In times of financial uncertainty, many companies are inclined to bury their heads in the sand and simply wait for the storm to pass. Other companies, however, may look at an economic downturn as an opportunity to get more advertising for less money, thereby keeping the brand in their customers' minds for when things do turn around.

But what if your business has been forced to slash already tight marketing budgets in order to weather the storm? What is the best way to stay competitive and proactive without "going into the red" on your marketing budget? As it happens, your business many be sitting on a lot of valuable assets that could be used online and you may not even know it!

Google's Universal Search has been in existence for just over 2 years and most businesses do not take full advantage of the opportunities it presents to get products and services in front of a wider, more diverse audience.

What is Google's Universal Search?

In a nutshell, it incorporates all of the various types of content that could appear in the search results. For example, when you're doing a search on "Fisherman's Wharf in San Francisco" the result below shows not only the text based search result, but also the image results, a news result, and local business results.

By optimising the various forms of content, you could take up more of the search results on the page, thereby grabbing more market share for that particular search.

What's in your cupboard?

One of the most important website assets you have as a company is your content. When it comes to search engines, having fresh, engaging content that is updated frequently is as important a factor in determining how often your site is spidered by the search engines and how regularly visitors come back to your site to see what you're up to.

To this end, material that you have put aside in your virtual "attic" can prove to be very useful. This can include video content that was never properly edited and posted on your site, press releases that never made it through, opinion pieces, staff editorials, blogs etc. It can also include updates to your blogs, employee blogs mentioning the company and the industry, updates to the Google lists of products and images that represent the company or the market. All of these are assets that you have at your disposal and are not necessarily being used to full effect.

What's it all about?

It's about shelf space and user experience. At the end of the day, the more spots you take up in the search results, the less likely it is that one of your competitors is occupying that space. But that is not enough, since search engine users are becoming more and more sophisticated and are becoming aware of the options available to them.

Organic search results now bring up more than the ten results we've been used to. With the local search results, maps, images, suggested search options and video results, there are now more options for users to choose from in terms of preferred delivery of content.

For instance, someone looking for a cake recipe might find a video of how to bake a cake more useful than static text. Someone looking for a restaurant location might find a map result more useful than going through the restaurant's whole site to find the information they need.

With all of the different forms of content out there, it's important to make sure you are giving users a variety of choices to make information more relevant to them.

Where to Start?

Go through your offline content, i.e. press releases, news articles, catalogue information, etc and make sure it is available on your site. Find the digital assets already at your disposal and ensure the content is searchable and presented in a user-friendly way.

This is a way of maximising your organic presence without necessarily having to create content from scratch which can be either time consuming or cost prohibitive to your limited budget.  This is an efficient way of making the most of what you have.  So roll up your sleeves and start digging for those nuggets of valuable information hidden within your business.