*  This is a partial reprint of Liana Li Evans’ previously published ClickZ article

There’s a panel at SES that usually ends up drawing a packed house. “SEO is Dead! Long Live SEO” never fails to impress the audience, especially with all the cries that “Social media is now ‘king.'” As I am primarily a social media marketer, but have deep roots in search engine optimization, I raise my eyebrow with skepticism at those marketers who proclaim that with social media, you no longer need to worry about SEO. Apparently they missed the memo that people also search in social media communities.

It could be that these marketers don’t have the background to understand how Google’s algorithm works, or that they had some kind of success with just launching videos on YouTube and now think that’s how all companies should launch their social media marketing plans, that they are proclaiming you don’t need SEO, or measurement for that matter. If you hear a marketing company tell you this, I’d advise you to drop the marketing slick and run in the opposite direction, fast.

The keys to understanding search optimization in social media communities are twofold:

1. People search differently than they converse. Over the years since Google’s inceptions, the global community has been taught to search in very finite ways. When Google first appeared, searching for “shoes” didn’t bring you back the millions of pages it does now. With time, Google trained us to get very specific with our searches, as evidenced by Google reporting that 54.5 percent of queries done on its search engine are three or more words in length.

…. To read more of this article head on over to ClickZ