This document discusses optimizing for blended search across different media types. It covers optimizing products, news, images, video, and local search. For products, it recommends submitting a complete and accurate product feed to search engines with optimized fields. For news, it suggests optimizing press releases. For images and video, it provides tips like using keyword rich filenames and surrounding media with relevant on-page content. For local search, it advises verifying business listings and collecting reviews across directories and maps.

1. Understanding
Blended
Search

2.  In this chapter, you will learn about
- Knowing blended search
- Optimizing products
- Optimizing news
- Optimizing images
- Optimizing video
- Optimizing for local search

3.  In 2007, Google released a new version of
its search results dubbed universal search.
 Other search engines followed suit. The
SEO industry calls it blended search
 Blended search mixes relevant news,
images, video, and other content right
into the traditional web search results on a
search result page.

4.  Blended search presents more
opportunities for you to grab real estate
on the first page of search engine results.
 Every image, video, and press release you
do, as well as your physical location, give
you a shot at a top ten ranking.

5. Optimizing Products
 Product pages on your website end up in the
regular search rankings.
 But you have a second way to get them into
the search engines – the product feed.
 A product feed is basically a spread sheet of
all the products in your store.
 You give that spread sheet to the search
engines, and they use it to create an index of
your products.

6.  Google and Bing both provide ways for
you to submit a list of products and prices.
 You can submit products to Google for
free using its Merchant Centre site at
www.google.com/merchants
 You can get information regarding Bing
product feed at
advertising.microsoft.com/small-
business/new-bing-shopping

7.  There are six ways to optimize your product
1. Submit a complete feed – Although it might be
tempting to submit a product name and price
and be done with it, you should carefully fill in all
the details. That way, if someone searches for
700c bicycle tire, he will find you because you
completed the size field.
2. Use existing categories – Each search engine
provides a list of categories that it typically uses in
its product search directories. Use those
categories, even if they’re different from the
ones on your site. It will help great deal.

8. 3. Submit individual products manually – If you
manually edit your feed, you can optimize product
descriptions and other fields for best impact.
4. Include images – A listing with an image draws far
more clicks than a listing without.
5. Update your feed – If you’re selling products,
update your feed to match your inventory cycle.
Don’t put out of date pricing or incorrect information
on the internet.
6. Use custom fields – For google base, add custom
fields that make sense. For example, if you’re selling
shoes, you might add a custom field called starts and
the list the stars who are currently wearing those
shoes. If folks search for shoes that suzy starlet wore
and your site shows up, they’ll buy

9. Optimizing News
 Google and bing also blend news headlines into
their search results.
 If you send a press release, try the following tips to
get into the blended search results:
- Optimize your press release – Make your press
release relevant by including your target phrase in
the headline, paragraphs and other elements will
definitely help.
- Avoid using sales language, such as best deal, or
fastest deal – press release should be informative,
not salesy.
- Use a newswire – Submit your press release by using
web-savvy newswires such as PR Web
(www.prweb.com)

10. Optimizing Images
 Getting an image included in a search
result can generate a lot of traffic.
 You can increase traffic by as much as
200 % in a single day because an image
from your website landed on the front
page of google
 Image typically shows up at the top of the
search result.

11.  However, search engines can’t actually see
images. So they use a number of cues to
determine image relevance.
 Use the following tips to optimize images-
- Use original images
- Use high quality images
- Optimize the content around the image
- Use the correct formats
- Make images accessible
- Give keyword rich name to image

12. Optimizing Video
 Video and images in blended search are
similar in the following ways:
- Filenames must contain relevant terms.
- Overall page relevance helps determine
video relevance.
- Originality, quality and format can all
make a difference.

13.  In addition to these factors, to optimize video, you
need to
- Make sure that you place the video on your website,
and that you let your current customers or readers
know it’s there.
- Consider putting all your videos in an RSS feed.
- Be organized
- Weigh the benefit of putting a video on a site such as
You Tube, and potentially getting a lot of views in a
short time, against getting the links and direct traffic
from having that video on your website.
- Give your videos a relevant filename and surround
them with relevant content.

14. Optimizing for Local Search
 If you are a local business, a top local search
listing can drive customers faster than any
other online marketing technique.
 Local search optimization isn’t difficult.
 But it does require a very sustained effort,
around three different factors:
- Listings, on the local search engines and the
directory sites they reference
- Reviews and bookmarks on those same sites
- Local data on your website

15. Optimizing your local search
listings
 The first step in local search optimization is making
sure that your business is in major search engine’s
local search directory.
 To do so, follow these steps
1. Search for your business on google and bing
2. Make sure you fill out all fields requested by the
search engine, including the description and
hours.
3. Submit your website to yelp, yellowpages,
superpages, citysearch etc..
4. Make sure your business is assigned to the correct
category in the local listings

16. Optimizing your site for local
search
 Use the following tips to optimize your website
for local search
- Make sure that your physical address is on
every page of your website.
- Put your metro-area location in a few title
tags on your website
- Have a very good contact page with
directions.
- Consider geo tagging your website
- Use social media
- Get links from other local sites