Blended Search & Reputation Management – Part II

By CT Moore

This is the second installment of our series on Blended Search and Reputation Management. In Part I we discussed how blended search can help manage your reputation, as well as how to optimize press releases for Google News. In this installment, we’ll look at optimizing images and video.

Images

There are two sides to getting your branded image content to showing up in search results: onsite and offsite.

For starters, there are probably a number of images all over your site and blog. There are two things you can do to optimize them for targeted terms. First, you can rename all the image files to include the keywords you want to rank for — e.g. Brand _Name_at_Industry_Conference.jpeg. Secondly, you can add keyword rich alt attributes to the HTML you are using to embed on the pages. Both of these will help the search engines better understand that these images are relevant to your targeted terms.

Furthermore, you can also distribute its branded content on popular photo sharing services such as Flickr and Photobucket. While this won't direct users directly to your site, it will at least bring them to a branded image sharing profile and keep them away from the competition.

When it comes to sharing images, make sure to use appropriate keywords to (1) rename all your image files before uploading them, and (2) add write image descriptions and tags that feature your target keywords. If you are then embedding these hosted images in blog posts, you can give them some added relevancy by using title tags and alt attributes when you do so.

Also, it doesn't hurt to make sure that your image sharing profiles is "friends" with similar profiles. For instance, if your branded profiles are friends mostly with users who upload images of cars, the search engines are going to take this as a cue that your account and its images, are relevant to cars.

Video

Optimizing video for blended search is very similar to optimizing images. Essentially, when you upload your videos to popular hosting sites such as YouTube, Vimeo, and Blip.tv, describe and tag them with the keyword you're targeting.

Then, if you have the opportunity, embed them in company blog posts so that they can receive some link juice from a relevant authority – your brand itself. And again, find others in your industry on these video sharing sites and add them as contacts. This will reinforce the contextual relevancy of your content. That being said, you'll have to determine what kind of video content you can produce without breaking the bank on a video production studio. Well, there are actually 5 online video formats that offer business both simplicity and cost-effectiveness. These include:

1. Product Demos
2. User Generated Content (UGC) Videos
3. Previously Aired TV Commercials
4. Expert Interviews (with either staff or industry piers)
5. and the Business Vlog (for team members that are both savvy and enthusiastic about social media)

Each of these, however, has its own format and guidelines, so before deciding which ones are right for you, you might want to click on that link read up a bit more on what each one entails.