At SearchEngineOptimisation.co.uk we were not sure where real time searching was going to head, and with all the speculation and mixed opinions from SEO experts, it was unclear to most SEO experts whether real time search would really take off. Despite all the negativity surrounding it, it appears that real time searching is here to stay. Real time searching can be used for both an informative and social source of information, and our favourite search engines have taken a shine to both of these things.
From a social point of view, one of the most controversial things to happen was when Google began showing Twitter and Facebook links in their results pages. Some people thought this was great, whilst others looked on in aghast at the thought of random social networking comments becoming top in terms of page ranking, when there is a lot more useful and structured information to be found on the web. The fact is however, that the world of online search is determined by its users. Ultimately it is their demands and needs which drive the nature of search, and if they want tweets and status updates from around the world to be displayed within their search results, that is what they shall have.
From a business point of view this can work to your advantage, as if you are posting something relevant and informative regarding your company, which of course you should be, then posting it in real time can be a good angle to your social media optimisation. The trick to doing this is to know what you are doing already in terms of social marketing and be really on the ball when it comes to posting information. If you want people to link to your web pages then you need to be first to post information and it needs to be something which your consumers want to read about.
News feeds are one of the ways you can really get your pages into real time searches. In order to do this you do need to submit your news feeds to Google and Bing and there are certain criteria such as specific archive duration and a certain quantity of articles. It is a good idea to have a strong design on your news pages and ensure the content is very good quality. It is worth remembering that in order to get search engines to display your news feeds you need to request it from them, and in terms of Bing you do actually need to get an invitation from them, which again can be requested.
The most important thing to remember with news feeds is that you should only create one of your site is worthy of one. If the nature of your industry generates a lot of daily news and interesting information then a news feed can work wonders in terms of driving additional traffic to your website, however just having a news feed for the sake of it will not portray a good image and could end up damaging your business in the long run.
About the author:
Posted by Jon.
Link to us
If you want to link to this blog, copy and paste the following HTML code to your website.
