There is a good article at www.isedb.com/news/article/1081 outlining a new service for videos to enhance your search engine listings. The idea of a marketing video next to a search engine listing is interesting. I'm not sure the public would actually click on them once the "gee whiz" factor wore off, but it brings up an interesting topic - that of making your search engine listing stand out above the rest.
There are some search engines that display a thumbnail shot of your home page next to the listing. Some people like this, some don't. I personally love it. Sure, it uses a bit more bandwidth to load the page, but seeing what the site looks like before going to it, makes the task of deciding which links to click just a bit easier. But, of course, it means your homepage needs to have a nice design. It wouldn't surprise me if some search engines offer the ability to purchase a special icon of some sort to display next to your listing.
But what if you have to depend upon the listing itself? What are you doing to have your listing stand out? Does your title entice users to click your link? And while you may not have complete control over what snippet of text is displayed as the description, you do have control over your meta description tag. This is often used as the snippet. How appealing is your meta description? Would it make you click on it, or would it make you think that the site is probably spammy junk? Look carefully at the other listings that show up near yours. Does your listing stand out as the best one to visit? If not, make it so. After all, a good ranking is useless if users never click on it.
Tomorrow will be devoted to a similar topic. Once a user clicks on your search engine listing, does your site give them what they are looking for?