Why Widgets Matter - Web Widgets and SEO
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When it comes to making sure your brand reaches someone who isn't on your web site, it doesn't matter whether your widget is designed for the desktop, a user's personal home page, or the public web. But if you want your reach to extend as far as possible, you need to create a widget for the web. In that case, you should familiarize yourself with the requirements of Facebook, MySpace, and iGoogle, since those sites contain the personal pages in which most users embed widgets.
Once you take that step, there are a number of ways in which you can include widgets in your online marketing campaign. First and foremost, make sure the functionality you want to include in your widget is both simple and useful. If it isn't simple, it defeats the point of having a widget; if it isn't useful, nobody will download and use your widget. You should also keep in mind that there won't be a lot of room in the widget for advertising; the widget itself should show how a user can benefit from your product (like Flixster for Netflix).
Widgets can help you develop links to your site. You want to include text links in widgets because the search engines don't read Flash, and that kind of video is often a big part of how a widget works. Just be careful about this; with Google on the warpath when it comes to link spam, a few bad apples could spoil it for everyone.
You can always optimize the page on which you offer your widgets for download. This is similar to the idea of optimizing a page on which a video appears. It can give you another page in the SERPs for your keywords, and that's always a good thing.
If you're doing anything with social media, or thinking about it, widgets can help. Widgets make excellent linkbait. If your widget is genuinely useful, and noticed by bloggers, community moderators, and others online, they will download it and put it up on their highly visible blog pages or talk about it in their communities. More importantly, they'll include a link back to where they got the widget.
The world of widgets is still small, but it's growing. A recent one-day convention in New York was devoted to widgets, and companies that make widgets (and other interested parties) now have their own group, the Widget Marketing Association. If you haven't considered reaching out to web surfers who make use of content and information in this new format, perhaps you should.
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