tom critchlow - universal search optimisation

Universal Search

A4uexpo Europe, Munch 2010

Tom Critchlow

Head of Search Marketing, Distilled

> tom.critchlow@distilled.co.uk> twitter.com/TomCritchlow

> www.distilled.co.uk> www.distilledconsulting.com

Tom Critchlow

Tom is a search geek, ninja poet, poker playing, maths loving, data geek. He’s responsible for all search marketing at Distilled.

Universal Search Bingo

Google Local

Why Do You Care About Local?

ZOMG!

David Mihm’s Rand Fishkin’s

Local Ranking Factors SEOmoz Search Ranking Factors

Who’s (Ranking Factors) Is Bigger?

Verified Listing Number of Reviews Citations Distance to Centre Categories

5 Major Factors

Manually uploaded and verified listing

Verified Listings: Manually Claimed

The Bulk Upload Whitelist

Verified Listings: Bulk Whitelist

Capitalisation (e.g. UNESCO or NATO)

Odd Phone Number Formatting URLs in the description field.com

Avoid the Following:

A Note On Data

Quantity not Quality: Number of Reviews is more

Important than Rating

Reviews

Mentions of your brand

LinksCitations

Citations

http://www.seomoz.org/marketplace/companies/view/23

Citation Example 1

Citations: How To Get Them (1)

“More Web Pages”

Citations: How To Get Them (2)

Voila, one goldmine list of competitor citations!

Citations: How To Get Them (3)

Google says it doesn’t matter. It does matter. Let’s move on!

Distance To Centre

Can add up to 5 Use keywords (custom values allowed) Analyse Competitors

Categories

http://www.distilled.co.uk/blog/seo/google-local-research-data-released-for-

free/

Free Data. Mmmmm Data....

For Affiliates

Claim unclaimed local listings for places you have data on (warning – a little shady!)

Or, get listed as a trusted data provider.

User Maps = Opportunity

http://www.distilled.co.uk/blog/seo/google-local-research-data-

released-for-free/

http://searchengineland.com/google-custom-maps-a-goldmine-for-

local-businesses-27535

http://www.davidmihm.com/local-search-ranking-factors.shtml

http://www.davidmihm.com/blog/general-marketing/local-seo-

citation-is-new-link/

http://maps.google.com/support/bin/request.py?contact_type=feed

s_verify

http://blumenthals.com/blog/2008/08/04/ranking-factors-in-google-

maps-cracking-the-code-smx-local/

Further Reading

Google Shopping

Major Factors

• Data freshness

• Data quality

• Reviews

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/how-to-rank-well-in-google-products-search-a-big-list-of-places-to-get-reviews

Google Images

Basic Factors

• Filename

• Alt text

• Text around image

• Page, not image

• Buzz words

XML Sitemaps

Linkbuilding With Images

Image Resources

• http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2010/04/adding-images-to-your-sitemaps.html

• http://wiep.net/talk/link-building/link-building-with-images/

• http://www.seosmarty.com/image-seo/

• http://www.flickr.com/photos/willgame/50229647/sizes/m/

• http://www.flickr.com/photos/alreadytaken/2504312455/sizes/m/

• http://www.flickr.com/photos/tommyhj/146234325/sizes/m/

Video

Metadata FTW!

The Long Tail of Video Search

“Once [a video] gets to about 5,000 views, it will start surfacing in search and related videos. Of

YouTube’s more than 1 billion playbacks per day, Walk said, half of them are from content

uploaded more than six months ago.”

Don’t Forget About The Rest

Conversions FTW

Vzaar let’s you integrate with Mailchimp to embed email capture within your video. FTW!

Video Resources

• http://vzaar.com/features/mailchimp_integration

• http://newteevee.com/2010/05/12/half-of-youtubes-traffic-comes-from-old-videos/

• https://ads.youtube.com/keyword_tool

• http://www.seomoz.org/blog/creating-online-video-strategy

• http://www.tubemogul.com

• We heart adobe image credit: http://twitter.com/issaco

Google News

News Tips

• Get in using a news sitemap

• Publish fast, index fast

• Publish unique facts

Use 3rd Party Sites

Sites like PR Web are included in Google News so if you publish a press release with them you can stand a chance of ranking in Google News with that article:

News Resources

• http://www.webpronews.com/topnews/2009/09/02/google-news-seo-tips-ranking-in-news-search

• http://www.brentdpayne.com/presentations/

Data Quality FTW

Thanks!