Vertical Search Content

June 8, 2011

Vertical content refers to content that fits into a specific content area, either topical—like medical information or email marketing—or media type—like video or podcasts. Providing a variety of vertical content can earn you links from subject-specific directories or portals and improve your ranking in the search engine results pages (SERPs). Why? Because, at least for now, they’re less competitive, so you can get decent rank even for some competitive keywords.

Information and data within this post gathered in association with a Palm Beach personal injury lawyer at Clark, Fountain, La Vista, Prather, Keen & Littky-Rubin.

Google wants you to submit a variety of content, and it even provides tools to help you do it. This includes things like:

Really Simple Syndication (RSS): Most content can be published as a feed. People can then subscribe to your feed, making it easy for them to find your new content. Many of the popular blogging platforms like Blogger and WordPress will automatically publish this for you. If you add Feedburner, you can also offer email updates and track subscription statistics.

Google Places: Local businesses need all the help they can get to attract local searchers. Claim your Places listing and customize it with pictures, videos and special promotions. Ask your customers to review your business on Places.

Blog Search: If you’re not using a blogging platform that automatically pings (notifies) the search engines whenever you update, this service will tell Google to crawl your blog. It will also share your updates with other engines.

Video Search: For now, it’s easier to rank for video than text. So, create a sitemap of your videos to help Google find them more easily. Remember that visitors are your priority, so when you post video, try to include a transcript for anyone having trouble loading them.

If you need more ideas, read 21 Content Types to Share with Google, where Lindsay provides a nice overview of additional types of content Google wants to see more often.

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