How To Adapt To Google’s New Universal Search
If you’re a webmaster, you’ve probably heard of Google’s universal search. Google issued a press release on May 16 telling the world they were going to add videos, images, news, maps, and books in their search engine results pages (SERPs). Thus, you will see many types of media on the SERPs instead of just text-based websites.
How can webmasters take advantage of these developments? How should our search marketing and optimization efforts change? Google gets about 60-70 percent of the search engine traffic, so it’s always a good idea to rank high on Google searches.
I think video will huge in the new search environment. It’s time to start using screencast software like Camtasia and Cam Studio. You may want to dust off your webcam. If you really want to make an impact, you can start shooting quality videos with a good video camera.
Also, not only will video starting ranking higher in the SERPs, traffic from web videos has been shown to convert well. If you’re selling affiliate products or have your own product, you can increase your conversion rate by using video. Even opt-ins and pay per lead offers will convert better with video.
Another search engine optimization (SEO) and traffic tactic that will become more effective is the press release. With news items moving up the SERPs, you’ll want to submit press releases that relate to your website and your industry.
Where should you submit your press release? PRWeb.com is one of the best online press release sites. They used to be free, but now they charge $80 for a press release without anchor text and $200 with anchor text. Also, there are free press release sites like PR-inside.com.
Another area to look into is images and pictures. In some niches and industries, the consumers are looking for images. For example, as I did my keyword research for my wedding site, I found that many keyword phrases included the word “pictures.” People are typing in phrases like “wedding flower pictures” and “wedding dress pictures.”
Also, the first results these image related searches are pictures. You will get a lot of traffic if you land one of your images on the front page of these searches. So, if you’re in a image-oriented niche, add more pictures to your website and see if that drives more traffic. And don’t forget to add keyword-rich alt tags to your images. This will help your images rank.