Social Publishing

Hi everyone! This week we are covering Chapter 6 Social Publishing, specifically search engine optimization (SEO) and social media optimization (SMO), which both are a part of social publishing strategy to increase search engine rankings (located preferably at the top of the results) and increasing share-ability by users. We were asked to analyze these aspects on a website of our choosing, so i chose Nordstrom.

The website uses highlighted items and different colored fronts to draw attention to certain perks that they offer, there is also a banner for a special limited time department called Pop-in shop, a link to see what a particular employee recommends buying, and a link to their blog and other social media websites. The only problem I see is that the banner promoting interactive aspects of the website and links to published content on other social media sites is at the very bottom of the page. I think the idea behind this is that for those using the traditional website, who want to get more connected to the content the website is sharing, the publisher thinks that the user will go looking for that information near the bottom of the website. The opposite is true for users of the iPhone/iPad app who may be more technologically savvy; the publisher has pictures that link to the blog, Instagram, the pop-in shop, and the new favorites of the Director of Creative Projects at the top. The problem I have with the tradition site having all this interactive information and links to their social media sites at the bottom is that I think they are selling themselves short. Their audience is pretty technologically driven so even if the user is on the traditional website, these links should be near the top increasing the possibility of increasing the search engine optimization and social media optimization.

I think some good tags for the website would be department store because it is one, personal stylist and free shipping because those are two of the first things I noticed right below the name, at the top of the page.

When running the search for these keywords I found that department store was effective as it was on the first page of the search, but it was not in the top three listings. I think it wasn’t listed in the top three because there isn’t a physical location close to where I live, a lot of the results on the search are based on proximity to where I live, and the further down I went the more broad the results were. As for the personal stylist search, it was the top listing on the page, so that is also an effective keyword. I typed in free shipping into the search engine and the website was on the first page as well as the top listings, I think since it is a highlighted item that not all department stores offer it increases the chances of having the website listed at the top of the page.

If I had to compare the organic results between all the searches I would have to say it would be a close tie between free shipping and personal stylist, because the free shipping results had no sponsored links above it at all, and the personal stylist results had just one sponsored link above it. If I had to compare the sponsored links, the department store search results would win, because a direct link to the website is listed as the sixth ad link on the right side of the page.