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As I find myself drifting further and further from my search engine optimization roots to focus more time and effort on exploring the worlds of social media, blogging and viral marketing, I’m sometimes astonished at the misunderstandings between these two worlds. Search engine marketers look to social media as a vast expanse of link opportunities, almost completely missing the true potential of social media. On the other hand, social media types tend to look at SEO as some type of dirty game of tricks and scams that would tarnish the pure image they hope to build in their social media utopia.
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from mphung 1312 Days ago #
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Excellent example of a site that could have hit it out of the park, if only ...

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from Halfdeck 1312 Days ago #
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Jen really dug deep with this post and delivered it with style, as usual.

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from hugoguzman 1311 Days ago #
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Preaching to the choir, but at the same time, there are still a lot of Social Media consultants that don’t understand this fundamental philosophy.Well done!

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from toprank 1311 Days ago #
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The opportuntiy for education goes both ways.  Both social media and SEO people "think" they know each other’s channels but they really don’t. The question is, does the onus fall on the developers or on the agency/client folks directing the project that didn’t know any better? It seems to vary by situation.I thought Jen did a great job with the post.

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from thejenn 1311 Days ago #
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Thanks guys.Lee, I’m with you on this. I’ve been moving more and more into the Social Media world (not the SEO Social Media World, but the Social Media world) in the last year and I’m amazed at the misunderstandings on both sides.I remember when the SEO world first started jumping on the SM bandwagon. 90% of them defined social media as "getting a site to the front page of Digg." 10% looked a little further and about 5% understood the value of building conversation and reaping the side benefits of increased links as a bonus.I’m seeing more and more people in the SEO world really start to "get it" and I’m seeing more social media types begin to understand the value of a search friendly site. I’ve heard from Lenovo’s VP of Web Marketing and he said he’ll be writing a response when he returns home from Japan next week. I have no doubt there were good reasons for much of what they didn’t do that was on my list (especially the expanded content and interactivity) but I dont’ really think there’s ever a reason beyond ignorance for not making a non-password site indexable.

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