The search engine results page (SERP) evolution is clear to advanced and novice internet users alike. Marketers looking to take advantage of this technology should focus on the broader and more consistent changes to the SERP rather than trying to track and respond to every intricate day-to-day change. The increasingly visual, social, and local nature of the SERP offers many actionable insights for marketers looking to boost their presence.
Understanding the three types of content that populate the SERP is essential to successfully fitting in or standing out. The first type, paid content, affords advertisers the most control and includes paid ads and product feeds. Owned content consists of a marketer's native site, video, images, blog content, and local listings. The last type, earned content, offers marketers the least control and includes off-site communities, user-generated content, and press coverage.
Fitting in
The first step a marketer should take toward a better fit into the SERP is comprehension of the nature and types of content search engines serve up, including getting favorable representation in sponsored and natural core listings, local listings, mobile SERP listings, and social media and news results.
For core listings, long established white-hat search engine optimization (SEO) tactics can help marketers ensure proper representation for their brands and products in the natural results. Beyond creating relevant site content, emulating "searchers" language, and building up high-quality inbound links, marketers should use relevant keywords in their page title, properly categorize all listings, and consider creating a Wikipedia page for their brand(s) and/or key product(s). To cultivate a presence in sponsored listings, marketers should maintain a paid search campaign that covers an extensive keyword list representing core brands, products, and other mission-critical terms.
Local listings offer marketers additional opportunities to own more of the SERP, but local SERP success won't happen on its own. Marketers should create a Google local listing and distribute a local feed to top engines. All search engine listings should be checked and verified to ensure they contain accurate phone numbers, addresses, maps, and other information, and any inaccuracies should be addressed. Localized content should also be accessible, free of technology constraints like JavaScript and form barriers, and be part of a local sitemap. Also, each business location should have its own landing page. Getting listed in local directories like Superpages and IYP, building and earning citations around those listings, and running paid ads with store locator links can also boost local success.
Local enhancements set the stage for success on the mobile SERP, but another important step is auditing a site's performance in multiple mobile browsers. In some cases, companies will need to build out a dedicated mobile site, and this often proves advantageous, even when a corporate website performs somewhat well. Since many top engines also distribute PPC ads to mobile users, effective paid search programs also help marketers on the mobile web, particularly those with a strong local component.
Much like local efforts, social media enables marketers to reach people through the mobile channel, particularly in light of the recent surge of social media usage via mobile devices. For example, "S-Net (The Impact of Social Media)," a Performics-sponsored report from ROI Research Inc., studied 3,000 social networkers and uncovered continued growth in mobile social networking. Among active account holders, Facebook saw a 23 percent increase in users accessing the social network through a mobile device between October 2009 and April 2010. Twitter and YouTube users accessing those networks through mobile phones increased -- 15 and 22 percent, respectively -- over the same period.
Social continues to prove itself as a viable standalone channel, and marketers have options for putting it to work:
- Establish a brand's Twitter handle and tweet regularly about hot topics
- Identify brand influencers
- Listen and respond to consumers before massive conversations invade the SERP
- Join the conversation, thank them, and encourage them to keep tweeting
- Create and optimize Facebook and YouTube channel pages
- Add pictures of top products, executives, and more on Flickr
- Add favorable articles to Digg and encourage others to "vote up" those articles if they find them helpful
- Link out from authoritative pages on your site to favorable content on social networks
As valuable as earned social media content can be, news media coverage can earn credibility and further boost a marketer's SERP real estate. Marketers can also link to positive and fair stories, increasing their rankings and leading others to credible content that supports their viewpoints. Creating a media page with built-in links to all executives' on-site, LinkedIn, and Google profiles will boost the news effort too.
Standing out
Images, videos, and other filtered search results attract extra attention to brands and products. Since the general public can create and optimize multimedia resources just like marketers, the best defense is quite literally a solid offense. The more sought after, high quality, positive multimedia resources a marketer can create and optimize, the better the odds of owning more multimedia components of the SERP and, in turn, controlling a brand's online presence.
comScore recently reported a 132 percent increase in the number of online videos watched between December 2008 and December 2009, and new research continues to show that the presence of images and videos increases users' engagement.
Marketers vying to have their positive multimedia outrank other multimedia should consider the following 10 tactics for optimizing images and videos:
- Optimize the file name, meta-data, and content around the image or video.
- Ensure videos have their own URL and are built/created outside of Flash.
- Resize and rename images if they are "borrowed" from other sites so that the search engines see them as unique.
- House all images and videos in separate folders off the root and create image and video sitemaps, monitoring indexation levels using the site's operator.
- Verify that the robots.txt file is not blocking indexation.
- Use Yahoo Site Explorer to discover what pages are linking to any undesirable images or videos that you want to push down; try to mimic those links to favorable videos and images.
- Create a custom YouTube channel.
- Look for reasons to flag YouTube videos that are damaging to your brand (like if the video is using a copyrighted song in the background).
- Stage contests -- like Doritos did during the Super Bowl -- in which users can create their own videos about your brand.
- Utilize paid Yahoo Rich Ads in Search (RAIS) and paid image product ads.
A Google search on "McDonald's" illustrates the negative impact that multimedia results can have on a brand. In addition to listings for the company's native site, recent news coverage, and nearby locations, other proactively created online resources help the company own most of page one. This includes listings for http://www.aboutmcdonalds.com/, twitter.com/mcdonalds, http://www.mcvideogame.com/, http://www.mcspotlight.org/, http://www.happymeal.com/, and more.
Unfortunately for McDonald's, multimedia resources often capture searchers' attention, and one of the images available on page one is less than flattering. The video features two scantily clad obese women feeding one another McDonald's food. This image seems to be the only problematic page one result on a branded Google search for McDonald's, but it illustrates the type of troublesome content that might appear and makes the case for more proactive use and distribution of multimedia content. Snickers, on the other hand, does a great job of using multimedia to own more of the SERP. Since consumers pay more attention to images and video, the brand employs shopping results, video, and other multimedia resources to stand out.
Representing brands and products in more visual, social, and local contexts can help marketers better fit into an ever-evolving SERP and increase the odds of standing out in only positive ways.
Eric Paczun is vice president of SEO and feeds at Performics.
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