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You may hear everyone touting the new social search phenomenon but exactly how new is it? In reality social search is a return to one of the oldest marketing methods around- “word of mouth” or referral marketing. That’s right. The main difference is the technology that lies behind the creation of online communities.  The technology simply increases the speed and market reach of these very old marketing approaches exponentially.

What are the facts about social search?

1. Social search is really another layer of criteria added to the technological criteria already used by search engines. It allows the opinions of community friends to be seen by a searcher. It includes features such as “share” or ”bookmarks”, “like” and general comments.
2. Social search personalizes the search experience beyond keywords. It relies on the relationships and connections between people rather than relying strictly on the connections between pieces of information.
3. Social advertising is controlled by the Brand (company) paying for the ad. Advertising is matched and displayed only to those persons whose demographic and psychographic characteristics match a brand’s “ideal customer” traits.
4. Social advertising is especially useful to small businesses and bricks and mortar stores because social advertising relies on the opinions and views of searchers’ friends, colleagues and professionals. In most cases it appears to result in a bias for doing business with local brands.
5. The ability to create an online persona for your brand and participate in community discussions, blogs etc. provides added opportunities for building credibility, visibility and personal relationships with your customer base. It is also a great way to disseminate more information and become recognized as an expert in your field.
6. Relevant, in-depth, quality content and information is the driver behind social search.
7. Social search still includes all of the old and newer SEO criteria required for bots and spiders. It does not “do away” with traditional SEO. Your site must be optimized for both technological and human searchers.
8. Social networks continue to grow at a rapid pace and do provide unrivalled market reach and penetration for a very low cost.

Fortunately BING and the other search engines understand it is important to keep those technologies and criteria that have proven to deliver results and focus on additional criteria to make the search experience as easy and as useful as possible. Social search is the result of their efforts to find better ways to make results as relevant as possible to everyone who undertakes an online search for information.

Do not neglect your regular SEO optimization practices and shift all of your efforts into social search. Remember social search is but one layer to a complex equation of criteria designed to provide you with the information you need. Develop a balanced marketing plan that addresses both the technological and the social elements of a strong online marketing campaign. A balanced approach measured, reviewed and adjusted as necessary will yield consistent results that will increase site traffic and conversion rates.

Author Details: Writer, Jeff Beale, SEO Consultation provide you social Search optimization Services. They have vast experience in executing marketing consultationand search engine optimization Project.