The other day, I was doing a Google search for our business, ESalesGuru just to see what sort of listings were coming up on the first couple pages and I was interested to see a large percentage of Social Media Sites and Blogs fall within the first 20 results.  Check out my top 20 results in Google:

1-4. First two listings were for my main site and the next two were for this blog (which is good!)

5: Discussion Forum (DigitalPoint.com)

6. Blog Post (Affiliatescout.com)

7. Social Bookmarking Site (Blinklist.com)

8. Press Release Site (PRweb.com)

9. YouTube Video

10. Secondary Press Release Site (OpenPR.com)

11. Podcast Sharing Network (Genwi.com)

12. Blog Post 

13. Blog Post

14. Web Directory

15. Social News Site (Digg.com)

16. Secondary Press Release Site

17. Social Bookmarking site (Reddit.com)

18. Industry Specific News Site (imnewswatch.com)

19. Blog Post

20. Article Directory

If you disregard the first four listings related to my own web properties, 10 of the next 16 listings on the first two pages were all related to Social Media (Blogs, Social News sites, Video and Podcast sharing sites).  This was very revealing for me! While I have certainly focussed a lot on social media marketing over the past 6 months, these results clearly indicated Google’s affinity towards Social Media sites and blogs.

This Social Media Revolution is forever changing how Search Engine Optimization gets done. While we will certainly continue to conduct mainstream SEO tasks such as creating and optimizing website content, there must now be a major emphasis on syndicating content through every type of social medium such as blogs, videos, podcasts etc… Google is definitely placing significant weight on Social Media related links, so it is imperative that Social Media Marketing assume a key role in your company’s marketing efforts for 2008!

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