Google rolls out 40 new search-related upgrades

In what marks a new record for the search engine giant, Google has rolled out 40 new upgrades to improve the search quality of its system.  In its latest post – ‘40 changes for February’ – on Google’s official blogspot page, the search engine has cited changes that have been introduced to its search system.

In what can only be dubbed as a continuation of Google’s endeavour to improve the quality of search and make it more accurate and reliable, the latest in the series of upgrades that Google regularly rolls out are considerably directed at improving local search results and local rankings, and making regular search more accurate, fresh and credible. Some of the important upgrades include:

1. Panda 3.3 Upgrade: The latest upgrade to Google Panda – the search results ranking algorithm – is merely an act of refreshing the data in the Panda system and not so much about creating new or changing ranking signals. The upgrade, as noted by Google, is more about making Panda more accurate and more sensitive to recent changes on the web. The only inference that can be clearly drawn from this is that Panda has been more strongly interwoven into Google’s indexing system and this will make the search engine pickier and shrewd, if anything. This comes as nothing new, but then again, every time Panda seeks a mention in any of Google’s on-going endeavours, it catches the attention of even the weariest of search enthusiasts.

2. Link Evaluation: Search marketers have been caught in a little bit of an eerie situation because of the latest in Google’s link evaluation protocol. Google has noted that it is “turned-off” one of its link evaluation/analysis signal. Google, in its post, quoted, “We have changed the way in which we evaluate links; in particular, we are turning off a method of link analysis that we used for several years. We often re-architect or turn off parts of our scoring in order to keep our system maintainable, clean and understandable.”  The best interpretation that stands to be drawn from this upgrade is that either Google is readying to come with a better way of measuring links or that something new altogether is being worked upon. Either way, it is not a grave concern for search marketers yet.

3. Improvement to local search: Lo-and-behold, local search, as predicated and avidly cited by many search marketers, will go on to take more precedence in Google. The search engine has launched a new system to find results from a user’s city more reliably. This will help detect, more accurately, queries and documents that are local to a user.

Other significant changes launched by Google include Improvements to freshness, Improvements to ranking for local search, more coverage for related searches, less duplication in expanded site links, more accurate detection of official pages and more locally relevant predication for You Tube, to name a few.

Search Engine Marketing Tech Spends To Increase In 2012

Most of the businesses, large and small have realized the high impact of search marketing on ROI. A research revealed that 72 percent of the surveyed brands intend to increase their search engine marketing budget in the year 2012. 26 percent of the surveyed plan to retain the search engine marketing technology spends and 2 percent will reduce their investments.

Experts have a say that it is very important to monitor as many signals and data points of search and social marketing to get a better understanding. However, monitoring all the signals is not quite an easy task and can be extremely tedious if not well-managed. One should begin with identifying which social signals matter to companies in general and the ones that will be applicable for their own company. Then, you should use various platforms to gather all the important data and use human help to analyze the collected data.

19% of the surveyed group feels that there is a much more increased importance in 2012, to have a marketing solution that can provide global support. 36% feel a moderate increase in importance to target markets in more than one country whereas 42% feel that the importance remains the same. Only 3% believe that the importance has reduced. As long as we are concerned with providing marketing solutions globally, we need to identify long-tail keywords for each region and language and have someone locally to make proper local updates.

When the respondents were thrown the following question,” Does social media matter to your organization’s marketing strategy,” 98% replied with a positive nod. Though SEO in the year 2011 revolved around tracking ROI, organic search and quantifying ROI, SEO 2012 focuses more on the impact of social signals on SEO.

The surveyed group was also asked to compare the importance of social signals to SEO in 2012 to its importance in 2011. 31% of the respondents believe that the importance of social signals in their SEO campaigns has increased enormously. 53% estimate the importance to be moderately more than the previous year. 16% have predicted that the impact of social signals on their SEO techniques will remain the same. Well, none of them feel that the importance will of social signals will reduce in any way. This certainly points out towards the large influence of social media on search engine optimization. You can certainly wait and watch what the year 2012 holds in store for SEO but it is always good to research and strategize accordingly.

Sources:

http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2135045/Search-Marketers-Value-Social-Global-Plan-to-Increase-SEM-Tech-Spend-in-2012

Search Engine Marketing Tech Spends To Increase In 2012

Most of the businesses, large and small have realized the high impact of search marketing on ROI. A research revealed that 72 percent of the surveyed brands intend to increase their search engine marketing budget in the year 2012. 26 percent of the surveyed plan to retain the search engine marketing technology spends and 2 percent will reduce their investments.

Experts have a say that it is very important to monitor as many signals and data points of search and social marketing to get a better understanding. However, monitoring all the signals is not quite an easy task and can be extremely tedious if not well-managed. One should begin with identifying which social signals matter to companies in general and the ones that will be applicable for their own company. Then, you should use various platforms to gather all the important data and use human help to analyze the collected data.

19% of the surveyed group feels that there is a much more increased importance in 2012, to have a marketing solution that can provide global support. 36% feel a moderate increase in importance to target markets in more than one country whereas 42% feel that the importance remains the same. Only 3% believe that the importance has reduced. As long as we are concerned with providing marketing solutions globally, we need to identify long-tail keywords for each region and language and have someone locally to make proper local updates.

When the respondents were thrown the following question,” Does social media matter to your organization’s marketing strategy,” 98% replied with a positive nod. Though SEO in the year 2011 revolved around tracking ROI, organic search and quantifying ROI, SEO 2012 focuses more on the impact of social signals on SEO.

The surveyed group was also asked to compare the importance of social signals to SEO in 2012 to its importance in 2011. 31% of the respondents believe that the importance of social signals in their SEO campaigns has increased enormously. 53% estimate the importance to be moderately more than the previous year. 16% have predicted that the impact of social signals on their SEO techniques will remain the same. Well, none of them feel that the importance will of social signals will reduce in any way. This certainly points out towards the large influence of social media on search engine optimization. You can certainly wait and watch what the year 2012 holds in store for SEO but it is always good to research and strategize accordingly.

Source : http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2135045/Search-Marketers-Value-Social-Global-Plan-to-Increase-SEM-Tech-Spend-in-2012

Blend SEO With Human Psychology, Positively Impact Business Economics

There is an intimate interactivity between SEO and Economics which can be termed as SEOnomics. SEOnomics deals with blending elements of SEO, human psychology and business strategy to positively impact the economics of your business. If you move your business online, you need to adapt to the online strategies and objectives. Offline marketing strategies are less likely to work on the Web.

While formulating digital strategies, the common questions that will arise in your mind are: where do our online customers live and how to target them, what is the most cost-effective approach, which tools to use, etc. The answers to the above questions along with SEO analytics will provide solutions to the most pressing problems. Every SEO expert gets into the mind of a potential customer to understand his needs and requirements and formalizes a strategy based on that.

The worldwide financial conditions worsen day by day due to which companies are pulling down their online marketing expenditure. Most of the businesses are satisfied with 1%-2% conversion rate. However, if companies focus on the non-converting 98%, the marketing spends will not be a waste.

Most companies have realized that SEO is a measurable and cost-effective option to increase conversion rate. SEO and web analysts play an important role in any business development venture. Analyzing data provides insights into a customer’s mind and helps you deliver the best experience. An effective SEO strategy does not revolve around search engines, website traffic, clicks and views but concentrates on people’s needs. Only when your SEO expert focuses on human psychology, your business economy will be positively affected. Good SEO deals with attracting the non-converting 98% by fulfilling their needs.

If 98% of the website visitors are not-converting, you need to study your website’s analytics data closely to figure out why is the bounce rate high. You should track the weaknesses in your current strategy and modify or tweak your website based on your study. This is possible with proper and effective collaboration and communication between different teams. However, it is observed that there is very little synchronization between teams.

SEOnomics is about making the most money and grasping the biggest business through SEO. It is more about converting website visitors than driving more website traffic. SEOnomics is a means to convince visitors to convert by presenting your point of view. It is the art of combining economics with business strategy and SEO to multiply the success of your business.

Develop Link Building Ideas for Optimization Success

Link building is an important tool used by online marketers for website optimization. The greatest challenge that most of you will face is, getting high quality links to your website. If you wish to get more people to link to your site, you need to strategize new ideas with an open mind, pouring creativity.

Some of the major techniques which help to develop link marketing are keyword trends, discussion forums, consumer review sites and keyword research. Let us explore these strategies in depth.

You can research on the recent trends for keywords using Yahoo Buzz, Google Trends and such other tools. These tools will provide you with details like the number of times your topic appeared in the Google news stories, analysis of Google web searches and the total number of searches done over time, etc.  You can use the information of breakout trends to your benefit by running contests based on these trends, and offering attractive prizes. You can promote these contests through social networking websites and blogs. Each like or re-tweet will gain social media engagement for you.

You can use discussion forums to your advantage, by offering solutions, online tools, etc. to the common problems people are talking about. This will require investment in terms of time.

The next important strategy is to keep a watch on consumer review sites, and trace the common complaints. You can offer solutions to these problems, by adding a little humor and creativity. If you belong to the hotel industry, you could start comical cartoon series about various food or accommodation experiences across the globe.

Lastly, you can use the keyword research tool to find link building ideas. You can check the demand for key phrases by adding words like ‘problems’, ‘fix’, ‘tips’, etc. along with the keyword. You can then create something based on your analysis of the keywords which people are actively searching for. It will increase your success with links.

It is advisable to choose phrases with the highest search volume, because it will naturally increase the ranking. Once it has obtained top ranking, it will be easier to obtain new links, crediting to the greater exposure you will get. By imbibing the above mentioned strategies, you can improvise your company’s link building ideas regularly.

Read more about Internet Marketing here.

You can also have a look at our annual State of Internet marketing report.

Organizational Maturity through Enhanced Customer Experience

Organizational maturity is a reflection of how a company adopts and implements a set of sound, repeating practices that result in an enhanced customer experience with the company and its brand. This maturity comes from recurrently extending the scope of practices and services that affect customer experience in a disciplined yet rewarding way.

There are many ways an organization can achieve organizational maturity. Many trade analysts have derived upon a set of practices that bear well with the purpose of customer experience maturity, and an aggregate of which can summed up as follows.

The first step to improving customer experience comes from understanding the customer. This calls for having an intricate understanding of things like who the customers are, their goals, what are their expectations from the organization and how they presently perceive the interactions with the firm. This will help an organization identify and narrow down key areas for future improvement and also build new experience opportunities. A subsequent step calls for establishing a quantitative and qualitative measurement of customer experience so as to track the quality of the same on a regular basis. Such metrics serve effectively as key performance indicators (KPI). However, having a measurement tool in place is not enough. There needs to be a governance system that proactively takes the initiative to build accountability and develop the process from time to time.

The fourth step calls for devising a strategy based on the information generated from previous steps. A strategy defines the nature of customer experience an organization wants to provide its customers. A well-formed strategy takes into account the expectation of a customer and coins it with creative and rewarding experience opportunities that stay true to the organization’s goals in harmony. One can make use of pilot designs to test if a strategy is effective or not, and make necessary adjustments accordingly. This helps reduce wastage of efforts and results in a more crisp strategy at the end of the day. Finally, a customer-centric culture is essential to a mature experience. The goal of culture-building activities is to establish customer-eccentricity as a core value. People tend to respond more favorably when changes help them achieve goals they already believe in, and thus, a customer-centric approach should form the nucleus of the entire process.

The idea behind customer experience maturity is to make sure organization is reflected in the most favorable light to a customer on all account. At the end of the day, if a customer feels distressed by a monotone effort or one which lacks design, the organization stands to face the brunt of it.

Webmarketing123 is a dedicated internet marketing firm operating out of Emeryville in Calif.

Read more on Webmraketing123 marketing insights here.

Tap the right questions to make the perfect blog content

Writing a blog, more than anything, is an intrusive act – for businesses or otherwise. It calls on probing deep into a business and taking a nip or two from its functions and services. Writing a business blog

is ideally an act of presenting a business and its services in different ways and versions. If the blog is intended to push an SEO effort, then the focus is largely keyword driven and aimed at driving and at times justifying the visibility of content on a search engine. But the onus still stands to make sure that the blog content quenches a reader’s information thirst and at the same time helps achieve a high visibility on a search engine as an online marketing tool.

The trick to writing effective SEO blogs involves nothing more than looking into a website’s web analytics dash board. This will ascertain what type of questions people ask with reference to your business module. For example, if someone search’s for a phrase like ‘what are the qualities of an SEO manager?’ it is most likely that the search engine directs him to a post, perhaps bearing a title like ‘Understanding the qualities of an SEO manager’ which ranks well for the searched phrase. Look into your web analytics to see which pages visitors viewed and any goal pages reached for the answer they were looking for; implication being that look for keywords that sent visitors to your website and appendage these terms with ‘what’, ‘how’ and ‘why’ to derive upon a blog topic. Something as simple as a ‘?’ in conjunction with a relevant keyword is an ideal way to reflect on the interest of the visitors.

If you are planning to initiate a new blog, you can start by doing research about your target audience and talking to front line employees, such as the sales team, to get an idea of frequently asked questions. One can also opt to look up niche websites like LinkedIn Answers and Focus Q & A for trending topics and even make use of Google suggest to predict likely questions. Start by typing a question in Google search box to see how Google goes on to complete it.

A word of caution, however, stands. Without pre-existing relevance to search engines, in the form of new content and links, web analytics tends to reveal what you already know in terms of keyword topics. This implies that a website already needs to be optimized to some degree and stand to attract a diverse traffic. It ought to have relevant links pointing to it, preferably through social networks and fresh content published regularly

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