Quite often we focus quite heavily on one area of our searches. Whether it is to target a specific audience, or searching for a certain type of result, such as an image or a map, there are so many angles we can take that it can involve a lot of different approaches. Sometimes we can get so carried away focusing all our attention on one area that we forget that some people want to just search for everything all at once, and do not necessarily have a clear idea of what type of search result they want. This is where preparing your web pages for a universal search comes in.
A universal search basically takes all the various elements of search and displays them on the main search engine results page (SERP). So, for example, you could include a video within one of your landing pages, so that text and a video link would be displayed in the main Google search engine, not just specifically in the video search tab. Adopting a strategy for universal searching is crucial, as despite the likes of Google segmenting its search results easily, a large proportion of users will only use the main Google search page no matter what format they are looking for.
Other elements of the listing which are included in a universal search result include blog pages, images and local information. All these areas could be addressed separately and be treated as an individual search, however your site could be missing out on a lot of traffic if it does not include them all at some point.
SEO blogs are particularly important now as crawlers on search engines such as Google now include social networking sites as part of their search. This means that any post or news article can now be picked up. For this reason it is important that you are including blogs as part of your content to meet the needs of the real time and social media market.
You may need to hire professional search engine optimisation services to help you with certain other elements of your content, such as videos, maps and images. However, they are well worth it for giving you the perfect display within SERPs. Including an image or video on your landing pages or home page and ensuring there are sufficient tags and links to them can offer a more appealing search result. The aim is for your link to display a text link and a video or image link just within the main search result page. This will catch attention and make you stand out from your competitors.
Maps are often part of local search, and this is a very important element to include. If a user is searching for directions to a local company then they are still more likely to search within the main Google page as opposed to the map tab. Local searches are very popular and ensuring that you are listed within Google local search will give you a good page ranking for local searches.
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Posted by Dan.
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