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Promotion Tip:
Attract Visitors With Multimedia Search
by Larisa Thomason,
Senior Web Analyst,
NetMechanic, Inc.
If only it were possible to target visitors who have high incomes, are tolerant of online advertising, willing to pay for content, and likely to buy products online. Why, that accurately describes an online demographic group called "streamies:" people who enjoy online audio and video.
They love multimedia, so why not share yours with them? Multimedia search engines make that possible - and many let you submit for free!
Who's Watching And Listening?
According to a series of Arbitron and Edison Media Research studies, the "streamie" audience is quite large and affluent:
- They're more likely to click on advertising: 30% vs. 14% of all online users.
- They make larger online purchases: $677/year vs. $596 spent by other users.
- Their income is higher: 57% have incomes of $50,000 or more compared with 38% of the total population.
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These people like to be online and like to be entertained. Wouldn't you like to have them buying stuff at your site? They'll have to find you first.
META Tags Are Key To Multimedia Search
Although human visitors love multimedia applications, search engine spiders have never been particularly impressed. Standard text-based spiders can't index the information contained in multimedia files. But a multimedia search engine is a new type of specialty search engine that contains a large, searchable database of multimedia files.
META tags make it possible.
A standard search engine spider can still index an HTML page without any META data because it looks at the text content too. Use them anyway: META tags do give your site a boost in some engines and help create a more attractive search results listing.
But META tags aren't just "useful" to a multimedia spider - they're critical to proper indexing and retrieval in a multimedia search engine. Since they can't watch videos or listen to music files, multimedia spiders depend on the descriptive data contained in META tags.
Check your multimedia files before you submit them to verify that your META data is complete and accurate. NetMechanic's META tag generator helps you create META tags for your HTML pages, but not your multimedia files. Check the software manufacturer's instructions to learn how to add META tags to your individual multimedia files.
For instance:
Adding META data to Flash files
Adding META data to Windows Media files
Once the META tags are in order, you're ready to submit your multimedia files.
Multimedia Search Engines
There are a number of search sites that call themselves multimedia search engines. Many are little more than file sharing sites where visitors swap copyrighted music files. But the number of legitimate multimedia search sites is increasing - and so is the size of their databases.
- Singingfish: Multimedia search engine with the widest market penetration. Provides audio/visual search capability to the Real One Player and Version 9 of the Windows Media Player.
The engine indexes these formats: Quicktime, Real, Windows Media, and mp3.
The Singingfish spider (named Asterias) crawls the Web looking for multimedia files. Check to see if yours are already listed. If not, select between the two submission options. The paid inclusion option gives you more control over your listing and allows you to submit a landing page that opens along with your video or audio file. That helps draw visitors deeper into your site.
- Lycos Multimedia Search
- AltaVista Audio Search and Video Search
- FAST Multimedia Search: Access FAST's multimedia database at the AllTheWeb.com search site.
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Multimedia is popular and multimedia search is catching on quickly. Still, the vast majority of searchers still look for sites using conventional search engines. Use Search Engine Power Pack to optimize your Web pages for individual search engines like Google and Lycos. Each page you have indexed in a search engine is like having another door into your online business.
Multimedia search opens even more doors and invites visitors into your site who might not find you otherwise.
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