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The top six social media tips to know before you leave the office.

As the search marketing space continues to evolve, I traveled to the SMX Advanced Conference earlier this month to find out more about what’s next in search engine optimization (SEO) and to better understand how businesses can adapt accordingly. With 88 billion monthly searches executed on Google alone, it is critical for companies of all shapes and sizes to understand the importance of optimizing Web content to appear among the top relevant results.

Recent months have seen drastic changes to the ways search engines work: real-time social media indexing, new sorting options on Google, the launch of Google Caffeine, the advent of of Bing, and the upcoming partnership between Bing and Yahoo have all dramatically altered the landscape. In the wake of such evolutions, this week’s Six @ Six outlines six new search optimization insights and tactics gleaned from SMX Advanced. Do you have additional suggestions? Are there other tactics you’d recommend? Let me know on Twitter @astoltzfus.

1. Speed of websites is critical

One often-overlooked factor that is becoming an increasingly important component in search engine ranking algorithms is the speed with which a website loads. After all, search visitors in particular tend to be looking for quick results and will often hit the Back button instead of waiting for a slow-loading site. Search engines, with Google leading the way, are now treating site speed as a significant factor in determining the most useful results to searchers. In order to ensure that your site appears among the top results, try to avoid using heavy multimedia content whenever possible and be sure the server that hosts your site can handle expected traffic and maintain speed under heavy conditions. If you’re unsure how fast your site speed compares with others, there are plenty of online tools to help test it.

2. Look beyond Google

It’s true that the focus of most search marketers over the past decade has been Google. But with Bing’s successful launch last year and this fall’s upcoming partnership between Yahoo and Bing expected to capture 25-30 percent of search engine market share, it’s important to focus on sites beyond Google as well. This doesn’t necessarily mean creating separate sites optimized for different search engines the way many sites were ten years ago – but it does mean you should test and track results on Bing, Yahoo, and Google. Additionally, search-based advertising on Google will likely no longer be sufficient for saturating target audiences, as Bing and Yahoo become increasingly popular platforms on which to advertise services or products.

3. Traditional PR tactics can build inbound links

If content is king in search optimization, then links are its queen. Generating critical inbound links doesn’t have to involve underhanded negotiations or magic code manipulation. Instead, try using traditional public relations tactics to build inbound links; such as reaching out to the owners of related websites with useful content and building relationships with other site owners. A tried-and-true tactic is to develop interesting content that others will want to share (such as a timely infographic or relevant blog post), and then share it with high-authority bloggers and other online outlets. Other successful link-building tactics include authoring guest blog posts on related sites, leaving comments on relevant blog posts elsewhere on the Web, and leveraging other online publishing opportunities. In the end, it all comes down to relationship-building and developing interesting content – both of which are mainstays of traditional PR.

4. Optimize real-time updates

Search results today increasingly feature “real-time updates” – or recent updates pulled from social media sites such as Twitter, Friendfeed, and Facebook – among the top search results. This presents an ideal opportunity to jump to the top of the search results for any currently trending topic. While it’s unknown exactly what criteria go into determining which updates appear in search results, it is nearly impossible to rank among the “real-time search” results without a regularly updated social media profile – so, if companies are still looking for a reason to get involved in social media, here’s yet another reason. Once you have a social media profile, a few of the factors likely to play a role in determining the search rank of social media updates include user authority, freshness of content, the quality and quantity of followers, follower-to-following ratio, number of recent re-Tweets, and inbound links to the account – all of which reflect general best practices for effective Twitter engagement.

5. Add “juice” to existing content

Once you’ve developed content and put it up on your site, it’s easy to let it sit there and hope its popularity will organically grow. But old content also provides great raw material to help “juice” a site and boost the search ranking. Consider creating podcasts out of old press releases or blog posts and push them out via iTunes and podcast directories – as this can generate new, high-authority inbound links and can even spark a new type of audience for your site. Additionally, you can create RSS feeds of old content, use RSS Footer plug-ins to automatically add links to new posts, and create custom RSS feeds that include your content as well as external content to help piggyback off other sites.

6. Chase after a positive user experience

With so many changes to search ranking algorithms taking place on a near-daily basis, it’s tempting to chase after the minor adjustments and optimize your content accordingly. But as Matt Cutts, Senior Engineer at Google, pointed out at SMX Advanced, search engines always try to provide searchers with the content that best fulfills their search needs. As a result, chasing after an overall positive user experience is much more valuable than trying to identify the next algorithm adjustment. Content should load quickly, be easy to navigate, be organized well, and speak to the needs of your audiences. Developing strong content and creating a positive user experience is the only guaranteed way to ensure top search rankings that will last through the next week, next year, and beyond.

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Andrew Stoltzfus is a Search Optimization Strategist at Levick Strategic Communications, the world’s top crisis communications firm. He also is a contributing author to Bulletproof Blog. Connect with him on Twitter: @Astoltzfus.