Leveraging digital assets to maximize SEO - SMX 2010 Recap

What Rob tells us, isn't truly new, as we already have seen this all over at Google. Rob shared with us that Universal Search is important for Ask Jeeves, since the regular queries over at Ask are true questions. And asking a question is different from conducting a search. Its all about answering the question.

Optimize your video's for search engines

Shmulik Weller steps into the world of video and shares with us how to gain maximum results when optimizing your site for video's. Here are his best tips:

- each video needs its own landing page and URL

- put the video in context: use H1's, the right keywords, related links and audio transcripts to tell search engines what the video is about

- add metadata to the video like dimensions, duration, etc.

- embed the video, but don't use javascript or popups

- use video sitemaps, include the video URL, meta data, etc.

Finally Shmulik shows us a SERP for a keyword where a small website outranks Amazon for a product name, stating that you can outrank big companies with productvideo's if you do it correctly.

Get your content into Google News

Next up is Rob Kerry again. Rob is covering Google News and starts with the statement that if you ever need short term traffic, Google News is ideal to get good rankings on pretty competitive terms for a short period. He addresses the problem how to get into Google News:

- Make sure every URL is unique and contains a unique number of at least 3 digits. You can also use a news sitemap if you're not able to alter the URL.

- Make use of related images and keep thumbnails within 300x250 and 180x50 to get them inside the search results

- Use multiple authors. If you're alone, then fake it. Make sure the author information is viewable from the article page. 

Then submit your website to Google News. And if your website is rejected by Google, be aggressive and tell them they are wrong, you're an authority, etc.