While Google pursues better and fresher content with it’s recent Wildfire acquisition, its Google+ platform must also innovate to match user engagement levels comparable to Facebook and Twitter. A SocialShare Report from BrightEdge shows that Google+ is gaining momentum with big brands like Visa, H&M and Red Bull creating Google+ pages and bringing their followings with them. These brands, however, are not necessarily fostering consumer interaction.

A new social media report conducted by BrightEdge, specialists in SEO, has found that leading brands such as H & M, Toyota and Red Bull find Google+ to be an increasingly important home for their brands.

Fewer “top brands” are using Facebook and Google+ today than eight months ago. But it’s not a huge decline and may just represent the normal coming and going of online brand activities.

Three out of four of the Top 100 brands are now on Google+. In the past two months, Visa, Hermes, and Wells Fargo have all joined the Google+ network with their own fan pages. Growth is slowing, but that’s to be expected, given the astronomical adoption rate among big brands when Google+ was first introduced.

Are you missing an opportunity to fully understand and take advantage of the impact of local on search engine rankings? A new whitepaper from BrightEdge shares insights into how Yelp.com optimizes for local and highlights best practices for marketers.

One of the most talked about changes introduced by Google on May 31, 2012, is the launch of a paid program from Google Shopping based on Product Listing Ads (PLA).

Since its announcement, we have seen a huge change in shopping results. Google Shopping listings replace the current Google Product Search listings, which are part of the organic search listings.

In this post, I will explain what Google Shopping is all about, how it affects retail merchants and outline steps to mitigate the impact and seize opportunity.

For many search marketers tactical approaches to managing and optimizing SEO campaigns fills much of their time in their very busy diaries. However as SEO and social media disciplines merge, the importance of SEO is slowly rising to the top of many a C-Level agenda as a key driver of business goals including top line and bottom line.

Understanding where your competitors are positioned in SEO is one important aspect in today’s competitive landscape for meeting your organic search goals.

As search marketers, we know that there are proven methods of improving our page rank such as creating unique and relevant content with the right keywords, promoting this content, and building links from the domains that matter.

These are methods that have been used for the past ten years and while, these methods have been quite effective, SEO is more complex today.

The rise of social media as an effective SEO tool, the growing competitiveness of SEO, and tough guidelines by search engines, call for a re-evaluation of how we have been doing SEO.

What do you think is driving growth in the SEO enterprise technology market?

The biggest single driver for growth is the ability to measure the current business impact of SEO and forecast future returns. The market has transitioned from a technology and feature conversation to an ROI conversation.

One of the early innovations at BrightEdge was to integrate with site analytics technology (such as SiteCatalyst, Webtrends, Google Analytics ) to track and measure the economic value of SEO-driven sales.

On Wednesday I will be moderating a panel at BrightEdge Share 12, on the theme of a "New Direction of SEO" and will be joined by Raj Rao, VP of Global eTransformation at 3M, Leo Haryono, SEO Director at Macy’s and Andy Johns, Product Manager of User Growth at Quora.

What's exciting about this panel is that the challenges these brands face represent the entire range of challenges facing our industry – from B2B search targeting, to consumer facing e-commerce, to growing a startup by leading with content. The role SEO plays in the growth of these brands is both critical, yet nuanced, and part of a broader marketing strategy.