Universal Search = Digital Media & Content

While I am Optiem's go-to resource for SEO, my title and the name of the department don't use words like "organic" or "search" or "engine". Frequently this confuses people because they think what does digital media have to do with search?

At SES San Jose this week Google Engineer David Bailey explained why. In the words of Chris Smith from Netconcepts:

One major piece of advice he [David Bailey] gave to companies who wish to rank well in the new Universal Search paradigm really stood out to me: he recommended that companies look to diversify the types of content they have out there in promoting their products and sites — to work to have content in each of the major vertical areas now, including Images, local business listings in Google Maps, video, news, etc.

Search is now about the types of media you produce, how you distribute them, how they are tagged and used to drive traffic & organic search results for your site. This is something we've been suggesting to our clients for quite some time now but Universal Search makes it easier to understand the reasons why.