Digital Asset Optimisation in the evolving and merging world of search
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Digital Asset Optimisation in the evolving and merging world of search

24th February 2011

The world of search and marketing is constantly evolving and merging which is why SEOs have got to constantly be aware of how to utilise off page assets online. Universal search has meant that organisations can now index, rank and obtain traffic from a wider channel of sources so it is vital that you are involved in that space.

Paddy Moogan steps up first to talk and makes the point known that he is called Paddy not “Patty” as it says in the SES conference guide. I am sure people won’t forget as his presentation was packed with actionable points and valuable pieces of information.

What are digital assets?

  • Look what you have got offline
  • Make all your content crawlable
  • Making your content bring you traffic

Examples; Videos, podcasts, images,

Why should we care?

Universal search and the integration of vertical silos has meant we have other options than just organic listings to get traffic.

News feeds, images, videos are all channels to obtain more traffic

Only caveat is make sure it’s relevant to your client

Online assets

Never say you don’t have any!

I completely agree, every company has USPs  and if you don’t know – talk to staff, read up about the history of the comapny.

Offline assets

Most companies don’t use them…

Our job is to look at what they have got and what can be utilised:

  • Emails
  • Direct mail
  • Press release
  • Training videos/manuals
  • TV &radio
  • Surveys and research

Find ways to make them work for you in online space

What does your SERPS look like?

Every vertical is different…

Don’t just jump on bandwagon and start creating videos if they are not suitable for your industry/audience

Where do your assets fit in?

Go back to your list, prioritise, and optimise….

Most common in SERPS

  • Videos
  • Images
  • News
  • Real time
  • Shopping

How do you optimise these areas?

Video Results

Optimise YouTube channel

–          Use closed caption files

–          Use keywords in filename

–          Encourage embeds for more backlinks

–          Comment on videos for backlinks

–          Use the YouTube keyword research tool

Images

–          Watermarks your images (branding and awareness)

–          Install link in images

Google news

–          Multiple authors (bg ranking factor here)

–          News sitemap

–          Date in the URL (could just be a number)

–          Keep asking google news

–          Try and break news quickly

Read also about getting Google News in Universal SERPs in Barry’s Post.

PROCESS: How to write and rnk news pieces

  • Publish brief “breaking news” article
  • Promote immediately to get citations (email, social, RSS)
  • Update article with full content

One method which the Times have done which has worked very well is to prefix the keyword in title of all news pieces. For example six nations 2011: Title of Post

Google Shopping

Essential if ecommerce site

–          Keep the product feed fresh

–          Higher quality images the better

–          Encourage customers to leave reviews

–          Age of feed matters

–          Use category attribute

–          Custom attributes to give more data

Rich Snippets

Examples of some areas that you can use rich snippets:

  • Reviews
  • Events
  • People
  • Recipes

Google allows you to mark up the following with rich snippets

–          Examples:

–          Reviews

–          Products (US)

–          Business

–          Events

–          People

–          Recipes

Getting more from your videos

Link building – I have read this video post and recommend Paddy’s post on Distilled

Transcribe content from video into text. Two services that offer this are:

Odog (?)

SEOmoz

Use emails for content

Q&A

Turn into content for your site

Use presentations as videos

Use camtasia to turn presentations into screenshots

Add to YouTube and optimise

Press Releases

Always get them from your offline PR department

Rewrite title and opening paragraph if PR companies have already sent it through…

Surveys and Research

Audit your offline content for interesting stats and research

Put it into a blogpost or infographic

Audio & Podcasts

–          Audio content can be turned into MP3 file

–          Create an RSS podcast feed that contains file

–          Submit RSS and page where file is hosted to podcast directories

Jim Yu

Jim Yu mainly focuses on real time search, explaining what it is, how we should be treating it and how we should be integrating it into our day to day actitivies.

Real time Impact on SEO

–          Recent listings – even with low authority – can infiltrate top positions

Real time presents some new challenges for search engines

–          Understanding searches intentions

–          Ranking algorithm

Balancing authority, relevancy, recency – all factors that will now alter ranking algorithm.

One issue that Google will have to deal with is balancing opinions/reviews.

QDF – Google’s Answer

QDF stands for “query deserves freshness”

QDF tells the search engine when and how much to increase the importance of recency

Google QDF driven by:

  • Search volume
  • News coverage
  • Blog coverage
  • Twitter Facebook pages

Case Study

Brand fell from #1 to #2 because of real time story

40% decrease

Remember you can use PPC as reputation management Insurance

CHECK LIST

Optimise for authority

–          On page internal linking

–          Build external backlinks

–          Use social services on your site to encourage engagement + links

–          Build social authority

Create new content optimised for freshness

–          Insert news, blogs twitter feeds on pages

–          Refresh older pages every few months

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Written By
Sam Murray graduated from University with a BA (Hons) in Marketing in 2007 and wrote his 10,000 word dissertation on Search Marketing. Sam is a freelance search manager.
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