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12.12.08 If it Can Be Searched, It Should Be Optimzed By Lee Odden Search engine optimization can be challenging enough, especially for large, enterprise organizations rich with digital assets.  They're also rich with policies, procedures and often times a labrynth of  content approval and publishing processes. An effort to optimize and promote those assets to search engine bots can be even more challenging than standard SEO. And yet it can also be far more rewarding. The notion of Digital Asset Optimization came out of TopRank's efforts in early in 2007 to describe for internet marketing clients what new opportunities there were to enable prospects and customers to pull themselves via search to company content. The fundamental premise for good SEO or DAO or whatever you want to call optimizing content is that: If it can be searched on, it can be optimzed. "Searchability" implies a digital asset is crawled by a search engine bot or spider and subsequently available for sorting within search results when consumers perform queries. As such, each type of searchable content presents an opportunity for optimization and improved visibility where people are looking. The idea of organizing a company's content or digital assets as a more holistic way of engaging in SEO has been around for more than a year.  More signifcant benefits of DAO can be extended beyond content used to attract leads and sales. There are other types of consumer search that can drive or benefit business including customer service related content, job listings and news content. Each has it's own audience to consider and therefore, a different context for optimizing assets. If a SEO team ensured that jobs, customer service and news content and digital assets were properly optimized/promoted on top of content selling products/services, couldn't that nearly triple the benefits of the SEO investment? If not triple, it would certainly be a multiple near that. The Fundamental Server: Everything You Need Inside and Outside the Box - Learn More For example, journalists searching for subject matter experts or researching past media coverage of a subject company are not looking to "buy" products and services. Yet that is the type of content creation and optimization most companies engage in. Optimizing a company's news content and digital assets including press releases, video interviews, podcasts, high res photos, webcasts, white papers and past media coverage should consider the context in which the media (jouranlists, reporters and some bloggers) are searching. Optimizing multiple media formats provides multiple entry points into a company's news content and therefore, a greater likelihood that a journalist will find and use a particular company in a story they're doing.  TopRank conducted a Journalist Use of Search Survey recently and found that 100% of reporters surveyed, use search to do their job. 91% use Google.com. They also use image search and social media search. We'll be reporting survey results in another blog post within the next week or so. Another example involves optimizing FAQ and knowledgebase content. How much could a company save if support could be handled by customers searching Google instead of making phone calls to customer support?  Call centers are not cheap - even when you outsource offshore. Or what about jobs content? Especially with these economic times, there will be plenty of job seekers using search. Why not make sure job listings and corresponding digital assets are optimized and promoted so your best candidates can find them? Making it easier for search engines to do find, index and sort content will bring benefits to most companies who make the effort to do so in the form of increased sales, recruiting, and news coverage as well as lower customer support costs. That is the real opportunity in 2009 for optimization efforts. Comments About the Author: Lee Odden is CEO of TopRank Online Marketing, a digital marketing and public relations firm in Minnesota that specializes in search, social and online PR consulting and training for companies worldwide. Odden has been cited for his internet marketing expertise over the past 10 years by the Economist, Forbes and U.S. News and contributed a chapter to the book, "Online Marketing Heroes" published by Wiley. For the past 5 years he has also been the editor of TopRank's Online Marketing Blog, a Technorati 100 favorite blog and one of the top marketing blogs according to Advertising Age.

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