Social Bookmarking and SEO

November 4th, 2009

What is Social Bookmarking?

Social bookmarking helps Internet surfers to search, store, manage, and organize bookmarks of their favorite blogs or websites on the net. If you have ever posted a link of your favorite website or blog articles to Social media sites stumbleupon, reddit, Digg or propeller, then you have actually bookmarked it.

As Social media sites are growing in popularity, social bookmarking is becoming a very important technique in promoting business or website on the Internet. If social bookmarking is used wisely, placing your links on social bookmarking sites will also help you in improving your rankings in the search engines. Thus, Social bookmarking can be used as an effective SEO strategy.

SEO Benefits of Social Bookmarking

Social bookmarking is one of the latest methods for promoting blog or websites. It is also beneficial from the SEO point of view. If you have not included this technique into your marketing plans, it means you are missing something very important.

Social bookmarking sites are spidered frequently by search engines, so any bookmarking links put on these sites are going to get indexed faster. So, social bookmarking can get you backlinks with anchor text of your choice without much time delays. If you place your links properly on dofollow social bookmarking websites, this will also help you to improve PageRank of your website, along with  improvement in search engine rankings and traffic to your website.

Preferred Way of Social Bookmarking

Bookmarking sites usually accepts the links which contain web addresses of the site or its inner pages. If a number of people agree with the value of your bookmark they will visit your website and your site popularity will grow.

Social bookmarking allows you to use anchor texts of your choice and you can target longtail keyword phrases. As these longtail keyword phrases tend to be less competitive, your chances of ranking high on the search engines for these keywords will also increase.

However, you should be wise in using these technique, or you would be banned from such social networks. Do not spam by bookmarking just pages from your websites. Keep the portfolio of your bookmarks broad and try to be include pages from other website that are helpful and interesting to other Internet surfers.

Demerits of Automated Bookmarking Scripts

The main difficulty with social bookmarking is that it is long tedious process. You have to create your bookmarking accounts and then bookmark your blog posts or pages. If you plan to bookmark to hundreds of social bookmarking sites, you will spend hours just to bookmark one URL. To automate the bookmarking process, many social bookmarking scripts and software are available on net.

Most of social bookmarking scripts are spamming tools developed to destroy the essence of bookmarking sites. This spamming software randomly creates user names and passwords at these sites and posts hundreds of links. They create bookmarks and hence backlinks within a short period of time. Search engines like Google will surely take these links with an alarm and may flag those links or discount them altogether.

Another big problem with these scripts is that they leave records with their duplicate content.  When you bookmark an URL across all those accounts, the same description, tags, title and will appear at all hundred social bookmarking websites. This can be an issue of duplicate or copied content and the search engines will remove all your bookmarking links. So it is better to avoid these kinds of bookmarking scripts and software and go for manual submission where you can have better control over your anchor text, description and submission frequency.

Social bookmarking can be a good way to get valuable backlinks from high authority websites, as long as it is not misused. If many people spam bookmarking sites, search engines will soon downgrade the value of backlinks from these sites.

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Why hire a Google Adwords Professional?

October 12th, 2009

In my role as a SEO consultant, I have come across many Google Adwords campaigns that were wasting money.  Why?  These Pay-per-click (PPC) campaigns were managed by website owners or webmasters who did not have an in-depth knowledge of Google Adwords system. Many business owners choose to manage their own adwords campaigns, but their lack of knowledge and inexperience results in poorly managed campaigns which do not deliver results and waste money in the process instead of saving it.

Google Adwords is a disruptive technology that has possible shaken the client – agency – customer long haul, to few operations of mouse clicks.  This having simplified the process, however, Google Adwords demands the skills of Business Development officer, creative dent of an ad agency, and perspectives of customers in a single professional – which is simply logical.

Google’s PPC Adwords has gained significant popularity because of contextual quality advertisement based on the users search query.  Google, to ensure a good user experience, punishes advertisers (by increasing the bidding price) for low quality ads – which can even rip off millions if not identified over a long period.  Google places its search users’ interests above everything else, and hence, the advertisers (PPC campaigner) need to be very sharp to reap benefits from Adwords.

Google Adwords Training Mumbai

Role of a person who manages Google Adwords campaigns demands refined skills.  A good Google Adwords Professional need to be holistically skilled; some of the skills he should possess are –

  1. Strong technical Skills – Google ensures high quality standards thus makes constant changes to better its engine. Thus, an Adwords expert should be technically sound, comfortable with multiple tools, and the ability to learn and apply quickly.
  2. Writing Skills – Writing is a mature skill.  According to a research, the activity of grey cells at writing is equal to as of solving a mathematical problem.  Added to the short span of time spent by the online users reading a page – the ad or article has be appealing, at the same time attract targeted readers who could convert.
  3. Trend Analysis and Tracking – To make sure that the Adwords  campaigns do not result into a wastage of money,  the  Adwords professoional needs to track the performance of the ads  and tweak the campaigns if necessary to make sure that the campaign would generate business.  Adwords professional also needs to know the trends in the industry domain to do justice to the campaigns.  This needs constant vigil and analysis.
  4. Reports and competition analysis – Similar to the offline industry, the online campaigners is expected to perform regular competition analysis, surveys from clients ( setting up e-mail responders) that helps to gather feedback and then incorporate without causing any major setback in the running campaign.
  5. Knowledge of Google Adwords System – A good adwords professional will ensure that your campaigns will have a high return on investment.  To achieve a high ROI, the adwords professional has to ensure that the Quality Score of his ads is high, thus resulting in lower cost per clicks (CPC).  The Adwords professional also should have skills to track the conversion process.  A better designed Ad campaign can cut down costs and improve conversion.

Thus a seasoned Adwords professional can bring in the skills that can contribute significantly to the company’s overall performance – adding value to the company if it decides to get online.  Hiring a Google Adwords professional can help save you time in learning, while maximizing the return on your investment.

If you still wish to have a control over the whole process, you should consider going for a professional training in Google Adwords.

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When is Linkbaiting unethical?

October 4th, 2009

In Search Industry, one aspect that gets lot of attention is Linkbaiting.  This happens mainly because Link Baiting is usually associated with negative  or unethical practice, as many SEOs often resort to dirty techniques in the pursuit of gaining backlinks .  So what exactly is Linkbaiting, and when it becomes unethical – let’s discuss it here.

What is Link baiting?

Link baiting is a way to natural linkbuilding which involve creating  useful, provocative and unique content which appeals to readers and they respond by linking to it.  Good Backlinks are beneficial from SEO point of view so, Link baiting derives its name based on the fact that good and useful content on a website always attracts visitors and they end up linking to it.  There are different ways of Link baiting and now-a-days it is also done with the help of images, videos, free software and tools etc.  Though there are many options available for linkbaiting,  one thing is important that your website content should be amazing.

unethical linkbaiting

Linkbaiting is an art.  In order to bait a link, you’d  need a hook.  There are many types of hooks,  and  some of the more popular ones include:

  • Resource Hook
  • Humour Hook
  • News hook
  • Contrary Hook
  • Attack Hook 

You can see that essentially there are two main types of hook, the good or nice hook, and the nasty or evil hook.  It is best to stick to the nice hook for linkbaiting.  Many bloggers, however, use the nasty hooks to gain as many backlinks as possible through their provocative content, and so linkbaiting often cojures up the image of unethical linkbuilding practice.

Link baiting becomes unethical when a webmaster

  • Tries to get attention by criticizing their competitors and spoil their reputation
  • Aggregates fake stories in order to get inbound links
  • Runs contests but fail to fulfill promises about awards
  • Creates content just for the sake of Linkbaiting, which can be very controversial, irrelevant and distasteful
  • Tries to adopt other means to manipulate people in linking to his website against their will

Such unethical ways of Linkbaiting can help you to get a number of inbound links, but it can backfire on you and spoil your own image.

Link baiting is more about finding your niche, gaining reputation by writing creative and useful content.  It also includes presenting and publishing your ideas on the Web and finding people who actually make use of it.  You will not get readers if you just deliberately try to build links, but if you concentrate on readers, then you can definitely get links organically. Moreover, basic principles for becoming a successful blogger and gaining good reputation in this search industry is to focus on your readers.

So, instead of writing content just to gain links, first try to understand your audience. Always give first priority to readers and be connected with them. Appreciate their feedback and be appealing.  You should always value your customer and so while creating content make it universally acceptable and convincing.

Without being unethical, you can still do Linkbaiting, but your focus should always be on your readers.  Producing better content will eventually get valuable links and build your reputation.

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Keyword Meta Tag and SEO

September 26th, 2009

Google has finally officially revealed one of its most guarded secrets – that Googlebot gives no importance to keyword meta tag for your search engine rankings.  Google usually doesn’t disclose their search engine ranking algorithm, but with recent post on Google Official Blog , Google has clearly discussed what tags they do not consider for Google ranking. 

In the official video released by Google, Matt Cutts also clearly said that Google does not use the keyword metatag in the ranking algorithm.

According to Google, keyword meta-tag is just a waste of time and should be completely ignored.  By doing this you can save your precious time.  Though there is a possibility that Google might consider Keyword Metatag in future,  it is not guaranteed and as of now it is the least important tags for ranking in Google.

Google’s webmaster guidelines disclose information related to all Meta tag except the keyword meta tag.  Matt Cutts clearly mentions in his video aboove, that Google does not give much importance to Meta description tags too, for ranking pages.  He clearly mentions that good descriptions are used as snippets but they don’t have any effect on your ranking.

So the question is, should we discard the keyword meta tag altogether?  Even if Google has stopped giving importance to Meta Keyword tag,  you should not forget that other search engines such as Yahoo, Bing,  and MSN still pay lots of attention to Keyword meta-tag attribute.  

Bing has clearly mentioned in their webmaster guidelines, about how to add Meta Keyword tag terms.  Bing’s webmaster blog states “Keyword meta-tag attribute is not a solution for good search engine rankings as it was during initial days of Internet.  It was more than often misused and so lost its prestige.  But even then there is no need to completely ignore the keyword attribute.  Make proper use of this opportunity and use keywords genuinely without misusing it.  Meta keyword tag should contain phrases and words which are relevant to your webpage content.

Now big question in front of all webmasters is whom to trust Google or Bing? Google which occupies, Search industry’s  65  percent market share OR Bing which is one of the fastest growing search engine?

A better strategy  would be to keep the keywords meta-tags and use some of your most targeted keywords, as well as some misspelled keywords while taking proper care that you DO NOT overstuff them.   This strategy would help you to rank in Yahoo and Bing.  Also, Google has never mentioned that Keyword has any negative impact on rankings,  so there should be no problem in using it moderately.  In future, if Google again starts considering it and start giving importance to Keyword Meta-tag, then you are already prepared for it.

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What is SMO – Social Media Optimization?

September 22nd, 2009

Growing popularity of Social Networking Sites

Social networking websites are future of the Internet revolution. Facebook, YouTube,  Myspace, Flickr,  Twitter, and other such websites provide a platform to promote sites and attract more traffic.

Few years ago, SEO and SEM were the only techniques available to promote websites, but these days we have one more important alternative – that is social media optimization or SMO.  You can relate SMO with SEO and SEM, but there are some differences too.  The main focus of SMO is to drive the traffic to the website from sources other than search engine – the new genre of social media sites.  Looking at the popularity of the social networking sites, SMO is going to become a next level of online marketing.

social media optimization smo

What is Social Media Optimization?

Social Media Optimization is a technique which will helps you to achieve higher ranking and drive huge traffic to your website.  SMO is method of making publicity through social networking sites, community websites and online communities.  SMO includes adding social news buttons, RSS feeds, blogging, and sharing videos and images.  You can apply the social media optimization method to raise the popularity of your website through social media sites and online communities.

SMO involves driving traffic to your website through different and new channels because search engines aren’t the only medium that drives huge traffic to your website anymore.

Why Social Media Optimization is important?

People like to connect with other people through social networking sites; so to establish yourself or your business in such communities, you need to be a member and promote your product and services; thus creating a direct connections with your target customer.

Also, social media can be considered anything that can help you to build a community to rally around.  Websites such as Delicious, Digg, Facebook, and Myspace all can be used as places to put your marketing message.  One can also spread messages through email and blog posts.  This social media optimization is an extension of the word-of-mouth marketing.  Since the web is a combination of niche communities interacting with one another, SMO can also be used to build your brand reputation through these social networking sites.

The greatest benefit of SMO is the instant exposure and influx of inbound links that a site creates. You need to be able to capture those first-time visitors and convert them into loyal site community members.  Thus, a well planned strategy for SMO along with a strategy for SEO/SEM is important for success of any website.

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Long tail keywords for SEO

September 17th, 2009

Long tail keywords -the nitro of keyword research for SEO

If you have started your keyword research for SEO, you’d have tripped over the terms long tail keywords for SEO and short tail keywords for SEO.  So what are long tail keywords? From a keyword research perspective,  long tail keywords can be defined as multi-phrase search entry ( query ) into search engine text box and short tail keywords as single phrase search queries used by the visitor on search engines.

For example, a long tail keyword can be something like Web Design Expert in  Mumbai while a short tail keyword is something like Web Design’.  Short tail keywords are thus broad keywords – and they normally have a high demand. On the other hand, long tail keywords have a smaller demand, but these keywords are better targeted for your search.

long tail keywords seo

If you have a  new site,  you should not bother about optimizing your site for the broad keywords or short tail keywords.  You will never rank for these keywords, as there is huge demand and so is the competition. So your first strategy in keyword research for SEO should be identifying long tail keywords.  Long tail keywords intuitively carry much more precise information of the visitor’s need than the general or main keyword search.  Kick starting your site focusing on long tail keywords creates a niche within the general search with better chances to rank for those long tail keywords and become an authority for that niche. 

Benefits of SEO using the long tail keywords

• Long tail keywords fare better.
Visitors reaching through long tail which are more specific search queries compared to short tail keywords do better that conversion ratio on any programs.

• Long tail Keywords rank quicker
In the SEO world, authority of a site is determined by the PageRank (10 as highest and 0 as lowest). It is relatively easier to make your website rank well on search engines for long tail keywords due to hushed competition.

• Focused visitors to your website.
If keyword research is done right for long tail keyword creating a niche among general keyword search the search engine will drive more traffic as you’ll have a lot more pages indexed.

• Increased monetory potential.
Over the years, individuals have become smarter with the use of search engine. Your site targeted at long tail keyword will have specific long tail user traffic. Thus you have better chances to show the visitors more relevant contextual ads with monetization potential.
 
Now having learnt the benefit of long tail keywords for SEO,  the next important question is which tools are good for keyword research and identifying long tail keywords for SEO.  Well, there are many tools available for keyword search that help with SEO.  Apart from the legendary Google keyword research tool, there are many other keyword research tools for SEO such as Wordtracker and Keyword Elite.

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PPC Search Engine Marketing Tips

September 7th, 2009

How to succeed in PPC Search Engine Marketing?

Today, a lot of businesses are exploring the Internet to make money while keeping costs in control.  Most of them look at the Internet search engines as the most cost effective and efficient traffic generator, however, getting high rankings for desired keywords could be a difficult task.  In fact, it takes a long time, often more than a year for a site to get higher ranking in search engines.  There’s one more way to achieve top ranking in search engines result pages fast.  It’s called PPC search engine marketing.  It can put your site at on the first page of search results and you can start getting targeted and quality traffic within few minutes.

If you belong to any of the following categories, you would be Interested in PPC Search Engine Marketing.

  • Any online business with a website that wants more sales and leads
  • Affiliate marketers who promote affiliate products online
  • Non-Profit organizations, Charities, Temples or Churches
  • Organizations that want targeted traffic for other reasons

PPC search engine marketing could be risky.  PPC (Pay Per Click) marketing is one of the reasons why a lot of people are frustrated about Internet marketing.  You might have expectations about the visitors you will bring, and the money you will make, but the actual reality is usually different than your planned calculations.  In the beginning, you may not be getting so many clicks, so you will have to bid higher.  And, if you bid higher, you may have to spend extra money than your planned budget. 

Thus, you can see that PPC Marketing is not an easy task.  You could easily overrun your budget, and still not get the desired results.  So, if you want to survive online like other successful Internet marketers and also want to try PPC search engine marketing, please follow these tips.

Keys to PPC Marketing Success

  1. Money – You will need to spend some money getting trained to succeed in your PPC Search Engine Marketing goal. There is no shortcut to this;  however, you should be smart and not waste money on fake courses.  A good idea is to undergo training in PPC Marketing under a reputed SEO professional.
  2. Time – There is a learning curve involved in spite of the guidance and training you may obtain. You will have to spend ample time in mastering and applying campaign management, keyword research, tracking conversion ratio and determining your return on Investment (ROI).
  3. Persistence – PPC is frustrating job as there are numbers of factors get involved in making effective campaigns.  Hoever, you can enjoy long term benefits only by being consistent.  So never, ever give up!
  4. Experience – Experience = Time + Persistence. You will have to do study and test so many factors to see and understand which factors works for you, there are so many things which are learned through practice and analysis.  Once you get the proper experience, your success ratio will increase dramatically.

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Doodle 4 Google Contest for India

September 4th, 2009

Google is well-known for its doodles.  Doodles are simple drawings, which have some meaning and are often made to catch attention of people.  Google has special logos, called Google Doodles.  Through the doodles, Google tries to inform its users about some special events and days. Thus,  whenever you happen to stumble upon these Google doodles appearing on some special days;  you get to learn something new about that day, occasion or event.

Google Doodle India

According to the particular day’s specialty, these doodles keep on changing, like birthdays of famous scientists, artists and engineers, seasonal or historic events or any other exceptional occasions like Valentine’s Day, Diwali, Independence Day etc.  Google doodle gives a fresh look to the same old search engine’s homepage, which is otherwise very drab.

Google also wants to promote creativity among its users, and it does it through Doodle4Google competitions. Recently, Google India has announced its first ever ‘Doodle 4 Google’ doodling contest in India.  This competition is open for primary, middle-school and high school students in India and gives them opportunity to portray their picture which will appear as a special logo for Google India homepage.

Google wants to give Indian students an opportunity to show their immense talent, richness of ideas and creativity through this “Doodle for Google” competition.  This competition reflects Google’s culture and beliefs – which are innovation, creativity, and a sense of fun.

The topic of this ‘Doodle 4 Google’ contest is My India.  Students have to give a pictorial representation of what exactly does India mean to them by generating a doodle for Google.  The winner of this competition will get a laptop for personal use and his/her school will get Rs. 1,00,000 as a technology grant. Apart from this, the winning doodle will be displayed on Google India’s home page,  on Children’s Day, November 14, 2009.

According to Google press release, this Doodle 4 Google competition is open for all students from class 1 to class 10,  studying in any school in India. Students can find all the information related to this contest at Doodle 4 Google page , where they can also register online.  Three categories for entering this competition are

(a) Class 1st – 3rd
(b) Class 4th – 6th
(c) Class 7th – 10th

Judges will select 45 best doodles amongst all the entries received they will displayed on Doodle 4 Google India website.  Here every one can view these doodles and can also vote for the doodle they like the most.  Final selection will be done by Dennis Hwang, who was the creator of the first doodle for Google  in 2000.

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SEO as a Career in India

August 31st, 2009

In last few years, the Internet has changed the way companies do business worldwide.  India is not lagging behind in this trend too.  A few years ago there was no profession called SEO or Search Engine Optimization.  But today the Web has created new careers like  ‘Search Engine Marketing/ PPC Experts’ , ‘Web Copywriting Professionals’ etc.  In today’s business world, marketers and advertisers also need to have at least some knowledge about Search Engine Optimization and Marketing, if they want to be successful online.

In the current global recession, companies worldwide are restructuring their business to target potential customers.  More and more businesses are turning to non-traditional media like the Internet to promote their products and services and are cutting down costs in other areas.  This means that jobs in Search Engine Optimization and Internet marketing would be a safe bet for job searchers.

SEO Career in India

SEO Career in India

India has also been hard hit by the recession and unemployment is rising day by day in all sectors.  It is quite alarming fact that around 600,000 Indians have lost jobs so far this year. Many Indian IT companies have publicly expressed that there wont be any hike in salaries this year.  If the current recession continues, many Indian IT companies may resort to massive layoffs.  This is a clear signal that is it is time to learn new technologies and upgrade your skills to suit the new type of job opportunities.  SEO and SEM provide an answer insure your career in the future.

A few years ago, SEO was not a distinct profession; Webmasters did some basic Search Engine Optimization for the websites they managed and that was all.  But as Internet began to grow and websites started making money, it became logical to hire an SEO expert than to have the webmaster do it.   Given the gigantic growth of Internet based promotion of products and services,  Search Engine Optimization (SEO), is gaining significant grounds worldwide, and India is no exception.  There is huge demand for SEO professionals in areas like

•    Sales copy writing
•    Blogging services
•    SEO copy writing /Content Creation
•    Keyword research services
•    Search engine marketing
•    Link Building Services

SEO profession is full of challenges and that makes it exciting. There are plenty of career opportunities for SEO professionals worldwide. Many companies in India – especially those engaged in the field of digital media, website design, advertising, e-commerce services, Internet Marketing -  are aggressively recruiting SEO professionals.

SEO professionals can work for a company or as a freelance solo practitioner.  Salaries for SEO employees are at par with software developers and designers.  You can make even more money s a solo SEO practitioner.  Most freelance sites have sections for SEO services and offers for $10 to 50 an hour are quite normal.  If you are not yet confident that you can work on your own,  you can join a SEO related job,  get some experience and then start your own venture.

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