Anytime a client considers changing their site architecture or is planning a website redesign or decides to move their Website, we work with them to ensure that they do not experience an adverse effect on their rankings in the search results. Anytime you plan on moving your site, you should have a plan. The best case scenario is that the move should be transparent, at least to the search engines so that your site does not tank in the rankings.

When moving your site, you want to avoid the end result of 404 Errors popping up after the move. Not only with this have an impact on the user experience, but it could have a negative effect on your organic search rankings. A cool tool to check for broken links on your site is XENU which can be downloaded here. The best thing that you can do when preparing to move your site is to plan your move. The good folks over at Google Webmaster Tools put together some helpful tips, which we’ll recap here.

We should point out that these tips are for moving a site to a new domain and not for moving to a different IP address. The Webmaster Tools team has covered that previously as well with these five tips:

Moving a Site to a New IP Address
 

1. Change the TTL (Time To Live) value of your DNS configuration to something short, like five minutes (300 seconds). This will tell web browsers to re-check the IP address for your site every five minutes.
2. Copy your content to the new hosting environment, and make sure it is live on the new IP address.
3. Change your DNS settings so your hostname points to the new IP address.
4. Check your logs to see when Googlebot starts crawling your site on the new IP address. To make sure it’s really Googlebot who’s visiting, you can verify Googlebot by following these instructions. You can then log into Webmaster Tools and monitor any crawl errors. Once Googlebot is happily crawling on the new IP address, you should be all set as far as Google is concerned.
    
5. To make sure everyone got the message of your move, you may want to keep an eye out for visits to your old IP address before shutting it down.

How to Move a Website to a New Domain According to Google
 

1. Test the move first - Begin with one directory or sub-domain first.

    

2. Use a 301 Permanent Redirect to redirect old pages to the new site.

    

3. Monitor Google’s Index - Check to see that the pages on your new site are appearing in Google’s search results. When you’re satisfied that the move is working correctly, you can move your entire site. As the Google folks mention, "Don’t do a blanket redirect directing all traffic from your old site to your new home page. This will avoid 404 errors, but it’s not a good user experience. A page-to-page redirect (where each page on the old site gets redirected to the corresponding page on the new site) is more work, but gives your users a consistent and transparent experience." The Google Team goes on to suggest "If there won’t be a 1:1 match between pages on your old and new site, try to make sure that every page on your old site is at least redirected to a new page with similar content."

    

4. Use a Staged Approach - If your site is moving as part of a redesign, you’ll want to use a phased or staged approach. Begin with moving your site as the first stage. The second stage is to roll-out with the redesign. This can help troubleshoot any issues that may arise.

    

5. Pay Attention to Links - anytime you move a website you’ll want to pat attention to both your external and internal link inventories. Ideally, you should contact the webmaster of each site that links to yours and ask them to update the links to point to the page on your new domain. If this isn’t practical, make sure that all pages with incoming links are redirected to your new site. Again once everything is moved over, you’ll want to use a link checking tool (such as XENU that we mentioned above) to check for any broken links (404 errors).

    

6. Keep You Old Site Up - Redundancy is a good thing. After moving your site, it is a good idea to keep your old site up for six months according to Google.

    

7. Update Webmaster Tools Data - Add your new site to your Webmaster Tools account, and verify your ownership of it. Then create and submit a Sitemap listing the URLs on your new site. This tells Google that your content is now available on your new site, and that we should go and crawl it.

    

8. Monitor Both Site via Webmaster Tools - The Google Webmaster Team suggests that keep both your new and old site verified in Webmaster Tools, and review crawl errors regularly to make sure that the 301s from the old site are working properly, and that the new site isn’t showing unwanted 404 errors.

Anytime you decide to move or redesign your website, you run the risk of incurring a drop in search rankings. Careful planning and testing is critical in enduring a smooth and transparent transition.

Original Post at SEO-Space

• Constantly Reading, Sucks: Providing course material to your trainees is important but don’t overload them with constant reading. There will come a time where their ability to absorb content through line and lines of text will simply run out. I suggest mixing up the textual content with audio and video, additionally I recommend you introduce scenario based training. Scenario based training is way for trainees to get their hands dirty with tasks that they will face on a day to day basis. If you’re providing training for an agency or even in-house training, create tasks that are related to current issues that the company is facing, you never know what kind of innovative ideas some fresh minds could come up with.
   
• Create a Relationship: When you’re training someone it’s important that you create an open door policy right from the start so that your student(s) can approach you with any questions related to the training program or search marketing in general. Throughout the training program, schedule some regular time with your students to ask them how they’re doing with course material. This will keep the students stay engaged with the training program and help you design a course which is custom rather than "cookie cutter." 
   
• Get Feedback: Your search marketing training program is not going to be perfect right off the bat and it may not be perfect for a while, but the idea is to continually tweak your program with feedback from the people who are undertaking the training. Whether it’s your clients or your co-workers, it’s important to get their comments/suggestions in-relation to the course content, their ability to understand the concepts, the level of difficulty of the material and the relevancy of the course material to real-life business situations.

Original Post: Web Analytics World

The SEO Dangers of Website Re-Design: Enquiro Retro Post

We have been getting a lot of questions about website redesigns lately.  Specifically as a site re-design relates to SEO and improving website usability with a website re-design.  Many people are unaware of the "dangers" that you can place on your website when performing a site re-design that is not planned out.  You must be aware of potential SEO issues when you plan a website re-design.  As a result of the numerous questions that we have received recently, we have decided to visit our vaults for past articles that we have written that address issues with website re-designs and the impact that they have on SEO.  For instance, take this piece written by former Enquiro team member Brenda Wright.  

• Does not ask you about your business
• Does not ask you any questions about your Search Engine Marketing and Optimization programs
• Begins the new design without discussing with you the goal of your website
• Begins the new design without discussing with you who your target audience is
• Puts visual impact ahead of the usability of the web site
• Recommends a Splash entry page (Search Engines cannot normally ‘see’ Splash pages. This is a dated feature that tends to put off site visitors – who will often simply leave the page (and the website) before it has had a chance to load)
• Recommends your entire site be in Flash (Search Engines cannot ‘see’ Flash pages)
• Recommends putting your site in Frames (Search Engines have great difficulty ‘seeing’ Frames pages – there are workarounds for using Frames but they are a costly retro-fit. A good designer will recommend using tables rather than Frames if you have your heart set on a Frames look)
• Does not realize that the <title>, <meta name="description">, and <meta name="keywords"> tags should be different on every page

• How to optimize a website for Search Engines,
• How to design a website that will be user friendly for your target customers, and
• What you want to achieve with your website.

Every site owner and Webmaster has either contemplated or participated in a website redesign at some time in the history of their sites. Unfortunately the vast majority do not factor in the search engines and SEO when completing their website redesign. How many times have we seen people come to us after they have performed a site redesign only to see their search engine rankings tank? If I had a dollar for every time this has happened…

• The needs of your target audience
• The hierarchy of your site content (sub-folders vs. sub-domains)
• Your URL structure
• The transition of your existing content to new pages / Page Redirection
• Your current external link inventory
• Maintaining/Transferring of your existing titles and meta data
• Future Scalability
• CMS Compatibility
• A/B testing of Landing Pages / Calls to Action
• Interlinking of Site Pages
• Legacy Issues
• Cost of the Website Redesign
• Timing of the Website Redesign
• Time it takes to complete the redesign

1. Don’t Implement a Site Redesign for the sake of having a redesign – Anytime you perform a redesign of your site, you run the risk of losing existing rankings in the search results. Why jeopardize your rankings if you don’t have to.
2. Identify the Strengths and Weaknesses of Your Existing Site – which areas does your website perform well in? Which areas need improvement?
3. Define Your SEO Needs – Do you need to improve your URL structure? Do you need to improve site navigation? Identifying your SEO needs will help with the planning on your website redesign.
4. Pay Attention to Existing Rankings – be sure that you understand which pages are currently ranking well in the search engines. You can greatly minimize the risk of a drop in rankings by understanding which site pages are performing well in the search engines.
5. Identify Your Top Referring Pages – prior to redesign your website, you should determine which site pages drive the most traffic. Of course you will want to ensure that these pages remain somewhat intact during your website redesign.

Coming from an agency, there are often times when there is need to perform a competitive analysis for a client in order to better understand the client’s position in the competitive landscape. The main purpose of a competitive analysis should be to gain awareness of the competitive factors analyzed and to leverage the client’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats (SWOT) to their advantage. So what kind of factors should be included in an online competitive analysis? Below are a few that I feel should always make the competitive analysis list:

• Domain Age: The age of your domain can have an affect in the way search engine determine authoritativeness for your site. Theoretically, the longer the domain has been active, the more value it receives from search engines. Webconfs has a great tool for calculating the age of your domain and your competitors’ http://www.webconfs.com/domain-age.php.
• Search Engine Visibility: Take your vertical’s main keyword basket and analyze how visible your site is compared to its competitors in Google, Yahoo, MSN, ASK and AOL. Comparing the number of top X rankings can give you a sense of your keyword market share.
• Site Traffic: This one is difficult to compare unless you have access to your competitors’ analytics, however Compete.com’s search analytics does a fairly decent job of providing some insight.
• In Bound Link Quality: Using a combination of Yahoo Site Explorer and a batch PageRank checker you can begin to determine the quality of back-links for a given domain. The quality of links is more important than the quantity.
• In Bound Link Anchor Text: The quality of links is partially based on the theme of the linking site as well as the anchor text that is linking to you. Image or branded links aren’t as high quality as keyword rich links. http://www.webconfs.com/anchor-text-analysis.php
• Meta Tags: This maybe considered simplistic and old school but meta description and title tags are still important in SEO. Analyzing description and title tags can help you determine which competing sites best differentiate themselves as well as the messaging the site is providing visitors.
• Paid Search Campaigns: On the other side of the fence their is sponsored campaigns and a tool like SpyFu can give you some insight on PPC competitors and keyword costs.
• Blogs: Got a blog? Check out Blog Juice from Text Link Ads, which looks at Bloglines, Alexa and Technorati to compute a "juice" score.

We received a great question from Karen in California who wanted to know:

Have a quick question…..we have been told that we should be building lots of mini-sites to help with our in-bound linking and that will help our SEO efforts. Do you believe that or is on page SEO much better and time and resources should be spent doing that and not worrying about in-bound linking from your own mini-sites?

I know in-bound linking is very important to build your “authority” but does in-bound linking from your own sites do much?

Great question Karen!  The answer is it depends.  Inbound links or as we like to say improving your external link inventory is an important factor in improving your organic rankings in the search results.  Having said that, on-page SEO is also a key factor that will have an impact on your rankings as well.  You really need to do both.

The fact is that yes you do need links to be treated as an authority and to rank well by the search engines.  However prior to building your external link inventory, you need to ensure that your on-page factors have been addressed.  These on page factors include but are not limited to:

1. Proper/Well Optimized URL Structure
2. Optimized Page Titles
3. Optimized Meta Data
4. Keyword Rich Content and Page Copy
5. Effective Interlinking of Your Site Pages

Using Mini-Sites to Improve In-Bound Linking

The best thing to keep in mind when building your external link inventory is to do it in a natural manner.  This means not trying to artificially inflate your link inventory…. and trust me there are a number of sites that out there that do this. Don’t just build sites for the purpose of linking.  Ensure that the sites provide value to the user.  In order to obtain real benefit from these sites, these “mini-sites” need to be relevant, and should hopefully have a respectable PageRank or level of authority as they link back to your main site.

Getting a link from a relevant industry site that has a PageRank of 7 or 8 will carry much more weight with the search engines than having 20-30 links from sites that do not have any PageRank or are not relevant to your business.

Having “lots” of mini-sites will not necessarily boost your IBL score, for you see the quality of the link is much more important than the quantity of links that you have to your site.  The fact is that too many links to your site can actually have an adverse effect on your Inbound Linking (IBL) Quality score.

If you are considering using a number of mini-sites ask yourself the following questions:

• Will these sites benefit my target audience/site user?
• How many of these “mini-sites” will there be?
• Is the purpose of these mini-sites simply for obtaining links?  If the answer is yes then you may be creating them for the wrong reasons.  The search engines are looking for you to build your link inventory naturally.  If all of a sudden 50 sites that consist of a few pages pop up with similar content and begin linking to your main site, the search engines may treat these links as spam or less authoritative.

To answer the original question, you should make sure that the on-page SEO stuff is taken care of first.  Then focus on building your link inventory with a couple of mini sites.  With the mini-sites make sure that:

• The content is unique on each
• The pages feature unique title and meta data
• The sites have established link inventories of their own (that way the search engines will treat them as more of an authority).

Also linking from your own sites to your main site will not carry as much weight as links from other relevant sites.  So additional things to consider when setting up mini-sites are: having dedicated IP addresses for the sites so that they are not hosted on the same IP address

In terms of where to spend your time and efforts, ideally you should be spending time on both, the on-page SEO issues should be addressed first.  Link building is on-going anyways and can take a long time to accomplish.  So long as you are not trying to trick the search engines (or the users for that matter) using a couple of mini-sites to help build your link inventory should be ok.

Original Post: In-Bound Linking Vs. On-Page SEO

SEO strategy is something that has been difficult to define as the search landscape tends to change quite frequently with new innovations and technologies popping up all over the place.  While many have tried to outline the definitive SEO strategy, the fact is that a sound SEO strategy may be different for each and every business or web property.  An effective search engine optimization strategy does not mean simply getting a webpage to number one in Google, Yahoo or ASK.  A successful SEO strategy should focus on three areas:

1. Getting Traffic to Your Web Properties via Carefully Selected Keywords
2. Having Compelling and Useful Content on your Web Properties
3. Establishing Authority via Link Development

Let’s look at each of these in a little more detail.

SEO Strategy Component #1: Keyword Selection

This is really the lifeblood of your SEO campaign.  C’mon who are we kidding, without proper keyword selection, you run the risk of blending into search results oblivion.   A strong SEO strategy begins and ends with keyword selection.  In fact it never ends.  Keyword research should be ongoing.  If your business and website is to remain competitive you will need to develop creative ways to reinvent your messaging and content.  Business is a dynamic process, markets change, competition change, supply and demand change and your business (in order to grow and prosper) should change as well.

Keyword selection is a critical aspect of any SEO strategy.  Keyword selection depends on a wide variety of factors such as:

• Type of Industry you’re in
• Popularity of your brand
• Competitiveness of keywords
• Semantic mapping of the user
• Stage of Awareness
• Head vs. Torso vs. Long-Tail
• Time of Season
• Corporate jargon vs. industry terms vs. lingo of your consumer

The list could go on and on.  The fact is that keyword selection is not a one-time thing.  You really need to make an effort to understand what terms searchers will be using when looking for your service or product offering.  If you cannot successfully identify relevant keywords to your business and website, you’re going to be in trouble.  Just when you think tha you have compiled an accurate keyword basket or list, you need to re-evaluate it to ensure that you incporate phrases that will ideally drive qualified traffic.

Editor’s Note:  Due to a power outage the following section is having to be re-written as I was unable to save my original post.  This will be a condensed version of the original.

SEO Strategy Component #2: Content… Content and More Content

Think about this.  Let’s say that you have a 20 page website yet you have a keyword basket of 100 keywords.  Do you actually think that your site is going to rank well for all of these phrase?  Highly unlikely.  How can your site possibly be an authority on all 100 key phrases when you do not even have a single page for each phrase.  Why would the search engined rank your site higher than a site that his some history and consists of hundreds, thousands or tens of thousands of page?  The fact is that they won’t.  You need supporting content.  The greatest SEO strategy that you can incorporate is content development.  Not to mention from a user point of view, content development can be used to improve site stickiness and time spent on your site.  You need to provide your audience with the content on your site that they are looking for.  If that means product comparisons, you had better provide product comparisons.  If that means pricing than provide some indication of pricing.  If it means news articles then you guessed it, your site better feature relevant news articles. 

Even in 2008, the search engines still like good old fashioned HTML text copy the best.  Not content buried in Flash or images, good old copy.  However if you need a little content "pizzazz" try incorporating videos with transcripts, blog posts, news articles or the like.  If keywords are your lifeblood of your SEO strategy, them content is the rest of your "physical" makeup.  Search engines need content to crawl and index and of course rank.  To increase your visibility in the organic space of the search engines (ie the natural search results) you need to have a content rich site.  Do not expect to rank if you do not have any content on your site.  Writing content for the Web is a key factor of any SEO strategy.  Yet why is it overlooked by so many?  Every SEO strategy needs to focus on content development.  You are defeating the purpose if you are not pumping out new content on your site on a regular basis.  You want to be an authority on "car insurance" you better have content about "car insurance".  You want to rank well for "cosmetic dentistry" you might want to create some additional content for your site.  Content development  is critical for a successful SEO strategy.

SEO Strategy Component #3: Building Your External Link Inventory

A strong SEO strategy needs to have this component for without relevant links to your site, you simply will not rank.  The sites that are the true authorities are the ones with quality links from other sites and web properties.  It’s not always about quantity, but more often than not it is about quality.  If you want to rank well in the search engines, you need to build up your external link inventory.  Many argue that the best way to do this is to buy links.  I strongly disagree.  Buying links artificially builds your link inventory.  It improves quantity but does not necessarily improve your link quality.  For my money, the best way to build your external link inventory is to do it by providing interesting and useful content.  Some call this link bait, I call it smart online marketing.  If you provide content that is somewhat unique, extremely useful and informative, chances are others are simply going to link to your content.  Furthermore you can bet that the links will be of higher quality and more relevant. 

Do you think that a site without a strong external link inventory can rank well?  Well it does happen, but the "staying power" of these sites to remain in the top organic result is week.  A site with a strong external link inventory will almost always outrank a site that lacks quality links.  It’s built into the search engine algorithms, linking is still a fundamental factor as to how sites are ranked in the search engine results pages.

 A successful SEO strategy must consist of three items (and one common denominator)

• Relevant Key Phrases
• Relevant Content
• Relevant Links

If you can address these three issues with your SEO strategy you will do well.  Fact of the matter is that I have incorporated these items with my clients and the results have been amazing.  I’ve seen client’s sites increase traffic to their sites by 2000% in a little over a year by incorporating these items into their SEO strategy (and this was for  very well known brand… which unfortunately must remain nameless).  Other client’s have seen similar increases and top rankings for a number of years for highly relevant, high traffic phrases.  Before incorporating the latest Web 2.0 strategy, you might want to take a look at strategies involving keyword selection, content development and building of your external link inventory.

Local search continues to be a hot topic for many site owners.  As you know there are a ton of options when it comes to local search. Not only do you have the major search engines offering local search products including:
 

• Yahoo Local
• Google Local/Maps
• City Search
• Windows Live Local
• Local.AOL
• ASK City

You also have other properties such as:
 

• SuperPages.com
• YellowPage.com
• Local.com
• MapQuest
• AOL Local Yellow Pages
• Yelp
• 411.com

Of course I could go on and on as there are numerous other local search resources available. So what can you do to get your site listed in these resources so that you appear in the natural listings of local search and so that when a user searches for "plumbers in Detroit" your site is found? Well organically speaking you have limited control over determining your placement in the local search results. In fact we have contacted Yahoo to find out more about organic strategies for being listed in the "organic results" in Yahoo. There response was, "..there is no real way to control your presence in the Yahoo Local results…" Enter GEO-targeting through paid placement. (that’s another post for another time…)

However here are a few basic tips that you’ll need to follow to at least be found in the local search results:
 

1. Have A Physical Address - Guess what? Local search is designed for small to medium businesses that have one (or possibly more) physical locations. You need to have a physical address for your store, branch or office.

    

2. Communicate Your Address on Your Website - you need to illustrate to the search engines and more importantly, your users as to where your business can be found. A great place to start is your Contact Us page. At the very minimum ensure that your have an updated, full address listing on your Contact Us page for your store, branch or office. If you have multiple locations, list them here as well. If you have a large number of branches, you may want to create a series of pages with your various branch information.

    

3. Create Local / GEO Targeted Content on Your Site - ah yes another supporting reason why "Content is King". Things such as articles or state-wide statistics can be a great way to provide information to your various geographic targets. Feature testimonials about how someone in Boise used your product or service and was happy with the results. " Locally focused content" can also act as great link bait and improve the authority of your site in a specific geographic locale.

    

4. Obtain Links from Other Sites Within the Same GEO Area - For relevancy purposes, try to obtain links to your local pages or local copy from sites that are in the same area. Try to obtain relevant links from local colleges or universities, local directories, local Chamber of Commerce sites etc.

    

5. Check Your Listings - Chances are you may already be listed in some of the various local search properties. Perform a search for your company name and see what comes up. If a listing does come up, log in or set up an account to edit the listing. Try to include your site URL, a detailed description of your business (incorporate your main keywords where possible.), an image of your store/office location, hours of operation and any other pertinent information that users will find useful. If the local engine has various categories, ensure that your business is found in the most relevant categories.

While local search may not be effective for all businesses, you will want to make sure that your business has some sort of presence in the local search engines. Start with the basics, let the search engines know where your business can be found. Provide an attractive listing for users and map out a local search strategy that works for you.

• Leveraging high image rankings: You may have top rankings for your images in both the image results and universal/blended results but what are visitors doing when they arrive at your site? Search Engines such as Google show the exact page where an image resides (after clicking throuh on an image) therefore this is a great opportunity to funnel visitors deeper to your site. The different images queries which refer visitors to your site can help dictate the type of content you should surround your images with.
• Should you freshen up your images? You definitely should. Similar to textual content, keep visitors coming back with images that continue to match the visitor’s query (and intent). The most important point is to maintain the names of the images as well as the textual content within the alt attribute.
• The ROI on Video: Video is an excellent way to promote your brand and services to visitors but how do you know when a given video has maxed out its potential. I recommend checking out trends for views, comments and clickthroughs (and again what visitors are doing after the click through). These trends should help show whether or not the video is still engaging visitors. If you are seeing the trends flat-line you know it’s time to add some new content.
• Visitors know what they like to watch: If you’re thinking about enhancing your video strategy with some fresh content then I suggest you look to your visitors for help. Look at the comments they leave (if you’ve uploaded YouTube or MetaCafe) and secondly look at your internal search terms. Both of these areas are ways visitors have engaged with your content by providing feed back so why not show visitors what they want?

Bonus Tip*

This next strategy is not directly related to video or images but the concept is something you maybe able to apply elsewhere. I have two travel sites: BC Travel Guide (.ca) and British Columbia Tours (.com) and I am looking to rank highly for "Kelowna" or "Kelowna British Columbia." So I created a Kelowna themed page on each site, both with keyword rich content, interlinking and images. The results are too early to tell but this allows me to test the level of authority per domain, the return per domain and the potential for having 2 sites rank highly for a few phrases.

Original Post:  Tips for Optimizing for Blended Search 

Tips for Optimizing for Blended Search

Previously we examined what you should know about optimizing for blended search.  In part two we look at a few tips for optimizing for blended search (or Universal Search as it is known in Google.)

Optimizing for blended search is critical for your online marketing strategy. Consider this scenario: A web site might have enjoyed high rankings on key terms within a search engine for years and years now finds that their ranked web pages have been pushed down the rankings by video, image, local search results or other types of blended search results.

Blended search will tie into relevancy based on the query of the search. Ultimately the search engines will continue and work to provide the most relevant results possible. If that means video, that's what you can expect to see for a certain type of query. If that means an audio clip for a newscast then that's what you are going to be served with from the search engine. The days of simple text link web results are quickly being replaced by more dynamic, more targeted search results. Therefore the need to optimize for blended search becomes paramount.

7 Tips for Optimizing for Blended Search

1. Optimize Your Existing Site Content - first and foremost make sure that you optimize your existing content for the search engines. Begin with on page factors such as optimized page titles, meta data and page copy. While text link search results are becoming less, they still dominate the current search results and will remain a part of the search page.

2. Optimize Images - something that is often overlooked is optimizing the images found on your site for your key phrases. This includes using alt text, proper naming conventions and optimizing images for size.
3. Review and Organize Your Content - determine if there is an opportunity to serve your content to your users in various formats. Consider html page copy, videos, video transcripts, blog content, press release news content, PDFs etc.
4. Optimize, Upload and Publish Video - with so many video aggregator sites out there, creating, optimizing and uploading your videos for your user becomes even more important. The search engines have started to incorporate more video results into their search results. You can expect to see more of this in 2008.
5. Optimize Press Releases - syndicate company news through RSS feeds and press releases so that news results/press releases about your company show up in the blended search results.
6. Always Add Fresh Content - Whether it's page copy, new images, new videos, podcasts, white papers, always, always, always continue to add fresh content to your web properties. Blended search results will factor in relevancy and as a result content that is fresh may be given more weight in the search results. Continuing to create fresh content can help promote your various forms of content for blended search.
7. Blog, Blog, Blog - blogs continue to be a more trusted form of content on the Web. As a result, expect the search engines to incorporate more blog content/results into their main results. Blogging is a great way to quickly get your content out there. Blog content (if your blog is well optimized) can expect to get optimized and ranked in the search engines within hours.

If you do not begin optimizing for universal search results as part of your online marketing strategy now, you may cost yourself more in the end. As you drop in search rankings, you may be forced to increase your pay per click spend driving up your online advertising expenditure. Why not optimize for organic placement via blended search optimization as part of your longer term strategy? Releasing a new product or solution? Why not upload a video to promote your new offering. Have a bit of an online reputation problem? Why not start a blog to clarify the situation in the online community? Take control of the listings in the search results by optimizing for blended search.