The central tenets of SEO are to create great and compelling content. There is, however, exponentially increasing information on the web that is dramatically changing marketing. A single query into search produces millions of results. People are adding information to Wikipedia faster than we can read it. Researchers at the University of Rochester in the area of decision making published in 2008-12-26 shows people are making their best decisions with their unconscious mind in a complex decision-making process. All of this means consumers are more likely going to make a decision with their unconscious mind in the age of information overload online.

If you are an SEO or online marketer, this is important information to know. Below are some major shifts that I see happening on the web and the change it is bringing to the silo approach of SEO.

The Web is rebuilt around people. Google and Bing both are catching up.

On March 30, 2011, Mac Slocum, Managing Editor for O’Reilly Media, Inc, interviewed Paul Adams, a product manager at Facebook, at the Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco about social behaviours on the web.

Paul argues that human beings can be so irrational when it gets to making a decision. If you are looking for information on the web, no matter how high value the information you get, you will still listen to what your friend said.

Paul gives an example of car buying:

“When people look for buying cars on the web, they do all their research about what colour they want, what features, whether it is high performance. They gather all the information, and then when it comes to buying the actual car, they bring their friends with them. And their friend would say something like ‘I don’t like the colour’ so all the research the potential buyer did goes out of the window.”

People will trust their friends on certain things. We are learning that most people are now influenced by people who are emotionally closest to us or people who share and believe in the same worldview that we have.

So you have to build the irrational signal in your SEO strategy. Facebook Connectwould be an ideal example on how to do this. Search engines such as Google and Bing are already building social into search now.

Social search takes away power from seller to gives it to the buyer.

Search engines are slowly and gradually putting more information into their algorithm that maps offline world and social behaviour directly with their algorithm. Search engines are still at the beginning of solving this problem though. Different studies have shown that due to interrupting ads or interruption marketing (a term coined by Seth Godin describing it as tactics that works only if the ads interrupt you to get your attention) and overload of information in search engines, people are more likely to click on results from others they are personally connected with.

Phil Fernandez, CEO of Marketo.com, in his book Revenue Disruption argues that the most important trend affecting site owners and business today is the shift of power from sellers to buyers, and its resulting disruption of established marketing and sales practices. Due to social media, buyers are more aware and informed about your brand. All of this means that now your buyer will be making the decision whether to go with you or a competitor based on the vast amount of information they can gather about you through their friends on social search or through your personal interaction with your customers on your social media profiles such as Google+ Places.

Most SEO’s are still in the Denial phase over social media impact. It’s all out there, so deal with it!

Your visitor can identify if you’re truly being genuine now. And when they do, that positive word will get around rapidly. Everyone will have to learn to adapt to it. This is a disruptive change to the SEO we used to do. When shopping for a laptop, I was able use these social media tools to learn far more about my purchase options than I ever could have, short of talking to a salesperson. I was an informed and empowered buyer by the time I finally bought my new ASUS laptop.

“People no longer want to learn about 'what' you do and more about 'how' you do it”, said Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos

Storytelling for different people of different worldviews on the web

Many SEOs need to realize that your content can turn viral when enough people with a similar worldview come together. Stop describing your worldview on who you are or what your brand does; your worldview should be what you believe. Remember people clump together into a common worldview; your job is to find that clump and frame your story for these people in a way that embraces the worldview of these people.

So create your content around a story, frame it to target people that shares similar worldview that your story does and see how it spreads virally!

Thought leadership

People don’t “buy” your product or come to your site nowadays. Instead, they “buy into” your approach to solving their problem. Thought leadership puts your content, blogpost, or article points of view out there for prospects and people to see.

And due to overload of information on the web for people, they are more likely to read from different thought leaders with a subject matter expertise rather than just any piece of content on the web.

References, Citations and Resources -

University of Rochester, Rochester, New York, Our Unconscious Brain Makes the Best Decisions Possible. New Research Shows the Human Brain Computes Extremely Well - Given What it Knows. Study lead author Alex Pouget, associate professor of brain and cognitive sciences. Statement dated December 26, 2008.

Paul Adams, Product Manager at Facebook and author Grouped: How small groups of friends are the key to influence on the social web (Voices That Matter).

Phil Fernandez, CEO of Marketo.com and author of Revenue Disruption.