Web 2.0 & Social Networking can enhance “findability”

July 23rd, 2007 | Category: Blogging,Heidi's Entries,SEO,Social Networking,Web 2.0,marketing,social media
written by: Heidi Cool

IMG_0025.JPG
"Guerrilla Asphalt Repair" has been making the
rounds thanks to Web 2.0.

This is the second in a series of posts that will discuss Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and other Web marketing strategies.

Through the course of this series, I'm going to take a broad approach to the concept of SEO, focusing on the tenet that strategies that increase the "findability" of your sites will also enhance your SEO, which in turn enhances your overall visibility. Additional information on the basics of promoting your site can be found at Raising your Web site rankings.

What do we mean by Web 2.0 & social networking

For the purposes of this discussion, Web 2.0 refers to Web-based sites, programs, services and applications such as blogs, chat, MySpace, Flickr, YouTube, etc. that promote interactive and/or participatory functionality. Social networking will refer to the use of these and other online tools to connect with or share information with others. Online social networking may be done on social networking sites like Facebook, but such networking also occurs in newsgroups, topical discussion boards, the blogosphere and other venues. There's more to it than that, but for now we'll keep it simple.

A week of active and passive social networking using the tools of Web 2.0

I do not profess to be an expert on either Web 2.0 or social networking, but last week I was involved in some discussions that made me want to learn more, so I decided to jump in and do some exploring. Throughout the week, when not building Web sites, running errands, watching thunderstorms, and socializing with friends in the real world, I worked with tools I'd not used before as well as tools I use on a regular basis. Here's how it went:

facebook.jpg

One evening I decided to dust off my Facebook account to see what all of the fuss was about. While on there I added a map of places I had been and a list of some of the books I've read lately. The iRead feature was rather handy, and allowed me to rate books or let people know if I had them available to lend. I also added a few friends which led to a few more friends and Gretchen got me to join a group and a cause. I also added some information about my interests and work experience, and Gretchen and I wrote messages on each others walls. Other than that I'm not quite sure what to do with it. I guess I'm supposed to use it to learn more about the people I know, meet people I don't know, and write/chat about common interests in topical discussion groups. But I don't have a lot of free time these days, so I guess I'll have to explore that more later.

The next night I joined LinkedIn. I'd been getting invitations to do this for awhile. This is more of a professional networking site in which you can list your work experience and education to find people in your field, old classmates, and so on. It also allows you to ask and answer questions on all variety of topics. I found it frustrating because I couldn't control how much information is shared on my profile. There are different views for contacts and non-contacts, but I wanted to control the content more precisely than it would allow. I guess I'm so accustomed to building sites the way I want, that I felt hemmed in by these limitations. Next I wanted to find classmates from Colby, but whenever I tried to go past the first page, I got an error message saying the search functionality was temporarily unavailable.

With searching out of the way for the time being, I poked around the answers area to see if there were any Web development questions I could try to answer. I answered two. But when I saw my post for the second one I realized that I shouldn't have included any HTML because it was showing up as code. Thus I tried to edit it. No can do. You can add clarifying information or you can delete it. To clarify my message I would have had to say something like, "Oops, didn't know you couldn't use HTML here" which didn't seem to add much value. With or without the clarification I look like a lunkhead. So I thought I'd delete my answer and start over. But you can't do that. If you delete your answer, you aren't allowed to answer that question again. I'm sure there is some good reason for that, I just don't know what it is. I therefore logged off in frustration. I think this question/answer network is probably a very useful thing, I just found the interface to be clunkier than what I'm used to.

second.jpg

The next day I needed to get a screen capture of people hanging out in the virtual Silver Spartan diner on Second Life. I've explored this a few times, but I'm still a newbie—more adept at walking into walls than much else. Brian Gray graciously agreed to meet me in the diner, gave me some pointers and explained how to use the camera functions so I could get both of our avatars in the shot. (Brian is also a good resource on Web 2.0, particularly in regard to libraries.) This went quite smoothly and I was able to get the images I needed. Thanks Brian!

By Friday, after tinkering with various sites and picking Jeremy's brain for ideas on best practices, I'd cut down on the experimenting if not the usage. My friend Steve had invited me to join him and others in painting a parking lot as part of his art project, "Guerrilla Asphalt Repair." I decided to take pictures rather than paint, and also used the time to explore IngenuityFest. After that I met up for cold beverages with some of our engineering faculty and various other friends.

flickr.jpg

On Saturday I uploaded my pictures to Flickr, organized them by tags and one set, and e-mailed the location to Steve. While there, I also responded to Flickr mail from some of my contacts, and posted shots to the Your Life on 20/07/2007 group. This put the photos in front of a whole new group of people including a woman in Singapore who commented that Steve's project was an amazing idea. Today another Flickr user identified a woman in one of my photos as a dancer who performed at Ingenuity.

On Sunday I decided to also post a few of the pictures to my other blog, the one I rarely update. A little while later I wandered over to Technorati to see what my favorite bloggers were up to and who, if anyone, was linking to my sites. There I discovered that George Nemeth at Brewed Fresh Daily had already linked to the posting I had made just a short while before! This in turn led me to add some more information to the original post and to send pictures to the Ingenuity Cleveland group on Flickr. Back on Technorati I also learned that a fellow in Louisiana had quoted from my turtle story. It's fascinating to see where this stuff will turn up.

Conclusions: Web 2.0 and social networking tools have increased the findability of my content...and Steve's.

While the forays into Facebook and LinkedIn have put the url of this blog in front of a few more people, and I have far more to learn about these services, the tools I was already using accomplished the most. Flickr's built in functionality let me share pictures with people from around the world as well as those specifically interested in Ingenuity. (Now I just wish I'd taken cooler pics!) My posting of photos to my blog—rather than to a static Web site—led to them being shared with the readers of Brewed Fresh Daily in addition to my own; my blog entry comes up first in a Google search of "Guerrilla Asphalt Repair" (handy for anyone who saw the project and later does a Google search to learn more); and between the blog and Flickr I've added a number of links to Steve Manka's Web site which will him keep up his Google positioning as well.

In the grand scheme it doesn't matter how much exposure these photos received, but for other Web content, it does. Using similar techniques, substituting a topical discussion forum for Flickr, posting regularly to your—or other people's blogs— or even sharing links on the right newsgroup or listserv will help you make your content more available. Many of you are using these types of tools already.

Blog Related Announcements

This Thursday at noon, Jeremy Smith and I will be giving a UCITE presentation to faculty on "Using blogs and Web pages to raise your professional profile." Register online. This will be similar to the presentation we made last year with a few updates.

Bloggapalooza takes place July 28th, as part of the Waterloo Arts Fest. I'm not involved with this, but it sounds interesting and supports ArtsCollinwood. As I understand it, many of Cleveland's more active bloggers will be there.

Web 2.0 & Social Networking Resources

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26 Comments »
  1. I'm fast. ; )

    Comment by George Nemeth — July 23, 2007 @9:09 pm

  2. Very fast, this post only went live a few minutes ago! So George, perhaps you can share some insight into this topic. How did you find out about this post, and the one on Sunday, so quickly? RSS feed? Ping? Trackback? Cyber-omniscience?

    Comment by Heidi Cool — July 23, 2007 @9:26 pm

  3. Heidi, I enjoyed reading your post about Web 2.0 Currently my favorite Web 2.0 sites are: 1. StumbleUpon, 2. Digg, 3. PlugIM and 4. Marktd. None of which you mention. :) I'm familiar with Flickr and I search Technorati all the time but some of the others you mentioned I will have to investigate further and check them out. Please check out my blog at: SEO Blog - Tips and Techniques Regards, Jared

    Comment by Jared Blake — July 25, 2007 @2:15 am

  4. There's so many Web2.0 sites popping out that I'm losing count. Is there any Web2.0 directory out there?

    Comment by Edmund — July 29, 2007 @3:07 am

  5. Thanks Jared, I'm familiar with StumbleUpon and Digg, but hadn't previously seen PlugIM and Marktd. I also forgot to mention de.licio.us, which is quite popular, but as Edmund points out there are a lot of things out there. Here are some directories for Web 2.0 sites: Of course all of this stuff can get you sidetracked from your original purpose. As soon as you finish adding bookmarks to de.licio.us, someone e-mails that you've just got to post your favorite blog entries to furl. As you look up furl someone else asks you to to join Friendster, and suddenly you remember that the real reason you got online this evening was to get directions to that new Brazilian barbecue place where you were supposed to meet your real friends, in real life, 90 minutes ago!

    Comment by Heidi Cool — July 30, 2007 @2:48 pm

  6. Also, you can be networked until the cows come home, if you don't have content worth reading your site will get treated like the geek in high school with the big zit on his nose. I need to concentrate better on my presentation - it will take me a lot of time to get to the obvious ability you have. Keep up the great work, I look forward to reading it.

    Comment by TomG — August 5, 2007 @3:40 pm

  7. Your blog is always fascinating to read.

    Comment by Andria — August 6, 2007 @1:16 am

  8. LinkedIn seems to be very limited or hard for me to grasp. So far, I haven't gone much further than adding contacts and there's nothing there inticing enough for me to spend more time exploring it. I'm attempting to learn a lot more about Facebook and am enjoying the ride. Glad I could offer a helping hand.

    Comment by gretchenaro — August 9, 2007 @10:32 am

  9. You bring up many good points and from an overall internet marketing strategy web 2.o and social networking are a great way to extend the reach of content and build relevant link popularity and inturn improve SEO efforts. From an SEO marketers perspective this is exactly what search engines like Google, Yahoo, & MSN want you to do to build your rankings organically because its all about relevance and content that people will link to is generally relevant.

    Comment by Bryan Boettiger — August 25, 2007 @1:58 am

  10. I think many seo people are jumping on the bandwagon and trying to manipulate the recent web 2.0 trend. Take the recent Squidoo slap by Google, many lenses dropped in rank and this was rumoured to be due to spammers setting up hundreds of sites within a short period of time. Thankfully, many of these sites have human editors to stop many spammers, however they usually do find a way round it and cause problems for the rest of us.

    Comment by Mark Woodcock — September 3, 2007 @11:24 am

  11. Those unfamiliar with the "Squidoo Slap" may be interested in the following.

    As we've seen time and again, the bottom line is that readers, customers and search engines want quality content. Those who who focus more on making money than they do on the products or services they offer just make it harder for everyone else, including their own potential customers.

    Comment by Heidi Cool — September 3, 2007 @2:36 pm

  12. I would have to totally agree with using the social networks of the Web 2.0 to get the word out about your site.

    Comment by Fred333 — December 20, 2007 @10:18 am

  13. Some really great information. Thanks for sharing. I look forward to reading more from you.

    Comment by Michael Goldstein — January 24, 2008 @8:13 pm

  14. The main problem I see here is that the social networking scence is being manipulated by marketers which in its own way is fine as long as it is done within the rules but there are the ones that have little or no control and completely spam everything they touch, now it is these people who are responsible for ranking falls and sites being unfairly penalized. These 2.0 sites are for communities and people who wish to bookmark their favourites or indulge in online conversation (social networking) and sharing their views photos etc. I have nothing against marketing using the 2.0 platform as long as it is done professionally and with a certain restraint.

    Comment by Singen Peccant — January 30, 2008 @5:01 am

  15. Web 2.0 it's about making the Web a participative and democratic WWW. Supposedly it will also make the Web a better place with people participating in all the process: finding information, researching, giving information and feedback, etc. http://www.sanderscontacts.com

    Comment by Bill Danielson — January 31, 2008 @11:17 am

  16. Heidi, it’s been a while since I posted on your blog, I'm sticking with your post here on "Web 2.0 & Social Networking" as I've been into Social Bookmarking and Web 2.0 lately. I just built a new social bookmarking news site called WhamX. I have spent the last few days making the site more SEO friendly. The URL’s now use hyphens instead of underscores and are all in lower case. Also I removed the word “category” from the URL’s. Please check out the site and submit a post or two if you like. Hopefully it will be a great place for website owners and bloggers to create links and generate interest and traffic back to their sites. It’s a brand new site so the page rank hasn’t kicked in yet. Here is the link: http://www.whamx.com Regards, Jared Blake

    Comment by Jared Blake — February 6, 2008 @2:37 am

  17. One of the most important principles of WEB 2.0 is participation. The Web now is a two way comunication, is not just getting information from Websites but giving feedback from us the users.

    Comment by Contact Lenses — February 8, 2008 @5:14 pm

  18. Great article, Web 2.0 and social networking is touching all parts of the internet experience, curious to see the future!

    Comment by John Colins — April 2, 2008 @2:22 am

  19. great article and social networking has increased our findability as well.

    Comment by Jonathan — April 8, 2008 @1:30 pm

  20. the article is simply gorgerous, thanks

    Comment by Bidding Directory — April 12, 2008 @10:28 am

  21. you've gave a good description of Web2.0 and social networking...I think its due to the informal elements that encourages participation. I've also known very quiet personalities being very "talkative" in their blogs. People are using these sites as their way of expressing themselves.

    Comment by Timothy — April 24, 2008 @10:44 pm

  22. I like the idea about second life .. do you have a list of social media sites you are using or the ones which in your view point are more successful than the others?

    Comment by Debanjan Ghosh — May 11, 2008 @6:47 pm

  23. I think that the difference between the web 1.0 concept and web 2.0 concept is like the difference between 2d and 3d animation. That is the difference! Your article is very god. Web 2.0 means participation an interactivity! Maxwell F.

    Comment by Filmes Maxwell — June 17, 2008 @11:55 am

  24. It is common to note that spammers out there are constantly making use of web 2.0 trend in popularizing their own domains. Squidoo lens and Twitter slaps are good examples of such moves. http://www.ezbusinessneeds.com With Regards, Rif Chia

    Comment by Rif Chia — October 27, 2008 @11:52 pm

  25. I swear it's one of the most interesting blog entries I have ever read on Social Media Optimization. Great style, amazingly unique. Well, Im not surprised that its got so many comments. Btw, Social Networking has increasingly become indispensable for everything you want to do online. Those who are into online business simply can't do without online social networking.

    Comment by John Hemilton — November 12, 2008 @7:14 am

  26. I have been into search engine optimization industry for over five years, and I have found optimizing online dating sites one of the most difficult things to do. The keywords and key phrases are very competitive and there's so much competition around, it is very difficult to retain a position for a long time. I'd like to know if there are any specific ways to easier SEO for online dating sites.

    Comment by Ken Thomas — November 15, 2008 @3:00 am

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