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Did anyone tell you about Universal Search and how it can open different avenues for you to get more visitors?

Ok, what is universal search?

To put it simply, Google has modified the whole system of producing results to you (the users) for your search terms. Earlier, when you used to search for certain terms in www.Google. com, it only provided you text based results.

But now, things are different. Google is now integrating reports from Google news, images, video, stocks and share and even map for search inquiries. Google has always emphasized on better user experience and now it has moved one step forward in this motion with this integration.

Why such integration?

Marissa Mayer, Vice President of Search Products and User Experience from Google said 'a seamless, integrated experience to get users the best answers' which best answers the question.

Thus as a Google user you get access to different forms of information at one go and in one page. And the best thing is that they have well organized the result and offer them only as and when required.

How to get the most from this opportunity?

Universal search means that you are given more opportunities to improve search engine rank. Now you can include your popularity in each and every vertical to concentrate into a single point. This also means a lot of opportunities to rank high.

At the same time it also means that now the emphasis will be on your overall online visibility (your availability in different sectors). And more importantly, those who have stronger offline presence would get most benefit out of this.

A lot of webmasters and bloggers think that this will help the big players in the market to grow bigger. However, if you can offer quality product, Google is bound to improve your rank. Moreover, web has a different characteristic than the offline market. You can easily get thousands of people talk for you if you can do something good for them or if you offer good quality product. It is all about stimulating the inactive nodes (people who have a web presence like a blogger or a forum member can be called a node). And your success depends on how well you can activate or stimulate these nodes.

Other simple steps you need to follow:

Optimize your website properly around the targeted keywords. And give as much emphasis as possible on better user experience. Get as many links as possible from different sources.

Apart from follow these basic SEO strategies, focus on proper link positioning and more online visibility. And communicate with your visitors and engage them with your website. For example you can ask for suggestions for improvement or may offer them customized solutions. These will ultimately offer you more natural links.

Now go ahead and publish news (press releases), videos, pod casts, blogs (includes comments on other blogs too) so that you can cover as many verticals as possible. It is what we call online visibility.

Do not forget to use keywords in image alt tags and file name. it is more important if these are product images.

If the other verticals show up beside your link on the result page it will surely attract more visitors even if you rank in 5th to 10th position, as the vertical also makes the page scanable. And may be your video or product image could rank higher than your competitors to give you extra visits.

If necessary, concentrate on local search like Google map or Yahoo local. Apart from adding another vertical, it would also get you local visitors (for example, if you concentrate on Florida Ft Lauderdale SEO), it will get you some local visitors too.