As Chris Boggs, the President of SEMPO, told WebProNews, the main goal of the letter was to promote a free market approach to the Internet that would allow search engines to provide the best results with limited or no regulation. The organization wrote the letter in response to its members’ needs and the continuing call for regulation of Google.

Although SEMPO has not received a response from the FTC, it hopes that its message was heard. Boggs told us that it is willing to work with government agencies such as the FTC to help them better understand how search engines operate.

Keep watching WebProNews for the latest news in this developing story.

As he explains to WebProNews, digital asset optimization is essentially the optimization of non-text content within web pages and the role it plays in search engine rankings. In other words, it pertains to content such as video, images, and even rich, Internet applications like Flash.

This type of content is becoming increasingly popular in certain verticals including retail and health care. For instance, “how-to” videos that explain a process or provide insight into a condition are continually growing in value for consumers.

“There are a lot of reasons that people may look to the Internet and do a type of search that lends itself better to a video result, or an image result, or even an interactive application,” says Boggs.

He goes on to say that the search engines have recently updated their landscape to allow more of this non-text content in the top pages of search results. Although people often view digital asset optimization as a way to get additional listings in search results, Boggs points out that there is a better way to utilize it.

By taking a holistic approach, he says users have the opportunity to have all their web pages gain rankings. Since it gives users a greater chance of ranking, it is very important that they have non-text content on their web pages. In many cases, Boggs says the non-text content is described as a web page in the search results.

Are you taking advantage of the opportunities of digital asset optimization?

“It’s easy to optimize the site, but you have to make it search friendly – big difference.”

Making your website search friendly is actually the first step. Your url needs to be search friendly. If you are a marketer, you need to work closely with the IT department on joint goals and strategies.

Secondly, work on optimization. Remember that optimization is an ongoing process and it usually takes a lot of time and money. As you add content to your site, you will need to continue to optimize each entry or item that you add.

If you really are trying to successfully optimize your site and are spending a lot of money and time, you also need to have unique content. Good content is essential because you want your customer to be able to take action easily. If your optimization and search friendly efforts pay off and you get people to your site, you want your content to be good enough to keep them there.

For the three people who’ve never heard of this SEO tactic, Boggs describes it as “primarily the idea of generating content with the ulterior motive of driving links in a natural manner to [a] particular page.”

Sounds familiar, eh? “Build it and they will come.” Perhaps it’s that simple?

Maybe.

Since “linkbait” can mean far more than plain, old, quality content, things get a bit complex.

Darron Rowse (of Problogger) states, “It is actually a difficult term to be definitive about as it covers a lot of different practices ranging from running awards or competitions, through to writing attacking posts on high profile bloggers in the hope of them biting back and linking to you, through to providing other bloggers or site owners with tools (with embedded links back to your own site) that they can put on their blogs… In reality the term ‘linkbaiting’ is a new term for something that webmasters have been doing for many years.”

Then there’s the connotation of the term “bait.” It sounds a bit malicious, misleading, misinforming perhaps? Certainly, there are poor uses of this tactic in the wild, but isn’t that the case with anything?

Boggs argues that the “build it and they will come” mentality is a bit flawed.

“[There are] purists out there who feel that LB should be purely that… and that it has to be worthy to link to… when in fact you really do have to go out and do a little bit of link building to generate the knowledge that the link exists.”

Regardless of how sweet the bait is, it’ll take some other bait to get folks to notice.