The 7 Pillars of SEO 2.0

In order to succeed in a social media driven online environment

• website owners
• bloggers
• businesses

have to take certain steps. These practical steps are based on a theoretical foundation with 7 main pillars.

These 7 pillars of SEO 2.0 enable any webmaster to truly be part of the current Web in order to succeed financially or in any other desired way.

The 7 pillars of SEO 2.0 are:

1. Presence
2. Outreach
3. Participation
4. Recognition
5. Value
6. Trust
7. Authority

Presence is more than web presence as in the synonym for website, it’s the almost physical presence of appearing everywhere on the Internet where it matters for a particular

• person
• group
• brand
• business

Example: musicians had to be on MySpace a few years ago, journalists need to be on Twitter, professionals on LinkedIn.

Outreach means the active encouragement of bilateral communication between you and your audience.

Be it blogging, be it UGC (user generated content) or letting the community decide which Linux distribution should be used by Dell.

Participation is about not only being there passively to be contacted like in “presence”. It’s not only short term or low level communication efforts.

Genuine engagement is about taking part actively in communities on social sites on a ongoing basis. Just dropping in and shouting about your latest content piece does not suffice.

It’s about being part of communities, building them up or setting up new ones in a larger context.

SEO 2.0 experts do not try to infiltrate social networks from outside, they are an accepted part of them from day one.

Recognition is based on stability, and recurring symbols like logos, avatars and names throughout different platforms and media.

As long as active participation is not recognizable it does not work. An individual or company who has a positive record already on the other hand will be welcomed elsewhere on the web.

SEOs of the first generation were changing names and being viewed as attackers from outside.

SEO 2.0 experts have an established and well respected online persona which can easily integrate into a new platform due to it’s existing online credentials.

Social media experts Tamar Weinberg is the best example for this. As a well respected member of a few online communities her sheer appearance on a new one ennobles this community.

Value is the most important part of SEO 2.0. It’s the pillar that is in the center of the holistic SEO 2.0 approach.

Without value all of the other pillars are utterly useless. In fact the created value is the foundation on which all of the other pillars reside.

Value is an objectively as useful accepted piece of know-how transferred without payment to the online audience.

Only free access to content created by you or other types of value provided makes it valuable for the Internet community.

Free access ensures the acceptance by the online community. Value that is only accessible behind a paywall does not count.

When you give nothing for free people will not be willing to accept your presence among them in a casual non-commercial environment that social media inherently is perceived as.

To sell something give something away. This is the reason why Open Source solutions have such a success. Nonetheless developers earn their fair share by support and services.

Trust is a middle term goal. Based on value and in accordance with the other pillars above you build trust.

Once you have created value people will come back once again to check whether you will do it twice.

When you provided value three or more times people will get accustomed to you and gain confidence in you.

In case you don’t disappoint them by trying to oversell in between you will gain trust over time.

Authority is the long term goal you have to strive for when you want to succeed with your SEO 2.0 efforts. Why?

Providing value and gaining trust is not that difficult to achieve. Gaining authority is an endeavor you need endurance for.

To become an authority in your industry, on your subject or in your community you have to create value and gain trust while

• being present
• doing outreach
• participating
• being recognizable

over a long period of time.

The question of authority is too complex to be described in a short paragraph on a list. Let it be said that value and trust are compulsory.

The other aspects mentioned are also needed. Yet often they are not enough to achieve authority. Authority depends on how other people speak about you.

Is this still search engine optimization and can it even be done at all?

Now most of you new to the still vague concept of SEO 2.0 will argue along the lines of

• This is not SEO anymore or what does that have to do with search?
• To achieve this you need a whole team of Internet experts working 24/7

These assumptions are understandable but not true. The boundaries between search and social media or SEO and other marketing departments are crumbling.

It’s the historical and still valid connection of content optimization in order to be found on Web that is the basis of the evolved SEO 2.0 concept.

While the content might not be on “a website” anymore and the search performed not via a so called “search engine” the metaphor is still the same.

There is no need to come up with new cryptic acronyms each time the focus of the discipline changes.

Does this blog have all seven pillars?

When you look at SEO 2.0, the blog, the term or me as the force behind the SEO 2.0 philosophy you will notice that at least 6 pillars out of 7 can be partly or wholly attributed to my work.

I maintain an active online presence via multiple channels. I do plenty of outreach on various platforms.

My participation on at least three international social media sites can be described as substantial. There is no problem with recognition due to my

• name
• nickname
• avatar

and the attraction of the SEO 2.0 concept itself.

The value aspect is not as easily achieved as the above but I strive to offer and promote the best and most useful information to enable my readers to succeed online.

I already see that some of these techniques have worked. How do you know? Typical signs that people trust you are:

• a lot of subscribers and followers in your narrow niche,
• other bloggers linking or referring to you
• overall acceptance of your shares and content on various social sites etc.

The 7 pillars of SEO 2.0 empower you to succeed online.

I’m living proof. When you gain the authority described above you can even sell  something without the needs of advertising.

By then people will trust you as much that you won’t need any marketing at all. I hate the term in the first place. The Internet is not a market. That’s just a tiny part of it.

Stay with me to grasp the concept of value. Content, freebies or products are not value per se. It depends on how helpful they are.

Last updated: May 15th, 2018.