In in last month's Chaffey Column I explained the opportunities available from gaining visibility in Google's blended search results.

This month we will look at the steps to gain a presence in these different types of blended results units on the search results pages:

1. Local business results
2. Video
3. Images
4. Products
5. News

Taking advantage of blended search results

1. Local business results
You need to submit details of your trading locations to Google to appear on a map and a listing for a geographical search such as www.google.co.uk/search?q=warwick+cars. You can see from this example that not all car dealerships in this area have done this.

To make sure you are included, add your trading locations to the Google Local Business Centre. You can add multiple locations.

2. Video

It isn't essential to upload to the Google-owned YouTube or Google Video, but it will certainly help with increasing the number of reviews and ratings which are part of the algorithm to increase the position of your video. The steps to consider for video optimization, assuming you have already created a compelling video (!) are:

Step 1 Upload to YouTube including:

• Keyword dense, appealing title
• Keyword rich description starting with URL and a call-to-action to encourage clickthrough to your site from YouTube
• Add tags and categories (for Youtube searches)

Step 2 Setup video sitemaps?

• Only necessary for large numbers of videos

Step 3 Promote your video on your site and through PR activity to increase :

• Popularity – views, embeds
• Quality – star ratings, links to video pages

This will only be effective for an exceptional video that informs and entertains.

You can read more from the relevant Google Webmaster advice page: www.google.com/support/webmasters/

ReelSEO, a specialist Video SEO site has lots of advice, for example:
www.reelseo.com/seo-for-video
www.reelseo.com/youtube-video-optimization/#formats

3. Images

Consider these steps to increase the chance of images from your site appearing within the Google listings:

Step 1. Review type of product pictures your users may be searching for and include more of this type of image on your site. Google tends to only display images when many companies have images on their sites related to the search (for example for holidays or films).

Step 2. Use detailed file names, ideally hyphen delimited (category-product-name.jpg)

Step 3. Create great alternative text (remember density)

Step 4. Provide context - include keywords on the page through
Image caption
Text on start of page
Page <title>

Step 5. Link to page with anchor text referencing images / phrase (particularly where images are grouped in one location)

Step 6. Provide quality images
These will help attract visitors searching for larger, more detailed pictures.

Google guidance on image optimisation: www.google.com/support/webmasters/

4. Products

For your products to be incorporated into Google Product Search listings you need to submit your product details in an XML format such as that defined by Google Base.

Mark Bonnett, National B2B Centre e-business consultant describes the steps in this article:
Get a little more noticed with Google Base

5. News

Direct inclusion in Google News will be difficult unless you have a team of journalists since it is primarily intended for publishers.

However, Google does include many non-publisher companies are included in News, often through using services such as Adfero Direct News or Newsvend where content is sourced from journalists as part of a contract.

Another option is to use a paid press release service such as UK PRWeb or Pressleap which is successful in syndicating it's releases into Google News.

About the author

Dr. Dave Chaffey, is the Director and lead consultant for Marketing Insights Ltd, an independent digital marketing consultancy. He is the best selling author of several Internet Marketing Books used by digital marketing professionals and on many University and College Courses globally. His latest book, Internet Marketing: Strategy, Implementation and Practice, now in its 4th edition, was published in January 2009.