Search Engine Marketing

Worried about a recent drop in your search engine rankings? You are trying to find out the problem and how to get your ranking back to their positions?

Search engine forums as a resource can work wonder for this. They are full of questions from people who have experienced similar situations and are great resources for an answer or two. But if you really want to get to the bottom of the problem and you want to do it yourself.

Following are some of the tips, which help you in evaluating dropped rankings.

Synopsis of Activities Done:

It’s really a great tip for you, retrace you steps i.e. note down entire list of activities which you have done in past 3-4 weeks for your site. Now look for anything that could have negatively affected your content, site structure, or the reliability of your URLs. This entire activity enables you to pick out the problematic event as an answer. Some common situational problems can be:

• You recently moved your site to different Hosting Service Provider: If your site experience a down time during switch over, a search engine visited your site when it was down there is a small chance your rankings would be negatively affected but it will only happen for a short period.

Remedy: Approach Quality hosting companies, which will allow you to setup your site on their servers before the switch takes place so that downtime is minimized if not removed entirely

• Site Structure of Site: If structure of your site changes permanently then don’t forgot to use permanent redirect that tells any visiting search engine to permanently change its index to reflect the new site structure.

Remedy: Redirect the traffic from the old URLs to the new URLs using a 301 redirect

• Checkout for any downtime from your hosting company, if your site offline once the situation is under control. If you found this happens consistently then your rankings can fail.

Remedy: Minimize server downtime to avoid ranking woes. As long as your site is reliably online and has not been offline the rankings should reappear as your site is re-indexed.

Check Server Header

Simply we can understand, it’s a response code by server to Search Engine visiting our site. Server Check is important to verify that no incorrect, unusual or unnecessary commands are stashed in the header of your siteFree Check Tool:
SEO Consultants Check Server Headers Tool
WebRankInfo Server Check Tool

Search Engine Webmasters Tools resources:
Strongly recommended to claim your site on following webmasters tool resources and get regular feedback for you site performance:
Google Webmaster Central
Yahoo Site Explorer
Live Search Webmaster Center

Importance of XML Sitemap: XML sitemap can ensure no pages are missed when the search engines index your website

Check Your Content:
Keep updated your text on website, Google, Yahoo & MSN love to come back within a week or even a day where they find content is updated on regular basis.

Final Tip-Contact SEO Expert or Request a Forum Review:

Finally if you were not able to find out the root cause, I would personally recommend you to approach a reputed SEO company for advice or you can post your ranking problems publicly on a popular search-marketing forum within a resource like Webmaster World.

I was reading a Wharton article(http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/
article.cfm?articleid=1892) on why marketers arent moving into the online space. It is indeed interesting to note that marketers spend 22% of their advertising dollars on TV and only 6% online. The time spent online is 14 hours per week and the time spent watching tv is the same then why the bias towards offline media?

I think the major aspect that prevents marketers from going online lies in the way the web has evolved. From being a resource of information,it has become a participative medium and a platform for discussions and reviews. Marketers are scared that they might have to give up control if they allow the community to define their brand.

I feel this thought is totally unnecessary. If you look at traditional advertising methods such as Tv and print advertising, you only delay the participation of the community. Take for example, a brand like the Maruti Suzuki Versa launches itself amidst a slew of ads both on the print and the TV medium. It uses superstars like Abhishek Bacchhan and Amitabh Bacchan and spends a sufficient amount of ad dollars on the same. The result : expectations get higher but the product turns out to be a damp squib. The launch of the car beholds the participation of the community and as word of mouth(through offline and online media) spreads the sales dip and keep dipping.

In an online advertising campaign the results would obviously have been the same. You cannot save a bad product. However precious ad spending dollars could have been saved. A video upload of the same ad on a You Tube or placed on a well targeted microsite or widgets and ads placed contextually would have given Maruti greater coverage and savings. Participation through blogs and forums catering to the automobile world would have given them a feel of what the consumer needs. Add to that the mechanism of instant feedback and you exactly know where your product is. The greatest advantage : you know exactly why your product failed or succeeded and you have metrics to analyze the same.

Participating in Web 2.0 and making use of the technologies that enable it gives you certain advantages that an offline advertising campaign can never give. Some of the advantages would be:

• Instant Feedback
• Portrayal of a brand image that is willing to evolve
• Portrayal of a brand image that is willing to take feedback constructively.
• Measurement of the success of the brand
• Contextual targeting
• Behavioral targeting

The web having become a strong medium of communication also allows one to measure the success of an offline campaign as well. Blog posts,comments,forum posts,the sentiment being reflected,all of these can be measured online. I think marketers need to or would be forced to look at the realm of Online Marketing. With the web emerging as the social media it is one channel that no marketer can afford to ignore.

As the year moves on, we observe that more and more clients are asking for Social Media Marketing proposals.There is definitely an awareness in the marketing circles on the feasibility and advantages that an SMM campaign can provide.

The biggest gain that any Social Media campaign can provide is of course the traffic.However what kind of traffic and what does it mean to the client are some of the things that one needs to gauge.

How does a news channel for example gain from traffic through Social Media.
For a subscription based journal such as the WSJ, it does make sense if the traffic converts into subscribers

For an ad based online model it would make sense as the probablity of clicks increases.However this traffic translates into clicks,impressions and subscribers only and if only your audience has been well researched.

Theres a plethora of web 2.0 sites on the web each claiming to enable the participant through unique features and functionality. A Youtube would allow you to post videos while a Digg would allow you to submit article content as potential link baits. Each of the sites does have an individuality which needs to be explored before taking the plunge.

As Jeremiah Owyang mentions in his post ,http://www.web-strategist.com/blog/2007/12/17/how-to-effectively-talk-to-execs-and-clients-about-social-media/,it is not enough to simply say that “We will do SMM through blogs,blog submissions,social Bookmarking and RSS” or focus on the technology “We use Ajax etc”
A focus needs to be made on how best a client can add value by using or rather enabling social media.As such sites that are catering to his niche need to be evaluated.The advantage of having a plethora of Social Media sites is that you will probably find sites that are catering specifically to his domain.These are the sites that can drive conversions on the client sites.

The next question that obviously rises is where can I actually find the resources to enable Social Media for the client.

I can provide you with three starting points :

1. www.crunchbase.com
2. www.killerstartups.com
3. www.go2web20.net

Apart from this monitor mentions of the client site on the web.A simple search on Google for the brand name can give you a kitty bag of ideas.

Use the Social Media effectively and always look to provide value.His ROI is what defines your success.Convince him on that.�

Many a times I come across people who take traffic generated from Social Media to be a given.The primary purpose of a blog,to them, then becomes writing articles and submitting them on relevant resources.

Keyword research, anchor text optimization,syndication and other on page optimization factors are taken care of but they simply forget the primary principle driving Social Media which is that your bait/article/content/post needs to add value to whoever browses through it.

The content might be good but if there’s nothing novel about it, it will be buried deep within the mass of other articles. To understand what the community wants I feel every marketer needs to participate.Participate could mean simply observing passively.

If I am trying to attract links or gain visibility through an online marketing social media site like Sphinn or Gooruze, my first step would involve becoming part of the community.
An observation of the top bookmarks on Sphinn can easily tell you what content is popular and what is not.

Again establishing a presence is also very important.You need to have people to be aware of your name.A level of credibility needs to be established before you start posting.One way of doing this is through comments.Comments on blogs of other credible members of the community gives you a lot of visibility.Comments also allow you to mention your site URL as well(generally).As such you get brand exposure as well.

It is only then that I would start posting.Again each Social media site has its own individuality and you need to cater your strategies around them.A microblogging platform like Twitter can enable you to network,follow and be followed.A large network,once established,again drives a substantial amount of traffic to your blog/site.However,as before,simply twittering or marketing upfront your blog or site wont help.The network needs to feel that they have something to gain from following you.You need to convince them through your microblogs. If they feel that you can be a source of value to them they would be more than ready to connect with you.

How do you plan to market your blog? Think about it…Its not just about the articles but defining a comprehensive strategy to implement it.It is this strategy that the makes traffic,syndication and other on page factors relevant.

We all have heard about the great ‘G’, but the question arises

-is it actually that Great?
-do we actually need to depend upon Google for our businesses?
-What next after Google?
-……

We all would have participated in one or the other discussion on similar questions but did we find any answer?

What will happen if one fine day you wake up only to find that G crashed or some major update happened (which is getting very regular phenomenon these days), and as a result all your current rankings are gone and hence the traffic, leads and conversions. What next?

The solution to this is “Social Media”, which is getting increasingly popular these days due to its high visibility (more than SE’s) and capability to pull the targeted visitors to your website just like the search engines. But unlike SE’s, every Social Media website generally concentrates more on a specific theme (or so to say a community) rather than giving equal importance to all different themes. As an example, Sphinn.com caters to SEO community. So it is very important that you select the right SMO website(s) for maximum visibility and quality traffic for your website. Though you can still use other Social Media sites for added visibility or brand building, your target should not be traffic from those websites.

I will be discussing in detail about different Social Media website and the community/theme they target in my coming posts.

One often wonders about the usefulness of blogs in driving up the page ranks. Many of them have a ‘no follow’ tag attached to them, keeping all search engines at bay. However, the usefulness of a blog lies in its highly relevant and contextual content. The content is generally so contextual that it attracts incoming links at a rapid rate. Let us look into how exactly a blog can be useful in contextual linking

• Good Content
  The blog world works entirely on the premise of good content. If a blogger comes across good content, he will immediately link his blog to your site/page. There are many blogs which discourage search engines and there are many that aren’t. It is therefore worthwhile to invest in working to get blog reviews and have blogs of your own product or service. Links are easily shared between bloggers and in no time your site could have numerous highly contextual back links

• Regular Updates
  Blogs also get regularly updated, more often on a daily basis. The search engines tend to like regularly updated content and rank such pages higher. You might be wondering that if content gets refreshed regularly, content and back links to your site might soon end up in the archives. However, bloggers have an effective tool known as a permalink which allows them to permanently link to regularly read blogs and pages. So, an effective blog (read good quality content) is a sure shot way to receiving a permalink

• Anchor Text
  The anchor text for the link provided is also generally highly contextual in nature and related to the theme of your website. Adding a blog component to your site is also an effective way to get quality backlinks.Generally, bloggers, as blogging etiquette, would provide links to both your home page and to the blog page as well. You therefore gain two highly relevant links from each blog that links to you.

• Social Book Marking
  Blogs are closely related to Social book marking and tagging sites as well. Sites like Del.ico.us and Stumble Upon can greatly drive traffic to your site. These sites allow you to maintain bookmarks online and make bookmarked sites available to other users as well. Again there is one advantage in ‘Stumble Upon’ which can avail full use of. The advantage is in the form of paid bookmarks. You can pay for a listing on Stumble Upon. Stumble Upon includes your web page/web site in the random sample that they generate and allow you to run a campaign. The important thing to note here is that even after the paid campaign is over, the stumbles you receive on your site/page still carry the same weight.

As web2.0 evolves the importance of blog, forums and communities will only increase. As such search engines will also evolve to include blogs/forums and communities in their listings. Google has already come out with a patent to include blogs and articles in its SERP listings that have been endorsed by members within the same network. As such user reviews would drive such articles to high page ranks. This effectively translates into “Content is King”.

The mobile revolution has been slow and steady. From a simple device used to call and receive it has become a high end computational device. The answer to Nokia’s tag line “Is this what computers have become?” is a very loud “yes, and maybe more”.

With the onset of the mobile revolution, many web services have also extended and integrated themselves with WAP. Search, the dominant service on the net has also extended it’s capability to the mobile user. Companies like Google, Yahoo and MSN are investing heavily to mark their dominance in the mobile search scramble. It is estimated that mobile search revenues would generate around $33.2 million dollars in 2007 and increase to around $ 102.3 million dollars in 2008(source: emarketer), an increase by more than three times.

While Microsoft provides search capabilities on all Windows Mobile platforms, Yahoo and Google provide search capabilities for a host of other service providers and mobile manufacturers such as O2, Telefonica, Vodafone, Motorola, and Nokia.

On first sight it appears that search capabilities across the mobile and the regular web would be the same. However a lot of factors differentiate a search application on a mobile from search on the regular web:

• Display inhibitions: When searching from a PC or a laptop, you generally have a 14-17’ screen interface. This allows you to have a view of all the results on one page. However the screen size of a mobile is very limited and hence the number of results displayed. Also each device’s display capabilities would be different. As such search engines would have to evaluate effective methods to identify documents with display capabilities for each device type.

• Relevancy: That brings us to the second differentiating factor. The relevancy of search results in a mobile search application needs to be high. In effect it translates into highly contextual and preferably local results. Relevancy implies that search engines would have to involve factors such as

o The location of the mobile user

o The profile of the user: This could be derived from call records, social networks etc.

• Language standards: Mobiles interfaces do not work on plain html and other web standards. The languages used for building or displaying content on mobiles are:

• XHTML: Extended HTML
• XHTML (MP): Extended HTML Mobile Profile
• WML: Wireless Markup Language
• CHTML: Compact HTML

XHTML (MP) is the standard that conforms to Wap2.0 standards. WML is slowly being phased out.

• Navigation: The keyboard of a mobile differs from the large QWERTY keyboard on PCs and Laptops. Even if a QWERTY keyboard has been provided on a mobile device, it would be quite small. As such navigation would be a major concern. Search Engines would need to evaluate each result being displayed to ensure that navigation is user friendly. This would obviously have a major impact on the indexing and the ranking algorithm employed for mobile search. Another important point to keep in mind is that mobiles don’t use the mouse, thereby presenting a major navigation inhibition. Also a page with a large number of images and scripts cannot be employed in a mobile search.

• User Behavior: The role of contextual and local search results has been understood. However the primary purpose of a mobile shouldn’t be ignored. The effectiveness of a search result would be enhanced by a ‘Click to call” or “Click to SMS” link.

One can easily infer that the results on mobile search would be different from those on the regular web. As such the optimization of web sites/pages would differ from regular SEO techniques.

A good starting point, I believe would be a deeper understanding of how Google and the other major search engines plan to index and rank pages.

Video casting has again proved the old adage “seeing is beleiving”to be true. It has revolutionized the marketing concept by bringing the product / service videos right at the door step of the customer and influenced their decision making time. This has been possible mainly because it communicates effectively the product profile and benefits within the shortest possible time and causes people to take immediate action or to be aware of your service and brand because it’s the closest thing to actually having it as a tangible product, system, software or download. The Wharton School of Business showed that video boosts comprehension and retention by 50% over a live presentation. Other industry studies have shown that video expedites buying decisions by 72% versus print. And that six times as many people prefer a video to printed information.

Recently it has been seen that even the search engines are not far behind. They have also started giving potential weight age to the video casts by giving them potentially good visibility in SERP.

We have our own success stories SEM involving video casting, if you have then do share with us…..

The world of search marketing, apparently, is an ever continuing “penalty shootouts” between search marketing companies and search engines. They like good goalkeepers would want to defend their bastion and we like seasoned players would want to score a goal for every client.

But essentially this contest is not acrimonious for search engines’ objective is also to “make play” for otherwise it will be a very dull game for the audience who have come to watch and surf.

So essentially both belong to the same team and yet we feign a play.

I think that it is still, overall, a win win situation for search engines, search marketing firms, clients and audience. With good sense and best intentions this play is truly worth its motions.
Welcome to the rules, fouls, triumphs and travails of this ” game” then……. which we will put across in future posts