Getting Your Videos and Images Ranked Highly In Google’s Universal Search
Getting ranked well in Google’s Universal Search is a primary goal for most local businesses, and there are specific tactics you can use to accomplish this. But many are confused by what constitutes Universal Search, so let’s clear that up right away.
Simply put, Universal Search is a mixture of both Google’s vertical search engine and specialty search engines, primarily video, maps, news and images. You may notice a search result return local listings, maps, images and videos at or near the top of a search query, this is Universal Search. Let’s look specifically at ways to rank your visual content in Universal Search, focusing on videos and images.
Keys to ranking your videos in Universal Search
There are only a few items you really need to focus on with regards to optimizing your videos for Universal Search. The most significant one is that you’ve got good schema markup. Which means that your code is not only clean, but relates the data that Google needs to discern what your video is about, and will help it rank well. This would include information that can be found on your YouTube channel, such as numbers of views, the length of your video, when you uploaded it and any family ratings information can be extremely helpful. It’s important too to have your video description there, and that it is relevant to the page that it is on. Choosing your thumbnail image with a focus on getting the most interest from viewers can also help.
What about images?
Making sure that you’re using unique images is the primary and most significant factor in ranking your images. Google has become very good at figuring out whether or not image content is unique or not, and ranks accordingly. Optimizing your images well with appropriate title and alt tags, descriptions and relevant content surrounding them on the page is also important.
Videos and images can help you claim valuable virtual real estate
Getting as many entries as possible on the first page or two is vital to your search engine performance. Properly optimized images and videos for Universal Search can help you to multiple listings that can in turn boost your results.