Why Digital Asset Optimization matters
DAO or Digital Asset Optimization is huge part of Off Page SEO. DAO is defined as Optimizing marketable assets for search engines & users.
Basically, every digital asset you own should be optimized for the search engines, and for users utilizing the website’s search function.
Here are a few examples of Digital Assets: Articles, Press Releases, Anchor text, Blog Posts, Micro Sites, Images, and even the profiles you create for social media sites or forums. Before anyone can begin with DAO, they must perform a keyword research.
For Images
• Image File Name - Use Baby.jpg instead of 345.jpg (place keywords in image file name)
• Image Alt Text/Image title – Choose ALT instead of Image Title
• Words around an image including caption is very important.
For Audio Podcast
• Audio File Hyperlink – Ex. “Elvis Presley Hits” not “Elvis Presley Hits –>>click here” (Remove excess words/symbols like arrows or click here)
• Use Description, comments, Title, Details – (Rich content can help with Search engine rankings. Make sure to use every field)
• Meta tags for internal/external search – Users will use the search function in a podcast site. If you use tags, your audio can be found a lot easier.
For Video
• Add Description, Tags – Important part to fill so Users can find you within the Video site or on the Search Engine
• Place in correct category
• Pick an optimized title – Google ‘SEO’, and you will see 2 videos on Page 2 with the words ‘SEO’ in the title.
• Video Sitemap – If you broadcast videos on your website, it’s important to create and submit your video sitemap to Google.
Optimizing Titles
Picking a title that is optimized is extremely important if you plan to rank high in the search engines. There are two different types of optimized titles, and the title will depend on who it’s intended for.
Here are some examples for users (linkbait)
“How DAO can make you millions”
“Making millions using DAO”
Here are some examples for robots (search engines)
“Digital Asset Optimization – DAO”
“Digital Asset Optimization – An Overview”
The difference is that one is catered to users as some type of linkbait, and the other is catered for robots with keywords in the title. The title of this post is a little of both. New blogs will use a lot of keywords in their titles to help it rank in the search engines. Well established blogs will use a shorter title or a link bait title to attract referral visitors. My recommendation is to use a little of both.
Less Cloudy, Targeted, and Optimal titles
• Mortgage rates drop by 1% according to Bankrate.com (cloudy)
• Mortgage rates drop by 1% (less cloudy)
• Mortgage Rates drop (optimal for nationwide)
• Charlotte Mortgage Rates drop (targeted)
• Charlotte Mortgage Rates (optimal, targeted for local)
Using too many words in the title can make the title cloudy, and can hurt your chances of ranking higher. It’s always important to use keywords instead of filling up the title with ’stop words’. If the article is targeted towards your city, then make sure to include your city name in the title.
Blog Posts
• Optimized URLs – Use /fha-mortgage-rates.php not /page1.php
• Use HTML coding (strong/bold on keywords or anchor text) - Using Bold or Strong tags
• Internal Linking – very important if you want Users/Robots to find other posts in your site. Also helps the SEO juice flow through your site.
Not a lot of people use bold/strong tags on their anchor text. This can help make your hyperlinks with rich anchor text standout to the robots. Make sure to use it in your forum signatures, press releases, and articles.
Usernames for Profiles
• Pick an optimized username - Ex. NC_SEO not johndoe or vice versa if you’re looking to create accounts for Online Reputation Management
• Look for places to fill with content (About me, description, interests, around links, etc)
• Look for places to get a back link – a lot of social media profiles allow you to place a free link in the profile section.
Building your Assets
• Social Bookmark your assets – This creates traffic to articles/blog posts/press releases. (another form of backlinks)
• Write Press Releases/Articles – Depending on the type of digital asset, you maybe able to write content that points to the asset.
• Write in Mixx or Digg – These sites are very popular for being large amounts of traffic
• Build Back links directly to asset pages – This works if your digital asset is pointing a backlink to your main website.
Building backlinks to press releases, articles, and blog posts can help boost them in the search engines. If these assets have a backlink to your main website, then the juice of the backlink from the Digital asset to your main website will become a lot stronger. This is a pyramid effect which is one of the best ways to build the overall SEO authority of your main website. Another example of this pyramid effect is using micro sites. Your main website can have dozens or even hundreds of micro sites pointing to it. Each micro site can be strengthen by building backlinks, social bookmarks, Press Releases, and articles that point to them. I would recommend researching what the difference is between a micro site and an actual partner page that is against Google TOS.
