Wil Reynolds

Hey Guys and Gals, all the rage yesterday was the launch of Google Universal – people are calling for the demise of SEO as we know it. Of course, this is the demise of traditional SEO — well, for a certain type of SEO. If you’re an SEO who is just looking at yourself as an SEO and not also a marketer, that is where the demise will definitely occur. SEO’s that also understand marketing will be fine. So what if Google shows videos, maps, local results, and books in the SERPS; as an SEO, you have to learn how to get your clients optimized in areas that are not just algorithmic. Optimizing a video with tags and metadata and creating a video worth actually looking at that will attract links and comments is just one way to tackle this issue. Being that it is Google though, I doubt we’re going to see many Revver videos; we will probably see more Youtube and Google Videos in the SERPS. I would also recommend making sure that you are optimized for Google product search (used to be Froogle) as when/if products or product links show up in SERPS, you’ll want to be there.

For example, if I worked with a business selling the iPhone on SEO, the old way to optimize for iPhone was pretty straightforward. Do a search now, and you’ll see not only is news being incorporated into the search, there are videos too. See samples below:

There are videos as well (courtesy of Youtube, a Google Property need I remind you)

And that is not all:

I would try to get my client in Google news (if they had something newsworthy). Can you say PR SEO?

I would admittedly have to start to understand the patent search and see if there are opportunities there, too.

If a real blog could be developed around the iPhone with real news and something of interest, I would try it… maybe a video blog (hosted on Youtube) showing people using the features? (I don’t know; This is an off-the-cuff blog post.) Getting a hybrid blog + video would allow us to tackle both of these.

Lastly, I would list their products in Google Product Search (assuming they had products related to the iPhone).

In summary, I guess you could say that Google is turning the SEO world on its head, and that is exactly what I LOVE about search; it constantly changes, keeping you on your toes. Throw in personalized search and wow, these next 12 months are going to be fun! (I hope.)

We’ll have more on this, but Microsoft just bought aQuantive (owner of Avenue A) for $6 Billion, with no plans to spin off the SEO company. MSN owning an SEO company… this could get fishy with DoubleClick being bought by Google (DC owns Performics who also does SEO).