Top 10 Tips to help your site rank better in Search Engines

If you want to ensure all your hard work creating videos, Tweeting, posting images and writing press releases doesn't go unnoticed, subscribe to these five methods of optimizing for Blended Search.

1.Optimize Images - Use proper naming conventions that are loaded with the keywords or key phrases for which you wish to be searchable. Avoid naming conventions such as image007.jpg or company_logo.gif. By properly describing your images, you not only get an edge with Search Engine Optimization, you will find it helps keep your image folders organized and easy to reference. Optimize the size of your images, too. The speed at which people demand information is forcing websites to increase the download speed of images and documents. The faster your webpages appear, the better your chances to rank higher in search engines. Optimize using alt text. With the exception of the name of your images, this is the only way search engines can "see" your images.

2.Optimize Videos - As the trend of using videos to find information grows, optimizing videos continues to become more critical. Video sharing sites such as www.YouTube.com and www.dailymotion.com provide ways to optimize your videos when you upload them. They allow a title for your video, a short description and even tags. Take advantage of these elements by placing important keywords in them.

3.Optimize Press Releases - Search engines love press releases because they are relevant to the times. You can easily optimize them by using keywords or key phrases in the title and in the opening paragraph. Try to use different variations of the keyword and don't be "spammy" by overloading the press release with your keywords.

4.Optimize Your Blog - First, if you are not blogging, start. Second, because blogs continue to be a more trusted source for information, they are becoming a large component of search engine results. They are a quick and easy method of getting more content on your site. Use the same optimization tips as you would for a press release.

5.Optimize Your Social Media - Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, bloggin and forums; How can these help your business? Besides the fact that they are all extremely viral, search engines are indexing them. If you look back at my last post on Blended Search, you will see a screen capture of live updating Tweets from Twitter. Why is this so amazing? Because out of 61 million listings, it was in the 4th Google search ranking position for the search term, "Tiger Woods." This opens the door for smaller, newer sites to rank well for other competitive terms, even if for only a short period of time. Follow the same search engine optimizing tips you would for a blog or a press release and you may find your social media ranked at the top for your most important keywords.

Check back on Friday, January 21 for the rest of my Top 10 Tips for Blended Search Optimization.

Previous Post: Blended Search Results can help your site rank better in Search Engines

Blended Search Results can help your site rank better in Search Engines

A hot topic at this year's Search Engine Strategies Expo in Chicago was the emergence of Blended Search Results and how they can help improve your positioning in search engines. Blended results have been around since 2007, they just hadn't made as big a splash as they are now.

What are blended search results?
Blended search results combine the typical blue text link and the two line description with many other types of results including image, video, news, wiki, social media and more. For example, I did a web search for "Tiger Woods," which returned:

Image Results

Video Results

News Feeds

Wikies

Social Media

How will blended search results affect my business?
With more than 20 different types of blended search results, the top 10 search engine ranking positions are becoming more competitive. Before blended search was created, there were ten results listed on the first page in a search engine. These listings were driven by search engine optimization elements such as page titles, meta tags and inbound links. Now, the typical blue text link results are fighting for position with image results from Google Shopping or video results from YouTube.com, and even Twitter has found its way into the top ten.

How can my business take advantage of Blended Search?
Similar to the search engine results of the past, you must optimize. Blended search is primarily based on keyword rich content and relevancy to the other content on your site.

To read my Top 10 Tips for Blended Search Optimization, visit our blog on Tuesday, December 22.