How Do Google's New Search Options Affect SEO?

Google's Tell us about it

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MtirDMfcOKE

I asked a few search engine marketing experts if they think the options will affect SEO. Here are a few responses I got:

SEO By the Sea says: "Web Options have the potential to impact SEO by offering a much wider range of ways to find information. Whether or not they will may have to do with whether or not searchers will take the time to click on the 'show options' link, and explore the many new ways that they can find what they may be looking for."

Top Rank Online Marketing says: "Yes! But it doesn't change the SEO advice we give: fresh content, digital asset SEO..."

"From what I am seeing, the 'search engine optimization' industry is actually turning back around to what it used to be: good old fashioned website marketing," says Murdok Blog Partner SEOmoz post.


In other words, it's all about optimizing for people. That's all the search engines have ever wanted, and that's all the searchers have ever wanted out of content - to be able to find what they're looking for. It's easier said than done, but all you have to do is help them find you.

So considering that, why not take a few moments to examine just what these new search options are that are available to users. Let's think about what it would take to have your site show up for each option.

Videos

discussed in the past. To me, it looks like it just got even more important, given that sorting by videos is the top option in Google's new search options (just below "all results" - the default option).

Based on several test queries, it looks like it's going to comedown to relevant keyword use with videos. Whether that be with videos on your own site, YouTube, or other locations. Doing video interviews with other content providers will likely work in your favor here as well.

Within the Videos option, you have the sub-option to see videos of all durations, short ones, medium-length ones, or long ones. This tells me you will probably do well to produce videos with a variety of different lengths.

Forums

The next option is to sort by forums, and this appears to be another obvious one. Participate in forums. It just so happens that I

On a sidenote, this might be a very important option to monitor from the
Sorting Options


If there are more keywords within a longer snippet, that means there will be more bolded words, which could make the result stand out, but if that good-old-fashioned content isn't surrounding those keywords, they will be worthless because now the user will have more to read before they click through to your site. If it's not relevant to what they're looking for, they have a better means of realizing it before the click.

Timeline

The Timeline groups results by dates referred to on actual pages. What this says to me is: include dates in your content when relevant. Another good thing about this is that it gives you the opportunity to get older content viewed, and in its right context. If users are using the timeline and select older dates, they're most likely looking for content from that period.

Let us know either way