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"Lee Odden (@leeodden) is CEO of digital marketing agency TopRank Online Marketing and writes about search, social media &amp; online PR at Online Marketing Blog.\nThe increasing demand for fresh, live web content as well as the expectation of consumers to interact with what they find in the search results requires that website owners and content publishers make their websites both search and social media friendly.\nHere are 5 ways to do just that:\n1. Fresh content\nTo play the search and social media game, a website must be in the content publishing business. Search engines and participants on the social web respond favorably to the signals created from frequent updates. \nWebsites that frequently add content provide more web pages for search engines to include in search results and attract more links from other websites. Fresh content and inbound links give search engines more reason to re-crawl content on a more frequent basis.  Frequent visits from search bots means corporate content getting included in search results more quickly.\nBesides providing a positive signal to search engines, fresh content can also take on a social flavor based on the tools used to publish. RSS is a big player here, enabling syndication of blog content as well as content from other social media tools the company is engaged with such as Twitter, Flickr, YouTube and blogging. \nParticipation in offsite social channels can be brought into the corporate website through RSS or widgets providing website visitors access to additional forms of information and interaction with the company. Adding new web pages to a corporate site for the sake of being \"fresh\" isn't practical, so syndicating offsite social media participation can help solve the freshness issue as well as encourage social engagement with the brand.\nThe easiest way to syndicate content is not always going to offer a SEO benefit, since links within widgets that use JavaScript or Flash will often not be crawled by search engines. Not all efforts at bringing in fresh content need to be SEO friendly in order to realize benefits from better user experience.  \nExample:  Econsultancy home page \n\n\n\n2. Social content\nNot all of a company's social web participation needs to happen offsite with third party tools. The addition of a blog, reviews, forum or even a social network to the company web site can provide interested consumers opportunities to interact with the company and even other brand enthusiasts.  \nIn many cases, the result of social media participation creates content in the form of comments, reviews and media being shared. Social media content can provide more information for standard search engines to crawl, index and rank. It also provides opportunities for inbound links which can improve search visibility. \nExample: REI \n\n\n\n3. Interaction\nConversation is king on the social web.  Most company websites offer limited interaction opportunities for visitors outside of a contact form or buying a product. Key characteristics of social media friendly websites make it easy for site visitors to interact with the website itself and in many cases, with other site visitors.\nThe ability to create profiles, share interests, connect with others, vote/rate and comment on content make up the core behaviors of a social media friendly website. As mentioned with social content, a byproduct of consumers engaging in a social media is content. Content is good for search engines as well as for improving visibility to consumers that are looking.\nExample:  Autodesk Area: 3D Animation Wiki &amp; Community \n\n\n\n4. Easy to share\nBesides the ability to contribute to conversations happening on a corporate website, there's a tremendous opportunity and benefit to making it easy for site visitors to share that content with others. \nMany sites offer \"share this\" options that make it easy for readers to submit specific web pages, video or images to popular social bookmarking and social news websites (Digg, Delicious StumbleUpon).  Sharing options for Facebook, Twitter and email are also popular.\nMaking it easy for website visitors to share interesting content (web pages, video, images) facilitates the word of mouth recommendations people make in real life, except when done online, they become searchable assets. Content that's well received on social news and bookmarking sites can be voted to the popular or home page creating a tremendous amount of traffic and more importantly, visibility to bloggers and media that pay attention to what's popular.\nTen thousand visitors in a day from StumbleUpon may not result in many business inquiries, but it will very likely result in being mentioned by a handful to thousands of bloggers that may otherwise not have known about the company. The resulting links can send traffic and as SEO savvy marketers know, improve search engine visibility.\nExample:  Mashable \n\n\n\n5. Syndication\nSyndication works well to extend the reach of content produced on a company website as well as bringing in offsite content to the company website from participation in other social channels.\nThe addition of social features to a website and the resulting content can be syndicated across other company web properties via RSS. For example, a company blog that lives on the main company website can use RSS to syndicate posts for a specific topical category to a niche microsite. \nCompanies are increasingly creating social hubs either as standalone websites or as a part of the main company website. These hubs leverage RSS to aggregate company social web participation in one location giving consumers a conversational snapshot of how employees are engaging socially online.\nExample: Best Buy Connect  \n\n\n\nConclusion\nThe popularity of the social web is growing rapidly and has already changed the way we discover, consume and share information online. Consumers and businesses alike will continue to publish digital media that can be searched on, giving marketers opportunities to make it easier for search engines and consumers to discover and interact with content. The challenge is to figure out where social media and SEO fit within an overall online marketing and content strategy and implementing a plan that aligns realistic tactics with business goals.\nMore social media resources from Mashable:\n- Social Media and SEO: 5 Essential Steps to Success- YouTube Brands: 5 Outstanding Leaders in YouTube Marketing- HOW TO: Manage Multiple Social Media Profiles- 5 Ways to Share Your Social Media Identity\nImage courtesy of iStockphoto, DSGpro"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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