Let me start this post with a tricky question. Can we use SEO for Web 2.0 sites? The answer is Yes, we can. In Web 1.0, websites and search engines binded together like flesh and nails. Because there are billions of web pages were found in the search engines database to help people finding information relevant to their search queries. But this doesn’t really happen with Web 2.0. Many Web 2.0 sites are social networking and social bookmarking sites. They allow people to connect and share with each other within their communities. They are not having billions of pages of information. People don’t search at Facebook for an information. They just connect and share with their friends. If we want to find our friends, we can use the Facebook’s internal search box. An external search engine like Google is not the way to use these sites.
Putting it in another way, the Web 1.0 website owner created pages with content. In Web 2.0 sites, the website owner only provides a platform for the members. It’s up to the members to create the content. In many cases, the content of Web 2.0 is the members themselves, which means their profiles and a bit of personal information. We don’t search LinkedIn for information; We search for people and connect with them.
This means SEO doesn’t really apply to Web 2.0 social networking / bookmarking sites. There isn’t any point in making millions of friends pages findable in search engines, because those friends won’t look for each other through an external search engines like Google, Yahoo and Live. They can connect with each other personally only through Web 2.0. The vast majority of those pages have no informational or transactional value.
At best, a Web 2.0 social networking / social bookmarking site can use a bit of SEO to make itself findable in search engines so that it is much easier for the investors, friends, business partners, job applicants, and so on to trace them easily without facing any hurdles. However, if the site can’t able to get people to link with each other on their own, it won’t matter whether the site is in a search engine. This could become a problem for search engines. If the Web continues to develop towards social networking, search engines won’t be at the center. The top most sites include Myspace, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Orkut, Hi5, etc.
People don’t use external search engines to search these sites because those sites have their own internal search engines. Also, Web 2.0 sites have several technical issues. These sites aren’t HTML pages with content. Web 2.0 sites are more like software. They are a tool with lots of features. For example, Google Maps, You Tube and Facebook are sites where we do things, not just reading pages. These sites are built with Flash or Ajax, which are very popular for Web 2.0 sites for several reasons. Ajax and Flash allow the site to offer lots of features to its members. With Ajax, the page isn’t reloaded on every click, which means savings in terms of data transfer. This is all very good, but always keep in mind that Ajax sites can’t be indexed by search engines.
Every few weeks, people meet new startups that have spent tens and thousands of dollars to build all-Ajax Web 2.0 sites, and now they started thinking why they don’t show up in the search engines. Don’t let your website developers and artists build an all-Ajax site. Your developers can use these tools, but put the result in the center of the page and include traditional HTML content at the top and bottom of the page to get noticed by the search engines.
On the whole, a well planned and certainly well optimized SEO strategies can be implemented on Web 2.0 participatory websites to make those places a real livelihood environment.
Thanks for reading!
Disclaimer: The post is completely based on individual thoughts and SEO Services Group bears no responsibilities for the thoughts reflected in the post.
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