Search Engine Optimization and Online Marketing

Writing content for the web is not an easy task. You need to see both aspects business and search engines. But some people try to write the content just for search engines to rank higher on so many keywords. It's not a good idea to stuff the keywords for short term results. As we know search engine rankings are dependent on so many factors including your visitors site visiting time. How much time a visitor spending on your website is also one of the major point. Try to write as per user point of view, it automatically moves you on the top ranking. Do not use same keywords throughout the page, you can use synonyms or related words. It's really affect your conversion as well. A quality content always converts visitors into customers.

Tips for Content Optimization:

1. Try to use synonyms and place the keywords on right place only. Do not make it artificial


2. Think about users, what is business focus and who is your target audience.


3. Try to include some related words on the very begining of the content.


4. You can break the keyphrases into key terms, if phrases are too long.


5. Focus on User Generated Content

Today People are thinking about the effects of Google Universal Search. As Google going to lauch Google universal search, It will show all kind of information related to that particular search term. Now People can see videos, maps, news, books and other relevant information at one place. User can play video from search. It's really cool.

Google also working on backend and to change their existing infrastructure. In new infrastructure it will incorporate the real time information comparison system to provide more relevant information to its users. oh! Now the #1 ranking is not an easy task. :) Existing websites needs to work on Usability and accessibility.

Google launching a new feature i.e. 'Universal Search'. As Google always tries to provide relevant information and better user experience. Now the next step of Google is to display everything on single page from all its content sources. Including Google books, blog, group,news, maps, images, code and websites. Google has updated home page design in Google Experimental Search. Now user can play videos from Google Video and Youtube in the google search results.

Google is also implementing a new process with new technical infrastructure to compare all kind of information and provide universal search results. This is the next step to provide more relevant information with all kind of option including videos, images, book search etc.

Google New Navigation bar:
Google has updated its home page with new navigation bar. Now users can navigate other section as well apart from web search.

With the help of new navigation user can browse more relevant information in depth including images, videos, maps etc. In the left navigtaion you can also serach for relevant search terms related to that particular search.

If you want to try new Google Experimental Search just click here: Google Experimental Search and for more information on Google Universal Search just check it out here: Google Universal Search

Web Analytics plays an important role in the field of Search Engine Marketing. To track different user sources and which medium is more successful and their share is most important point in online marketing.


Their are different free and paid tools are available to track visitors movement online:

• Google Analytics


• Statcounter


• Hitwise


• Web stats etc.

Below is the type of valuable information that you will get for your websites are:

• Total and Unique Visitors with GEO Locations: It's a very important point where you can see the geographical location and their share in total traffic. These figures helps online marketer to analyze the overall performance and how to move next step.


• Keyword Conversion: On which specific keywords customers are actually buying your products. These keywords are also called conversion keywords.


• Different sources of traffic: It clearly gives you an idea about from where you are getting traffic. It may pe through paid or organic listing. After that you can get the exact data about different search engines and amount of traffic you are driving to your website.


• Website performance: It helps online marketer to get all kind of website performace related data like: Bounce rate, Avg. Pageviews per visit, visitors lengths etc.

The above data shows the website KPI (Key performance indicators) areas.

One of the most important aspects of e-business is demographics anlysis and searcher behaviour What they prefer and analysis of surrounding situations. It includes age, gender, income, marital status, ethnicity. It helps online marketer to know about the potential customers needs and helps to promote their product in that way.
For example:

Demographic

• Gender: Target is male or female ex:male


• Age: Age group you are targeting for ex:18-25 years


• Income: Earning of the customer $10K+


• Ethnic group: Desired audience ex: Asian


• Marital status: Target is single or married ex: single

Psychographic
Psychographic is based on the consumers ethics, values and psychological beliefs.

Topographic
It is a model that integrates psychographics and demographics with detailed buying process data. Topographic profile will give you a very good idea about customer needs and motivations.

RSI: Repetitive stress injury or Repetitive strain injury is a big problem for those who overuse computer. In modern life people spend their maximum time on computer for different purpose like for online shopping, games, chatting etc. But it becomes sometimes dangerous when people overuse. May be due to work pressure and some other reason.

Researches shows that due to wrong gestures, repetitive movements, exceeding time limit is main reason of RSI. Indication of RSI is recurring pain in shoulders, back, neck, wrists or hands.

How to avoid RSI:

• Maintain good posture alignment during working on computer system.


• Don't work regularly on computer. Take a break for 5 mins on every 45 mins.


• Maintain proper distance from computer screen.


• Stretch your back, arms during break.

Click here for Books and videos on RSI

Useful links:
Harvard RSI Action
RSI Prevention
Safe computing tips

Vertical or specialized search: A type of search engines that focus on specific business or industry i.e local, topical and vertical search. Google, Yahoo and MSN these are the major players in search engine industry that covers a wide range of online consumer search market. Now what is the scope of vertical search engines? why people wants to search in specialized search engines?

Sometimes, People want to see all the information they can get related to that industry... at that time users generally wants to use the major search engines like Google, Yahoo and MSN. But when user interested to buy a specific product of any particular brand like tanishq watches. When consumer enter the term "tanishq watches" in major search engines and he not only found tanishq watches but all kind of watches then its really frustating for him. That's where speciality or vertical search sites stand. For any specific items related to their business or buying something on the net, users don't want to waste their time in searching and filtering relevant information.

The major search engines using "Web Crawler" to fetch very large number of documents. All the search engines use some criteria to filter and sort the document. A step by step procedure to find out the relevant information is called algorithm.
Vertical search engines used to send their spiders on highly refined database only. So that user can find only relevant information, closely related to their specific term. There are so many specialized search engines are also available like for Travel, shopping, medical search engines, science search engines etc. Ultimately vertical search engines will play an important role in next few years.

Traditional media and User generated content
User generated content is just opposed to traditional media producers, and production companies. These contents are influenced by end users. The user generated content include blogging, podcasting, digital video, wikis, etc. User generated media such as Youtube, myspace, wikipedia, these are the examples where people come and share their experiences and opinion. According to youtube official sources, people upload 65,000 (sixty five thousands) video clip per day by using their mobile phones and other medium. It's really a big figure. We can just imagine the power of user generated content :)

Open source free softwares such as linux operating system also encourage user-generated software. This is a two way media also called web 2.0 which encourages people to comment on other people content and publishing their own content.

Traditional media required knowledge experts who can write content on specific topics. This type of content is edited by experts to maintain the quality of the content. Whereas UGC (user generated content) is created by users. This type of content is in the form of discussion groups, wikis, blogs, video podcasting etc. Everyone wants to say something and share their ideas on their interested topics. So, User generated media is the best place where they can share their experiences, ideas and valuable information.

All about Web 2.0 and Web 1.0:

Now a days people are just not searching for information, end users wants to share their ideas, experiences, their own opinion through social media like wikis, blogging, social bookmarking, tagging etc. Now users are moving forward from Desktop to online internet applications. There are three terms that used in web marketing for different purposes: Web 1.0, now people are using Web 2.0 and the next step is Web 3.0.

Web 1.0: In web 1.0 its webmaster responsibility to keep the website updated and provide useful and informative content to the end user. Examples of web 1.0 are
Double click
Kodak express
personal website etc.

Web 2.0: Web 2.0 is more than search for information. Now user is searching for information as well as experience. Users wants to share their opinion, thoughts on his/her interested topic. Web 2.0 contains more organized and categorized content. Web 2.0 include RIA (Rich internet applications) that is for share their experience online.

RIA (Rich internet applications) - Ajax and flash are key technologies that is used to make rich internet applications. Ajax (Asynchronus javascript and xml) is basically used for overall application usability. Whereas flash is used for better presentation and user experience. With the help of these applications user can drag and drop their interesting and informative content, create a link, edit and tag these links online and can share at the same time. SOA (Service oriented architecture) is also used in Web 2.0. Watch this interesting Video about Web 2.0.



Some of the Web 2.0 applications that allow user to share their experiences and allow to edit and provide drag and drop facilities are: Flckr, bloglines, del.icio.us, technorati etc.).

Blogging is also one of the best example of Web 2.0. Where user can write something about their interests and linking to something that they find interesting, share via RSS feeds(really simply syndication).
Although most of the blogs were manually updated, but now some RIA is developed to maintain it easily to automate the maintenance of such sites, and the use of some sort of browser-based software is now a typical aspect of "blogging".

Web 2.0 is a term coined by O'Reilly Media. The first principal of Web 2.0 was "The web as platform", discussed at first web 2.0 conference in october 2004. Web 2.0 is a web based services like communication tools, wikis and other social networking websites that emphasize online information sharing and collaboration.

Web 2.0 expected to replace desktop applications for many purposes. Because Web 2.0 applications are available anywhere and user can access their informative content or links from anywhere.

Example of Web 2.0 are:

• blogging


• search engine optimization


• wikipedia


• google adsense


• syndication


• tagging


• web services etc.

Internet marketing - emerging trend of 2007 is Social media marketing.

Are you ready to take the advantage of this? First of all I want to introduce what it is? and how it works?

Social media describes the tools and applications that people use to share their experiences, opinions, insights and perspectives with each other. In my previous post Top 10 Searches of 2006 it includes so many social network websites such as myspace, radioblog, wikipedia etc. It can take many forms like audio, video, images and text. Popular medium includes blogs, podcasts, wikis etc.

Blogs:One of the most popular form of social media is blogs. Blogs are online journals consisting regularly updated entries. You can take advantage of blogs for branding purpose as well as in global popularity.

Social Networks: This type of website allows you to easily communicate and share your ideas to other people connected in this network. One of the popular example of social networks is Myspace.

Wikis: These types of websites allow people to add informative content or edit the existing content.

Podcasts: audio and video files that are available by subscription.



Examples of top social media services are:
1. Myspace (A platfrom for blogging)
2. YouTube (A Videoblogging platform)
3. Digg (A platform for news sharing)
4. del.icio.us (A bookmark sharing platform)
5. Reddit (A news sharing platform)
6. Flickr (A photosharing platform)

How you can take benefit of social media marketing campaign?
Blogs are written in personal style and it shows credibility. Take advantage of links and comments. Subscription via RSS technology, ultimately you will get global popularity, that also helps in viral marketing.

Happy Christmas!

Jingle Bells

Dashing through the snow

In a one horse open sleigh

O'er the fields we go

Laughing all the way

Bells on bob tails ring

Making spirits bright

What fun it is to laugh and sing

A sleighing song tonight

Source: http://kavathiya.20m.com/Christmas_sms/Christmas%20Song.html

Organic vs Paid listing

There are two ways of promotion:

1. Through Organic listing
2. Paid listing

Organic search engine optimization (natural listing) - The process of increasing the amount of visitors by achieving higher ranking on search engines. Where you do not have to pay money to search engines. As soon as you will get higher ranking chances are you will get maximum results. Major search engines are Google, Yahoo and MSN where you can check ranking and estimate traffic for your website. According to Geo Location you can also check local search engines of that location to maximize no. of visitors and business.

Paid lisitng - Here you have to pay for your listing and then you will get traffic and business. There are so many programs running by major search engines and other third party as well like PPC (Pay Per Click), banner advertising etc. There are so many options are available to go for paid listing. Some third party are also running this type of campaign. To evaluate how much you are investing and what output you are getting, you must tracking report and proper analysis for that, so that you can improve day by day.

Now one Big question for you?
Why you will go for Paid listing, if you are already listed in organic listing? I think anybody can say no for paid placement... right? No... you are in wrong direction if you are thinking there is no need to pay for paid listing. what happens if your ranking will drop for any reason, may be search engine updates... may be some optimization mistakes. Then you have to wait for ranking to get business.

If you are doing Organic and paid placement both then you can take double advantage. First one is no need to worry about ranking. Second if you are not doing paid placement someone else can do this and get business of your part. So if you are investing $100 or getting $2000 through paid placement, I think there is no any other better option.

Search engine marketing has a level of personalization and accoutability that much conventional media such as Radio, television and print are unable to deliver. Due to effectiveness, it is growing more than conventional media. One of the greatest benefit of this medium is you can track your campaigns, whether you are doing marketing or brand building activities. you can track everything. You can set your goal and track accordingly as well. For different campaigns you can set your objective and cross check upon key factors involved in that campaign. you can easily track and evaluate KPI (key performance indicators) areas.

Traditional advertising vs Reverse broadcast network!

Search engine optimization is the best way to advertise your products and reach millions of your targeted visitors. Traditional broadcast systems includes Television, Print, Radio etc. These are very expensive and even advertisers does not get targeted visitors. But In Search Engines "Reverse broadcast network", here consumers exactly telling you what they actually want. Ultimately advertisers conversion ratio is high and there is no need to pay tons. I think this a unique system of broadcasting where you don't need to tell consumers, it's the reverse, cosumers tells you what they actually want, means they broadcast to you. Suppose a customer wants to buy "camera" he already in the "buy mode".

This can be achieved by search engine optimization where advertisers need to target keywords phrases and increase overall visibility on the major search engines.