But what exactly is Blended Search?

As the name suggests, Blended search is the process of blending or mixing content from multiple sources and displaying them together on one page. When the idea was launched around two and a half years ago, the main sources of the content were – news websites, videos, images, local and books which are still independent vertical search engines. But today, we have started seeing more results from social networks like facebook & twitter and press release website which are updated more frequently than any other online media.

Universal Search is also known as Blended Search. Click on image to expand

And how is it changing the SEO industry?

Earlier, website owners used to optimize their website with only focus on relevant content so that search engines can rank their websites on top of search results. It doesn’t work the same these days now since search engines do not only rely on your website content. Instead, they have started looking for varied sources of information where they can find more relevant and updated content.  News websites like CNN & Reuters; Social networking sites like Facebook & twitter; and Press release website like prweb.com etc are some of the sources that search engines rely heavily on for their content.

Please note that this doesn’t mean you should stop optimizing your website content. On the contrary, you need to start updating your website content more frequently now since search engines love new, updated & relevant content. This is probably why many company blogs and press releases have become so popular these days.

But is it really changing the SEO industry?

Yes, it is. Because people have really started publishing their content on all the types of online media which has slight chance of being crawled by search engines and get ranked on first page. Here are the few examples -

1. Image results – All the search engines already have image search as an independent search engine which drives more than 10% of traffic for website owners. People have been focusing on optiming their images by using alt tags and more proper image names for quite some time now.
2. Videos & Slideshows- YouTube, owned by Google has the highest number of videos uploaded on the web. People have started publishing a video presentation of their company or products demo. They, then promote it on YouTube by writing comments, adding ratings and sharing with more people so that it gets enough popularity to get ranked on first page of search results. Then these videos or presentations are pushed on to other popular aggregator sites like Vimeo, Slideshare etc.
3. News Results – Press & news websites are the most hit upon source by website owners. There has been an evident surge in press releases published in last few years by website owners. The only reason being the importance given to such sites by Google.
4. Local business listings – Google, Bing and Yahoo show their respective maps to show local business listings. Hence, every website owner makes it a point that their business is submitted in local business listing directory. They strive hard to promote it by adding more ratings, comments and sharing with friends & existing clients.
5. Three blogs a week has become a reality. Website owners do not miss a single news however trivial it is, just to have something new up on their company blog. [Don't worry this post is not one of those ]
6. Social media marketing (SMM) – SEO Companies have started offering a new service called ‘Social media marketing’ wherein they promote their brand on social networking websites like – Facebook, Twitter, Delicious, Digg, Myspace etc. They do it by submitting their brand name, linking it to their website, building network of friends and by commenting on other blogs.
7. Google Product search – Online shop owners are utilizing this feature to promote their products on increase sales from Google organic search result.  Google offers merchants a separate place to submit their products individually with prices and description. Google then shows their products on top of search results for the relevant query.

Clearly, the focus on just your website’s content is the thing of the past. In order to maximize your chances to be on the top of the search engine rankings and drive more traffic, you have to be on your toes all the time and exploit every source of data that major search engines scour today for their search results.

Let us know what you think of today’s post. We look forward to your comments on the latest trends being used in the SEO world. If you liked reading this post on The KPMRS Blog, do subscribe to our feed now!

About 33 % of consumers are not connecting with brands on social networks, according to a new report by interactive marketing firm Razorfish.

Razorfish surveyed 1,000 consumers who reported both social media and ecommerce activity with the goal to find out how social media influences their purchasing decisions. 80 % were members of at least one social network and 40 % were active in two.

“Social media has quickly become one of the most talked-about topics in marketing. We didn’t want this report to just be more of the same, so instead we took a different, more scientific approach to evaluating this phenomena and measuring its effects,” said Shiv Singh, VP and Global Social Media Lead at Razorfish.

“Today, a brand’s actions speak louder than its words and pushing out messages is no longer enough to excite and engage consumers.”
The question is now: How about you the small businesses and your social media activities?

More than brand companies, small and medium business should step into social media marketing to expand your message and spread the word to the potential client, to make him informed, to make him interested and to make him a paid customer.

To bother your targeted audience with outbound advertising messages is not enough in today’s times. The user out there has established some kind of personal advertising filter. Moreover he wants to find valuable information when he decides that he needs them, not when you decide to send him message through email marketing, radio or TV commercials, or call him by phone and disturb his daily doing.

You need to build your credibility to address your marketing message. You need to be personal and authentic and to avoid sounding like an advertisement.

Be helpful and be valuable offer relevant content. This is the way how you as a small business can gain customer loyalty.

– Be the flame not the moth! –

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Social media is the buzzword today and everyone is spending a considerable amount of money in SMM (Social Media Marketing to the lesser known) as a part of their Internet Marketing budget. When we started KPMRS, the idea was to help SEO consultants, internet marketers or any website owner by monitoring their website rankings on 3 major search engines – Google, Yahoo & Bing. But this idea was not unique and we are still not the only providers who is tracking your search engine rankings.

But we also wanted to provide something extra, something different and unique from what others are providing. Sticking to that principal, we thought of providing a report of how popular are your websites on the social networking & bookmarking websites like – Delicious, Twitter, Flickr, Technocrati, Digg etc. I personally found it very interesting and useful to find my website’s social activities along with its rankings on search engines – all at one place.

Social popularity report for your website

Unfortunately, the numbers are not very great right now, but we were not expecting a lot in just a month anyway Although it does tell me that more than 80 people have bookmarked our websites on Delicious and 30 people have talked about us on Technorati. So far, so good!

Check your website’s social popularity with this tool. Sign up now, submit your website and see how popular are you in social media industry!

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