First, let’s define what proximity searches are: (via Wikipedia)

a proximity search looks for documents where two or more separately matching term occurrences are within a specified distance, where distance is the number of intermediate words or characters. In addition to proximity, some implementations may also impose a constraint on the word order, in that the order in the searched text must be identical to the order of the search query. Proximity searching goes beyond the simple matching of words by adding the constraint of proximity and is generally regarded as a form of advanced search.

For example, a search could be used to find “Michigan green plumber”, and match phrases such as “Michigan green plumbing”. By limiting the proximity, these phrases can be matched while avoiding documents where the words are scattered or spread across a page or in unrelated articles in an anthology.

While conducting my testing I have noticed several issues with proximity searches within the three major engines. The target site ranks for the desired search term “Michigan Green  Plumbing” and Michigan Green Plumber” in both Google and Yahoo. Bing has the main indifference out of the three.

Tagging – The site is tagged via the title tag and targeted body copy to compensate for the term “Michigan Green Plumbing”

Again while this works to be in close proximity to “Michigan Green Plumbers” both Google and Yahoo rank the site accordingly and Bing only references the site for the exact term.

Google – #1 Position for Michigan Green Plumbing

Google – #1 Position for Michigan Green Plumber

Yahoo – #1 Position for Michigan Green Plumbing

Yahoo – #1 Position for Michigan Green Plumber

Bing – #1 Position for Michigan Green Plumbing

Bing – #1 Position for Michigan Green Plumber

In conclusion when targeting proximity searches it is an acceptable best practice to include them into your research for both Google and Yahoo, but when it comes to Bing stick to the old fashion techniques for each and every targeted keyword on you list.

Will this trend disappear with the merger of Bing and Yahoo? Or will Yahoo results be close minded to proximity search terms?

If you happen to also find yourself scrolling to the bottom where the next pages normally are displayed in the following fashion has been replaced with Gooooooaaaaaaal.

Here are areas of social media content that should be optimized with keywords:

• Titles
• File names
• Descriptions
• Anchor text
• Annotations

Social Media and SEO efforts in tandem will increase the overall benefit from the campaigns. The bottom line is that companies who make the effort to figure out how to test, build expertise and mangage though a strategy, will achieve a distinct competitive advantage over companies that are not active in Social Media.

The main area of the discssion was the Dominos video because it’s an excellent example of viral media, using social media, and how social media relates to SEO. Shortly after it was uploaded to YouTube, the video was being spread around the web at one of the faster rates recorded for viral content. On its first day, over 1 million people viewed the video – even before the news stations started running the story.

The larger scale effect of the video was seen shortly after the story began airing on the nightly news and showing up in newspapers across the country. The video had such a negative impact on Dominos that a search for their company name at the time returned only the Dominos homepage, the actual video, and 8 other pages related to Kristy and Michael sticking cheese up their noses.

Prior to this incident Dominos didn’t have a social media presence at all, and it showed by their lack of saturation in the search engine results pages (SERPS.) When we talk about search engine saturation, we’re referring to how many of the top 10 results for a brand name are actually controlled by that brand – and it’s an important aspect in both SEO and social media. Having a high SERP saturation not only allows you to control the messaging for your brand, but it also helps customers interact with and engage your brand in more ways.

To their credit, Dominos handling of the event was almost perfect. They started out by posting a reply to the original video right on YouTube. Instead of burying their response in a press release that hardly anybody would see, or buying a full page ad in the New York Times, Dominos took their response to where the discussion started and was still taking place. They also created a Twitter account and hired somebody to monitor Twitter and answer questions from anybody who would ask.

These were all the right things to do, but the fallout would have been a lot worse if Dominos had established a social media presence prior to the video incident. If they had, a search for “dominos” would have showed less bad news coverage and more of their Twitter account, Facebook page, YouTube videos, and other pages.

Hosting a video on YouTube (or another video site) rather than hosting it on your company site can offer multiple advantages. Search engines have gotten extremely efficient at indexing and discovering videos posted to the popular video sites, and will most likely index them quicker. Embedding the video on your own site also increases its “view count” on the video site – which may be used as a ranking factor. Of course hosting a video on a 3rd party site also opens that video up for comments and discussion, so you’ll have to actively monitor and engage in that discussion to get the full benefit.

In addition to helping engage customers, social media can also serve as an essential SEO offering as well. A good social media offering can help out your SEO team by increasing exposure in search results, building relevant inbound links, helping control brand perception, and increasing universal search efforts.

Using social media effectively makes seeding new content and increasing awareness much easier – and should be an essential, ongoing part of any SEO campaign, rather than an afterthought or a reaction to a tragedy.