Read the story at WashingtonPost.com here.

Bluetext was excited to see this month that three of our clients are in the top 10 of Fortune Magazine’s just released 100 Best Companies to Work For: Google came in at number One, The Boston Consulting Group at number Four, and NetApp at number Six! Another client, Cisco, is not far behind.

Now, we’re not taking credit for their high results, but we do think there is a strong correlation between companies who have established the kind of workplace culture that earns them such a high ranking, and the willingness to push the envelope with creative campaigns and communications efforts that make people sit up and take notice.

It takes that kind of work environment to give their marketing professionals the self-confidence to try new approaches, seek out cutting-edge creative, and be strategically focused to reach new audiences in different ways. The conventional approaches may be safe, but trying something a little more creative is how you can get ahead in a tough market. One cool thing about our clients on this list—they are always asking for campaigns that are different and that will set them apart from their competitors. They’re not afraid to take chances, and if we present them with a good idea, they will always find the support for it.

That, we think, is a result of a corporate culture and work environment that gets them to the top of the Fortune list every year. Congratulations for believing in your team, and giving them what it takes to be among the best!

Google announced some significant changes to the way it ranks page results this past weekend to better weed out low quality sites that are used to prop up companies seeking to game the system. This move, chronicled best in The Wall Street Journal, follows the high-profile cases of J.C. Penney and Overstock.com, who both got caught using spam-filled link farms to capture the results of hundreds of searches. The ongoing cat and mouse game will continue as long as there are cats and mice, of course.

But here’s what I found most interesting in The Wall Street Journal’s article Saturday reporting on Google’s changes: widely-followed scholar and academic VivekWadhwa pronouncement that he had written off Google because of its allowing spammers to take control of search. When someone like Wadhwa dismisses the value of a Google search, that’s a problem for Google. Wadhwa does say that Google’s improvements made him “optimistic that they may well get this under control.” But more alarming, he told the Journal that, “It’s not rocket science; they know who the bad guys are, they compensate the companies” by letting them post Google ads and share revenue.

I wanted to know more about what’s behind Wadhwa’s dark view of internet search, so I went to his blog site to find out. Let me quote from a recent posting:

“But what has really changed in search [over the past 15 years]? We still go to the same text boxes, enter expressions that we hope the computer will understand, get back lists of web pages that reference those words, and click on links to find the information we are looking for. The only real difference is that now the top links take you to spam sites—which want you to click on other links that make them money and that make Google money. Creating low-quality, low-cost information pages has become such big business that the leading content farm, Demand Media, just went public and is valued at $1.9 billion. According to Blekko’s spam clock, over 1 million spam pages are created every hour. So the web is becoming one giant heap of trash.”

For organizations truly hoping to provide quality content across the internet in a legitimate desire to attract viewers, this isn’t good news.  First, it makes every result that much more competitive with the spammers.  Second, it undermines confidence from key audiences that search results will provide quality results.  And third (and this isn’t really bad, just another challenge), it means that companies trying to target their audiences will have to broaden their outreach– through social networking sites such as Facebook, Youtube and Twitter, through traditional media and paid advertising, and through new avenues that emerge every day.  Google will remain important, but if it doesn’t get the spam results under control, it may be soon relegated to oblivion.

The unseen and often unseemly world of search engine manipulation came into full public view recently when the New York Times ran a brilliant piece of enterprise reporting after noticing that J.C. Penney’s kept coming up at the number one result in dozens of Google searches for common household, clothing, and consumer items– even if Penney’s would not be the first store you would think of for those items. Enter “bedding,” and Penney’s, not Bed Bath & Beyond, for example, would come up first. Try “area rugs,” and again it would be Penney’s, not, say, Crate & Barrel. Put in “Samsonite Luggage,” and yes, Penney’s would be number one– above the more obvious Samsonite.com.

After enlisting computer scientists who specialize in search engine techniques, the Times discovered that Penney’s had achieved these page rankings through a massive placement of links on hundreds if not thousands of web sites often created for exactly that purpose– to fool the search engines (read the Times article if you really want to know how they did it). Penney’s, of course, has denied any knowledge of this trickery and has fired its social media firm.

Those of us in the online reputation management (ORM) business have been well-aware of how to game the search engines, and are only amused when these things backfire by becoming public. Google and other search engines pride themselves on using sophisticated algorithms that return search results based on the number and importance of the links back to that page, and a couple dozen other factors that they won’t divulge. But there’s always a way to game the system, and as the Penney’s case demonstrates, if you get away with it, it can pay off.

“Link farms,” as we in the trade call them, actually aren’t very sophisticated– they just take a lot of manpower. Political campaigns often employ computer scientists who can write sophisticated algorithms placed in the meta-data of positive content to drive it up towards the top– and driving the negative stories down far enough that no one will see them. When dealing with ORM, the goal is often to push down negative content any way you can. But there’s a significant risk if you get caught.

Google will blacklist you for a long time. Once Google was alerted to the issue and it corrected for it, Penney’s page rankings dropped down so far that no one wold ever really come across them during a search.

The challenge, of course, is using techniques that fall within the bounds of sound ethics and good business practices rather than succumbing to the dark side. From a practical standpoint, getting caught and outed is too high a price to pay. Public embarrassment of the kind that Penney’s faced following the Times expose simply isn’t worth it. In addition, Google’s punishment is severe and long-lived. Getting good search engines results the old-fashioned way– by earning it– is still worth the time and effort.

It may be a surprising question.  Google, after all, is a search engine, Facebook a social network that by all appearances is the hot property over the past 12 months.  The number of users is growing exponentially, and investors believe it is worth billions of dollars. But there is real evidence that Facebook is inadvertently losing its primary attribute– intimate social interaction– that truly differentiates it from the all-data driven promise of Google.  It may seem counter-intuitive and will, take a little explaining, but it all became clear when reading Time Magazine’s Person of the Year cover story in December on Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s erratic founder.

The gist of the difference between the world’s largest search engine and the world’s dominant social networking site goes something like this:  When you look for information on Google, such as restaurant critiques, movie reviews, suggestions for vacation resorts, or anything else you can think of, you are getting the wisdom of strangers.  When you seek that same information on Facebook, you are getting the recommendations from friends.  The latter would seem to be more valuable for most people because it is from individuals with whom they have those types of relationships, and not from faceless (and often nameless) Internet personalities.

That’s just one example of the utility of Facebook.  It is also much more of a place to have a dialogue with people with whom you have a relationship with– to see what they are up to, what they are reading, or how their families are doing, or just to look at their photographs.  In other words, where Google is about broadcasting information, Facebook is about engaging in conversation with friends.

But look what’s happening on Facebook when it comes to having “friends.”  The definition has changed– dramatically.  In the off-line world, friends are people with whom you share experiences, spend quality social time, and interact with on a personal level.  In the Facebook world, the meaning of the term “friend” goes far beyond that– it is anyone who hits the “accept” button.

My daugthers each have well over 800 friends on Facebook.  In their off-line life, the number is a fraction of that.  I have one colleague who has more than 3000 friends on Facebook.  When he asks for movie recommendations, even from his Facebook friends, the response is no different in my mind than from a Google search– it is merely the opinion of strangers who happen to be friends by this new definition.

From a practical stand-point, there is no way he can follow the news feeds of those 3000 friends, not can he engage in any meaningful conversation.  When he posts a status update, links to an article or video, talks about his weekend, he isn’t engaging in dialogue on a personal level with anyone.  He is simply broadcasting his posts, hoping that, as with Google, people will see it.  When online friends don’t really have the same attributes as off-line friends, the social networking component disappears.

What does this mean for communications professionals?  For one, Facebook can be a great place to broadcast information far and wide. But it’s going to become a more difficult place to actually engage key audiences– be they consumers, customers, employees, policy makers, or just friends.

Social networking and search engine optimization will be forever linked and integrated for progressive marketing strategies. Good marketers know that the two work hand in hand and the linkage is growing more powerful daily. This graphic summarizes the Social SEO cycles in today’s hyper-connected environment.

As innovation in search and social continues, these platforms and ecosystems will continue to find valuable integration pathways between one another. As brands fight for relevancy and stay on the edge of what’s hot, the two systems truly need one another. I believe these brand categories will blur into a consolidated category. Will this just be “media” or will this be truly “digital media.” User experience consultants can help their clients by creating digital media strategies to embrace these changing times.

Here are 10 reasons to rethink your social strategy with a complete SEO integrated layer:

1.  Search engines are smarter than ever before. You must embrace their new inteligence. The value of truly earned organic, editorial links will only continue to increase in value.

2.  Earned links are the modern media hit factories of yesterday. A strong social strategy will earn a growing amount of editorially-earned links daily.

3.  Being fresh with your editorial pace and content will enable you to get more link baits for authoritative domain fish out in the sea.

4.  Frequent Updates = frequent visits by spiders, humans and everything in between.

5.  Social web success brings increasing returns. Likes and other rating systems influence search algorithyms.

6.  Social is sustainable.  An honest, well-nurtured community strategy will naturally progress, keep you focused, and build domain authority.

7.  Links aren’t good enough. You need strong PR digitally and offline. Strong endorsements contextually to your brand will help your digital reputation strategy.

8.  Ride the wave. With 600 million people spending 30 minutes a day on Facebook, your focus should be there.

9.  Social scavengers produce links more likely than any other first-time brand user.

10. Stay compelling and of high quality when producing content.