Search engines are poised to change. Online presence will quickly reach a point where you can no longer gain relevant visibility by simply buying keywords at the highest bid. Results will start to become more individualized, and more influenced by the searcher’s online community. And that changes everything. Again.

Don’t believe me? Let’s start by taking stock in today.

How did you figure out which gadget to buy this year? I put out a tweet on Twitter, posted a status to my friends on Facebook, and searched relevant blogs. A dozen people sent me back recommendations within 5 minutes, and guess which gadget I bought? The one recommended by the guy with 1,000 followers. I would go as far as to say that this scenario is similar in many markets for technically savvy users (and, surprisingly, for not-so-techies, like my MIL’s hometown bakery @GretasGrains).

We all know about the magical few in the population who do the majority of the research, and are turned to by their friends, neighbors, and peers for a recommendation - the “Influencers”. When Google became the go-to search engine, to  many marketers, it felt like the playing field became evened. Brands could buy their way to increased rankings on search pages, and, in a way, work around the Influencer. But, with the influx of the social media sites over the last few years, the Influencer has had a visible resurgence, and has become even more powerful than ever. They aren’t just talking to their neighbors anymore; many have thousands of followers.

The search engine companies are smart, and appear to be gearing up to accommodate our taste for influence. Take a look at Google Wave. Your search results connect your Twitter, Facebook, IM, and email conversations. It’s brilliant! Now, think about this…how long before an individual’s online social circle could start to greatly influence the order and ranking of search engine results? Until they recommend links in a specific order based on your contacts’ latest blogs, articles, or even reads. We aren’t far off.

If search engines use social connections and peer influence to rank results, then companies must become part of their users’ and prospects’ community, just to survive. That means becoming actively engaged with them, taking part in their conversations, and belonging to their social communities. Start preparing now, and you can poise members of your company as influencers, or figure out who influences your market already, and strategically engage them in online meaningful conversations.

Let’s face it, though, even without these impending changes, that’s a really good idea anyway.

You need to start working on three basic, and free, techniques which I call Create, Converse, and Converge.

Create

Produce content weekly.

I can hear it now: “Content isn’t free.”

If that was your first thought, then I need to say something to you: Content doesn’t have to be an essay or e-book. It can be short, to the point, and poignant (or not). Content can be a response to some else’s clever idea, or even just a pointer to it.  Articles and tidbits are best when they are “real,” so let go, and you will be amazed at how much you (and your peers) produce.

Content should come from a resource your company already has, writing about what they know.  Do yourself a favor and find smart people you work with and publish them. Help them build their personal brand, and it will be far more likely to get done.

Where do you publish these little ditties? You can do it in a few places.

Blogs, when done right, are the easiest way to create new web pages with relevant content for your site. You need one post weekly, so consider creating a single company blog with many posters. Tagging is great for grouping relevant articles.

Not into blogs? Then, create sub-pages on your website. Or, add a “Solutions” section and publish short articles. You can also publish on your public User Forums or knowledgebase. Post in 140 character spurts with hash tags to Twitter or as a guest blogger on a market-relevant site.

It doesn’t really matter where you publish, as long as it conforms to the rules. What are the rules? Glad you asked.

The Rules:

1. Search engines must be able to find and index your content.
2. Content should have links to other articles and link back to pages on your website (if relevant).
3. Readers should be able to comment on the content.
4. Buttons should be available for readers to easily post the article on their social networks.
5. The content should be interesting to your customers and/or prospects.

Converse

This isn’t about just shouting into the wind. You must listen and engage smart, relevant people, here-in-after called the Influencers.

How do you find the Influencers?  Follow the experts and thought leaders. (I use the free feed searching from SocialOomph and Google Alerts to find people who are writing about what I am interested in.) Ask your peers who they read. Ask your customers. If you look, you will find them.

Reference the Influencers in your content. Post interesting thoughts on their content and you will find that they will talk back. Some of the best information I have received as a product manager has been in response to a comment I made on an article. People want to tell you what they think if they believe you really want to know. And I do.

If you engage the Influencers, you will gain relevance, follow trends, and generate links organically. Better than that, if you engage in meaningful, relevant conversations, you can actually build up your own network, which translates into increasing your company’s reach.

How do you maintain the reach? Connect with them. Literally. Link through LinkedIn; follow them via Twitter; fan them on Facebook; reach out and grab them and make them a part of your community.

One word of warning: be genuine. Don’t do this if you aren’t really interested in engaging in the community. If you don’t want to engage, stick to paid searches, which are less likely to backfire. People can smell a fake from a mile away. Time is valuable and no one wants to feel like their time is wasted.

Converge

If you can’t trace it, it didn’t happen.

I am always surprised when people don’t do this. Invest some time in mapping out ways to trace the lifecycle of each article and location through the use of unique URLs. URLs are free. You can redirect as many different URLs to a single article as you want. When you drop a link on Twitter, use a unique URL. When you create any content, again use a unique URL. If you have a decent customer management system in place, you can automatically trace back customer activity to the articles that they have read, and how they found them, by the URLs they clicked.

Try it out, you will have a blast. If you can’t do it using your own URLs, then use one of the dozens of URL shorteners that are out there for free. A few I like: Bit.ly will actually track back the number of clicks each URL has received, as will cli.gs (which also has great geo-tracking capabilities), or Tinyurl.

My point is: You must understand your success to build on it. When you track, you can take the most popular links and Influencers and go back to Create and Converse, create more relevant content and conversations like it in the locations that produced the most relevant leads.

And you can use this to reduce your budget!

If you stick to the process and Create, Converse, and Converge, you will see results. Once you reach critical mass and have enough articles and conversations out there (I saw tangible results after only 6 months of weekly postings), you can significantly reduce your paid SEO budget. These posts will do a lot more for your company and will bring in relevant leads.

It’s all about building mindshare and inbound links from the Influencers in your customers’ online network. By creating a presence in their online social circle, you will draw the right users into your site and create Inbound Leads. For free. And you will be poised to be at the front of the pack when the individualized search results start to show up.

Bonus

Some tools are not free, but are well worth the price you spend. Once you reduce the SEO budget, you can try out a few powerful tools that automate the URL, landing page creation, and tracing of a customer. I personally use Hubspot^® integrated with Salesforce. Many of my marketing peers use Eloqua to achieve similar results. I know exactly which links and articles interested each of my leads, who referred them, and which campaigns have resulted in sales. I also know exactly how much I am saving on an SEO paid search. This month, I not only saved over $500 by organically ending up on the first page of search rather than paying for this placement, but I also gained a large number of high quality leads that I would never have obtained with keyword purchases. These tools are powerful. And really fun.

Nicole Reineke is the Director of Product Management for Unidesk Corporation, a leading virtual desktop management software company. Nicole has more than 10 years of development and product management experience building IT applications, and uses the Pragmatic Marketing Framework extensively. Follow her @NicoleReineke or blog.unidesk.com.