SEO Werkt!

There was a time when search was focused primarily on web pages and photos, and the results didn’t have to be 100 percent specific. But today’s internet users are looking for much more, including video and audio. And they want accurate search results, not a tagged pile of possibilities to sift through. How can you make sure users connect with your content first?

Getty Images is a global stock photo and media agency. The company has an archive of more than 80 million still images and illustrations, more than 50,000 hours of video footage, and a quickly growing archive of music and other multimedia assets. And all of Getty Image’s content is optimized to be easily findable.

Getty knows search. In fact, Getty Images director of search marketing Rhonda Hanson says the company is well ahead of Google, Bing, and Yahoo. “People are looking for very specific content around imagery, footage, and audio. I think Google is trying to get there. They’re just not in a place where they can do a literal search for a lateral image.” She continues, “We’re helping Google, Bing, and Yahoo understand visual search through APIs, and getting our content to them.”

Here are Hanson’s top tips for getting your content seen, and staying ahead in the new world of search.

Conversation highlights

0:00 – Major shifts in visual search
0:48 – The industry is moving toward interactive content
1:08 – “Shazaam has done a good job indexing consumer content.”
1:50 – Proven tactics for getting your content seen
2:15 – Trends impacting search
2:23 – Tools
2:43 – Hanson’s top two tips for companies
3:00 – How search will change over the next year

Run time is 3:25

Rhonda Hanson is the director of search engine marketing for Getty Images, leading provider of digital media worldwide, creating and distributing a range of assets – from images to video, music, and multimedia – that help communicators around the globe tell their stories. Rhonda has been an a search engine marketer since 2004 focused on driving highly qualified traffic to lead-gen and e-commerce websites. Currently Rhonda manages the global search engine strategy for nine properties in 52 markets, including Getty Images and iStockphoto.

Bethany Simpson is the video director at iMedia, where she covers digital marketing tech and trends. She has interviewed more than 500 business leaders in digital and traditional marketing, technology, security, and finance. Prior to iMedia she managed “The Leadership Network,” a private online community for C-Llevel leaders of Fortune-1000 companies.

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It’s been fascinating to watch the proliferation of photo apps before and since the rise of Instagram and its sale to Facebook. EyeEm has a beautiful app which makes tagging images to locations ridiculously simple (plus all that filter goodness). LoopCam makes hilarious photo loops you want to share with your friends. Now SlickFlick has appeared with an iOS app to help you create fun stories around your pictures. [download from iTunes here]

The boot-strapped startup was founded by Maria Constantinescu who has been relentless in pushing her vision for the last two years and today she lands a big-brother partner in the shape of the Getty image library.

Basically you create visual stories on the fly your iPhone and then share or embed them. Using it is a bit like creating a film storyboard. A good example is their “Zuck & Priscilla” story, made in 2 minutes, which recently went viral.

Now, the vast Getty Images will make its entire library available to users of the SlickFlick app. Users create stories with their own photos or add in images form the library, then share them on the site or on social media.

SlickFlick is based in London but developed out of Romania, and Constantinescu has been a champion of the region’s development talent.

This is an app worth checking out an playing with. My feeling is that the next stage would be to upload sound, perhaps by integrating SoundCloud.