Blended Search Results & Social Media Strategy

Blended search is changing the way people use search engines and impacting the good old days of SEO (Search Engine Optimization.) Just when your marketing team got their head around SEO, the rules change. Ah, the world of the Web. Ever evolving, ever changing. Blended search tactics will also have an impact on your Social Media Optimization – and what people learn about your company.

Okay, so what is “blended search“? Quite simply search engines are “blending” more than just text links on the results page. They’re including video, images, pdf links and maps in the results. This means any, and I mean any content from any part of your website, blog(s), microsites etc., can be included in search results.

The advantage is if your using SMO tactics, you can improve your chances of dominating more search results around more keywords and terms. The downside is that competitors and negative content and content you’d rather your prospects not see, is also more likely than before to show up in search results.

In developing a Social Media strategy, we think it’s now important to consider search engines that deliver blended search results. The search engines  do this in part because “tagging” has enabled them to index and deliver rich content (i.e. videos and images) and they want to keep eyeballs on the page longer to improve the chances of ad clicking.

Blended search is becoming more popular. Understanding it will help in your Social Media Optimization strategy as well.

(Author: Giles Crouch, Managing Partner)