The Future of Online Marketing – How Google vs. Microsoft Will Affect SEO & Social Media Marketing

Search Engine Optimization and Social Media Marketing are no longer exclusive services. This is an obvious development if you’re looking at what Google and Microsoft have been doing when rolling out new search features after making key strategic acquisitions. When creating a marketing plan for your business, you must be able to plan for at least 5 years into the future, not just dealing with the present. That being the case, if SEO is currently a marketing strategy with your brand or business and your SEO department or outsourced company is not talking to you about Social Media Marketing, they’re shooting your results in the feet. Secondly, if you are concerned about being findable online through search, Social Media Marketing has to be involved in your marketing plan and strategy. Here’s why: There is now a new Google search called “Google Personal Search” which combines Google+ connections to Google Search results. This affects all search results by making them relevant to you based on your Google+ connections. When you look at the other acquisitions/products Google has, you have Google Search, Google+, Gmail, Youtube, Picasa, Reader, Google Docs and Zagat, most recently. Now, with Microsoft we have seen Bing slowly crawling to the surface of relevance with it’s connectivity to Facebook. In fact, they connected Facebook to their search results more than 15 months ago. More than that, as Twitter has left the Google camp, they’ve definitely started working with Bing. If …