In today's MediaPost Search Insider article, "Unearthing Your Hidden SEO Guru", David Berkowitz provides some fantastic suggestions for just about any individual within an organization to help out with their Search Engine Optimization efforts. He points to the rise of "Universal" or "Blended" search which, to paraphrase Berkowitz, is the new practice of search engines pulling in data from a host of content sources. This means that anyone involved with press releases, social media channels, news articles distribution, video clip or photo submissions, etc can all contribute to his/her company's search engine ranking.

In thinking about all of these small ways to help improve and expand search rankings, the real question on my mind is how do we measure these contributions? What is the impact of that news article that is picked up by countless sites, talked about in blogs and in turn placed in the search engines? Clearly it has increased brand awareness, but how is this measured? And brand lift, for how long? What are the other indirect results of this article? When we think about this small piece coupled with video submissions, photos, blogs, press releases and more, there are a lot of moveable parts. When we can agree on the metrics and means by which to measure the sum of these parts is when we will really be onto something!

Labels: search engine optimization, search insider, search measurement, social media optimization