RichContent Gets Universal Search
It looks like firms specializing in universal search SEO are already creeping out of the woodwork. Specifically, a company called RichContent.com is offering to take take a single piece of content and turn it into a multi-media piece of content. In a word, they're offering new media SEO.
Given how how universal search works, this is a model that may not only work, but seriously cut down on the time it takes to produce multi-media content. As the press release explains:
Google, Yahoo!, MSN and ASK.com have created their next-generation search platforms. First-page each results now include web pages, documents, images, video and audio. This "Universal Search" can play havoc with your position in search results. Or a great benefit for companies who know how to leverage their existing media assets. RichContent.com has released a new online content distribution platform that will increase any company's "online footprint". [...]
Portland, OR (PRWEB) October 1, 2007 -- Over 1,100,000,000 web users, still growing strong. More than a trillion videos, podcasts, photos and documents. For companies looking to gain web visibility, getting above the noise threshold has become a serious challenge. RichContent.com has developed a system of optimizing a company's existing content and placing it on the web's most high-traffic sites to help companies gain increasing results from their web site. [...]
The RichContent.tv web site provides instant uploading of content. From there RichContent's in-house media staff edits this content to create 10-second to 4 minute video blurbs. Editors then pull together or develop 4 images, a text transcript, article or press release and often a podcast. This content is tagged, branded and injected into 10 to 120 of the most visible web sites in the world.
What's interesting about this approach is that it understands how new media is multi-media par excellence. Essentially, search engines are paying more and more attention to new media outlets. For example, Google loves blogs because, amongst other things, they update frequently. This makes their content timely, and the folks over at Google appreciate how most users believe that the most up-to-date content is the most relevant. Similarly, sites that feature multi-media content are going to be considered more relevant because they run the gamut of what users might be looking for when they search any given keyword. This is why 4 ways to SEO for universal search are:
- having a blog
- creating images
- making video
- and then blogging all that content
By having the content from the whole gamut of multi-media associated with your brandname (or the keywords you want to rank for), you seriously increase your ability to rank on a universal search. In a word, you have to show the search engines that your content is accessible to the full array of users out there. In this sense, then, RichContent.com's approach of replicating the same content in a variety of formats seems to be a promising method of providing SEO in the age of universal search. Whether this trend, however, augments the user's experience or simply complicates it by over-saturating the SERPs with spammy regurgitation, only time will tell.
Comments
Hi Chris,
And thanks for the tip 'o the Hat.
We've been working on this hard since 2003, and were betting that Google and the rest of the pack would start taking "multi-media" more seriously as bandwidth opened up.
Whew! We feel pretty good about the direction they're taking, and it sure adds some lift to our client marketing efforts.
As for your roundup: you nailed the opportunity perfectly, and how to address it.
Yes, placing multiple media types on high-traffic venues and the actively blogging them is an absolute must (there are a number of additional nuances as well, but that's beyond the scope of a Monday blog post!).
One thing we share with our clients is: Blog. Often.
But remember this: the traffic is not on your site.
Most of the time, the traffic is on Seth Godin's blog, or on an active forum. So make sure you're spending the majority of your time leveraging OPM: Other People's Message.
Especially when it tightly aligns with your own.
And always, ALWAYS add value, wherever you make a comment.
My favorite examples are DanPink.com and http://communicationnation.blogspot.com, the blog of Dave Gray, founder of XPlane. The guy ALWAYS shares something relevant, important, interesting.
But I digress.
Thanks for the mention, and let's connect sometime. I like what you're doing here, and believe there's a lot more to the message we could expound on.
To your continued success,
Mark Alan Effinger
RichContent.tv
Posted by: Mark Alan Effinger | October 4, 2007 4:24 PM
Mark,
I love your point about leveraging OPM. Slick...
I also agree that contributing value is integral. There are too many yes-men bantering away out there.
Geez, your comment is nearly as long as my post was...
Posted by: CT Moore | October 4, 2007 4:32 PM
One more thing regarding "spamming media".
When I was working with PRWeb, we ran into that issue daily: from comment spam to people scraping our site and duplicating our offering, down to the LANGUAGE David McInnis used to share the PRWeb message.
And especially using PRWeb content as AdSense fuel for "splogs". Not what we ever intended. And we actively fought it.
My RichContent team and I regularly reject content that we believe is either garbage, or potentially spammy.
I'd get into what our underlying hope is for RichContent, but we'll do that next week (I bought the domain in 1998, so I've had a while to ponder our mission).
Suffice to say, its primary purpose is as an equalizer: to give voice to people and projects that might otherwise live below the radar.
Like Rives,
Will Marre,
The Purple Couch and
John Fetterman and Braddock, PA.
Sure, you can do that with spam... for a while. But you still have to sleep at night and face yourself in the morning. That's short-term thinking.
We hope that, over time, the RichContent platform is recognized as a service that really helps cool folks build their message with integrity and intensity - forever.
Whether that's folks like those in the links above, or when GM decides to commit to really greening their business...
And Wal-Mart figures out that LED lights are so much more efficient than compact flourescents.
And we help people sell stuff, too. Put money in the right hands, and you can make some seriously cool things happen.
But please, no media spam. it's noisy enough out there!
Thanks again, Chris.
best,
Mark Alan Effinger
RichContent.tv
Posted by: Mark Alan Effinger | October 4, 2007 5:02 PM