Social Bookmarking, Social Networking, Social Buttons — Who Has Time For All This?

Sociality is conquering the world of SEO. Google’s new Search Plus Your World (which adds Google Plus results from people inside your Circles to your normal Web search results) is just the latest nail in the coffin of old-school non-socialized SEO. But the problem with sociality (and the reason why the SEO world has resisted it for so long) is that it’s just a massive time sink.

You start with social profiles for your businesses — it can take a single person half a day just to read and make the occasional comment across Facebook, FriendFeed, LinkedIn, Twitter, Flickr, the various social bookmarking sites, and whichever other social arenas you choose to participate in. Then you add the necessity to put little social buttons all over every bit of content you produce so that people can show off that they Like or +1’d this or that particular comment, blog post, or picture you posted, and it starts to get really taxing.

But SEO companies continue to push the envelope, and they’ve taken to supporting (and actively taking over) social marketing efforts on their clients’ behalves. They understand that there’s a need to be served — the “full-time social marketer” is a role that ought to be filled — and they’re the most logical people to fill it. After all, you ask your SEO company to do everything else relating to your website; SEO companies taking over social marketing is just a logical extension of the role of ‘online branding expert’ that they already play.

It might take a little bit of extra time, but the benefits in terms of long-term profitability of their clients’ websites is immeasurable. ‘Social SEO’ is on it’s way to becoming a multi-billion dollar industry — and your SEO company is the right way to profit from jumping on that bandwagon. Get your profiles together and your Like buttons polished, summon your loyal fanbase and get them excited about telling their friends how awesome you are. It’s time to show up at the most profitable gathering place since they invented the village square.