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When it comes to the web, there are always new terms being tossed around. A fairly interesting one I have come across several times that seems rather pertinent to the discussion of SEO/SEM and all things social is something called a “Digital Sociologist”. What is a digital sociologist, you ask? Great question – one I would like answered myself.

A digital sociologist is a person who studies the behavior of people when using digital technology, with it’s main focus on social media usage. This new study of people will probably remind you of the discussion we have had here many times on the topic of tribalization. Tribalization, if you recall, is the phenomena of people banding together on the web around a particular blogger, forum, brand, idea, belief, or what have you. Part of digital sociology would be to study this phenomena, and perhaps figure out how to make it work for your brand.

So many things are happening on the web. It’s only natural that some formal study of the behavior of people on the web take place. We (and most SEOs) have been doing it for years in the form of analytics. But, analytics alone can only tell us so much. They tell us what channel a user comes from, what pages they visited, what they bought, or where they spent most of their time on a particular site. From these analytics we can make educated guesses to help us tweak our strategies, but taking all of this a step further, to actually understand the feeling and beliefs of the user may help define a strategy to a greater extent. For some, it will help define why people behave they do about a particular blogger, brand, belief, etc.

Below is a very brief presentation on Digital Sociology by Ali Hadi. I would like to take the discussion much deeper, as I think this will ultimately have an impact on the way we do our jobs, especially as they pertain to social media and SEO/SEM.

Small businesses have a great opportunity with social media. It presents a “word of mouth” type of advertising that is sadly lacking in traditional marketing. People, oddly enough, are now looking to the web, and the people they ‘meet’ there, to help them make sound decisions on many major issues, including just about any purchase you can imagine. Brian Solis has an interesting article about small business utilizing digital sociology and social media if you’d like to read further and join the discussion.

I have been a long time believer and promoter of the The Longtail. What is The Longtail, you ask? Hopefully, if you are client, you already know the answer. Or better yet, you’ve just handed the whole ball of wax to Jen and the SEO department and told them to go crazy, so you don’t need to know about The Longtail.

The term “longtail” refers to a key phrase that uses more words to get a more specific and accurate search result. For example, if you went to your favorite search engine and typed in “grill”, you would get results showing anything from an actual barbeque grill manufacturer (kudos to Weber {who else?} for ranking 1st in Google for the term!), to a rapper with gold stuff glued to his teeth.

Now, if you were to search the term “gas grill” or “charcoal grill” you are much more likely to find what you need. So, let’s take it a step further, and search the longtail phrase “stainless steel gas grill”. You have now narrowed the results considerably and will most likely find precisely what you would like to purchase.

Turn that around and take a look at it from an E-commerce standpoint. Optimizing your product pages with the longtail can increase conversions if you are very careful to choose the correct phrase, and concentrate most of the optimization on this phrase. If you stuff your page with lots of other phrases, then you dilute the power of the longtail.href=”http://www.theseoblog.org”>TKG’s SEO blog had a great idea for incorporating longtail phrases into your site a couple of months or so ago. Be sure to check it out!

Dave Davies over at WebProNews has some great pointers for The Longtail. He has another great analogy that really works when applying your strategy to an e-commerce site. Made me want to go buy a new TV, though.

If you’re still confused as to what the ‘longtail’ is, or how to develop these phrases and optimize for them, this video: How to Rank on Google for Longtail Phrases was posted on April 21, 2010, has great info and is pretty detailed.

If you’re still having trouble, give us a call, we’d love to help you out!