Optimizing for Google Onebox - Directory of Best Internet Marketing Blogs

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I got this question last week, and it actually made me stop and think. The difference between optimizing for SERPs and optimizing for OneBox is actually quite a bit, but how do you really put that into words?

First, organic optimization is much more work. You not only need to get your content, title, headings, meta tags, site structure, and page cross-linking done correctly, but you’ve also got to worry about getting IBL’s with the proper anchor text pointed to the right page.

By comparison, optimizing to get into the OneBox is pretty simple. You’re just doing things, as it was described by NeO a while back, as if it’s the SEO of 1997. Use your keywords everywhere that makes sense a few times, then add those words to some places that don’t really make sense and add them a few more times. No linkbuilding, no big barrier to entry, just a little time spent filling out a form or doing some work in Excel.

The other difference that I’d say is HUGE is that there’s no waiting game to play. With “Traditional” SEO (is SEO old enough to say that yet?), the changes you make today may take weeks to show what effect, if any, they had. With Base, you make your changes, and within hours you can see what those changes did for you. For anyone that likes instant gratification, this will be appreciated, I’m sure.

Finally, the other big difference is the amount of competition. Organic optimization means competing with 100’s of 1000’s of listings or more. For niche items, it may only be a few thousand. Base means competing with 100’s for really popular items. Even something crazy like ipod nano, which has 30M listings on Google is around 100k in Froogle, and that’s including a ton of accessories. Clicking to narrow it to the 2GB model leaves you with less than 2k listings.