Presented at SEMpdx’s November 2009 SEO Fundamentals event, this presentation covers SEO tips for “universal search”. In other words, how to do SEO for “alternate” (non-text) content, which can improve your placement in search engines and/or help you gain more visibility with your content across the Web. Focuses primarily on image & video but touches on flash, audio (podcasts) and more.

(note – the presentation isn’t visible in the feed if you’re reading via email/rss/facebook – you have to click through to see it)

A summary of the “Optimizing Alternate Content” tips in the presentation:

• Filenames should match the content

• Optimize the HTML to provide contextual clues

• Make sure it’s crawlable

• Use proper formatting

• Leverage ‘attributes’

• Leverage syndication/distribution channels to get your content “out there” and found

Share your tips below or contact Amplify Interactive regarding our search engine optimization (SEO) services

Some news out of this week’s Pubcon Conference in Las Vegas.

It seems as if fast load times for your website might have a positive effect in influencing your search rankings. That all being said, having slow page load times seemingly will not negatively impact your rankings. Source.

This is reported to have come from Matt Cutts, head of the Webspam team for Google.

It’s a no brainer that, in terms of usability, a fast load time for your web pages definitely helps a user’s overall experience when browsing your site. We’ve all been to “that site” where pages take forever to load. I don’t know about you, but if I encounter a website with slow load times, I usually leave and look for similar information elsewhere.

It will be interesting to see if this ranking factor remains to be, more or less, a small influence or if it will become a bigger part of the search engine ranking puzzle.

The surprise answer – run display ads.

Just read an interesting article over at eMarketer “Display Campaigns Boost Search Effectiveness” about a study that  shows that display ad campaigns increase visits from search engine users by nearly 14% from both organic (SEO) and PPC search combined. Another benefit? Cost per click for PPC decreased as well – demonstrating greater efficiency of the PPC campaign as a result of display. Read the rest of this entry »

Finally – maybe Google will get a run for it’s money. I love Google as much as the next guy, but it’s been tough to watch the rest of the “competition” get left so far behind in the dust.

As you can read in this article on Search Engine Watch “It’s Official: Microsoft and Yahoo! Finally Strike a Search Deal” – the deal basically says that:

1. Bing will power Yahoo’s organic search results

I think this is a great move. Bing has made some pretty terrific strides in creating a better search engine. Spending another 100 mil on advertising it is making a dent as well. Bing isn’t perfect, but Yahoo organic results haven’t been all that great either.

2. Yahoo will handle the paid search

Again – this is a great move. If you manage paid search campaigns – you know there’s two specific problems with Microsoft/Bing.

1. AdCenter sucks to use. It just does. That’s not to say that Yahoo’s platform is great, but it is better than AdCenter and now they can focus on making it more usable.

2. Low search volume: WIth the exception of some verticals, the search volume is rarely there for clients to justify the time, energy & budget required to build & manage an additional campaign with Bing

So ideally, as a part of this deal we’ll just be able to opt-in or out of displaying ads on Bing with a simple check box. Just like you check a box to add the Google search partner network today.

This move will still be tricky and they’re both a long way from pulling it off. But hopefully by allowing each to focus on what they do best – maybe they’ll be able to actually compete and we’ll also have to start thinking about results from more than one search engine!

All too often, SEO & site development efforts are out of sync. It’s a common complaint among SEO’s that a client will come to them with a Web site in hand and say “optimize this”. Whereas SEO’s would prefer it if the client would ask first and say “what content do we need to develop in order to have a site optimized for our target terms?”. It doesn’t have to be a chicken vs egg scenario though.

Read the rest of this entry »