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Click Asia Summit 2012 ( Day 3 #CAS12 ) Master Classes By Mahesh Murthy And Gillian Muessig

2012-01-22T12:33:00.000-05:00

Day 3 of the Click Asia Summit was all about the master classes on social and search . One could attend 2 workshops that day . One was before lunch and the other one was after lunch. My work essentially revolves around SEO campaigns and I usually opt for SEO focused sessions but this time I decided to attend Mr. Mahesh Murthy’s workshop on “Creating great multi-media campaigns in an integrated world” just to acquaint myself about how other marketing companies approach a given multi media campaign.

Participants were broken up into teams, and a digital marketing project was given to each team, at the end of the session each team had to present the digital marketing campaign worked out by each . These were graded and analyzed at the end.

Before the teams started working on the project, Mr. Murthy gave an overview and an idea about what an ideal digital marketing campaign should be approached.

He pointed out that for every digital marketing campaign one should list out the following:

· Priorities to achieve via the campaign

· Process to achieve the same

· Template to judge the campaign

He also pointed out with an example of 4 videos the importance of having a strategy and making it go viral and also highlighted the reason for a video or any content to get shared.

· The first and foremost the audience has a lot of choice today so content should be remark worthy

· People share content because they want to be popular among their friends

· If the info comes via a friend it has a high trust factor

Hence,

Strategy + Virality = Success

What media you choose depends on what message you want to convey. People are not averse to marketing but they are averse to marketing that bores them.

"Digital is not niche anymore. It is mainstream" - Mahesh Murthy

The four videos taken as case study were as follows:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bUD3E5-rfrc&feature=related > All strategy but no virality

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8jgGK4NJ8Hk&feature=related > No strategy but all virality

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YR12Z8f1Dh8&feature=fvsr > bad strategy but all virality

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=owGykVbfgUE&feature=relmfu > all stategy and all virality

Mr. Murthy gave the project of designing a digital campaign for a water purifier . All the teams came up with different ideas and I am sure everyone left the place with their dimag ki batti being jaloed (minds Ignited) and I am sure Mr. Murthy too got some ideas for the next water purifier digital campaign his team may have to work on.

After this we dispersed for lunch and I got back to a session on Analytics, Glorious Analytics! By Gillian Muessig from SEOmoz

The session was divided into the following 4 categories :

Session I - Follow the Money... Backwards!
Choosing KPIs for your business

Session II - Tracking Social Media Metrics
Tracking things that matter in social media campaigns and understanding ROI

Session III - Tracking Conversion Rate Optimization Metrics
Layout, A/B and multivariate testing, and measuring results

Session IV - A Few Reliable Tools
An overview of: Google Analytics, Facebook Analytics and SEOmoz/OpenSiteExplorer.org

After the first 2 sessions , it became more of an open Q & A session where people started asking questions and Gillian answered patiently .

The questions were so varied and were SEO specific hence everyone got to learn something from what problems and issues they were facing on their sites.

The day ended with Gillian (or SEOmom as she is known as ) giving vouchers for a Spa to participants who had asked good questions and I personally got an SEOmoz souvenir which was a token of appreciation for all the help that I had offered. I am still wondering in what way I had helped out?? Infact it was the other way round for me and the pleasure was all mine.

The Key Takeaways From Click Asia Summit 2012 ( Day 1 and 2 #CAS12) …

2012-01-20T01:52:00.000-05:00

This is the second year consecutively that I have attended the Click Asia Summit Conference. It is sort of becoming a habit now and am already looking forward to the 2013 summit. Its not because of the gloss, glamour, delicious food or the happiness I experience every time I have to go to Mumbai (The city where I was born and spent 23 years of my life) but because of the sharing of knowledge related to the digital marketing world .

This interaction is the best way to start the year with confidence and set the right direction especially for entrepreneurs like me who work with very small teams and limited budgets. Conferences like these are an energy booster and help to plan for the coming year.

I have attended many conferences across the globe but when such an event takes place in India and especially in Mumbai , it gives me a sense of pride and pleasure.

#CAS12 the 3 day digital conference and networking started off on the 15th of Jan. 2012 with with an evening full of networking, conversations, and of course, laughter at The Comedy Store!

Day 2 post lunch had many options of sessions to select from but the day started with everyone attending the Keynotes by

Dr. Shashi Tharoor ( Member of Parliament, India) who spoke about “The Impact of digital media on politics and India in general”

Dr Tharoor highlighted the impact of social media on news , politics and India in general. He has been one of the early adopters of social media and has influenced celebrities to follow suit . He said that freedom of speech is the mortar that binds the bricks of our democracy together but free speech in Sweden isn't the same as free speech in Surat . He went ahead to say that Unlike a newspaper, social network sites are like postmen who take the news to your door. He also added that one cannot sue the phone companies for sending a defamatory or obscene SMS, similarly a person who puts up something defamatory on FB should be prosecuted not FB itself.

He totally spoke pro social media and said that social media is inescapable and is here to stay. He also added that a message needs a medium it is the message which is important and not the medium.

Lucy McCabe from OgilvyOne Worldwide,Singapore spoke on “The Digital marketing 2.0: The big picture“

She spoke very effectively and highlighted the point that the people of the library era and the people of the Google era think differently. My vote for the best speaker for the day went to her because of the way this difference was presented in her presentation.

She said that the shift of the source of information from the traditional library has made Google the new norm.

For the people of the Google era digital is not about technology but it is just stuff which helps them with their homework and other day to day activities. In 5 years from now we will not be attending conferences on digital marketing because it will be just stuff. She then spoke about the social media impact and redefined the digital relationships between people and brands in a whole new way by saying that people did not come on FB to make friends with brands, 50% of people who use FB have never 'liked' a brand since that's not the reason they are on FB and digital is not about the clicks, its about the conversation. On this medium brands should ask "what can we give back" if they want time, money, advocacy and data as a digital exchange. Customers don't wake up and go "ooh, wonder what branded digital content I can interact with today"

Connect Me -> Be Useful -> Entertain Me. Three things people want from brands .

Finally she focused on the fact that The future of agency lies in solving problems with innovative ideas

Cyriel Kortleven from New Shoes Today , Belgium spoke on “Get a creative boost... Break the curse of knowledge “

He started his keynote with wired 7 questions for triggering creativity . He said that our brains see something and make assumptions with almost everything we do . His digital marketing analogy with the human brain was quite interesting where he highlighted that the curse of knowledge is that we get stuck into thinking patterns and habits and we can break the borders of the box for thinking patterns and habits by not limiting our power with buts and ifs , but unleash the power of 'and' by asking and what else.

Post lunch the sessions were divided into 3 categories as follows:

TECHNOLOGY/MOBILITY TRACK
SOCIAL MEDIA TRACK
SEARCH & SOCIAL TRACK

My interest and inclination as usual is the social and search sessions hence I glued my attention to those sessions which were as follows.

The first session was by Mr. Sandeep Amar on Social media impact - An analytics overview .
For him social media meant only Facebook , the idea I just could not digest. He seemed to be pro FB and totally against Google which again was very annoying for me to sit through and listen to. The audience spoke more than him and he was unable to answer any questions satisfactorily.

He went ahead to say that Negative posts receive more comments and less Likes. This calls for marketers to delve into their Facebook Insights. The very thought of FB = Social Media which he put forward made me lose interest in the session.

Rajesh Sharma’s session was on “Beyond the initial hype – building sustainable and scalable digital businesses, the PE perspective ! “

He put forward the question – Will Ecommerce boom or burst in 2012?

As per his presentation the key points were:
There are more no. of enterprises coming up online
Technology is no longer a challenge anyone can get a website made but only the setting up of the ecommerce venture is easy sustaining it and making it grow is a challenge.
It is not necessary that the people who set up the business may be the right people to scale up the business . Hence we need experts for every specialized job.

For the success of the Ecommerce Business we need an EAT Model
E- Experiences
A – Aspirations
T – Transactions

The dotcom 2000 burst was because the T was missing then. Now people buy confidently online.

Mahesh Narayanan highlighted the urgency to go mobile ASAP and to Make sure to track and measure your reach,whether through your app or through your mobile site. He said that mCommerce will become big in the next couple of months in India and the consumers on the go should be focused.

Vivek Bhargava spoke on “How to use analytics and other technology tools to plan a content strategy for an Enterprise Business “

His mantra was to focus on the psychographics and the target audience and the most reliable strategy was to create videos and see that they go viral. He also highlighted that SEO is now all about web presence optimization and the content was the glue to conversations and If a user is engaged with your brand then the propensity to buy from that brand is much higher compared to others.

Manish Maheshwari spoke about Reaching internet-dark mobile users…in as less as 5 hours

This session was about how to use SMS to reach out to people who do not have internet access , what he spoke about was SMSing via http://textweb.com/ which has the internet on SMS .

He pointed out that :

SMS kills all others (Mobile web, apps) in terms of accessibility, reach
An average Indian Send 29 SMS a month
SMS, as advertising medium has 5% interaction rate
SMS is most used app on mobile phones, even on smartphones.

Chris George - Search and social : Digital marketing in the SME sector in India

He shared that:

76% of people think that companies lie in advertising
India has second highest base of #Linkedin users
41% of internet user trust information published on #Facebook
We are at the intersection of search and social
Aim of SMM should be - brand building and crowd sourcing...creating advocates
The selection of the social media medium depends on the message which needs to be sent across and the messenger matters.

Lalit Bhagia The multi- tasking digital consumer

He focused on the point that The challenge today is to get the attention of the consumer's nonstop limited attention 87% of the people are on social media while watching TV . We are multi-tasking all the time, hence the content that we share or upload on aour site or Apps should have an overall appeal and should pull the visitors attention from all the other task that he is doing at that moment.

Cross-leveraging SEO & SEM
Benedict Hayes (Moderator)
Navneet Kaushal, Hareesh Tibrewala,Benjamin Gonsalves

The day ended with a panel discussion on how to cross-leverage SEO & SEM.

The focus on this session was that at the end of the day whatever SEO and SEM strategy that you have the campaigns are judged by the ROI they generate.

Google Adds Google+ To Give Us Search Plus Social Results

2012-01-11T05:56:00.000-05:00

Google has always been synonymous to search . In 2011 the integration of social signals to search was the most common topic of the SEO blogosphere and everyone was trying to figure out how the social signals will be integrated into search results.

Google just yesterday announced on their Inside Search blog that : “…We’re transforming Google into a search engine that understands not only content, but also people and relationships….” Of course this endeavor of Google started in October 2009 and has been working on it since then.

Yesterday a major change has been announced and three new features as follows have been implemented:

Personal Results: which enable you to find information just for you, such as Google+ photos and posts—both your own and those shared specifically with you, that only you will be able to see on your results page.

Profiles in Search: both in autocomplete and results, which enable you to immediately find people you’re close to or might be interested in following.

People and Pages: which help you find people profiles and Google+ pages related to a specific topic or area of interest, and enable you to follow them with just a few clicks. Because behind most every query is a community.

Together, these features combine to create Search plus Your World.

Google says: Search is simply better with your world in it, and we’re just getting started….

The change is live now, though not everyone will see it until it fully launches over the next few days. It’s only for those signed-in to Google.com and searching in English.

Google has introduced a prominent new toggle on the upper right of the results page where you can see what your search results look like without personal content. With a single click, you can see an unpersonalized view of search results.

Amit Singhal has concluded the blog post by saying:

We named our company after the mathematical number googol as an aspiration toward indexing the countless answers on webpages, but that’s only part of the picture. The other part is people, and that’s what Search plus Your World is all about.

After Google announced this ‘Search Plus’ feature the SEO blogosphere filled with post on how this will affect the search industry and what will be the possible pros and cons of this additional feature.

Danny Sullivan Of Search Engine Land wrote:

Google’s Results Get More Personal With “Search Plus Your World”

A Blog Post On Mashable Said:

Google Merges Search and Google+ Into Social Media Juggernaut

Matt Cutts wrote a blog post on his blog titled:

Sharing a search story

The major concern is that Google might favor only the Google+ social signals and hence try to influence the use of Google+ more that other social media platforms. But, this was clarified by Google executive chairman Eric Schmidt who says Google+ content is not being favored over Twitter and Facebook by Google’s search engine. Rather, those companies can be treated the same if they grant Google the right permissions to access their content.

Danny Sullivan wrote about this on :

Schmidt: Google+ Not Favored, Happy To Talk Twitter & Facebook Integration

I think the blending of social results in search is not only the inevitable evolution of search but the reflection of what took place when civilizations evolved. We can just say that the stone age of search is over and now search even has the ability to reflect what people in your community are talking about and recommending. It is basic human nature to search for a want and then discuss with peers about their opinions and then take a decision. Since ages we have been doing this but now we have to just adapt ourselves to the virtual world for this kind of an action.

To a certain extent I believe that if Google wants to improve the quality of search results and combat the spam on the web then yes, it is highly essential that the search engine can access data from a resource it has full control on. But, from the search engine perspective only time will tell how well Google succeeds in integrating the social signals from other social media sites like Facebook and Twitter else with the kind of hold Google has over the search market it is going to be, Google Google all the way…

Related Links On Google+

Google+ As A Complete Blogging Platform Diverges To Converge And Converges TO Diverge
Google+ Is Coming Along Riding On The Social Wave….
Google+ Important For You If You Are Serious About Search
Google+ Business Pages – Build A Brand And A Voice For Your Company Locally And Globally
Google+ Real-time Search Results & Improved Hashtag Support
Google Plans To Support Brands, Businesses, and Beyond. Google+ Business Profiles For All
Why Is Your Google+ Profile Important From The Search And Social Media Perspective?
The Google+ Project : The Social Network Project From Google

Google+ As A Complete Blogging Platform Diverges To Converge And Converges TO Diverge

2012-01-09T10:47:00.000-05:00

Google+ is a platform with some great features for sharing content. Moreover, it does not have the limitation of characters like Twitter which is truly a micro blogging platform. With the trend moving towards content excellence and content marketing and Google+ profile becoming the most integrated identity for an online presence. As the circles concept of Google+ makes it very easy to reach out to different groups of people and share what you want to share to the selected circle. Google+ has the potential of becoming an excellent blogging platform for all purposes personal and professional.

We have been till now blogging on our blogs and then sharing the link on the social media platform but with Google+ the blog post content , comments and the link to be shared on other social media sites can be available on the same platform.

With social media signals being incorporated in search the need to have a quality social media presence which reflects the trust and authority factor of the brand is highly imperative. Hence we can see the SEO blogosphere filled with posts of how blogging and social media presence can help the SEO and online presence of any site.

I think all the clients who cannot maintain a separate blog for various reasons can start off their blogging journey via their Google+ business page which will not only associate and correlate valuable content to their social profiles but also pass of the necessary content correlation to the social signals for getting integrated to search. The content shared and the UGC content generated can be in the form of images, videos, text, links, etc. a whole plethora of content options available to correlate to the social profile.

I think from the users perspective also when you share your comment or views on the Google+ profile where the blogpost link has been shared you have a better chance of correlating that content to your social profile rather than commenting on the blog where the blog post is published.

Eventually all the Google+ data being accessible by Google is an overall added advantage . So, atleast from the search perspective currently Google+ has a win-win potential to become a complete blogging platform converging your overall web identity on a single platform .

(Google+) = Blogging (Personal + Professional) + Social Media + UGC + Location + (+1 Counts) + Image Albums + Videos + Recommended Links to integrate your overall web presence = Search Plus

Image As Shared on http://goo.gl/bTA5d

Some Selected Posts On Search And Social Of 2011 - The WebPro Blog

2011-12-31T06:40:00.000-05:00

The year 2011 has been a year of major changes and updates for the search and the social media industry. All these changes made in 2011 makes us look forward to 2012 with great anticipation.

We have tried to summarize some of our posts under the following categories for a quick look at the search and social scene of 2011:

SEO

Social Media

E-Commerce And M-Commerce

Search And Social Conferences & Events 2011

Age Is No Barrier For Learning New Technologies. Its Just Your Mindset.

2011-12-23T13:36:00.000-05:00

The article I read today on http://thenextweb.com/entrepreneur/2011/12/23/to-work-online-or-in-new-media-theres-an-expectation-for-you-to-be-young/ reminded me of an incident which occurred way back in 2000 when we used to run courses on Microsoft Technologies and train people for MSCE, MCSD and other Microsoft Certified Courses.

One day , the computer room was full of students practicing their Lab Work and I happened to be on my own without any help to attend to all of them (a batch of 16 students) working on different technologies.

My younger son then 8 years old had a holiday that day and was present in the lab drawing on one computers using Paint . There were two senior people from reputed organizations who were approx. 50+ in age sitting next to my son trying to learn MS Word. As I was busy with some other students they were waiting for me to come and answer their questions. My son who was sitting next to them asked them “May I help you in the meantime she comes?” They were surprised but were amused and thought of having some fun. They said why not and started asking questions .

To their surprise when he started answering their questions and explaining them they were dumb struck and when they left for the day they said more than MS Word we have learnt a bigger lesson today . An 8 year old also can teach you something which we think is advanced technology and had a resistance to learn. After interacting with this child I think it is so simple and I had a mental block of it being something very technical . This child made everthing sound so simple.

That day I had a win-win situation my son’s confidence soared and that person left the office premise with an open mind all set to learn more.

I think more than age it is our mindset which makes us still have that thirst for knowledge and open mind to learn new things .

upgrading oneself and keeping pace with the latest technology and adapting to the mindsets of the young is the only solution for facing the uphill battle confidently.

The experience and knowledge of the senior people is an asset for every organization but as you advance in age one should not stop learning and updating oneself with the latest technologies.

If one can do that then the young and the so called aged seniors can supplement each other in the most qualitative way and both can learn a lot from each other.

Always keep the atmosphere and ambience of learning alive at home and office . If you add a little fun and liveliness to it its like an icing on the cake.Well my motto in life is to learn for the pleasure of learning.

Below the multimedia set up we had at home in 2000 when my sons were 8 and 11. Now they are in their twenties pursuing their engineering and management studies.

Google+ Is Coming Along Riding On The Social Wave….

2011-12-20T12:45:00.004-05:00

Finally Google seems to be achieving the much needed stand on social media via Google+ . Google is very much focused on search and according to me the Google+ initiative is mainly aimed at enhancing the quality of search results which is very much affected due to the mal practices because of link building and content spamming.

On a wider perspective Google is trying to converge all the data from other Google owned platforms on Google+ and all these signals will finally affect the search results.

When social media signals got integrated with search , SEOs left no stone unturned to prove to their clients that having a social media presence is of great importance. But, it is not only the presence but a presence which reflects authority and trust for your business online.

Authority, trust and Goodwill cannot be bought it has to be earned. Hence every digital footprint you make on the web is adding up to the Halo of the overall aura that your online presence is creating.

2012 is going to be a year of the Greatest Challenge for the SEO industry. In 2012 the trust and authority of an online presence and all the UGC (User Generated Content) for that online presence is going to gain prominence and priority . All the SEOs who made hay while the link love sun was shining are going to get a reality check as in the long run only those natural links achieved as a result of the valuable contribution are going to have the multiplier effect for the online presence.

Website owners please do not assume that your SEO company has some magic wand and just because you have signed an SEO contract and are willing to pay a big amount for the SEO services you will start getting unlimited traffic to your site and your business is going to start getting unlimited inquiries.

If you do not have a good product even if you have a good presence on the search engines your business is not going to improve as you may get the inquiry but to finalize a sale your product and pricing has to be highly competitive. You need to work hard on your product and the display on the website, share the information on social media, create a persona for online queries , create an authority and trust factor for your online presence by meaningful engagement and then as a result of course whatever effort your SEO has put in for on-page factors, technical issues and other off-page SEO factors will work in your favour.

In fact I appeal to the website owners to take ownership of their digital presence by taking interest in what their SEO is working on. At least one person from the organization should be in regular contact with the SEO for knowing how their online presence is improving.

SEO is like establishing your business online and whatever factors apply in real life to establish a business are also applicable to the online presence . The SEO just tries to help you to highlight these factors and makes it possible for the search engines to record it in their index to influence better search presence. Just like in real life you need to have an attractive sign board, a good product, a competitive price, good WOM, efficient sales people, etc. which help in improving your business . Google also tries to find such signals via many platforms and metrics. The social media buzz and the UGC generate your digital WOM, your website content reflects the product details and company ethics, The Time On Site and the bounce rate indicate the interest level of the people in the products, the online sales indicate the acceptance of the product and pricing, etc.

Just as establishing any business in real life takes a lot of effort , hardwork and time similarly SEO also take a lot of effort and time to start accruing results.

In December 2010 , on our blogpost for SEO 2011 http://blog.webpro.in/2010/12/seo-and-online-presence-in-2011.html we had mentioned the following factors playing a vital role for 2011:

Have great content on your site
Have a social media presence
Engage and interact on social media establishing an individual and business persona
Have a blog with a focus on your main line of business which you keep on updating regularly
Participate in conversations of your topical communities
Take guest blogging seriously
Do not ignore the Local Search
Go mobile

The overall aura generated from all these efforts put together will create your online brand and identity which in turn will reflect on your current and potential online business.

The search engine bots will measure all these signals according to the algorithms which the programmers have worked on, the online visitors will make judgments on the basis of what they read on the various platforms about your business and your ROI and social media mentions and comments will give you the answer to where you are heading to on the web world .

All put together SEO is going to emerge as Web Presence Optimzation rather than Search Engine Optimization maybe we need to have a new term for SEO as in order to reach the search engines and SERPs, first you need to have an over all presence on the web.
____________________________________________________________________________

All the people who have worked on these issues in 2011 qualitatively will be the beneficiaries as Google can measure all these digital footprints more efficiently now with their updates in algorithms and the gradual convergence of their technologies on Google+

The competition is becoming tougher as the aggregate of your overall online presence is going to decide your trust factor and authority factor and thereby the search presence on the search options.

Though the future seems to be challenging I am just in admiration of all the changes and updates made by Google in 2011 to fight content farms and link spam because finally one can easily fore see that only those SEO companies working on SEO in its true perspective are going to survive and the grain will be sieved out from the chaff.

Google+ is not only a social media platform it is going to be the consolidation of your overall online presence quantifying your online personality.

I personally just love this video which very effortlessly shows the seeds of the convergence being laid by Google.

Google+ is not only a social media platform it is going to be the consolidation of your overall online presence quantifying your online personality.

Saying Bye to SEO 2011 and A Very Big Hi to SEO 2012

2011-12-18T14:11:00.001-05:00

As the sun is setting on 2011 and as the dawn of 2012 approaches the SEO industry as a whole seems to be discussing in a frenzy regarding the core issues of its existence with true dignity, respect and meaningful existence.

We all know SEO means Search Engine Optimization that means optimizing for search engines but the fact is that Google practically monopolizes the search scene so the changes, updates and modifications in the Google algorithm and search results are of high priority for all search industry professionals and website owners.

According to Amit Singhal in 2011 there have been more that 500 updates in the search algorithm and all these updates have been aimed at achieving better quality results for the user by penalizing low quality content and attacking the link spam.

The major changes , updates and modifications announced by Google this year have been as follows:

· The Panda Updates:

Panda/Farmer - February 23, 2011
Panda 2.0 - April 11, 2011
Panda 2.1 - May 9, 2011
Panda 2.2 - June 21, 2011
Panda 2.3 - July 23, 2011
Panda Goes Global (2.4) - August 12, 2011
Panda 2.5 - September 28, 2011
Panda "Flux" - October 5, 2011
Panda 3.1 - November 18, 2011

· The +1 Button - March 30, 2011

· Schema.org - June 2, 2011

· Google+ - June 28, 2011

· Expanded Sitelinks - August 16, 2011

· Pagination Elements - September 15, 2011

· Query Encryption - October 18, 2011

· Freshness Update - November 3, 2011

· The integration of Webmaster Tools with Google Analytics, reflecting SEO data (queries, landing pages, geographical data)

· Google Analytics social data (engagement, action and pages )

· Google Analytics real-time data ( this data shows you what is happening on your website as it happens )

With algorithms being updated with such frequency and the ranking factors varying with the changing times one can easily understand the challenge of achieving search engine presence and then maintaining it.

The Panda update focused on improving the search results by rewarding original content with high standards of quality .

The other updates and modifications focused on the ownership of content. Integration of social and search was proved when Google introduced the +1 button and also launched Google+, its own social networking site and went one step further by reflecting all this data in Google Analytics.

I am sure all these changes will be perceived differently by website owners and search industry professionals depending on their field of operation and what elements of the web they have a focus on, for getting meaningful traffic to their website depending on budgets and beliefs.

But, one thing is for sure that the search engines are aiming for better quality results by attacking the content farms , link farms and the spammers and the search behavior of the users is also evolving . The search options in the search results are also increasing trying to cater to the user in a more specific way.

Search engines are a source of targeted traffic having a very high potential for business opportunities whether it is advertising on search engines by getting listed under the paid listings after paying a high bid amount or whether it is ranking on organic search results after working on the SEO of your site. But, both these options need a unique and a different approach when you include them in your online marketing strategies.

The paid listings are a source of income for the search engines and as search engines are not charitable institutions the importance to paid results is quite justified. But again, search engines are not paid directories either, hence quality organic search results are the true character of a search engine, the organic search also cannot be undermined. As a result the search engines have to achieve that optimum balance between both the results. Google has always given a lot of information about SEO on their official blogs, webmaster videos, forums, discussions on blogs and by announcing the launch of every product by trying to have the maximum outreach via live events.

Lately there have been many blog posts on whether SEO needs to known by any other name after the integration of social and search. There are even blogposts on how the so called big companies are resorting to spam and black hat for gaining and maintaining their rankings and search engine presence.

Firstly, I think the very reason such topics have come out in the open for discussion it proves that the search industry especially the SEO industry is on the verge of transformation and is finally come of age and has evolved to carve a meaningful niche of its own on the online scenario.

Instead of searching for a new term for SEO , I think the right approach to SEO and its true inherent meaning needs to be put forward not only to the budding SEOs but also every website owner whose site we optimize. As this will sow the seeds for the right reputation of the SEO industry which is at a stake mainly due to the link spam.

Infact this year we were approached by one of the so called well known SEOs for outsourcing their SEO projects. When we delved further into the project details they told us that they will be sending us the list of sites where they want us to make submissions to create back links for the sites managed by them. When we told them that we do not undertake such tasks as we work on the on-page factors of the site, help create a local online profile and then train the client’s team for engaging in social media and help them work on the natural link building methods in a qualitative way involving them at every step. This reply made that SEO tell us that this will make us earn more than what we normally are earning. But we refused to go ahead with their proposal as it was totally against our SEO ethics and Mission. This made him furious and he said that the part of the world we are working there is a pressure on high rankings and quick results hence all this talk about ethics should not be discussed with him.

The reputation of the SEO industry is getting tarnished because of two main reasons:

· False promises by people who want to make a fast buck by calling them SEOs

· Very high expectations of website owners

This very pressure of quick results which SEOs commit to their clients or vice versa is the root cause of the bad reputation of the SEO industry . Hence we do not need a new name but the right approach towards SEO to reach out across the web.

Yes, we have to stop comparing PPC and SEO. Though PPC also operates on the edifice of keywords and search engines, it has its roots on the propensity to pay and the bid amount of the targeted keyword. The PPC campaign needs to operate keeping budgets in mind. SEO on the other hand requires a different mindset altogether, SEO is about overall search engine algorithms, the technical and content quality of your website and the willingness to patiently develop the overall web presence by the website owner to get targeted traffic in the long run. This difference has always been there inherently.

SEO has always meant to enhance the quality of the website in such a way that the search engine spiders and the visitors can read what they are finding on the web page and the content adds value to their search. Hence the SEO works on the code behind the page to cater to the bot and the SEO also works on the content on the page to cater to the visitor. SEO also contributes to the web eco system by adhering to the technical aspects of the site like the Page load speed, 301 redirects to avoid duplicate content issues, removing unwanted content from the search engine index, etc .

Sometime back we had written a blogpost on : Why SEMPO showing a decline in SEO spending in 2011 is good news for the SEO industry.

As according to us this indicates that finally the website owners are realizing that once the site is optimized for search engines, then in order to future proof the presence, they need to focus on quality web presence which is reflected in the increase in the social media spending . This further reflects the integration of Social media and Search. This attitude shows that there is a shift from the focus of just building links to developing quality content and then sharing it on social media for natural link building – which I am sure is a step ahead towards the right attitude to SEO.

Read more on: http://www.searchenginejournal.com/sempo-decline-in-seo-spendings-2011-good-news-for-seos/29817/

So SEO is about the improvement of overall quality issues of the site , quality footprints across the web for natural links and there by achieve high ranking as an offshoot.

Google clearly says SEO is not spam and infact they have been quite open in offering the SEO Starter Guide, SEO Guidelines and have a plethora of information on the Google blogs and forums.

It is the SEOs who have to carve a niche for themselves by letting SEO retain its unique essence and gain good reputation for this industry else the SEOs itself will be responsible for the doom of this industry .

Lets say Bye to 2011 and a very big Hi to 2012 by having a focus on the true meaning of SEO and work on natural methods of earning links by trying to add more and more value to the site holistically.

Search Queries , Google's Encrypted (Not Provided) Keyword Data And SEO

2011-11-30T06:09:00.001-05:00

In mid October 2011 Google had announced that “As search becomes an increasingly customized experience, we recognize the growing importance of protecting the personalized search results we deliver. As a result, we’re enhancing our default search experience for signed-in users. “

This meant that , when you search from https://www.google.com, websites you visit from our organic search listings will still know that you came from Google, but won't receive information about each individual query. They can also receive an aggregated list of the top 1,000 search queries that drove traffic to their site for each of the past 30 days through Google Webmaster Tools. This information helps webmasters keep more accurate statistics about their user traffic.

When the user’s search gets redirected to https://www.google.com , the user can have an end-to-end encrypted search solution between his computer and Google. This secured channel helps protect his search terms and his search results pages from being intercepted by a third party. This provides him with a more secure and private search experience.

This organic search query data gets displayed in the Google Analytics Report as “Not Provided” for the keyword metrics for such a search as follows:

	Keyword	Visits	Pages/Visit	Avg. Time on Site	% New Visits	Bounce Rate
1.	(not provided)	60	3.20	00:01:12	100.00%	25.00%

From the SEO perspective that means that the website owner will not get such keyword data as a result of which the visits were recorded. Google recommends the user to receive an aggregated list of the top 1,000 search queries that drove traffic to their site for each of the past 30 days through Google Webmaster Tools. This information helps webmasters keep more accurate statistics about their user traffic.

The Webmaster tools Search traffic data includes the following:

Queries: The total number of search queries that returned pages from your site results over the given period. (These numbers can be rounded, and may not be exact.)

Query: A list of the top search queries that returned pages from your site.
Impressions: The number of times pages from your site were viewed in search results, and the percentage increase/decrease in the daily average impressions compared to the previous period. (The number of days per period defaults to 30, but you can change it at any time.)

Clicks: The number of times your site's listing was clicked in search results for a particular query, and the percentage increase/decrease in the average daily clicks compared to the previous period.

CTR (clickthrough rate): The percentage of impressions that resulted in a click to your site, and the number of percentage points increase or decrease in the daily average CTR compared to the previous period. For example, if your CTR went from 40% to 30%, this column would show a change of -10.

Average position: The average position of your site on the search results page for that query, and the change compared to the previous period. Green indicates that your site's average position is improving.

To calculate average position, Google takes into account the ranking of your site for a particular query (for example, if a query returns your site as the #1 and #2 result, then the average position would be 1.5).

Such a depiction of data in SEO reports regarding keywords surely makes the website owner think from a larger perspective and focus on the correlation of content and keywords rather than rankings. This will take SEO campaigns above the metrics of keywords and rankings and the focus will be on other quality metrics like CTR , conversions, bounce rate, etc. which will improve the quality of the web overall as the websites besides being rich in content will have to focus on good landing pages, a proper call to action, page load speed and good navigation which will ensure a better UX .

Search query data is now integrated within Google Analytics and the SEO Reports can have those metrics , data and details from analytics itself.

The metrics can be found under Traffic sources and is represented as follows:

When the businesses are at a loss for the complete keyword data the focus is shifted to the search queries in WMT which have a good CTR which is a true measure of quality over quantity.

The percentage of the “Not Provided” data may vary from industry to industry but on an average should be in the range of 10 – 15 % currently but this encryption is trying to safeguard the privacy of the user and this way the website owners are also getting the accurate organic search data which is not influenced by personalized search preferences.

From the SEO perspective the only thing affected is the reports which tell the website owner about how many people visited their site while they were logged in to their Google account in the form of the “not provided” keyword. This as mentioned earlier makes them shift their attention to the content and keyword correlation and CTR to the data available in the WMT for atleast the first 1000 queries. This widened focus will definitely ensure more quality content on the web and that is a good thing.

I fail to understand why this made the SEOs attack Google with accusations , because according to me all these changes are drawing a clear, distinct line between organic search campaigns and paid campaigns and carving a niche for the SEO industry where the focus is on the holistic and overall quality aspects of the website rather than the cost paid for every click received.

Related Posts:

http://blog.webpro.in/2011/10/is-googles-encrypted-search-bane-or.html

http://www.seocopywriting.com/content-marketing/why-googles-recent-changes-mean-good-news-for-the-seo-industry/

The Evolution Of Search In Six Minutes By Google

2011-11-29T00:50:00.001-05:00

Google published a video on their official search blog essaying a short history of the evolution of search, highlighting some of the most important milestones from the past decade—and a taste of what’s coming next.

Amit Singhal at the discussion hosted by Church Hill Club had openly explained the testing procedure of every algorithmic update at Google. He says that the focus has always been “DO What Is Best For The User”

Search behavior is always evolving and Google keeps on trying to keep up with the pace of this evolution in search and hence the search algorithm get updated nearly on a daily basis.

As part of making the video Google has also created a timeline of search features. The timeline categorizes the different kinds of Universal Results and Quick Answers Google has over the years:

With this kind of approach to search one can only say that search is ever evolving, dynamic and here to stay. Hence ignoring an overall search presence is the biggest mistake one can make.

Is The SEO Of Your Website On External Link Steroids – A Case Study

2011-11-28T11:17:00.001-05:00

Sometime back we had conducted a SEO Training Programme at Ahmedabad Management Association which was attended by many professionals from the Internet Marketing Industry and also by Marketing Managers of some companies.

After all the SEO training sessions were over one of the marketing managers after a few days called up to discuss some points related to the SEO of their site.

The main points were as follows:

We are ranking for many keywords but only the home page of our site is ranking as they did not have any idea about Google Analytics and Landing pages. ( After the SEO training programme they did an SEO audit on their site and found this.)
The SEO has given us a list of some 1000+ links are these links valid and relevant.
The On-Page of our site is practically zero but yet we have the page 1 rankings for so many keywords so is it correct to let the site be as it is.
The most valid question and concern was , what should we do to future proof the SEO of our site though we have the rankings.

Firstly, I was very happy at the fact that the training programme conducted by us had made them think beyond rankings for an SEO campaign and they were open for an approach of an overall quality presence rather than just being satisfied with page 1 rankings.

After the initial analysis it was found that:

The on-page factors were not as per the norms
The inbound links were not from authority sites with anchor text which just mentioned the domain name and all the links were to the home page.
The client was totally unaware about Google Analytics metrics and was not sure if the site was added to any webmaster tools account.
The client only got the ranking report regularly without any further analysis of any other metrics.
The client was not aware of the search and social media integration and did not have a blog or social media accounts.
Other technical factors like canonicalization, customized 404 pages, XML Sitemaps, etc. were not in place either.

In short only submission to some directories and link building was done in the name of SEO but surprisingly the site was ranking well.

There have been many such cases in the past too when the rankings have been achieved only by link building and though the links were not quality links but due to the sheer high no. of links the site had got a temporary boost but the website owners have approached us when the site suddenly disappeared from the search engines.

Hence I thought of sharing this case study. It is very difficult to say how long the benefit of such rankings will accrue to the site but it is very important for every website owner to know that a complete SEO campaign caters to the following aspects of the site.

On Page Factors as per the norms of the search engines and W3C
Off Page Factors which help create an ambience of natural external links to the site
The site should also have the potential to rank for local intent keywords and have a local search presence
The technical factors also should have been attended to
The client should also be given an overview of the analytics and
Should be guided to start a blog and engage on social media to benefit from the integration of social media and search.

No doubt quality inbound links are important but just focusing on one aspect gives a lopsided growth which may be working like steroids and giving a temporary boost which is not the main goal of a genuine SEO campaign. Once these directories close down or if the external websites remove the links the rankings are bound to get affected and the site will be lost in the invisible web.

Real Time Reports In Google Analytics

2011-11-17T07:01:00.001-05:00

Author : Bharati Ahuja

Google has recently launched the Google Analytics Real-Time Reports : a set of new reports that show what’s happening on your site as it happens.

Real-Time reports are available in the new version of Google Analytics, and administrators with Analytics accounts will get Real-Time reports.

Google on its blog mentioned the following 3 ways one can use this data:

Measure Social Media Impact
Campaign Measurement
Accessing Real Time

With Real Time data it is possible to measure, monitor and track the immediate impact of a certain blog post or announcements shared via social media. We can assess the site traffic as a result of a certain tweet. We could also see when the blog stopped receiving the visits from the tweet, which helps know when to re-engage.

Similar is the case when we launch a new campaign and want to know what is working and whether the launch made an impact. The immediate traffic to the site will give us the indication of how well the launch was accepted by the netizens.

This data is available to some selected accounts and will soon be available to all. We have been having access to this data since 1st Week Of October and it surely is a great indicator to how your posts on Twitter are performing.

There is one more way this data can be of great help. Though we have to yet test its usability and ROI but this kind of Real Time Monitoring can help in serving the online customer online at that very moment instead of waiting for him to contact us .

The Real Time Data metrics that you get are as follows:

Top Referrals
Top Keywords
Top Active Pages
Top Locations

Overview:

Locations:

Traffic Sources:

Content:

All this data tells you how many visitors are currently visiting your site as of now and they have reached your site via which source , which keyword , which country and are currently viewing which page. This data is very helpful for an ecommerce site and if a person is appointed for monitoring this data and then cater to such real time visitors by asking the right questions and offer the requisite answers to their questions immediately via a chat feature on the site just like a salesman at a mall attends to the customers atleast during those hours of the day when the site gets maximum traffic.

One can sign up for this on sign up for early access https://services.google.com/fb/forms/realtimeanalytics/.

Google+ Important For You If You Are Serious About Search

2011-11-14T10:42:00.001-05:00

Author : Bharati Ahuja

The social and search integration is nothing new to SEO and
people working on search presence. Till sometime back Google had access to the Twitter Real Time Data. But, as that deal is no longer valid, Google+ real time posts are the readily available social signals to Google.

After the launch of Google Plus , Google also has launched the Google+ Business Pages which help a business to integrate their business presence with their social media presence and create a brand image. One can create a business page in a relevant category as seen below:

• Local Business or Place
• Product or Brand
• Company, Institution or Organization
• Arts, Entertainment or Sports
• Other

With the help of the Direct Connect feature one can inter link a website and the Google+ Business Page which suggests a strong possibilty of using the link graph generated thus.

Secondly, the Ripples feature clearly gives the idea of how easily Google can calculate the social signals like outreach, influence, amplification and the network impact of a post without depending on any third party data.

IMHO Google is currently equipping itself with all the necessary social and search integration features which will be applied suddenly like the Panda Update was applied to the algorithm for content.

Google is very much focused on search and according to me the Google+ initiative is mainly aimed at enhancing the quality of search results which is very much affected due to the mal practices because of link building and content spamming.

The +1s from your friends and associates, The Ripples generated by the circles you are in and the people in your circles should be able to give the necessary vote and the WOM factor which they thought they would get when they introduced the PageRank Technology. But, the PageRank got spammed by the so called link builders

As SEO is always evolving, this social and search integration should take search results at a different level as this time Google does not have to depend on any third party to give them the data . They have control and ownership of all the data they will be using to integrate the social signals with search for the web or mobile or local. Yes, Search is all about SOCIAL, LOCAL & MOBILE which is very well been spun and interwoven by Google into the fabric of Google+

Hence, if you want to future proof your search presence go ahead and create a Google+ Profile and a Business Page if you are still lagging behind.

Related Posts:

http://blog.webpro.in/2011/11/google-business-pages-build-brand-and.html

http://blog.webpro.in/2011/07/do-you-think-you-need-to-make-choice.html

http://blog.webpro.in/2011/07/setting-purpose-of-your-social-media.html

Points Highlighted By Matt Cutts And Amit Singhal at The Keynote Session At Pubcon Vegas 2011 Day 2

2011-11-10T04:46:00.001-05:00

Author : Bharati Ahuja

Following are some of the points which Matt Cutts and Amit Singhal of Google made at the Keynote Session of Pubcon Vegas 2011 on Day 2.

These points have been jotted down by following #pubcon on Twitter.

@mattcutts

The best SEOs don't want to go where search engines are but rather where they will be
What is a cell phone? it's a computer you carry with you everywhere. this will change things enormously
Googlebot is getting smart including processing java script, better understanding of page & content (above the fold)
SEO is not going to die
The web is one of the only places where, if you're a small biz, you can move faster than the big guys
Good editorial links matter. Bad links do not. Quality beats quantity .A really good editorial link can go a long way.
Got a page topped with ads? google's evaluating algo changes to penalize these
SEO is like coaching" helps you put your best face forward.
A special webmaster video for #pubcon: How does Google determine page speed? http://goo.gl/Nvm9z
Google currently looking into figuring out what content is above the fold as part of algorithm
Search is personal and will continue to get more personal.
We can give more data or we can go further back in time
Only rolling out SSL to http://google.com not to Google.ca, Google.fr etc. Just too complicated for now.
Historically SSL is hard to do on different hostnames (i.e. FR, DE) if they decide to rollout international
Number of users with SSL is single-digit percentage in aggregate. Tech sites will be higher due to type of users
There are no plans to offer analytics SSL data in a paid version of analytics
Google looks at over 200 signals to determine link quality.
Some sites may have 10,000 backlinks, but Google may not be crediting any of them. People don't see what links we trust and what links we don't trust.
Depending on the size & content, Google will remove spammy party of site, entire or folder
It's a lot harder to "fake natural" than to "be natural" online in terms of SEO
On press releases: you're going up to someone & asking them to write about you... it's better when someone comes to you

@theamitsinghal

On Author Authority - Visitors want to know a high quality author wrote it and why the author is high quality.
"If your child can learn something from the site, that's how we know it is quality."
If you can tell your child to go to a specific site, consider that "high quality content
It is our desire that every signed in google user has protection & privacy – internationally
At the end of the day, high quality content will win
Google likes to make changes algorithmically because it scales across languages, etc.
Google always prefers algorithms to human intervention.
If the internet remains healthy, Google will remain healthy.

A very big thanks to all the people who shared the event with their live posts on Twitter.

The Right Approach For The Keyword Research Phase Of The SEO Campaign

2011-11-09T05:51:00.000-05:00

Author : Bharati Ahuja

We all know that the whole search process starts with a search query . All the SEO campaigns revolve around having a quality search presence and high rankings for relevant keywords.

There are many keyword Research tools available online but most of them focus on what the keyword search trend has been till date or what kind of search terms are breaking as new searches on the search scene.

No doubt these tools can give a good insight into the past and present search trend and also reflect search behavior to a certain extent. But, I think if one gets too obsessed with the terms and phrases suggested then we sort of limit the circumference of search within those few terms which we focus on.

I think if you focus on the niche head terms of the industry (for which we know the SEO Campaign will have a long gestation period to start giving results) and due importance is given to a larger set of long tail keywords then I think you try to target a larger set of permutations and combinations of the possible targeted searches made for which your site can be found for.

As in the long run the search behavior keeps on changing and also varies from country to country . Keeping all options open for a global audience and targeting for the maximum possible keyword phrases should be the goal for the keyword research phase .

For example if it is an edible oil refinery manufacturers and exporters site based in India

Keywords like

Edible oil refinery manufacturer India
Edible oil refinery suppliers India
Edible oil refinery exporters India
cooking oil refinery manufacturers
cooking oil refinery suppliers
edible oil refining
refining of cooking oil
Edible oil refinery exporters
Vegetable oil refinery manufacturers
Vegetable oil refining
Vegetable oil refinery Exporters
Edible oil refining process
Vegetable oil refining process
Cooking oil refining process

If such a wide range of possibility is kept open for the site to rank then the potential of the site to cater to a wider audience is possible .

Hence instead on focusing on only the keywords suggested by keyword research tools and Adwords also focus on the possible psychologies of people from various geographic areas unless you are focusing only on a very specific region where only the lingo and jargon of that place matters for the search of that site.

People from different places , of different age groups and of different educational backgrounds think differently and use different terminology and jargon. Hence the content of the website should be written keeping this in mind. Instead of focusing on only certain fixed key terms we should try to keep the possibilities of a wider set of permutations and combinations of keyphrases open for the site.

As the basic thing is that the user does not see your keyword tag and search for your site he keys in what comes to his mind and the search engine bot takes that string of query and tries to hunt for the relevant site from the search engine index. So, making your website being available for a wider combination of queries is more beneficial. Like in the above case we want the website to rank if the person writes cooking oil, edible oil or vegetable oil whatever is the lingo and jargon used by the user.

The analytics data in fact can give a good idea of what searches are actually taking place country wise. A detailed discussion with the website owner who has a vast experience regarding his industry also helps. Hence we usually ask for a list of possible terms he thinks his website should come forward when someone is searching on the web from the website owner, then we add our our research results and come up with the widest possible keyword list which can be targeted as per the content available on the site.

Google+ Business Pages – Build A Brand And A Voice For Your Company Locally And Globally

2011-11-08T02:10:00.000-05:00

Author : Bharati Ahuja

Google just announced the introduction of Google+ Business Pages a collection of tools and products that help you grow your audience. At the core of this is Google+ Pages, your site’s identity on Google+.

You can create a Google+ Business Page on https://plus.google.com/pages/create. It’s not yet available for everyone, but will be “soon” according to Google. If it available for you then you will be given the following category options:

Local Business or Place
Product or Brand
Company, Institution or Organization
Arts, Entertainment or Sports
Other

Google+ pages interact in the Google+ world similar to the way that regular Google+ profile owners do - they can

add people to circles,
edit their profile,
share things in Google+,
+1 comments and photos, and
create and join Hangouts.

But Google+ pages and Google+ profiles are not entirely the same.

Differences between Google+ Pages and Google+ Profiles

Pages are extremely similar to profiles, but they have some key differences:
Pages can’t add people to circles until the page is added first or mentioned. Learn more.
Pages can be made for a variety of different entities whereas profiles can only be made for people.
The default privacy setting for elements on your page profile is public.
Pages have the +1 button.
Pages can’t +1 other pages, nor can they +1 stuff on the Web.
Pages can’t play games.
Pages don’t have the option to share to ‘Extended circles’.
Pages don’t receive notifications via email, text, or in the Google bar.
Pages can’t hangout on a mobile device.
Local pages have special fields that help people find the business’ physical location. Learn more about local pages.

Some of the organization business pages already available are
All American Rejects
Anderson Cooper 360
Angry Birds
Barcelona Football Club
Burberry
Dallas Cowboys
Good Morning America
H&M
Macy's
Modelland
The Muppets*
Pepsi
Phoenix Suns
Save the Children
Special Report with Bret Baier
Toyota
Train
WWE
X Games
Zen Bikes

We too just created our page on WebPro Technologies

Google has also uploaded a video regarding business pages:

Its always great to have a clear identity about your business and personal profiles on social media . These kind of demarcations also draw a clear line between social media marketing and social media optimization . As having a social media presence for any business is essential but setting the purpose for using the social media platform wisely to attain maximum reach and benefit is also essential.

Our blog post on http://blog.webpro.in/2011/07/setting-purpose-of-your-social-media.html has more information about it.

The Latest Agorithm Update By Google Focuses On Giving Fresher And More Recent Results

2011-11-04T13:28:00.000-04:00

Author : Bharati Ahuja

Google recently announced that after having the Caffeine Web Indexing System in place which allows Google to crawl and index the web faster and on an enormous scale they have made a significant improvement in the ranking algorithm which has the possibility of affecting 35% of searches.

The search results for those queries which according to Google deserve to be served fresh content shall be impacted. This according to Google is roughly 35% of the queries overall. For example queries related to an event, contest, movie reviews, latest product launch info, current elections, etc.

Library search results do not do justice to these kind of queries but the latest buzz from various microblogging sites and latest blogposts may offer much more relevant search results. As Google aptly writes on its blog - Different searches have different freshness needs.

There are two aspects to this update, first depending on the query the Google algorithm has to decide if that query deserves to be served fresh and latest relevant results from all over the web and secondly the way these results will be presented by Google on the search results page.

Currently it is showing these results on top of the page as shown below:

This is another quality improvement in the search results which is being served by Google. This kind of an update is quite justified keeping in mind the number of people increasing on the social media platforms and an average searcher on search engines who is more search savvy that ever before. Google has always been the best when it comes to search and this improvement proves that they would like to be ahead in all aspects when it comes to search.

If one wants to have a presence on the search results for those queries which deserve fresh search results related to your industry then the only way is to be the first one to blog about the latest topics , tweet or post about it on various social media platforms.

This can be seen in the image below when we made a search for “google algorithm updates”

Google Caffeine infrastructure gave the relevant data to Google by helping it index the web faster and now Google is offering it to its users in a relevant format as search results. Great , search has not been so hot and happening ever before. Although, only time will tell its actual impact , Google is surely gone one step ahead to please its users as far as search is concerned.

The Best Way To Assure Quality Content Is To Innovate, Excel And Work Hard In Real Time

2011-10-26T04:20:00.001-04:00

Author : Bharati Ahuja

With the Panda Update and Google being hell-bent on working on high quality standards for search results the need to keep the web presence updated with high quality content is the need of the hour. Amit Singhal of Google shared with us the definition of Good Quality Content. But, the challenge is how to share fresh good quality content which is knowledge based and will be helpful to the user on a regular basis.

Many are jumping on the band wagon of appointing content writers and thinking of ways and means of churning out content in some form or the other but just content addition is not enough, the content has to supplement and augment the already existing authority, popularity and the ideology of the blog or any web presence that you are trying to promote on the search engines. Authority and popularity cannot be bought it has to be earned over a period of time.

IMHO “There Is No Substitute For Hardwork” and the genuine content is the content which is the reflection of what you do in real time.

Usually when I advise the clients to keep their site updated with fresh quality content , the question which is posed by them is - What else can we write more about our company , we have already written all about it.

That’s where the difference is, we do not have to write for the sake of adding content and come up with an immaculate piece of content by a writer who is politically correct and grammatically correct but share and write about the following:

The company happenings
achievements
faux pas made by your team
efforts put in for making a product more innovative
a solution achieved for a problem faced
the industry ideologies that our company promotes
Share the latest news about the products and services we deal in
Videos about the new outlets opened or achievements celebrated
Discuss customer reactions and review
Support a cause , event or promote industry related conferences, seminars and exhibitions
We all discuss our success but for a change if we discuss some failure and the lessons learnt by that also is something which gets widely read and accepted as it helps others learn from the mistakes made by us.

This way the web presence of your business will become a true reflection of your real time business where there will be no dearth of actual valuable content and this content will be helpful in projecting the true image reflecting the authority, identity and popularity quotient of your business. Every happening, innovation and development in your office or company can become a topic for a blogpost adding valuable content if you think it will help and offer some valuable information your existing customers, potential clients, shareholders or any targeted visitor to your website in some way or the other.

Work hard in the real world to have more satisfied customers and more acheivements in business which helps your business grow and then update and upgrade your virtual business and presence with the real world facts, figures and experiences thereby being in a win-win situation in the virtual world as well as the real world.

The greatest example is Google itself , if we see the Google blog or any other web presence they have – It is always updated with their latest developments and the discussions about what their priniciples and ideologies in practice.

Paid content, like paid links does not have any value, if your business is not living its actual essence in real life. It will soon fizzle out like paid links . But, content generated with a view of updating the existing client with the actual product information or the content which helps the potential client take a decision or the content which makes the shareholder in your business achieve confidence in the company is all content valuable from the user and the search engine perspective.

Genuine, informative and knowledge based content does not only add value to the content aspect of the web presence but also has the potential of getting inbound links in a natural way boosting the web presence multifold .

Content added just for the sake of having more words on your website is like external makeup which gets washed away with time but content by which the company can vouch for and lives by is like inner beauty having a long lasting value for your targeted visitors, you and of course the search engines which can withstand any algoquakes from Google or that matter any search engine.

Spreading The SEO Knowledge Further Beyond Geographical Boundries

2011-10-21T07:10:00.001-04:00

WebPro Technologies conducting an Online SEO Training Session via Skype for participants in the southern part of India.

The session below is on the importance of working on natural inbound links for SEO.

Next we will be conducting a full time SEO Training Programme at Ahmedabad Management Association in November 2011.

Related Posts:

http://blog.webpro.in/2011/03/how-to-re-engineer-existing-inbound.html

http://blog.webpro.in/2010/10/seo-is-about-is-content-intent-and.html

http://blog.webpro.in/2010/08/what-is-all-this-link-building-about.html

Is Google's Encrypted Search, A Bane Or Boon For The SEO Industry?

2011-10-19T14:22:00.002-04:00

Author : Bharati Ahuja

Google recently announced their strategy to make search more secure . Google says as search becomes an increasingly customized experience, we recognize the growing importance of protecting the personalized search results we deliver. As a result, we’re enhancing our default search experience for signed-in users.

This means that in the Google Analytics Report we will no longer see the referrer keyword which initiated the click if the person searching is signed in to his Google Account and this will be applicable only to organic searches. The PPC clicks will continue to see the keyword data as Google has to account for every paid click to the Adwords Account Holder.

This has raised many mixed reactions from the SEO community. In fact a very big hue and cry from the SEO blogs all over the blogosphere that this kind of discrimination of data in Google Analytics is a big step by Google to promote paid search .

Google has further mentioned on the blog post that :

When you search from https://www.google.com, websites you visit from our organic search listings will still know that you came from Google, but won't receive information about each individual query. They can also receive an aggregated list of the top 1,000 search queries that drove traffic to their site for each of the past 30 days through Google Webmaster Tools. This information helps webmasters keep more accurate statistics about their user traffic.

Now it can be understood why before this announcement was made, Google had announced the integration of Google Webmaster Tools and Google Analytics and introduced the Search Engine Optimization option under the Traffic Sources in Google Analytics.

In order to monitor and analyze the keyword data in a holistic manner for an SEO campaign integrating the Google Analytics with Google Webmaster Tools will become necessary.

Though many in the SEO world have taken this development as an attack on the organic search scene, I think it is a qualitative step ahead for SEO for the following reasons:

The keyword data if it comes as a result of personalized search and reflects the organic click in Google Analytics does not reflect the genuine organic click as the SERPs of personalized search vary from the search results when the personalized search is off. The main reason being the fact that when the person is logged in the ranking for that particular query may be much higher due to his preferences and past history. But due to the social media integration in search results it is not only about the history but also about what you have shared on social media using that Google account, hence all the more reason for the person to be totally logged out from his Google Account if he wants to see true and accurate organic SERPs which are not influenced by any personal preference and are a result of the SEO effort put in for that.

The SEOs will have to educate their clients about this change which will make the users more smart about using search and will be able to appreciate genuine search results of SEO campaigns.

This will take SEO campaigns above the metrics of keywords and rankings and the focus will be on other quality metrics like CTR , conversions, bounce rate, etc. which will improve the quality of the web overall as the websites besides being rich in content will have to focus on good landing pages, a proper call to action, page load speed and good navigation which will ensure a better UX .

I Think if Google introduces the continuous scroll for search results along with this development of making search more secure then every SEO campaign will genuinely go beyond the metrics of keywords and rankings and only those SEOs focusing on the true meaning of SEO and working on technical and quality aspects like getting the site getting indexed properly in the search engines, improving the internal architecture, educating the client about his overall web presence will be the ones who will survive.

It is very difficult to know the main objective of Google behind this development. Even if today it may be for promoting paid search as many believe, but in the long run it will surely make the organic search scene more qualitative and carve a genuine and true niche for SEO.

Related Articles On The SEO Blogosphere:

Google To Begin Encrypting Searches & Outbound Clicks By Default With SSL Search

Poll: What does Google dropping keyword data mean for SEOs?

Discussion: Impact of Google's Encrypted Search?

Matt Cutts Answers Some Important SEO Questions

2011-10-17T10:05:00.000-04:00

Matt Cutts had a live Q&A session in September 2011.

View the video below to find what Matt Cutts has say for the following questions.

Do +1′s have any affect on search rankings?
Will you ever count negative meta keywords?
Should I create a native application or a mobile web site to work with all of the mobile platforms?
Will Google Plus allow me to customize my profile?
When can we expect Google Flights to be activated outside of the USA?
How will the +1 on advertisements affect SEO?
Why has the quality of technical search results has gotten poorer since the Panda update?
What do you like better, Facebook or Google Plus?
Will the age of a domain make a difference in how well it shows up in search engine rankings?
When are the next round of Panda Updates expected?
When will Google Plus be available for Google Apps users?
Why was the Panda Update called Panda?
What should be the recommended priority value when you submit your XML sitemap to Google?
Why did Google rank my website without a snippet even though my Meta Description was high quality?
What is the impact of Googlebot finding an extremely high number of pages at once on a site?
can you define that term “Hangouts” with an example?
How should e-commerce websites handle rel=author?
Will rel=author be compatible with business Google Plus?
Can you schedules these Q&A’s weekly like a Matt Cutts podcast?
How can I ensure a website stealing my content won’t get away with it?
Are double 301 redirects ok?
Where is the Orkut?
When is Google going to update PageRanks again?
When will there be a rel=author for the news industry? Why isn’t there one offered now?
How can I get an internship at Google?
Does “Unavailable after” robots tag remove a page completely from the index so you don’t have a problem with a 404 error?
Should I buy my company’s brand on a new top-level domain to secure it?
Does Google identify automatic page redirection with JavaScript?

Google+ Real-time Search Results & Improved Hashtag Support

2011-10-12T21:56:00.002-04:00

Author : Bharati Ahuja

Google+ has rolled out two new features :

1) real-time search results; and

2) improved hashtag support.

when you search in Google+, you'll see a message about new posts the instant they're available. If you click on this message, or select "Most recent", then relevant posts will start appearing in real-time.

We have got so used to using hashtags that it could not be ignored by Google. +Vic Gundotra from Google says You don't have to use hashtags on Google+ (search works fine without them), but when you do, we'll automatically link to search results.

Listen to what he has to say about these 2 new features.

Now with Real Time Search Results on Google+ it won’t be surprising if Google restores back the Real Time Search option on the Google Search Page. In fact looking forward for it to get back.

But it needs to be seen if that would be dominated only by Google+ Real Time Search Results or would also have updates from other social media sites???

After Link Building Spammers, It Is The Content Spammers Trying To Make Hay While The Sun Shines

2011-10-07T05:57:00.000-04:00

Author : Bharati Ahuja

After the PageRank became an important aspect of the Google Algorithm having a direct correlation to the ranking factors, there were many people who resorted to only link building as their main activity giving rise to a link building industry itself.

Well, at the very outset I would say that yes inbound links are important and yes there should be a meticulous effort put in to get natural inbound links and not all people focusing on link building are spammers.

But building links is like building a reputation and gaining the recognition for it . For building a reputation and popularity one needs to put in a lot of effort and links are earned as a part of the web journey of the site and I believe the only links that have value are the links that you have earned . The way you build your reputation in real life similarly you build the quality footprints on the web to gain the recognition by way of relevant inbound links. No amount of link exchanges and adding your website to umpteen directories and portals is going to bring any nutritive link juice to your PageRank .

After the Panda update we see many people claiming themselves to be content writers and offering content writing services. I am saying this as the no. of emails that I used to receive for link requests which were nothing but requests for spammy link exchanges are now decreasing and the no. of emails from companies introducing themselves as content writers is on the rise.

Again I would like to specify like all link building is not spam, all the content writers also do not fall in the spam category . There are some very good companies offering quality content writing as per each website’s niche content and focus . But, the real challenge again here is to separate the grain from the chaff.

There are a few questions to which we should gain meaningful answers before we start investing in content marketing or adding more and more content to our site.

Q1) Why do we need more quality content ?

Google mentioned on its blogpost when they first announced (Feb. 24 2011) the Panda Update 1.0 that

“This update is designed to reduce rankings for low-quality sites—sites which are low-value add for users, copy content from other websites or sites that are just not very useful. At the same time, it will provide better rankings for high-quality sites—sites with original content and information such as research, in-depth reports, thoughtful analysis and so on.”

So, yes quality content is important , but if you read in between the lines , it is not the quantity but the quality of content that is important from the user perspective. So it is not necessary to convert your site into a plethora of articles which will just add words to your site but instead give valuable information about the products and services that you offer so that the user gets the relevant info to take a decision or gets the answer to the question that he is finding and the content on your site serves the purpose of his search which made him click on the landing page of your website.

Q2) What is quality content?

As stated on one of our previous blogposts : http://blog.webpro.in/2011/06/understanding-and-adapting-to-google.html

What Is Quality Content?

Point-wise And In A Precise Manner The Content Reflects High standards Of Quality If the content is :
1. Trust worthy

2. Written by an expert

3. Not duplicated with other variations on the same site

4. The site can be trusted for credit card payments

5. Does not have spelling and style errors

6. The topic is in sync with what the readers want to read about

7. Is original

8. Adds value to the topic

9. Checked for quality standards to provide good UX

10. Unbiased and give both sides of the story

11. Hosted on Domain Authority

12. Is not mass produced

13. Is edited well

14. Trust worthiness related to important matters like health

15. Reflects brand authority

16. Is complete and offers an overall view about the topic

17. Stating facts or discussing the topic with insights

18. Is it worth sharing

19. Having a lot of Ads. Loses the true essence of information and knowledge

20. Is the content worth being printed

21. Is it long enough to be informative

22. Is attention given to detail

23. Is published with good UX

There is more about quality content on the following 2 links:

http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2011/05/more-guidance-on-building-high-quality.html
http://blog.webpro.in/2011/05/quality-content-site-guidelines-and.html

Q3) Can borrowed content or content written just for the sake of adding words to your site work in your favour?

If we read in between the lines of the above stated extract again then we can see Google clearly mentions that :

“…..At the same time, it will provide better rankings for high-quality sites—sites with original content and information such as research, in-depth reports, thoughtful analysis and so on.”

Hence Google wants to give preference and promote authority sites i.e sites which give overall information about the industry trends, offer analysis on the relevant subject of the site, etc.

All this content can only be written by a thought leader of that industry not by people who just spin out content for the sake of filling pages. Hence identifying the right person or the right company for content writing and then selecting and deciding what content and info should be published on your site is a specialized job in itself which I think should be handed over to a very responsible person of your company as this content reflects the opinion and views of your company related to that topic as this kind of correlation establishes you as a thought leader and will help the website positively.

But, what is important to note is that building links , having your site updated with quality content and establishing yourself as an individualistic thought leader are all inter-connected and correlated.

If you share your knowledge via blogposts on your site or write guest posts and share it on social media which has a potential of being shared further it helps you in gaining quality natural links and also in the bargain gives you an identity of being an authority on the topic if it is appreciated by your readers.

If we analyze this further if you have quality content then your site has the potential of getting natural inbound links and the social media platform is the dais on which this display of quality content is possible in the form of links to your site which has the potential of further increasing the inbound links and also establish your authority and reputation on the web.

Q4) How to come up with quality content regularly?

Now, adding quality content regularly can be a challenging task but if you have a strategy then it can be simplified to a certain extent.

· Share knowledge about the topics related to your products and services.

· Write about the industry trends.

· Offer your opinion and analysis about the latest industry trends.

· Display the information graphically if possible with relevant statistics.

· Explain the graphs and statistic reports via a video.

· Publish interviews with authority people of your industry.

· Write about the developments in your company which you would like to share.

· Invite guest posts for your site.

· Be ahead of the rest in sharing news about your industry

· Carry out surveys

· Research on some topic or trend in your industry and share the content

After a proper analysis of the above points one can easily plan a content strategy which will surely be a win-win-win from the user , the search engine and the social media perspective as they all are correlated to each other.

My Perspective On How The Correlation and Causation Concepts Are Correlated to SEO

2011-09-28T03:50:00.000-04:00

Author : Bharati Ahuja

Recently as per my observation and experience, I think more and more people are understanding the true meaning of optimizing a site for search engines and are preparing themselves to accept the fact that SEO is a long term proposition and an ongoing process .

The search engines will constantly upgrade and improve their algorithms and keep shifting the priorities of the ranking factors for maintaining the quality of search results. Hence keeping an eye on the shifting priorities and the algo updates is a constant R & D effort which has to be put in unconditionally by every SEO.

The correlation and the causation aspect is being discussed and talked about a lot in the SEO blogosphere and conferences but, before we start correlating these two terms with the SEO world let us understand a few definitions:

What is Correlation:

Correlation is a statistical measurement of the relationship between two variables. Possible correlations range from +1 to –1. A zero correlation indicates that there is no relationship between the variables. A correlation of –1 indicates a perfect negative correlation, meaning that as one variable goes up, the other goes down. A correlation of +1 indicates a perfect positive correlation, meaning that both variables move in the same direction together.

What is Coeffecient of Corelation and A Rank Corelation:

A coefficient is a multiplicative factor in some term of an expression (or of a series) it is a measure of the strength of the linear relationship between two variables that is defined in terms of the (sample) covariance of the variables divided by their (sample) standard deviations. An increasing rank correlation coefficient implies increasing agreement between rankings. The coefficient is inside the interval [−1, 1] and assumes the value:

−1 if the disagreement between the two rankings is perfect; one ranking is the reverse of the other.
0 if the rankings are completely independent.
1 if the agreement between the two rankings is perfect; the two rankings are the same.

In statistics, a rank correlation is the relationship between different rankings of the same set of items. A rank correlation coefficient measures the degree of similarity between two rankings, and can be used to assess its significance. A ranking is a relationship between a set of items such that, for any two items, the first is either 'ranked higher than', 'ranked lower than' or 'ranked equal to' the second

What is Causation:

It is the act or fact of causing; the production of an effect by a cause . Basically the relationship of cause and effect, the act or process of causing, the act or agency which produces an effect.

Let us come back to the SEO world and try to correlate the importance of the above mentioned definitions for SEO.

The actual task of SEO is very difficult to define.

It is a whole package of :

on-page optimization
off-page optimization
working on good quality inbound links
creating a potential for the site so that it starts getting natural links over a period of time
brand building
helping the site to become more social media friendly and Social Media ready so that the site gets the links and the social acceptance with a quality buzz around it and
last but not the least the regular monitoring and measuring of the analytics to ensure that everything is being geared in the right direction and there is constant improvement in the SEO metrics.

This regular monitoring is the stage where actually an SEO gets the idea about what is working for the site and what is going against it as every site is different and has different objectives to achieve. This monitoring also helps you analyze and study data from the R&D perspective as this regular monitoring of the relevant data gives you an idea about the correlations between what changes you made on the site and what results or effects were visible in the data set. Google analytics can give you a good idea about these correlations with the help of the custom reports feature.

Google says there is a combination of more than 200 ranking factors which determine the rankings of the search results and the priorities keep on changing hence if you make some changes on-page and off-page and you see a direct effect on the results you can know what factors are being given preference to by Google. In other words you can correlate the SEO changes and modifications made by you to the changes you see in the results as per the SEO metrics.

For example:

1) If you make the changes in the title tags of some of the pages and you see that page being ranked higher than before and the Google Analytics shows that page as the landing page for the keywords it was targeted and shows an increase in the no. of new visits and shows the source as search engines then you can be sure that there is a causation and this improvement can be correlated to the title tag changes made and one can conclude that this correlation is positive .

2) If you add a canonical tag and the those pages get deindexed and you lose the rankings then you know that this causation is due to the negative correlation between the two variables i.e the canonical tag and the loss of rankings .

The above two are very simple examples but if there are atleast 200 ranking factors then there are atleast 200 variables which can be assessed over a period of time for the various causations in the SEO metrics you want to measure.

When we say that the constant monitoring of the site is one of the major SEO deliverables, we mean that this correlation analysis of various factors on the causation of results is the main focus.

Data in itself does not have any value unless it is analyzed and understood so that corrective actions can be taken, otherwise it is like a car without a driver. You can use the car efficiently only if you have a good driver. Similarly you can make use of the Google Analytics data if you have a good analyst who can correlate between the metrics and understand the effect on the result oriented metrics.

Some points to ponder on this concept of correlation and causation are:

Almost all SEO is correlative rather than causative.
Moreover , a correlation need not be causative.
You need a sizable chunk of data over a period of time (atleast 4-6 months) in order to establish any connect between the correlation and causation to come to any conclusion.
This correlation analysis requires a lot of time, effort and an eye for detail by an expert
Jumping to quick conclusions will just cause more confusion

Always keep a list of SEO changes made on the site date-wise and preferably also write down the anticipated changes on the concerned metrics as expected by you and then study the effects on the concerned metrics over a period of time (atleast for 4 months) before you come to a conclusion.

When we say SEO is an ongoing process this is one of the major SEO tasks which need to be undertaken regularly by every SEO for every site as every site is different and needs to be analyzed and studied as per what metrics matter the most for that site.

SEO is becoming more and more specialized and the whole SEO task needs to be conducted by various experts to get the most out of every SEO campaign. Ideally if a SEO company needs to take more no. of SEO projects and do justice to the SEO campaign then the SEO team should comprise of experts in the following fields:

Keyword Research
On-Page SEO
Off-Page SEO
Natural Link Building Engineers
Social Media Strategists
Analytics
Research and Development Analysts whose job is to keep an eye on what changes are being reported by Google on their various blogs and other authority sites
Coordinators who can convey the SEO process and progress to the clients keeping the training aspect in mind so that every meeting with the client enriches the client with the SEO relevant knowledge in a very simple way so that he is convinced to renew the contract year after year.

An SEO campaign conducted by such a team will surely ensure a quality SEO campaign but will surely cost more too. SEO is very simple and can be done using the DIY method but to ensure a long term success and for future proofing your site from the unexpected algoquakes by Google hiring experts is the best option as every job in itself is a specialized job which demands the relevant knowledge in that niche field.

SMX East 2011 – Part 2

2011-09-20T16:17:00.000-04:00

Day 1 at SMX East ended with an evening forum with Danny Sullivan which had an overall focus on search and social.

Some of the statements made by Danny Sullivan and which were shared on Twitter were:

It’s a Google’s world. We just rank in it. Or not.
The 4 Cs Of SEO Success: Code, Content, Connections (links) & Conversation (social).
Link Earning instead of Link Building
Is link building dead? Great question asked by audience member. Audience & @dannysullivan say no!
Social media is the new link building
Reminder to all: .Co is fine, .Com is always good, & .Co.CC was the pure evil that got obliterated.
You rock as a brand if the CPC for your brand is pennies on the dollar and you have 8 sitelinks.
Is there a way to know when you have arrived as brand? - Yes, when you have a Google ad rep
If people leave the site because their info need was fulfilled it's not a bounce
"If you have no Panda problems, don't fix things"

On Day 2 - 14th Sept. 2011 My Focus was on the Technical SEO Track Sessions.

They were as follows:

Duplication, Aggregation, Syndication, Affiliates, Scraping, and Information Architecture

Presented By:

· Brian Cosgrove, TPG
· Vanessa Fox, Search Engine Land
· Matt Heist, High Gear Media

Too much syndicated content dilutes the value of the original content.
THE CHALLENGES - Feeds from suppliers, Too many categories, Items are too similar
Writing unique content is the cost-of-entry for SEO
TOOLSET FOR SUCCESS - SEO Strategy, Keyword Mapping, Content Strategy,Work flow,Style Guide,Content Calendar, Creative Brief
If you have too many sites and the content is distributed and thin then it is not good
Have fewer but content rich sites with clear audience segments
Content resonates in search AND social.
With the evolution of Social (joining Search from a distribution perspective), premium content that is authoritative AND fresh will flourish

Schema.org, Rel=Author & Meta Tagging For 2012

Presented By:

· Janet Driscoll Miller, Search Mojo
· Topher Kohan, CNN
· Jack Menzel, Google

Semantic (Structured Code) The semantic web is a “man made woven web of data” that facilitates machines to understand the semantics .
TYPES OF STRUCTURED DATA FOR SEO - Rich Snippets, Rel=Author, Schema.org
TYPES OF RICH SNIPPETS Reviews , People, Products, Businesses & Organizations, Recipes, Events, Music
REL=AUTHOR RESTRICTIONS - Doesn’t support multiple author blogs , Only works on same site (i.e. won’t work yet for syndicated content), Only works on self-hosted sites
SCHEMA.ORG - Created by Google, Bing and Yahoo! - Launched June 2, 2011 - Way for engines to easily identify types of content
Some Problems - Schema is a “New” mark-up, Standards not in place, Not a big ROI right now
But, it is the right time to implement as these are in all probability to be given importance by the search engine. Hence, when they will become a priority the site which already has these snippets and microformats in place will have a probability to be ahead .
Best Time to Implement is when - Moving to a new CMS, Launching new templates, Launching a new site, Site redesign, Down dev cycles
Some of our related blog posts on this topic are:

http://blog.webpro.in/2010/05/what-is-hcard-integration.html

http://blog.webpro.in/2011/06/authorship-markup-and-rel-attribute.html

Real Answers For Technical SEO Problems

Presented By:

· Vanessa Fox, Search Engine Land
· Todd Nemet, Nine By Blue

The main discussion was on - How To Evaluate Site Architecture For Technical SEO Without Launching A Browser?

Look at things like… Network, Web access logs, HTTP response codes, HTTP response headers and talk to the network admins/developers
Checking load balancing
Checking server latency
Checking network latency
Checking for duplicate sites
Web access log analysis
Monitor and check crawling inefficiency
Identify Duplicate Content Problems
Have a proper error handling page
Make the site Cache friendly

Making Data From Google Webmaster Central & Bing Webmaster Tools Actionable

Presented By:
· Duane Forrester, Bing
· Vanessa Fox, Search Engine Land
· Tiffany Oberoi, Google
· Myron Rosmarin, Rosmarin Search Marketing, Inc.

Stop Running Reports. Start Providing Analysis.
Reporting is Pulling data and plugging it into a spreadsheet - Analysis is: Making sense of data, providing insights for improvement and providing explanations
The Webmaster Tools are valuable sources of “Diagnostic Data”that enable you to provide a more thorough analysis of problems your site may have so you can take action toward improvement
Numbers without something to compare to don’t mean much.
Everything is Relative
Pull data at appropriate time intervals

Eventually everyone has to accept the fact as Danny Sullivan said that it’s a Google’s world and we rank in it or not… The presentation’s last slide said: :)

God, grant me the serenity to accept

the things I cannot change,

Courage to change the things I can,

And wisdom to know the difference.

Day 3 Sept. 15th 2011

The conference on the third day was only for half a day till 3:00 p.m

Link Building: Why You're Doing It Wrong

Presented By

· Jenny Halasz, Nine by Blue
· Byrne Hobart, Digital Due Diligence
· Rae Hoffman-Dolan, Sugarrae SEO Firm

Link building is important. But,

Try to build natural links. Go for quality over quantity
Guest Post = Your Inbound Link Value
When you write guest posts see that you put few links and make the post as informative as possible
When you write a guest post or any blog post on any general topic try to correlate it with your niche industry so that it has a probability of going viral in both the fields

According to Rae Hoffman-Dolan Points to consider…

Check for existing writer guidelines before contacting
Send personal and individual emails
Use names whenever possible
Prove you’re not a bot
Ask a genuine question
Never assume they know who you are
Include a potential topic idea and example post
DO NOT MENTION LINKS (but do mention edits)

Beyond Rankings: Actionable SEO Reports Your Boss Will Love

Presented By:
· Vanessa Fox, Search Engine Land
· Max Thomas, Thunder SEO
· Marty Weintraub, aimClear

Rankings as a metric is easy to understand hence the popularity but, Only looking at rankings does not give an idea about indexing and crawling
Measure the impact of changes made on the site
Monitor Errors Over time alongwith Google Page Not found errors

According to Vanessa Fox :

Do not look at keyWords look at people use searcher personas to connect SEO to conversion Personas > related pages for those personas > Keywords for those pages > Rankings for those pages

Cluster by category impressions, clicks, CTR, Avg. Position
Organic impressions = Technical SEO + Sematic SEO
The Title tags the main tag responsible for high CTR
If you have high rankings and If your CTR is bad then your title tags are probably bad.
People don’t pay for what they don’t understand.
Empower Your Primary Client
Make it easy for them to convey easily what’s happening Don’t wait for them to tell you. Figure it out. Ask questions.

Reports Should Demonstrate:

What’s working
What’s not
Where to focus resources
Connection of SEO/SMM to sales (or conversions)
How to explain to key decision makers so they understand

Don’t highlight their LACK of digital knowledge. Instead chalk out the difference between goals and metrics very clearly in a layman’s language. Do not use digital jargon while conveying the importance of goals or explaining the metrics to the client. One size Report does not fit all. Reporting should be done as per the client’s understanding.

SMX East 2011 – Part 1

2011-09-19T14:37:00.000-04:00

SMX East 2011 conducted from the 13th of Sept. to 15th of Sept. in New York had the agenda focusing on the following categorized topics Day-wise:

Day 1– 13th Sept. 2011	Day 2 – 14th Sept. 2011	Day 3– 15th Sept. 2011
SMX Boot Camp	Social And Vertical Search	SEO
The Big Picture	The Big Picture	Analytics & Conversions
Enterprise & In-House	Technical SEO	SoLoMo
Best Of SMX Advanced	Paid Search	Paid Search
Sponsors And Partners	Sponsors & Partners and Site Clinics	Site Clinics

The complete agenda can be viewed on http://searchmarketingexpo.com/east/agenda

My main area of interest was organic search hence I attended the sessions focused on SEO.

An SEO conference is a platform for multiple sessions and it is very difficult to make a choice of what to attend but the main highlights and takeaways of what sessions I attended are as follows:

Day 1 – 13th Sept. 2011

The Big Picture Track - The Great Correlation vs. Causation Debate
Presented by:
· Eric Enge, Stone Temple Consulting
· Micah Fisher-Kirshner, Become, Inc
· Mitul Gandhi, seoClarity
· Kristine Schachinger, SitesWithoutWalls.com
· Tony Wright, WrightIMC

Correlation is: A mutual relation between two or more things where one has a measurable effect on the other.
Causation is: A relationship in which one action or event is the direct consequence of another.
In every Causal relationship there is a Correlative One, but there is not a causal effect in every correlative one
We sometimes perceive something to have an effect but it may not have an effect as that can be a misperception.
The only way to eliminate false positives are is to measure test everything over a period of time with a wide array of data.
Almost everything in SEO is correlative not causative.
In causal relationships, you can directly measure that A does CAUSE B
In correlative relationships, you can only measure the STRENGTH of the effect of A on B
Correlations are a place to start not an end. Have a sanity check and and question its sensibility before coming to conclusions.
Before testing be sure of what is the return on your investment to collect and test this data?
Make sure that you are considering all important variables in time and do not rely only on snapshots in a short time span.
Be sure you have enough data and factors to run a linear regression
SEO is on a time line on a linear position. A single trend is not a pattern or a causal relationship.

The Big Picture Track

Panda-Proofing Your Content
Presented By:

· Justin Briggs, Distilled
· Horst Joepen, Searchmetrics
· Heather Lloyd-Martin, SuccessWorks Search Marketing
· Chris Silver Smith, KeyRelevance

Only 12% of websites in Google index were affected by Panda update – Matt Cutts
We are content marketers if we have a blog or a site.
“Panda isn’t simply an algorithm update. It’s a platform for new ways to understand the web and understand user experience.” (Vanessa Fox)
“It’s not a new algorithm – it’s a new factor.” (Danny Sullivan)
“It is easier to reliably detect social spam than link spam.” (Stefan Weitz and Maile Ohye)
Combination of automated metrics and human factors;
It’s a method for modelling webpages and websites which have certain usage profile combinations, scoring those combos, then using the scores to rank pages. (Chris Silver Smith)
When you produce cheap content then it is not meeting any goal
Create Quality content – Search Engines do not pay your bills your customers do.
Stop asking what Google wants. Find out what your users want.
Evaluate your content assets
Plan the Repurpose of content
Develop an editorial calendar
Watchdog the quality
Leverage it when properly planned and evaluate
Get everyone on the same page about SEO content. This could be a quick discussion - or an in-house training. Consider what works best for your team

Enterprise & In House Track

In-House SEO Operations: How Things Get Done

Presented By:

· Laura Callow, intuit
· Simon Heseltine, AOL Inc.
· Erika Mamber, Demand Media
· Ulli Muenker , Bloomberg

Use SEO as one of the fundamental building blocks in everything you do on your website.
Ensure SEO is a part of the DNA of your organization.
Build buzz and cultivate mindshare.
Tailor the buzz for the relevant audience and add your spin
Make it actionable
Be seen, be heard, be involved
Educate, Elaborate, Excite, Empower, Evangelize
Share the SEO why behind the what, because understanding builds a sense of ownership
If opportunity cost > available resources + cost of vendors
Then hire vendors Else don’t hire vendors
Ensure your team works according to an accountable system for delivery. Boil up to meet company / business objectives and vision

Social Media Engagement Is Much More Than The Count Of Followers, Klout Score, likes, Shares & Google+1s

2011-09-06T14:06:00.000-04:00

Author : Bharati Ahuja

Since Google started focusing on social and real time search results, the search marketers are on a spree to shout out the importance of social media presence to their clients especially for SEO campaigns.

But, the main questions here are:

What is the purpose of the presence ?
What kind of presence will boost the social persona which will have a direct positive correlation and will leverage the search presence and visibility?

Google says, that their main objective is to give relevant search results to the users . For that they keep on working on the search algorithms and keep working on the prioritization of the ranking factors. They introduced the PageRank concept to improve the quality of search results which gave origin to the link spam on the web. To improve upon this when the social media sites got inhabited by users and people started sharing online Google started taking these signals to improve the quality of search results. The main reason being that if people recommend a certain product or appreciate a certain link then it will act like a vote just like an inbound link does. Moreover this kind of recommendation would not only be a vote but a personal preference and a choice too.

Hence if at all a social media presence wants to boost the search visibility then the social media engagement and interaction has to be a quality interaction rather than a voluminous number. Just as in case of inbound links it is the quality links and natural links which Google wants to reward . Similarly if your social media signals convey the message that you share about a certain topic in your niche your identity gets associated with it.

Social persona is all about trust, authority, great content on links which you share and which get shared further via shares and retweets . If the time and effort that you are spending on social media is not creating this kind of persona then you are probably wasting time. Your grandparents are also probably having a facebook presence but their objective is not to pass the social signal juice to Google but maybe its just to keep in touch with you.

Hence to develop the right base to create a right social persona and aura which will generate the right signals to the search engines :

Develop trust by having a regular presence and a genuine complete bio description with links to your site and blog.
Share knowledge by asking and answering questions and thereby prove your authority in your field.
Share links from your site share valuable content and links from other sites to appreciate efforts made by others in the same field or niche that you want to focus on .
As a high conversion rate is more important than more traffic in numbers, a good WOM developed by the social media presence is more important than more no. of followers.
Do not narrow down your circle to only those with whom you are comfortable interacting with widen your circle , follow more and more people to know more about your industry and reach out to more.
Trust cannot be built in a day, work patiently , honestly and genuinely keeping your ego in check so that people feel comfortable to interact and share the industry trends with you but in case things do not go as per your principle you always have the unfollow and block option.
Do not fake a personality. Don’t just try to be a natural but simply be one. In the social world it is not necessary to agree to everyone and please everyone and neither it is true vice versa hence voice your opinions and raise objections when necessary. Have a right avatar pic which reflects your true personality.

Your Klout score, no. of followers, no. of likes, shares, +1s, etc. will all be meaningless if you do not meet the above quality criteria as Google will leverage your search presence and visibility when people trust you, consider you as an authority in your field or atleast as an active participant in the discussions related to your niche who has personal opinions to share and has a genuine identity.

The Importance Of Attending SEO Conferences , Expos And Events

2011-09-03T12:34:00.000-04:00

Author : Bharati Ahuja

Knowledge has to be improved, challenged, and increased constantly, or it vanishes. Peter F. Drucker

Since 2000, I have been upgrading my knowledge about SEO from the various blogs, forums, discussions and of course the plethora of information available on the Google webmaster blog and videos. The knowledge has been implemented on numerous websites to gain the necessary search engine presence and improve valuation of the digital assets of the companies concerned since then.

The field of search marketing is constantly changing as the search engines keep on upgrading their algorithms and the search behavior of the people also undergoes evolution over a period of time.

To keep up to that pace of upgradation is a challenge in itself. Though there is a lot of fresh information on the web about the latest developments in the field there comes a time atleast once a year when you want to interact with other professionals in your field to exchange news and views to get the confirmation and the confidence about all the self learning a person does.

In mid 2000 I used to search for such conferences , workshops, seminars and meetups so that I could get a chance to listen to other like-minded people , discuss and share knowledge and information mainly about organic search. But, usually such conferences were either held in Europe , America or Australia. In India I managed to attend some workshops organized by Google but they were focused on Adwords as a Google Product rather than SEO.

Such conferences are real time social media interactions which make you speak and listen as you discuss, share and thereby enhance your knowledge. Even if you are the shy kind you get to learn a lot merely by observation which have a lasting impression opening up new vistas of thought and imagination. As someone has aptly said,”The true sign of intelligence is not knowledge but imagination”

With this purpose of reaching out to people and sharing knowledge about SEO in 2007 I had approached Ahmedabad Management Association and offered the SEO programme designed by me which they readily accepted and as I had expected all the participants were people related to the web development and web marketing industry who were all on the lookout for such programmes to get confirmation and confidence about what they knew about SEO. This year in October we will be reaching out to other cities via our “Online SEO Training Programmes”.

Of course the opportunities vary from country to country and the decision of attending such conferences and workshops depend on the budgets, the distance to be travelled and the no. of days that you can spare for such an activity. But, Especially for the search industry I think as we make provisions from our business funds for Research and Development, Branding, etc. we should also create budgets, reserves , provisions and save for attending conferences and workshops which in the long run prove to be an investment rather than an expense.

Such conferences do not only give knowledge gaining and marketing opportunities to the professionals of that niche industry but if well coordinated , conducted and organized are giving rise to the MICE (meetings, incentives, conferences and exhibitions/events) tourism market which give an overall boost to the economy.

For the first time in Jan 2011 ClickAsiaSummit was held in India at Mumbai which was totally focused on Search and Social on a large scale inviting speaker from other parts of the world.

I find myself lucky to be able to attend a second conference this year that is SMX East to be held in New York from 13th Sept. 2011 to 15th Sept. 2011 and I look forward to attend all the sessions focused on SEO.

Danny Sullivan on http://daggle.com/lessons-thoughts-year-anniversary-starting-business-2649 has mentioned about the SMX East conference to be - "........on track to be our biggest search marketing conference ever, SMX East, with record attendance."

Related Links About Conferences and Events:

http://searchmarketingexpo.com/east/

http://blog.webpro.in/2011/01/highlights-of-conference-click-asia.html

http://sphinn.com/story/210293/

http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2008-08-06/news/27704880_1_tourism-market-tourism-secy-mice

A New Dimension To Ecommerce And Online Shopping

2011-08-24T01:51:00.000-04:00

Author : Bharati Ahuja

TESCO has been adjusting to the local Korean market and had to compete with the numero uno company in Korea that is Emart .

For this they had to find an answer to the question - Could we become no. 1 without increasing the no. of stores?

And they did find a unique, enterprising innovative answer which has brought them to the 2nd position in Korea.

View the video for the answer:

Main Takeaway:

Don’t wait for people to come to your store or wait for them to find you on the internet and search engines. Go one step ahead and take the store to the people.

Make it available wherever you think people can squeeze in some time to use their smart phones to shop.

Don't wait for them to find and search for your store. Create Virtual Stores to blend into their everyday lives.

A true blend of virtual and real time life.

Innovative Indeed.

Google+ Verification Badges For Profiles

2011-08-20T12:35:00.000-04:00

Google Is rolling out profile verification badges for celebrities, public figures, and people who have been added to lots of circles.

Google says that this is just the beginning and have not stated that how a profile can be applied for a verification badge.

Google Testing Infinite Scroll On The Search Results Page

2011-08-18T08:12:00.001-04:00

Author : Bharati Ahuja

There is an article on http://searchengineland.com/yes-google-is-testing-infinite-scroll-web-results-89659 today that Google has confirmed that they are indeed testing a form of infinite scroll web search results.

I have not seen this feature live on Google as yet but, if this feature goes live then I think it is going to be a quality improvement on the search results page.

It will be win-win situation for all, the user, the website owner, the search engines and SEOs.

The User Perspective:

If the scrolling is fast and easy then then user will surely scroll for more for a wider range of search results before taking a decision.

Website Owner Perspective:

The website owner will be less obsessed for getting his website ranked on Page 1 and focus more on quality aspects of the website.

The SEO Perspective:

The statement “SEO Is Beyond SERPs” will get its true meaning and SEO discussions will be beyond Page 1 rankings finally. Making the site stand out with a perfect title and description will be the main focus for getting a high CTR for the site.

The Search Engine Perspective:

The search results page will get a quality and meaningful update and will add more speed to the search activity. The user will be able to search more in less time. The search results page will become truly mobile friendly.

Overall it is going to be a smart move by Google if this gets finalized as I do not think there can be any reason why the user will reject such a development on the search page. After Google Instant this infinite scrolling feature will add the instant factor to the whole search process when searched from the desktop, tablet or mobile.

Hope Google makes the Infinite Sroll Web Results feature go live instantly.

Matt Cutts Webmaster Video On “Underscore v/s Dashes In Urls”

2011-08-17T05:09:00.002-04:00

Matt Cutts in this video explains how Google interprets the underscores and dashes in the URLs.

I was under the impression that there is not such thing like an underscore in the English language and the dash being a hyphen would separate the words and take each word separately , but there is more to it.

Dashes are preferred over an underscore in the URL as a dash does separate out each term and each term gets indexed separately but an underscore joins the terms and indexes it as one term.

If you already have a site which has used an underscore in URLs you need not bother to change all the URLs as it is not very much a ranking factor. But incase you are developing a new site then opting for dashes in the URL is the correct option.

Niche Social Networking Sites - IHadCancer.com: Connects Cancer Victims Through Social Media

2011-08-14T07:39:00.001-04:00

Niche social networking sites are sites focused on a specific cause, issue or a topic and target a specific audience. These kind of networking sites offer a more meaningful platform for sharing and offering solutions related to that niche.

This kind of segmentation proves the point that people want to find solutions and share on the internet but want to be away from the meaningless noise and want to find a targeted audience where a meaningful, focused and helpful interaction is possible.

One great example is http://ihadcancer.com an initiative by by Mailet Lopez (a cancer survivor) and the team at Squeaky Wheel Media in New York City. I Had Cancer allows cancer survivors, fighters and those newly diagnosed and their supporters, the friends & families of those affected to connect with one another and share their stories and experience of dealing with the deadly disease.

More WebProNews Videos

Related Links:

http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/info/cancer-oncology/

Matt Cutts, Ben Gomes and Amit Singhal From Google Give You An Inside Look On How Search Works

2011-08-12T14:32:00.003-04:00

This video is about Google's search leaders Matt Cutts, Ben Gomes and Amit Singhal who give you an inside look on how search works, they share stories on what it has been like to work together over the past decade, and discuss where they see search heading in the future. Moderated by Search Engine Land's Danny Sullivan.

It is a must view for all the people who are passionate about search and want to have an insight about how Google deals with search and search algorithms.

Some of the points discussed in the video are:

Amit Singhal introduces himself and says that academically he has done Masters In Search and a PhD in search – (Well he says yes there is such a thing but this back when search was the sleepy domain for the librarians)

Ben Golmes shares that when he joined Google his previous Boss had asked him “Do you think Google will ever be 1/10th size of Altavista?”

Matt Cutts introduces himself and says that he was a graphics guy and wrote the first version of safe search at Google and in the process found out that there are bad guys on the internet and since then he has been dealing with them now as the head of the web spam team of Google.

We take simple principles of how language behaves and build algorithms based on those principles in an environment of the modern web.In the real world these algorithms are challenged with all its complexities and the most relevant pages have to be produced for the query made by the user.

Danny Sullivan asks Google how do you decide what is not working and what is broken and how to fix it?

Amit Singhal says all their algorithmic changes are based on one principle that is - So what is best for the user, they develop science around it and then measure what is best for the user.

He further says that there is rigorous testing done before they finalize on any ranking algorithm update. There are approx. 500 changes to algorithm every year and Google runs around 20000 tests every year.

The answers to the following questions are considered along with many other considerations before deciding to go ahead with the new algorithm.

Is it good for the web eco system at large?
Would it benefit authors?
Would it benefit high quality content?
Would it keep the Google system simple so that it can be maintained much longer?

Ben Golmes adds that being very rigorous for testing is essential to the speed of moving fast so that they are constantly sure that they are the best for the users at any given point.

Matt Cutts says that at times under certain circumstances they may take manual action.

Matt says at Google we are obsessed about speed and we would like to give the most relevant result as fast as possible to the user.

All search in the future seems to be mobile and Danny Sullivan adds that we will not even be searching but it will be happening to us.

Bharati Ahuja
Some Related Links:

http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2011/08/high-quality-sites-algorithm-launched.html

http://blog.webpro.in/2011/06/understanding-and-adapting-to-google.html

http://blog.webpro.in/2011/03/all-about-farmer-algorithm-update-of.html

Is There A Limit To How Many 301 (Permanent) Redirects I Can Do On A Site? Video - By Matt Cutts

2011-08-10T01:54:00.002-04:00

Matt Cutts recently posted on Google+ that Google has recently recorded ~30 new in-depth videos and ~60 new quick-answer videos. This is the first in-depth video, and it's about 301 (permanent) redirects.

Is there a limit to how many 301 (Permanent) redirects I can do on a site?

According to this video:

There is no limit to the no. of 301 redirects that a site can have.
Instead of redirecting every 301 to the root it should be redirected to the actual URL of the new site.
Its ideal to do a redirect in one hop instead of having more no. of hops as the bot may lose track
Use this 301 redirect only if the URL shift is permanent. If it is a temporary one and you would like to get back to the previous URL after some time then the 302 redirect is the correct option.

Having A Schedule And Being Organized – A Personal Perception

2011-08-02T08:18:00.003-04:00

Author : Bharati Ahuja

Image via Wikipedia

I work as an independent entrepreneur and have a very different approach towards having a team. Instead of developing a team in-house I prefer co.ordinating with professionals and execute the project by allocating the relevant aspects of the project to the identified experts in that field.

And over a period of time some professionals become a necessary part of your organization. This way you get to work with professionals who are passionate about their work and the clients also get high quality results.

One does not have to bother about the team management issues and one can focus on upgrading the quality of service so that satisfied customers generate a WOM which accelerates business opportunities without much direct marketing methods. This in a way encourages entrepreneurship further.

I do not have any qualms about a 9 to 5 job but to each his own. As a job entails a different set of responsibilities and demands a different approach to work as compared to working as an entrepreneur.

Just the other day a business associate after observing my way of working asked me so you do not have any schedule for the day?

The chuckle in his voice made me think – Is this a good thing or a bad thing?

After giving thought to it I realized that yes if you are working 9 to 5 then you need to have a schedule as you are a part of the team and reaching at a fixed time and having a certain way of working according to the systems of the company become very important.

But as an entrepreneur even if you do not have a schedule does not necessarily mean that you are disorganized as the priorities of the day become your schedule.

· If you have a presentation then everything else may take a back seat.

· Especially when you are in online business the working hours can be 24/7 .

· If you need to give quality time to your children at a certain time of the day due to their busy schedules then that day working till late at night becomes something unavoidable.

· That is the plus point of working independently as you decide what is the priority of the moment and work according to the need of the hour which gives a lot of spontaneity of thought and eliminates the element of the boredom which arises due to having a strictly fixed schedule.

· Of course the challenge is of meeting deadlines by repeatedly working on the progress of the project and co-ordinating efficiently with proper communication becomes the focus of every decision .

· As Liz Strauss has mentioned in her article http://www.successful-blog.com/1/be-irresistible-the-7-key-steps-to-becoming-your-own-boss/ It takes commitment to become your own boss — a commitment to yourself, to the people you serve, and to the value of what you offer. That commitment has been in every success you’ve won. Make the commitment and you’ll become an irresistible force.

Setting The Purpose Of Your Social Media Presence - Social Media Marketing V/S Social Media Optimzation

2011-07-30T05:37:00.004-04:00

Author : +Bharati Ahuja

Image via WikipediaEvery online marketer today is harping on the social media mantra but everyone is still experimenting with this media for getting the outreach, visibility and that extra mileage which is possible from this marketing platform but there is no sure shot formula to achieve these objectives.

Hence, it is highly important to focus on the purpose of using the social media sites and have a strategic plan else it is very easy for your voice to go unheard inspite of you putting in so much time, effort and resources.

I am sure every one who has experimented with this media has made mistakes, got carried away with the tweeting and realized the futility of just having a presence on blogs, Twitter, Facebook and now Google+ and not achieving anything out of it despite all the efforts and time which has been invested by them.

Every SEO recommends that the company should have a social media presence and thats a valid suggestion indeed, because the search engines have integrated the social data and signals with search results to add more value, quality and are also adding the preferences of your social network to the search results.

So The Questions That Need To Be Answered By Businesses Are –

what is the purpose of our presence on social media sites?
Is our target to create more klout on the social media site in our niche industry or to make our search presence stronger using social media as one of the options?

The Difference Between Social Media Marketing And Social Media Optimzation

Social Media Marketing is usually creating content and distributing content by sharing it on the social network for maximum out reach. It is usually in the form of a corporate message for its targeted audience which if effective gets shared further just like an advertisement. Its like pushing the message across to more and more people .

Whereas in Social Media Optimization is sharing the content usually in the form of a link so that it gets further shared and people come back to the site so it pulls the targeted visitors to your site via the social media platform.

The selection of the social media platform entirely depends on this purpose .

Social Media Marketing focuses mainly on:

· Advertising

· Direct Selling

· Customer Support

· Public Relations

· Branding

· Communication

· Direct Marketing

· Sales Promotion

· Publicize An Event By Using # tags To Make It A Trending Topic

Social Media Optimization Focuses Mainly On Driving Inbound Traffic From Social Media Sites By:

· Having URL Links For The Content In The Posts So It Can Generate Inbound Traffic

· The Content Can Be In The Form Of Images, Infographics, Videos, News, RSS Feeds, etc.

· Sharing Content Related To Your Industry – Which In A Way Promotes Your Company Beliefs And Value

· Connecting To Communities

· Make Sharing Content Easy So That It Becomes Viral

· Having Rewards For Sharing The Content

· Setting Up The Social Media Profile With A Focus on Linking To The Other Web And Social Media Presence Of the Company To Create Corelation And Improve Quality External Linking.

· On The Proper Bio Description On The Social Media Site In Order To Establish Online Identity And Also Link To The Relevant Site, Blog Or Profile.

Hence , depending on the purpose of your presence on the social media platform the efforts have to be focused on that particular activity to achieve the right objective of either marketing directly or get inbound traffic .

Every business activity needs to have a plan and a purpose , engaging on social media for a business purpose without planning the task is a sheer waste of time and other resources and may harm the social business image of the company rather than heal it and leverage it.

20 Questions Which Help You Judge The Progress Of The SEO Campaign Without Facing The Meteors Of Metrics

2011-07-26T03:33:00.004-04:00

Author : Bharati Ahuja

Image by FindYourSearch via FlickrSearch Is Changing. As A Website Owner, Has Your Attitude, Approach And Expectations From An SEO Campaign Adapted To The Change? Do You Look Beyond The Ranking Report?

Search Marketing has evolved and has more to offer in terms of quality and quantity in the local and global arena. Every search marketer keeps on harping on the fact that search is beyond rankings and is more about quality web presence and having a good inbound web marketing strategy.

You may not be an expert at statistics and analytics and may not like to delve into the metrics and analytics. You may not have time for SEO reports but I am sure you want to judge and get an idea about whether the SEO campaign is on the progressive path in your own way . Especially when you are paying a huge sum for it.

The answers to the following 20 Questions will help you to ascertain your quality footprints on the web which can ensure Quality Inbound Traffic and Long Term Web Presence and also give you an idea about the progress of the SEO campaign.

1. Does your business have a local presence.(Listings in Google Places And Google Maps)?

2. Does your company have a blog?

3. Do people read and comment on the blog posts?

4. Do the images from your website and blog get listed on the image search?

5. Have you uploaded videos about your products, company , etc. on YouTube or on your own server?

6. If you have videos on your server then has a video sitemap been submitted to Google?

7. Do the videos rank in SERPs and Video Option Search Results for the targeted keywords?

8. Which are the major 15-20 search queries (Head &Long Tail) for which the site ranks on Page 1?

9. Are these search queries directly related to your company, product or service?

10. Do people fill the form on your website to contact you?

11. Are these inbound mails from the site increasing?

12. On which country domains is your website ranking?Is this in sync with your geographic target?

13. Are the rankings stable for more than a quarter?

14. Does your website rank for branded and non-branded terms?

15. Does Your Website rank for local intent keywords on organic search (for e.g SEO Ahmedabad)

16. Do the page titles give an idea about what the page is about to the user?

17. Can the user share the content of the page easily to his social media site?

18. Do the images have Alt text which tell more about the image to the user?

19. Does the website have a sitemap for the user?

20. Is the content useful for the user and not stuffed with keywords by the SEO?

The answers to all these above questions give you a quick idea about the progress of your SEO Campaign and overall web presence of your website.

If you want to go by the metrics that matter and want numbers to monitor the progress read the post on the following link:

http://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-analytics-metrics-monitor-the-seo-progress/25493/

The Current Evolutionary Phase of SEO - Its All About Quality Web Presence And Over All Web Strategy

2011-07-23T06:47:00.001-04:00

	Signed-in Personalized Search	Signed-out Personalized Search
Where the data we use to customize is stored	In Web History, linked to your Google Account	On Google's servers, linked to an anonymous browser cookie
How far back we use search history	Indefinitely or until you remove it	Up to 180 days
What searches are used to customize	Only signed-in search activity, and only if you are signed up for Web History	Only signed-out search activity
How to turn off	Remove Web History from your Google Account	Disable these search customizations

SEO Blog India| SEO Training & Solutions Company WebPro Technologies Ahmedabad India

Click Asia Summit 2012 ( Day 3 #CAS12 ) Master Classes By Mahesh Murthy And Gillian Muessig

The Key Takeaways From Click Asia Summit 2012 ( Day 1 and 2 #CAS12) …

Google Adds Google+ To Give Us Search Plus Social Results

Google+ As A Complete Blogging Platform Diverges To Converge And Converges TO Diverge

Some Selected Posts On Search And Social Of 2011 - The WebPro Blog

Age Is No Barrier For Learning New Technologies. Its Just Your Mindset.

Google+ Is Coming Along Riding On The Social Wave….

Saying Bye to SEO 2011 and A Very Big Hi to SEO 2012

Search Queries , Google's Encrypted (Not Provided) Keyword Data And SEO

The Evolution Of Search In Six Minutes By Google

Is The SEO Of Your Website On External Link Steroids – A Case Study

Real Time Reports In Google Analytics

Google+ Important For You If You Are Serious About Search

Points Highlighted By Matt Cutts And Amit Singhal at The Keynote Session At Pubcon Vegas 2011 Day 2

The Right Approach For The Keyword Research Phase Of The SEO Campaign

Google+ Business Pages – Build A Brand And A Voice For Your Company Locally And Globally

The Latest Agorithm Update By Google Focuses On Giving Fresher And More Recent Results

The Best Way To Assure Quality Content Is To Innovate, Excel And Work Hard In Real Time

Spreading The SEO Knowledge Further Beyond Geographical Boundries

Is Google's Encrypted Search, A Bane Or Boon For The SEO Industry?

Matt Cutts Answers Some Important SEO Questions

Google+ Real-time Search Results & Improved Hashtag Support

After Link Building Spammers, It Is The Content Spammers Trying To Make Hay While The Sun Shines

My Perspective On How The Correlation and Causation Concepts Are Correlated to SEO

SMX East 2011 – Part 2

SMX East 2011 – Part 1

Social Media Engagement Is Much More Than The Count Of Followers, Klout Score, likes, Shares & Google+1s

The Importance Of Attending SEO Conferences , Expos And Events

A New Dimension To Ecommerce And Online Shopping

Google+ Verification Badges For Profiles

Google Testing Infinite Scroll On The Search Results Page

Matt Cutts Webmaster Video On “Underscore v/s Dashes In Urls”

Niche Social Networking Sites - IHadCancer.com: Connects Cancer Victims Through Social Media

Matt Cutts, Ben Gomes and Amit Singhal From Google Give You An Inside Look On How Search Works

Is There A Limit To How Many 301 (Permanent) Redirects I Can Do On A Site? Video - By Matt Cutts

Having A Schedule And Being Organized – A Personal Perception

Setting The Purpose Of Your Social Media Presence - Social Media Marketing V/S Social Media Optimzation

20 Questions Which Help You Judge The Progress Of The SEO Campaign Without Facing The Meteors Of Metrics

The Current Evolutionary Phase of SEO - Its All About Quality Web Presence And Over All Web Strategy

Google Plans To Support Brands, Businesses, and Beyond. Google+ Business Profiles For All

Marissa Mayer Reveals The Surprising Origins Of Google

Why Is Your Google+ Profile Important From The Search And Social Media Perspective?

First It Was The TV And Now The Internet Too Targeting Children From An Early Age

Do You Think You Need To Make A Choice Between Google+ And Facebook ?

Women In Tech – A Panel Discussion

Personalized Search Results and Integrated Social Search Results - A Perspective

Google Going Gaga Over Social And Search Newbie Launches In 2011

The Google+ Project : The Social Network Project From Google

The Indian Social Media Landscape Is Changing Fast : Lets Review The Facts

The Purpose Behind Commenting On Blog Posts

Authorship markup And The rel Attribute

Understanding And Adapting To The Google Panda Update - A Simple, Systematic, Straight Forward Approach

Major SEO Factors Influencing The Search Engine Rankings And Web Visibility

Google Announces Instant Pages, Search By Voice, Images At Inside Search Event

An Introduction To Schemas And Schema.org

#SMX Advanced Seattle (8th June 2011) Day 2 (A Curated Resource)

The Happenings And Discussions At #SMX Advanced Seattle On Day 1 - ( 7th June 2011 - A Curated Resource)

The Importance Of Your Twitter Bio

SEO Periodic Table By @sengineland – A Valuable Resource.

Metrics That Matter For SEO And Quality Web Presence

Online Marketing Is About Being Found Where The People Are Searching For You

The Internet , Search and Social Media Have Become An Integral Part Of Our Lives

Content Explosion And Content Curation

Why Is Your Klout Score Important ?