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In digital news this week a damning blog post from SEOBook.com questioned the worth of social media such as Twitter and Facebook in terms of search engine optimisation (SEO) while Microsoft’s Bing got a boost in paid clicks.The popularity of social networking sites such as MySpace and Facebook is very well established and undeniable. With millions of users, and social networks officially overtaking email as the number one online activity, social media is touted as the next logical step in the future progression of online advertising.
SEOBook.com’s Aaron Wall rubbished claims that social media was the future of SEO. In Mr Wall’s opinion, it is too difficult to convert social network traffic from the likes of Facebook and Twitter to customer sales. “Most social media traffic is too fast and shallow to build a meaningful relationship from. Rarely are social media visitors worth as much as a penny,” he wrote.
Viral marketing campaigns were also criticised for being over-hyped, only increasing traffic by a factor of 10 for big sites such as Blendtec, a feat that Mr Wall argues good SEO practitioners have been achieving consistently for years.
However, while the worth of Twitter and Facebook were being trashed, the worth of Microsoft’s rebranded search engine Bing has improved. Statistics from Efficient Frontier show that Bing increased its pay-per-click (PPC) advertising by 8.1 per cent, with more impressions created on the Bing search engine.
Microsoft’s CEO Steve Ballmer was happy with the results but reminded onlookers that Microsoft was in the search game for the long term: “We are going to have to be tenacious and keep up the pace of innovation over a long period of time.”
Online Advertising news posted by Lily Townsend on 19 June 2009
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