Ben Elowitz, CEO of Web publisher Wetpaint, says that with the rise of social networks, search engine optimization will inevitably be replaced by social media optimization. SEO techniques such as “keywords, hacks, paid links, and technical engineering” worked well to game Google results, he writes, but great content will be the key in the future:
“Search was critical when answers to questions were scarce. Google can find an answer to almost any keyword query from among the zillions of pages on the web. But at a time when such answers are abundant, it’s far more valuable to find the best content for me – and increasingly, find it before I’ve even asked for it. The sort [of] algorithm that works best for that is more correlated to who’s doing the asking than how they would phrase the ask.
“For that level of personalized results, no abject algorithm can keep up without deep knowledge of its users. Advantage: Facebook.”
