Trumblog

Here is another of my old posts from a now defunct blog, originally posted 6/10/07.

Ever wonder why your company’s website doesn’t always appear on the first page of results when you search? After all, your agency says they’ve “search engine optimized” it, you’ve paid your search engine marketing dues, what’s the deal?

As the online experience continues to grow and change, companies and their brands need to use the entire spectrum of online content in order to reach their audience. It’s no longer enough to just create a website; companies need to combine many elements to create an online profile—in addition to a branded website they might use blogs, bookmarking and other user-generated content, online video, photos and search engine-optimized press releases. This supplemental content enhances the primary content’s SEO (search engine optimization) through inbound links and also ensures that a company’s content fills search engine “shelf space,” edging unfavorable and competitor content to lower rankings.

And what else? Keep tabs on Google: last week they announced their new “universal search.” If you haven’t heard about this, you may have already encountered it or you soon will. A search on Google now includes more search verticals (video, images, news, etc.) in order to deliver the overall most relevant results, one place. If Google determines that news articles are relevant to your search, they’ll appear right next to other results like images, video, blog entries, and of course websites and ads. (Keep in mind, this isn’t always the case; for many searches, websites are still the most relevant content available and that’s what your Google search will retrieve.) But due to this additional content, there now may be less than the standard 10 web results on a page.

This is where your online profile really comes into play: rather than fearing that your website will be left off of the first page of listings, a wide profile of optimized online content in addition to your website can potentially increase the number of your listings on the first-page search results thanks to Google’s universal search.

Let’s say for instance you are a hotel chain looking to achieve results with a keyword phrase like “Boston hotel”. Instead of the ten website listings and sponsored links that you would have gotten a while ago on Google, there are now just 9 results plus a news story. One large hotel chain happens to have an excellent position in the natural results. Now imagine if they backed that up with sponsored links, optimized press releases, a video tour of the Boston hotel and a well tagged photo gallery from it too? That could all now be included in the results for “Boston hotel” simultaneously providing multiple ways of reaching your audience, both through Google and other online channels where that content exists, as well as pushing competing websites off of the page. That’s the benefit of multiple forms of content working together to increase and enhance the connection with your audience.

A brand can no longer focus on search engine ranking alone; a breadth of optimized media is also required. However, distributing that content in order to achieve results requires having the content on third party websites and relinquishing some control—a commitment that not every company is willing to, or can, make. But, as Google’s universal search so clearly shows, an online profile is the future of successful marketing and this will only be more true as other search engines follow Google’s lead. How does your online profile look and what are you doing to manage it?

(No Ratings Yet)

 Loading ...