Last week I was asked to deliver a presentation on social SEO and what Google’s search formula tweaks now mean for brands and organizations looking to boost their visibility. This is a rapidly evolving issue, but there are some enduring points here that all organizations (and journalists too!) should keep in mind. Hopefully this guide will help you.

Yes, I decided to clean up the presentation a bit and cut it down to size, leaving in all the big take-away points for essential social SEO best practice. As I explain in the presentation, I came onto SEO even before the term was coined, back in the 1990s when most of us tech journalists were trying to figure out which issues attracted the most eyeballs.

Of course, SEO has gotten much more sophisticated since then. First, the techies and code-breakers jumped in to figure out how to boost visibility by doing everything from smart meta-tagging to content seeding. Now, thanks the Panda Update, Google (and the other search engines too) are rewarding high quality editorial content. For brands-, companies- and organizations-turned-publishers these changes should mean more visibility for your stories. As I explained earlier this year, the authoritative voices on a given topic will be rewarded under the new system with greater visibility in the form of enhanced search engine positioning. This is important, I believe, as it rewards strong journalism over gaming the algorithm.

Here’s the presentation: