Top Tips for Leveraging Content in the Age of Universal Search

Miguel Salcido, our Director of SEO, recently spoke to an enthusiasm crowd at MIMA about changing landscape of search engine optimization. He shared more than 25 marketing tips for leveraging rich media in the age of universal search results.

Here are a few highlights:

Video content

Stats–

* Video SEO is 53 times more likely to drive a first page result than traditional SEO (Forester)

* 44% of universal search results on Google featured Video (ComScore)

1. Put meaningful content around video

• * Include indexable and meaningful content around assets to help search engines understand the context of the video and any related content.
• * This is also great for your users. Utilize UGC by adding the ability to comment on your content (i.e. Flickr & YouTube).

2. Submit a transcript

• * Some video sharing sites allow you to submit transcripts, there are also some players that allow you to share this with users.  This can help a lot with content since transcripts can be understood and indexed by search engines.  And if accessibility is a concern for you, creating transcripts are hugely beneficial.

3. Optimize the file name, meta data, tags

• * Add keywords wherever possible because search engines have a tough time reading images and video. Instead of using something like a2rdp.mp4 use keyword-video.mp4.

4. Utilize microformats in your page code

• * Google recognizes two video markup formats: Facebook Share and Yahoo! SearchMonkey RDFa. Using either (or both) of these formats to mark up video directly in your HTML helps Google better understand and present your video content. Example: media:title Specifies the title of a video. Up to 60 characters.

5. Submit a video sitemap to Google

• * This is the easiest way to increase the chance of a video showing up in Google search results. You can find more information on that at Google Webmaster Support.
• * Special tip: if you want to drive users to your site and only have the thumbnail show up in search results, make sure and set the parameter allow_embed=”no”

6.  Take advantage of mRSS and HTML 5

• * There are lots of great attributes you can specify for video content including things like tags, that make it easier for the search engines to understand and index your content.
• * With mRSS, you can submit the feed to Google and as soon as you publish a new video it submits just like RSS feeds for your blog.

7.  Build links to videos with optimized anchor text

• * Look at the sites linking to competing videos and videos displayed in blended results. Try to mimic those links. Add optimized anchor text in embed code. Submit to social bookmarking sites in relevant categories.

8: Syndicate video content

• * Make sure that you have a YouTube account, but don’t forget to syndicate (Metacafe, Vimeo, Veoh). There are tools like TubeMogul that help you with this. Make sure to try and host on your site and index first.

Images

Stats–

* 300 million digital photos taken every day
* Image search makes up about 5.7% of Google searches
* 15% of all searches are image related

1. Use target rich keywords

• * Use target keywords in file names and image alt attributes to describe all images on your site.  Have a keyword rich title tag for pages hosting videos in addition to typical on page optimization.

• * Always include height, width, source, and alt tags in all image coding.

2. Put images close to relevant content

• * Include keywords in any captions, but also try to surround images with relevant content. Keyword proximity to the image is critical. Similar to Videos, adding the ability to comment on images will help search engines better understand what the image is about.

3.  Syndicate

• * Make sure that they are properly tagged and that your account is linked to your site.
• * Enable Image Search in Google Webmaster Tools.

4. Build links

• * Make sure that you have relevant keyword rich anchor text links pointing to your images.

5. Remove old images

• * Take down old images and reload them to increase relevancy.

6. Use preferred sizes and formats

• * JPEG is an effective image format. Digg you need to make sure that you have thumbnail images available in 160 x 160 pixels or 160 x 120 pixels
• *Pay attention to the image sizes of the top ranking images

7. Have high quality, relevant images

• * People pay more attention to and are more attracted to clearer images. Faces get more attention in images and images with more than one person.

Shopping

Stat–Google Product Search is the #1 comparison shopping site. (P.S. It’s FREE)

1. Submit a data feed

• * Submit a data feed with all of your product info to Google, so that they can pull your product images, prices, etc.

2. Optimize your product data

• * Use keywords in the title of the products, descriptions, and anywhere else. Fill in as many fields as you can, especially custom fields. (Hint: Google loves data)

3. Keep a fresh feed

• * Google likes a fresh feed. Product inventory and pricing can change daily which is why Google pays attention.

4. Keep it going

• * Long standing feeds have an impact. It’s about trust.