Posted in Online Publishing Strategy	March 19, 2008

Mike Grehan’s Top 10 Tips for Optimizing for Universal and Blended Search

Mike Grehan, Global KDM Officer of Acronym Media helped moderate a panel on Universal Search at the SES NY 2008 show and shared the following tips with the audience:

1. Understand what Universal and Blended Search is.

• Basically, Universal Search means search engine results pages (SERPS) are changing.
• Instead of returning 10 blue links, search engines are now delivering a mix of results and file types, including images, video, news, stock quotes, and local as a combined result.

2. Widen your perspective.

• Get creative about your digital content. Take stock of what you have and brainstorm how many formats you can provide it in.

3. Start with your images.

• Name each file in a descriptive way. Do the same with the alt attribute.
• Include a descriptive caption next to each image.

4. Target local results.

• Open a Google account and go straight to the Local Business Center to enter your free listing.

5. Think newsworthy.

• Optimize your press releases. They can get picked up by major publications and bloggers and then show up on SERPS.
• Become an expert commentator on your industry. That way, you might not even need press releases – publishers and bloggers will already be after your thoughts.

6. Behold the power of blogs.

• Embed audio, video and images in your blog, and be sure to optimize the title tag, description tag, and publishing date tag. Popular blogs can surge to the top of the search engine results charts.

7. Get into the movie business.

• Buy a cheap camcorder. It’s all you need to start recording and uploading videos.
• Share your movies with the world – upload them to Google Video, YouTube, and Metacafe and bookmark them at social media sites.

8. Take advantage of Google Finance.

• Your own stock quote can pop up on SERPS if your business is large enough and has some presence in financial markets.

9. Sell, sell, sell.

• Upload everything you want to sell – whether it’s a single item or a huge catalog – to Google’s Product Search (formerly known as Froogle).

10. Don’t panic! Relax, take a deep breath and remember your audience!

• Don’t fret it you aren’t completely optimized for Universal search just yet. Those old blue links are still very much the order of the day.
• Start with what’s relevant to you. Have images? Start optimizing there. Are you a local business? Get into local results immediately. Got something to say? Start a blog.
• Never do anything just for Google. Your audience – and what they want – always comes first.

Read related coverage from SES NYC:

4 Keys to Web Analytics Success
Blogger, author and Google analytics evangelist Avinash Kaushik shares four keys to succeeding with web analytics

Understanding Link Popularity
A few notes about link popularity from Debra Mastaler, President, Alliance-Link

12 Steps for Successful Video Search Optimization
Shari Thurow’s Tips for Optimizing Video

10 Tips for Universal and Blended Search
Mike Grehan’s Top 10 Tips for Optimizing for Universal and Blended Search