As a reminder to those of you who may have forgotten exactly what Universal Search is, in a nutshell, it is Google’s attempt to deliver relevant results across multiple content types, like web, video, news, books, local, and images, for example.

So what does this mean to you and your business?  By leveraging the various content types available you not only expand your market reach to target audiences interacting with those various content types, but you also provide Google with more relevant search results across the those content types to present to its users for the keywords important to your business.

You divide and conquer and Google’s Universal Search will do the work to bring it all together.  That’s the theory.

Branch out with your information and optimize it all!

Where can you start?

First create your strategy.

Decide on the keywords you will be optimizing for across the different content types. Remember, the idea is to coordinate your efforts.  Please though, by all means get your website “in order” first because that is ultimately where your online business is going to take place.

Let’s say we are a small manufacturer of connector pins so our strategy is to rank across all content types for connector pins. Here’s an example:

1. First we optimize our website for connector pins
2. Video on YouTube.com demonstrating our cost saving manufacturing technique that provides link to our website and highlights our company name
3. News release announcing a new project, expansion or innovation
4. Optimize images on and off-site showing our connector pins
5. Sell connector pins (if applicable) on the site so we can show up in Shopping Results
6. Open a Twitter Account for Connector Pins and tweet all news, thoughts, ideas
7. Create and post helpful white-papers, case studies or articles about connector pins

No matter how many content types you wish to provide content for, the objective remains the same: keep everything highly focused on connector pins (in this example) so your information is highly relevant to a search made for that term, making it easy for Google to scan, index and return the content in a search result.

Universal Search is Google’s way of bringing its users relevant information from a variety of sources other than just a website.  With that understanding you have the option to leverage those various content types to reach even more of your target audience groups and to garner Google’s respect for the valuable resource you are for information relevant to the keywords and phrases important to your bottom line.

Remember, Google rewards content with high rankings when it is relevant, highly focused and visited often by the web searching public.

With Universal Search you have the opportunity to optimize your content across a variety of content types and ultimately engage more qualified prospects.

Discovering the keywords and phrases that attract your target audience groups to your web pages is only half of the equation. Uncovering what the visitors do when they arrive can greatly impact your understanding of how to get them there, or which words and phrases to use, so you have the power to effectively influence them to take the actions you want them to take when on your site.

I’m sure you’ve heard the word mentioned many times: “conversion”.  Conversion means a variety of different things to business owners.

It can mean a submitted contact or request for quote form, an online sale, a booked sales appointment, a phone call, on-site registration, or simply fresh leads in the pipeline.

With a broader understanding of the term you can recognize that a site conversion occurs every time you successfully persuade your targeted visitors to take a desired action.

So one of your considerations when building your keyword list for search engine optimization is whether or not your website content satisfies your targeted audience so they are both ready and able to follow your guidance through to conversion.

Are you confused? Don’t be.

Remember, website content (answers)  is really what your audience is after.  What you present, and the way in which you present it, either successfully satisfies your target audience once they arrive or you have in advertently mislead them in some way.  Your keywords are inextricably linked to that content.  They set the stage for what a reader can expect to find so you want to be as accurate as possible.

According to a joint ThomasNet-Google study on industrial buyer behavior conducted in late 2005,”86% [of online researchers/buyers] recommended or selected a new supplier or new product or service for their company based on their online experiences.”

Still relevant today according to GlobalSpec’s 2009 Economic Outlook Survey which states that “more than 80% use the Internet to obtain product specifications and to find components, equipment, services and suppliers.”

This means that conversions are dependent upon meeting or fulfilling your site visitors’ expectations with accurate, appropriate and easy to follow website content.

Your keywords have both a front end and back end function that ultimately supports your highly focused content strategically designed to educate, motivate and persuade your targeted audience groups to start a business relationship with you as you have defined it.

Proper search engine optimization is about generating business, not just site traffic.  When measuring and reporting on results you must take into consideration the effectiveness of your keywords to both attract, and convert, your site visitors.

If they’re not working then ask yourself these four very important questions:

1) are my business objectives supported by the content on my website?

2) does my website content fulfill the interests of the site visitors I attract?

3) do my site visitors clearly know what to do next? and…

4) are the keywords I’m using effectively supporting items 1 through 3?

If the answer to any of these is an honest “no” then get to work.  The investment will reward you ten-fold.

There are many factors that go into the selection of keywords and phrases to optimize your web pages.

In general, criteria are governed by three principle objectives:

1. Keyword(s) accurately reflect the content presented on the page
2. Keyword(s) represent the search terms used by your target audience group(s) to search for what you offer
3. Keyword(s) attract your target audience for the right reason; i.e.: your target audience is most likely to respond to the information the way you want them to

Search engines can respond to a search query made by an end-user by delivering links to web pages that are primarily focused on either educational or transactional objectives.  That’s not to say that a single web page couldn’t do both, but it is important when selecting your search terms to ensure you are ranked among search results that reflect the true intent of your target audience when they search so they will respond to your web page content in the manner you expect, such as “become a member,” “buy a product,” or “support your cause.”

Suppose you sell “energy efficient light bulbs.”  Your instinct may be to automatically optimize your web page for this keyword phrase, but before you make a decision to use a particular term or phrase, search for it in Google and see if the search results presented actually reflect your business objectives, which in this case would be to attract people interested in buying energy efficient light bulbs.  At present, a search in Google for “energy efficient light bulbs” does not produce organic results listing predominantly transactional sites selling light bulbs but rather educational sites about the types and benefits of energy efficient light bulbs.

Not a good fit if you’re trying to sell because the person searching will likely recognize the page doesn’t offer what he wants and quickly click away to amend his search.

Or, as is the case here, Google gives the searcher the option to click on a link to “Shopping results,” ( I will be getting into the benefits of positioning with Google Products in an upcoming post) which leads him to the page where he can begin to search for energy efficient light bulbs to purchase.

That’s great. And it is within this section that you want to rank well because it is here that the end-user will know to look to find what he wants.  So you may want to get your target audience here more quickly and efficiently by expanding your keyword phrase to attract those interested in making a purchase: “energy efficient light bulbs for sale.”

Did you think I was going to suggest “buy energy efficient light bulbs?”

I considered it but after searching the term I realized it yielded almost identical results as the first phrase without delivering the type of result best suited to the business objective of selling light bulbs.

It does not mean that I might not test for ranking here as a first page spot may drive me qualified traffic well beyond competitors, but if in a test we can’t get top ranking for that KWP, odds are even on page 2 or 3 a user may never see the listing as they probably decided to change their search term already based on the first 6-10 results they see.

This is a simplistic example used to make the point that research into where your listing may post in a search engine result is an important consideration for keyword selection.

Select words and phrases that will yield not only the search results but the business results you are looking for.

Back in February 2009, Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft announced support for canonical tags, a new link element to enhance search results for end-users by cleaning up duplicate urls on sites.

Search engines frown upon duplicate content for two principle reasons:

• The first is that duplicate content diminishes the value of the search engine by obviously not offering the end-user clear, easy to follow and diverse content choices.

• Secondly, web pages with duplicate content have been used in the past to artificially generate link popularity to enhance rankings and increase the chances of web page content being found.  Google will penalize those who continue to use this “black hat” approach by removing the pages from the engine and even banning urls indefinitely.

Unfortunately, it is very easy to inadvertently produce duplicate content on your site, even if that is not your intention.

Database-driven sites, for example, that produce dynamically-generated web pages when a search is performed, may result in duplicate content because of the use of categories and sort criteria used in navigation and on-site search.  Page tracking and session IDs can also produce web pages with different urls but completely identical content.
A canonical tag lets you specify an easy-to-read url that the duplicate content will point to, functioning sort of like a 301 re-direct.  The search engine then knows which page is your preferred version to post in the search engine results pages.  Google recognizes that its spiders may crawl the canonical and the duplicate pages at different points in time, occasionally seeing different versions of your content, so you shouldn’t worry about that.
Effective use of canonical tags lets the search engines know you are helping them in their quest to deliver valuable content to their end-users.  You now have a tool available to you that works across the three principle search engine entities – Google, Yahoo and Microsoft Live – to ensure the web page version most import to your business or organization is delivered in the search engine results pages and that your page rank and back linking for all duplicate content will point to the canonical url to enhance your listing position.