Welcome | View My Profile | Sign Out
MediaPost Home About MediaPost Privacy/Terms Media Kit Sitemap
Publications Home News
Online Media Daily Media Daily News Marketing Daily Mobile Marketing Daily Search Marketing Daily
Daily Feed> Email Daily Feed> Video Daily Feed> Social
Online Blogs
Online Spin Email Insider Search Insider Behavioral Insider Online Publishing Insider Mobile Insider Video Insider Gaming Insider Performance Insider Metrics Insider Social Media Insider Just An Online Minute Daily Online Examiner Raw Blog
Media Blogs
Research Brief Diane Mermigas:On Media TV Watch TV Board Magazine Rack Media Creativity Notes From the Digital Frontier Digital Outsider Mad Blog Red White and Blog
Marketing Blogs
Engage:Hispanics Engage:Kids 6-11 Engage:Moms Engage:Boomers Engage:Gen Y Engage:Teens Marketing:Green Marketing:Sports
Magazines
OMMA Magazine Media Magazine
Subscribe
Feedback Loop RSS Feeds Archives Subscribe
Dec 2 Search Insider Summit (Utah) Dec 6 Email Insider Summit (Utah) Jan 11 OMMA Agency of the Year (NYC) Jan 12 MEDIA Agency of the Year (NYC) Jan 26 OMMA Social (San Francisco) Jan 27 OMMA Performance (SF) Feb 24 OMMA Metrics Measurement (NYC) Feb 25 OMMA Behavioral (NYC) Mar 15 OMMA Global (San Francisco) Apr 14 Search Insider Summit (FL) Apr 18 Email Insider Summit (FL)
Recently Concluded Events
Nov 3 OMMA Adnets (NYC) Oct 30 OMMA Video (LA) Oct 29 OMMA Mobile (LA) Oct 29 OMMA Mobile & Video (LA) Sep 23 Creative Media Awards (NYC) Sep 23 The Future Of Media (NYC) Sep 22 Online All Stars (NYC) Sep 21 OMMA Awards (NYC) Sep 21 MediaPost Live at Advertising Week All-Access (NYC) Sep 21 OMMA Global New York (NYC)
All MediaPost/OMMA Events Event Blogging Past Event Videos
Industry Events Calendar
2010 OMMA Agency of the Year 2010 MEDIA Agency of the Year
2009 Creative Media Awards 2009 OMMA Awards 2009 Digital Out-of-Home Awards 2009 Media Agency of the Year 2009 OMMA Agency of the Year
All Awards
Employment Situations Wanted Services Offered Post a Job
Briefs Reports Online
MediaPost Directories
Mobile Insiders Group
People Finder Edit My Profile View My Profile My Contacts My Calendar
HOME • MANAGE SUBSCRIPTIONS • MEDIA KIT
Digital Asset Optimization -- The Inevitable Evolution of SEO
by Andrew Hazen, Tuesday, June 24, 2008, 2:00 PM

SHARE

TOOLS

RELATED ARTICLES
TAGS:  Search

MOST READ

With the acronym DAO (digital asset optimization) floating around everywhere these days, it's easy to wonder if DAO is replacing search engine optimization (SEO). The answer is no; in fact, DAO can best be described as the evolution of SEO, which isn't dead but just rapidly changing.

Over the past few years, since Google's "PageRank" started DAO by measuring a site's popularity -- counting every external link as a vote to determine its relevance -- the emphasis has shifted from "on-page elements" to a focus on off-site criteria.

DAO is all about moving the focus of optimization efforts from the page text to more relevant assets, such as images, audio and video. The goal is to help searchers find the most relevant site based on the criteria and content most important to them.

From a bottom-line vantage point, companies must figure out how to best adjust their Internet marketing strategies to maintain a competitive advantage. To find the right balance, they must decide the most opportune way to optimize standard text while also optimizing and promoting their other digital assets.

When is the right time to start making this shift? Now! Search engines already have systems in place to measure the relevance of a Web site's digital assets. And they are constantly focused on improving them so that they become a more prevalent part of the equation. The only question is how long it will take for users to fully realize that they have these resources readily at their disposal.

The growth of universal search means the kinds of search results SEO consultants have become accustomed to are history, or at least on the decline. So now they need to figure out new ways to optimize any electronic file that can be crawled, indexed, categorized and sorted. This is about much more than just optimizing social media but rather the entire Internet, making all content easier to find via search.

Consequently, businesses today are increasingly producing an array of content for search engines that can be indexed, leaving their success directly linked to their ability to adapt to a rapidly changing market.

To survive, those of us who use search engines to market Web sites must adapt. With such intense competition and money at stake, the leading search providers will continue to improve the user experience.

As long as billions of people continue to use search engines daily, there will be a progression in the modes of optimization we use to improve the visibility of Web sites and enhance their presence.

That makes it necessary for companies to consider all of their digital assets in producing formats that are responsive to search engine and costumer demands.

We can no longer afford to wait for the customer to find us through text optimization and impress them with our other digital assets. Now it is all about matching digital assets with channels of distribution to provide marketers with even more opportunity to reach customers. In this new world, each channel not only drives traffic independently, but improves a Web site's standard search visibility.

DAO is not just a better definition -- it is the future of search marketing.

3 people recommend this article. 

5 comments on "Digital Asset Optimization -- The Inevitable Evolution of SEO"

  1. Lee Odden from TopRank Online Marketing
    commented on: July 14, 2008 at 11:59 PM
    It's interesting to read the differing perspectives on the notion of optimizing and marketing digital assets online from the the first time "digital asset optimization" was written about online a year ago in June 2007 to the recent dismissive gray beards stuck on online advertising.

    In theory it's as simple as making sure you go to market with everything you have that's promotable and understanding that if something is searchable, it can be optimized.

    The challenge is in making it work in organizations that do not regularly produce content or those with more complex content management processes.

  2. steve plunkett from M/C/C
    commented on: June 24, 2008 at 4:20 PM
    Jason.. contrary to public belief.. we never left meta tags.. PDFs have meta tags, but everything else is just a "tag"....

    unless it's an RFID tag

  3. Jason LaBaw from Self Employed
    commented on: June 24, 2008 at 3:59 PM
    It seems to me that it is still SEO/SEM or whatever you want to call it. You are optimizing, in this case a digital asset of some sort, so that it is ranked at the top of some search platform for a particular search term. To me this seems to just be a new subset of SEM, just as PPC is a subset within SEM.

    That's just my opinion about what DAO is, although, I must admit, I'm not one to get held up on acronyms or naming. What I'm REALLY interested in, and what I think we as SEM professionals should be interested in is how to optimize digital formats. Do you optimize for a video with a description of the video, transcribing the video content, meta tags? are we back to meta tags??? For instance you can tag pdfs to make em more accessible and searchable by SE's (check out boagworld.com's podcast or Joe Clarks article on PDF's.)

    So any ideas on optimizing digital assets? What would define as digital assets? Steve states the following as digital assets, "... PDFs, Videos, White Papers, blogs, Podcasts, LinkedIn Profiles, Plaxo Profiles, PowerPoint presentations, etc." Any others?

  4. Alan Charlesworth from the University of Sunderland - in the UK
    commented on: June 24, 2008 at 3:35 PM
    I can live with any 'new' description that takes us away from 'SEO' - a term that suggests that you have to optimize the search engine, not optimize [your site] for them. At least DAO puts the emphasis on optimizing the asset.

  5. steve plunkett from M/C/C
    commented on: June 24, 2008 at 2:34 PM
    working at an advertising agency/PR firm that has an SEO/Internet Marketing division.. DAO means somethng else. and most definately it has nothing to do with PageRank.

    a company has digital assets like PDFs, Videos, White Papers, blogs, Podcasts, LinkedIn Profiles, Plaxo Profiles, PowerPoint presentations, etc.

    These are ASSETS.. and yes, they are digital.

    You are thinking it's SEO.. it's not.. well kinda.. the optimization of these websites is NOT for the SEO of the website.

    It's the optimization of the digital asset itself, yes within a search engine for that particular format, be that a blog posting optimized for blog search on technorati or google blog search, a video search on google or youtube, a white paper search on a b2b technical engineering forum, or even a podcast on techology.. and yes.. I can pull firsts in iTunes, just like I can in google, except its for a podcast.... not a webpage.

    I've been doing SEO from before it was seo... first it waqs BBS, you optimized you BBS posts to come up first, then it was news groups, and you had to optimize your group posting to make sure your items were seen first... then.. in 95 webcrawler and yahoo! came along... you optimized your HTML for webcrawler and you optimized your category description ON Yahoo! FOR Yahoo! and you just prayed they would accept it and if they didn't it was similar to trying to get a website listed in DMOZ these days... you waited and waited and waited.. but there are still business out there.. fortune 500 business that still don't have web metrics on their website...

    SEO is getting (and keeping) your client's website first for their keyword.

    DAO is getting that video on youtube first ON youtube for the keywords, it's getting that podcast to come up first for the search in iTunes. (because that can't be SEO, or is it? since there are search functions in both youtube and iTunes)

    So what is a video that you optimized to come up first in google... the SEO of a digital asset?

Leave a Comment

You must be signed in to comment. Sign In

Do you have strong opinions and inside knowledge about the topic of this article -- and do you want to share your insights, observations and points of view regularly with the readers of MediaPost? To be considered as a MediaPost contributing writer, please send pertinent info about your credentials, plus several column ideas and one example of your writing on the topic, to pfine@mediapost.com. Please see our editorial guidelines here first.

ANDREW HAZEN
  • Hazen is founder-CEO of Long Island, N.Y.-based SEO-PPC marketing firm Prime Visibility, which made INC.’s list of the nation’s fastest- growing companies the past two years. The serial entrepreneur is an e-marketing, SEO and internet law expert.


AUTHORS

ARCHIVES

RECENT VIDEOS
Recent Search Insider Articles
What's Going To Work? TEAMWORK   
If you have a child in the 18- to 36-month-old range, you may recognize the catchphrase...
Search Insider Sneak Peek: The Three-For-One Keynote   
Avinash Kaushik, Google's Analytics Evangelist, will be kicking off the Search Insider Summit in just two...
Even More On: Everything I Need to Know About Business I Learned From Google   
Today we close out the chapter on business lessons learned from Google. As much as I...
Search Is For The Drills; Social Is For The Holes   
How do people engage with your product or service? Do you sell something like kayaks, which...
Applied Video & Social Search   
So I am sitting around with some friends last weekend watching sports on TV. We get...
Rebranding Myself   
This past Saturday, I married the love of my life. Now begins the process of changing...
SIS Sneak Peek: Looking Backward AND Forward   
In about three weeks, we'll be gathering in Park City, Utah for another Search Insider Summit....
PPC: Commercial Real-Time Search (Almost) Realized    
For all of the focus on crawler and social layers, paid search has largely been ignored...
Finding That One Blue Marble   
In the months straddling 2000-2001, I had the good fortune to lead the ParentsConnected Nationwide Seminar...
The Failure To (Completely) Serve    
At Ad:Tech last week, one message I heard, over and over again, is that people seem...
>> Search Insider Archives 
ABOUT MEDIAPOST • MASTHEAD • MEDIA KIT • RSS FEEDS • PRIVACY/TERMS & CONDITIONS
©2009 MediaPost Communications. All rights reserved.
1140 Broadway, 4th Floor, New York, NY 10001
tel. 212-204-2000, fax 212-204-2038, feedback@mediapost.com