March 21st, 2010 by Nick

It’s the buzzword of the year, but the phrase Web 2.0 does mean something for search engine optimization professionals and indeed everyone else who regularly uses the internet for business or leisure. The nature of the internet is definitely changing, moving away from individual pages with links between them and towards social networks and social media. Information is still the key element, but it’s becoming more interactive and less static.

Of course, social media hubs like YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter are becoming much more important to SEO in the new internet environment- Web 2.0 if you will- but there is a lot more going on. Good SEO companies are getting involved in social media optimisation. Great SEO companies aren’t stopping there. We want to get the best out of the new web, to understand it and be at the forefront of new developments.

Let’s leave social media for a moment and take a look at Google. They are industry leaders, so it’s a sound place to start. Yes, they’ve just introduced Google Buzz as their social media flagship and a competitor to Twitter and the like, but there is still more going on. Using Google Documents, for example, it’s possible to create a new text file and do some fairly advanced word processing without ever needing to download Microsoft Word or OpenOffice or any software at all. You can save the file, share it with collaborators (another social element creeping in). It doesn’t have to be a text document. Spreadsheeting and presentation creation environments are also right there.

This new trend is called Cloud Computing. Online tools are being used to offer direct access to software that’s hosted on the internet. It’s used through the internet and the results can either be downloaded and kept on the user’s home or office computer in the usual way or kept on the web host. While downloading software as always been a key feature of the internet, this is something different.

New methods of connection are also opening up. Right now, forums and social media websites are enabling communication through central hub websites, but Skype and other voice over internet protocols are bringing one to one direct conversations into play. We’re also seeing the rise of widespread video conferencing (long predicted but slow to arrive until now), which is changing the way companies do business, and even more significantly, having a strong impact on the way education is delivered.  This can all be part of your business’ internet reputation management efforts.

So what does this mean for SEO, and for websites trying to stay cutting-edge? We know that social media optimisation is going to be absolutely key, but we’ve just been talking about there being more to Web 2.0 than social media. One of the most important ideas to take away has to be that online tools are only just coming into their own. Offering high quality, relevant information on your website is a great SEO strategy- one of the best, in fact- but as the web changes, those who are able to provide free tools and services are going to be ahead of the game.