Search Engine Optimization and Online Marketing

At present one rumor is going on the internet is Is Facebook shutting down on 15th March 2011? Some of the news available online have written about the statement about the officials of Facebook and owner Zuckerberg. But all are fake news.

http://weeklyworldnews.com/headlines/27321/facebook-will-end-on-march-15th/

If you can refer to the official blog of Facebook http://blog.facebook.com/ there is no any update.

Most of the fake news have the below mentioned statement about Facebook shutdown.
"After March 15th the whole website shuts down," said Avrat Humarthi, Vice President of Technical Affairs at Facebook. "So if you ever want to see your pictures again, I recommend you take them off the internet. You won’t be able to get them back once Facebook goes out of business."




But Facebook officials have announced this statement against the rumour.

"We didn't get the memo about shutting down, so we'll keep working away like always. We aren't going anywhere; we're just getting started."

You can also refer to this link
http://www.facebook.com/facebook/posts/100307470046094

Personally I Can also say this is completely fake news.

A brief introduction about Google Real Time Search Result

This is a new feature introduced by Google to bring real time content from across the web in Search Results. You can see live updates from twitter, friendfeed as well as headlines from news and blog posts published just second before. This information is completely based on relevancy and automated by Google algorithm. This time Google has focused on speed / freshness part, as Google believes in four pillars of Search: Comprehensiveness, relevance, user experience and speed / freshness.

Appearance of Google Real Time Search Result
It appears in search results with a small transparent scrollable block where you can see live updates coming from Twitter, friendfeed, facebook, latest news headlines on relevant topic from different sites. You can go through the below screenshots:





An example of Karachi latest explosion coming in Google Real Time Search Results.

How it works?
Google Real time Search Results features are based on latest technologies that enable system to calculate and monitor more than a billion documents and process millions of changes every day. To run this feature properly Google has also tied up with Facebook, Myspace, FriendFeed, Jaiku, identi.ca and Twitter.

How to get into Google Real Time Search Result?
This is completely based on quality relevant and fresh content. You should must consider below points if you want to display your content in real time search result.

• Google algorithm analyze the text used in news headlines, tweets, blog postings etc. if the content has no relevancy and quality the system will automatically reject it.


• It also focuses on trusted users, like a person has not any follower there are less chances to appear their tweets on Real time search result. But if you have good no. of fan followers there are lots of chances your tweets will appear on search result.


• Comment on other trusted users and be participative, in the same way you will also get quality comments and again your chances of appearance in Google real time search results is high.


• Benefits to end users?

Google Real time Search Results enables end users to discover breaking news the moment’s its happening. For example you can see in the above screenshot about Karachi blast. Through micro blogging updates user may able to get information about traffic jams on highways, city weather, cricket news etc. That means all latest happenings at one click! :-)

Today I have cleared GAIQ (Google Analytics Individual Qualification) Test. :-)














GAIQ Criteria
There are 70 Questions in total and you have to complete in 90 minutes. Although you can pause your test in between and reappear in 120 hours.

To become a Google Analytics Qualified professional, you have to score at least 75% marks.

Find below few tips for becoming a Google Analytics Qualified Professional.

• Go through the Google Conversion University online presentations


• Apart from theory, focus on some practical cases


• Before test review analytics panel completely.


• Cover each section before appearing in the test, as you know to become Google Analytics professional you have to score at least 75%

I have attended this event and it was really a very informative event for Search Marketing people. I am sharing my learning and observation below.

This event was organized by SEMPO with the help of SEMPO India chairperson Mr. Vivek Bhargava (Founder & CEO of Communicate2). A team of SEMPO members actively participated and given an insight about Search Marketing industry. Bill Hunt (SEMPO Board of Director) was also present in this event.


I am just giving brief introduction of SEMPO speakers below:

Motoko Hunt: She is the SEMPO Chairperson, Asia President, Japanese Search Marketing Strategist. She has given an insight about “Global PPC campaigns and SEO/SEM Targeting”.

Jeffery Pruitt: He is the SEMPO Chairperson and partner of Arkon Ventures. He has shown different case studies about Global SEM Trends.

Bill Hunt: I don’t think he requires introduction in Search Marketing industry. He is SEMPO board of Director and President/CEO Back Azimuth. He is one of the renowned person in Search Marketing industry. He is the author of famous book “Driving Search Traffic to your company’s website”. His blog URL is http://whunt.com/wordpress/
He has also worked on IBM site to enhance search engine ranking position earlier.

Paula Hunter: She is the Director of Operations, SEMPO Asia.




Below is the Search Marketing insights given by each Speaker at the event.

Motoko Hunt: She has given presentation on Global PPC campaigns and SEO/SEM Targeting. She is also famous for Multilingual Search engine optimization. She is the owner of AJPR. She focused on world wide search marketing scope, and explored concept of “Think globally, Act Locally”. According to Motoko in next 3-4 years down the line Asia will be the top player in Search Marketing. Asian markets are booming days to day and this will increase like anything in next 4 years. Search marketing expert’s needs to understand the regional challenges and work accordingly. According to Motoko in Japan, there are more users using internet on mobile in comparison to PC Internet users. China is also one of the biggest market for Search Engine Marketing and there are lots of scope of improvement.

Jeffrey Pruitt: I have already introduced you in my first paragraph. He has given in depth insight of Search Marketing with the help of different Search Marketing case studies. He has shown some slides of year 2001 where only normal web pages and news results were coming. Now it’s totally changed and you can see tweets are coming in top, youtube videos, images, stock alerts etc all are coming in SERP of Google. He has focused on opportunity of Search and according to Jeffrey organic graph is increasing day by day. WEB -> MOBILE -> SOCIAL -> VIDEO -> DISPLAY -> RADIO -> PRINT are marketing medium.


Bill Hunt: He has given presentation on global SEO strategies for large enterprise. He had talked about below points in details:

1. Site infrastructure improvement.
2. Content auditing
3. Individual page auditing
4. context and taxonomy
5. Link popularity improvements

He has also focused on analytics tools report analysis and implementation on the same.

Hello Friends, After a long break, I have started writing again.

Recently I am working on mobile website and In this post I am talking about designing a search engine friendly mobile website. There are two major points that you should consider before making a website for mobile user:

1. User Experience (Usability)


2. Browsing Cost

1. User Experience (Usability):

This is most important point that you should consider during mobile website development. Generally mobile user is totally different from a person who is accessing information on desktop/laptop PC. Mobile users have limited facilities. They cannot type like a desktop keyboard, they can't view like a desktop screen etc. So the experience is totally different here.

Screen size (Choose generic common targeted screen size)
One of the biggest constraints of mobile is screen size and keyboard. Try to make your site for common targeted screen size, so that you can cover maximum user at a time. Today mobile screen size ranges from 176x208 to 320x480.

Vertical scroll is better than horizontal scroll
Horizontal scroll is not preferable for both desktop and mobile version of website. Keep entire content in vertical scroll so that user can easily press up and down arrow key and access it.

Typing - Minimize use of keypad
Typing is always painful on Mobile. Try to minimize use of keypad on mobile site. Make the site more click based. Incase user input is required, use auto suggest.

2. Browsing Cost:

In comparison to normal broadband internet connection, GPRS is costly. You should consider browsing cost for your website. Unlimited connections facilities are still not available on major countries. Although unlimited data connections facility is available on developed countries but in developing country it will take some time.

I will cover more points on mobile search optimizations in my next post.

Select a good architect: Like an online shopping mall, before building an eCommerce website you have to consider important factors that always matter in an online shopping mall. Let me tell you about the differences between online shopping mall and a local shopping mall located in a famous place. In a local shopping mall, consumers have access of different accelerators to reach in different floors and particular shops. Below are the key factors that make your online shopping store more usable and accessible for the end users:

1. Technology


2. Different category and its structure


3. Product depth (Number of clicks from home page)


4. eCommerce site navigation


5. Site usability

Technology: One of the most important parts of any eCommerce website is its technology. Before proceeding you must consider the pros and cons of that particular technology. May be in initial phase you just want to add few features in your portal but later on you can enhance it very well. Technology is one of the critical factors that you have to consider, because your overall infrastructure of eCommerce site is dependent on it.

Different category and its structure: You must decide the top parent category and proper elaborated structure of the website even if you want to start with few products only. That will help you in future to enhance your website in proper way. If something goes wrong initially then you have to change entire structure of your online shopping mall. Now you can just imagine if this will happen with a local physical shopping mall. Can you imagine the losses? So the base structure should be decided by a good experienced person who has in depth knowledge of usability and search marketing.



Product depth (Number of clicks from home page): Your product should be reachable from different navigation. Top selling products should be available in single clicks. The more number of clicks users will do the more chances are there to loose consumers.

ECommerce site Navigation: Like an accelerator in physical shopping mall your navigation should also strong. Through easy navigation system users can easily reach to the actual product pages. You can use different drop down menu or other navigational elements but it should be clear not confusing. Make your navigation hierarchy very clear and simple. CSS based drop downs and navigation is friendly to search engines as well. Use breadcrumb navigation to tell users where he/she is present and how to quickly navigate to its parent categories.

Site Usability: Ecommerce site usability is one of the most important factors to make site successful or failure. How easily a consumer can access your different section and make purchase. Information flow architecture of the site should be clear and easy to understand. So that common users never face any issue. Site should have sufficient help information regarding online purchasing and other facilities available in the website.

Top 10 Searches of 2007:

Top 10 Searches on Google:

1. iphone


2. badoo


3. facebook


4. dailymotion


5. webkinz


6. youtube


7. ebuddy


8. second life


9. hi5


10. club penguin

Top 10 Searches on Yahoo

1. Britney Spears


2. WWE


3. Paris Hilton


4. Naruto


5. Beyonce


6. Lindsay Lohan


7. RuneScape


8. Fantasy Football


9. Fergie


10. Jessica Alba

Top 10 Searches on ASK

1. MySpace


2. Dictionary


3. Google


4. Themes


5. Area Codes


6. Cars


7. Weather


8. Games


9. Song Lyrics


10. Movies

In comparison to last year top 10 Searches (2006), Social networking websites are still on top on Google and Ask. Social networking websites like Myspace, facebook are top in Google and Ask. Female celebrities like Britney Spears, Paris Hilton are still on top in Yahoo.