

Shared Content Now Ranks Higher in Organic Search

Both Google and Bing have added real-time results to their searches, meaning Twitter (and now Google+) results show up prominently above other content.

In addition, several experiments have shown that sharing stories on Twitter, Facebook, and Google+ can dramatically affect regular search results as well.

In July this year, Rand Fishkin of search engine authority SEOmoz.org performed a series of experiments to see if 1) social shares affected Google search results, and 2) how quickly those results appeared. (Find the full details on the experiment here.)

Spoiler Alert: In every test Fishkin performed, tweets and Google+ shares dramatically affected the rank of new, previously unindexed content. The results in most cases were nearly instant.

“We’re experimenting with clicks on +1 buttons as just one of the hundreds of signals that influences the ranking and appearance of websites in search results,” says a Google spokesperson (who wished to remain anonymous), via email. “As with any new ranking signal, for +1’s and other social ranking signals, we’ll be starting carefully and learning how those signals are related to quality.”

A Microsoft spokesperson (who also requested anonymity), says via email that tweets and Facebook Likes do indeed positively affect a URL’s ranking in search results on Bing. “To be candid,” she says, “we are experimenting with placements in order to strike a balance between this new social signal and the other signals we have honed to determine relevance.”

“Social signals that say quality are pretty straight forward,” says the Microsoft spokesperson. “Look to things such as likes, re-tweets, shares, etc. Beyond that, watch for the sentiment surrounding the action. Are people sharing your content via Twitter yet flagging it with #fail? If so, it’s a clue they’re displeased.”

When we go to a search engine, we want to find what we’re looking for, immediately and hassle-free. It’s clear that social media is helping search engines deliver more immediacy and more relevant results. In the long run, this will help SEO-directed businesses focus on what they should be doing: creating content people love.