Category: Marketing

With an increased focus on social media marketing and social sharing, companies have begun to bask in the glory of attention, free marketing & increased sales. However, social media marketing also has its flipside, just like everything else in this life. Customers can post negative criticism and complaints against your company, for everyone else to read. This will eventually hurt your brand image and sales in the short & long terms. Why you must handle negative comments and complaints intelligently While most of the complaints maybe genuine (providing you with an opportunity to fix your issues), some of the complaints maybe downright nasty. Without dwelling on whether the complaints are true or false, you need to have a social media complaint handling policy in place. So, what would you do in order to make sure that unfair complaints are reduced online? There is a lot that a company can do in order to weed out complaints that are malicious and libelous in nature. There is also a lot that a company can do to fix legitimate complaints that customers usually make. In this article, let us take a look at how a company can reduce these complaints in order to improve brand image and goodwill. You must act fast There was a time when negative complaints only went so far. If a customer was not satisfied with what you offer, he or she might have complained to 10 people. You probably had to lose those 10 prospective clients/customers. Now, thanks to social media, a single complaint can reach far and wide, across the world, to thousands of people. This is a scenario that one cannot take lightly. With that in mind, each negative complaint must be handled quickly and efficiently. Understand who is most likely to complain A recent study found that younger customers tend to complain more on social networking sites. Those who are aged between 18 and 24 tend to complain on Twitter and Facebook more often than their older peers. These negative complaints maybe genuine or malicious but they will indeed mar your image online and can hurt your sales. The onus is on you to make sure that negativity is handled with care and that all complaints are resolved, even if it seems irrational to you. Assign somebody to handle complaints It is a good idea to hire someone to handle complaints exclusively. This person might post under your company’s profile or he/she can use their name to resolve complaints. We believe that it is a good idea to receive complaints under the company page or profile but when complaints are very negative, you might want an individual to respond to those complaints. It not only looks like you care but the very fact that a human is responding to a complaint will resolve a lot of conflict between you and your customer. Complaint handling policy The next step is for you to decide how you will approach complaints. No matter how nasty the complaint is, make sure that you maintain your grace. Do not lose your temper online or sound haughty, which will affect your further sales with other people. Humility and sincere concern for the complaint will go a long way but arrogance will hurt you more than the complaint will ever. Communicating availability to customers When a customer posts complaints on Facebook or Twitter, they are mostly unable to reach you immediately. When you respond, be polite and offer to call them back or if that is not possible, ask them to send you a private message with their contact details so that you can get in touch. When customers learn that you are available to listen to their grievances, they will not usually post their complaints again and elsewhere. This reduces the chances of complaints being reposted unnecessarily. Of course, make sure that you get in touch with the person immediately and resolve his or her issues. Resolve issues on social media Whenever there is a complaint written on your official page, treat it as a PR opportunity. Ensure that you mention that a certain complaint is resolved and they could get in touch with you over phone or email, if issues persist. The idea is to let everyone know that you handled the complaint positively and that you resolved the issue. Do not provoke trolls When it comes to social media, you can always expect trolls to bother you, with repeated complaints and requests. Trolls usually seek attention and sometimes they like the other person to respond no matter what. Respond politely and reassure that the problem has been fixed. If you need to repost the response, that is perfectly ok. Most people understand when someone is being a troll. Do not ignore even the smallest of complaints No matter how trivial a complaint sounds, do not ignore it. That can cause your downfall. Instead, fix even the most trivial issue and attend to complaints as soon as possible. Do not let a complaint remain not responded on social networking sites as that implies that you don’t care. Sometimes people need a small reason to get angry. It is your business duty to save your company and that means, sometimes having to be nice to even the most unfair of customers. As long as you solve problems, you should not really worry about anything else. Encourage positive reviews Ask your customers to post positive reviews if they are happy with your products and services. Get people to write reviews, leave comments and spread some goodwill about your company. That helps to reduce negativity and builds positive image about your company. These customers act as brand ambassadors who do not even need to be paid and they genuinely spread goodwill. Create an HR policy Make sure that you have an HR policy in place so that your ex-employees do not speak ill about your company; legal help maybe necessary to draft such a policy. Make it clear to your employees from

Lead generation is probably the most important part of doing business. Without making a list of potential leads, we don’t know whom to contact and persuade and how best to design a marketing campaign. With everything considered, lead generation is the single most important task for a business to run successfully. Using technology to generate leads Lead generation also is no more old school and one does not have to painstakingly make huge lists of potential clients & customers and write them down oneself. There are automated tools and forms that can do this job for you; and automation brings into our mind technology. Without proper technology, it is not possible to have a good lead generation plan in place. Moreover, efficient use of technology helps you to make a list of higher quality leads that will indeed convert and help you make sales. With all that in mind, it is important to make use of available technology to the fullest and ensure that leads are generated automatically. In this article, let us take a look at what technological requirements exist to generate leads that are of high quality. Lead generation form Most people do not realize that lead generation forms are some of the most important tools in our business for generating leads. Lead generation forms are no longer manual but are mostly automated. Thus, a lead generation form must be user-friendly and people must not feel annoyed when they fill up information. The lead generation form could be anything – from a simple ‘contact us’ form to a form that collects information before letting visitors download something for free, an eBook for instance. Lead generation forms need to be short and error free & must not ask for unnecessary information. Social media Social media is certainly one of the most important tools of lead generation. Social media includes but is not limited to Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Tumblr and Instagram. Usually, Facebook and LinkedIn also give you access to people’s e-mail addresses, which is a good thing. You will be able to use those e-mail addresses for lead generation activities as well; only make sure that you do not bother people by contacting them incessantly. E-mail E-mail is something that should be used carefully. It is quite clear that everyone uses e-mail at one point or another. Even the most unsophisticated person in a secluded village might have access to e-mail if he or she doesn’t use Facebook. Teh ubiquity of email makes it an attractive lead generation tool. However, be aware that you can get marked as spam if you do not design your email campaigns well. You need to make sure that you do not end up being marked as spam by several people, which will automatically prove you to be a spammer. That is not what we want. Web browsing and cookies You can always use cookies and trackers to understand the kind of people that visit your website. Their browser and IP location & other details can give you a whole lot of information about who is interested in your content and who might become your clients. This way, you will want to contact the right kind of people instead of wasting your efforts on people who might not be interested in what you offer. Make sure that you track web visitors and do let them know that you track. Identifying information might not be collected or saved. Direct contact The best form of lead generation is when leads contact you themselves after having seen your advertisement or after having come to know about you somewhere. Classify those people under high quality leads as they are more likely to become your clients or customers. They might not initially state that they are interested in a purchase but you can always ask them if it is ok for them if you contacted them once in a while through email about news and products. Most people do agree. There is nothing more important than in knowing how to use technology to your advantage. If you automate everything and think it is all over for you, you are mighty wrong. You need to, instead, automate some activities and check manually sometimes. That holds true in the case of lead generation as well.

When you collect information about random people and try to filter out possible people who might purchase your services or products, you are trying to generate leads. The idea is to build a marketing base so that you can follow-up over email or telephone. Lead generation helps in email and telemarketing. The outcome of lead generation is sales and new contacts to contact. Demand generation, on the other hand, is more subtle. It is the process in which you deliberately create demand for your products and services subtly or not so subtly. The outcome of demand generation is that people are more likely to purchase your products or services. Understanding the difference between the two Marketers often do not understand the difference between the two and confuse it along the way. Moreover, they mix demand generation with lead generation and annoy potential leads and customers both. Demand generation helps you to gain customers and lead generation helps you to gain leads for whom you might create demand later on. Thus, the initial step is to collect all the leads and save them in a database. Once you have your leads, you can create demand using content marketing, advertising and direct persuasion. But wait a minute. Is it always like that? Can’t one create demand when no leads are in sight? Quite possible. In this article, let us take a look at why you need to place demand generation before lead generation, though the opposite is the norm usually. Create demand generation using great content Content marketing is not the same as demand generation. However, when you write great content and offer information for free, people will come back to you as there is already a demand created subtly through persuasive content and informative blog posts. Blogs can be persuasive even when they are not written in a persuasive way. In fact, blogs need to be opinionated, honest and informative. They should not be persuasive at all. Yet, people tend to respect the people who write those informative blogs than those who do not. Already, a sort of persuasion and demand generation is taking place. Leads generated after being exposed to demand generation are more likely to purchase Once you create tasks and campaigns for demand generation, it is easy to understand who will be your customers and who will just walk away after reading your content. Creating demand in the form of marketing campaigns or content marketing will help you to expose your potential leads to what you offer as an entity. They will ‘know’ you already and thus, it is easy for them to accept to be leads. The leads who were initially exposed to your demand generation strategies are more likely to make purchases as well; and that is a great way to build your database of leads who are more likely to proceed towards making purchases. Demand generation filters unwanted people Demand generation campaigns are useful in a twisted sort of way. They make sure that they turn off people who are not interested in your communication. When they are exposed to your demand generation content, they will know whether they are interested or not in what you offer. You will be less likely to send your marketing information and telemarketing calls towards these people who are not interested in being contacted at all. Demand generation sort of primes people into becoming leads and then, becoming customers. Thus, demand generation acts as a filter to avoid people who are not likely to become leads. Specific marketing campaigns can be designed once demand is generated When you design demand generation campaigns, you will get to know who your real target audience is. The answers can be pretty startling. A candy that was flavored with an exotic fruit from Thailand became hugely popular among those who had returned from Thailand. These Americans who vacationed in Thailand were more likely to purchase the candy than someone who had not visited Thailand. By communicating about the fruit that is grown in Thailand, one could identify a potential lead pool, who will probably buy the candy for the sake of nostalgia. There can be many more examples of how demand generation can be used to design specific marketing campaigns. Demand generation is quickly becoming the preferred form of short-listing potential leads before even one gets to lead generation; and this is a positive development.

The last time you visited CNN.com or some other authoritative website, you probably noticed a few links with thumbnails under the heading ‘From around the web’. These links direct you to websites that are not part of the CNN network. In other words, it is pretty evident that CNN syndicates these links for a certain amount of money, helping those syndicated websites to receive the massive traffic that CNN usually enjoys. By paying a certain amount of money to content syndication companies like Outbrain or Taboola, companies and businesses can get their blogs, articles and columns featured or syndicated on authoritative websites like Huffington Post, CNN or just about any important online publication out there. Content syndication has slowly come to be one of the most important steps in content marketing. You might be having a lot of content that has been published in all these years. However, if you are not marketing your content on all the available platforms, it is probably going unnoticed from the larger targeted web traffic. With that in mind, we strive to explain not only the importance of content syndication in content marketing, but also give you a brief overview about how best to do it. Let us take a look at 5 important reasons why content syndication is important as part of content marketing: • Visibility on authoritative websites It is not always that you get to make your content available on a highly authoritative website. When you choose a content syndication service, your content, which could probably never get a mention in mainstream media, can find a place on of the most important websites. No matter how relatively unknown your own content is, letting your content appear on a more authoritative website will make you visible. • Increase lead generation Content syndication helps targeted people to click on your links, after they probably read a related article on the publisher’s site. Usually, content syndication takes into account the demographics, psychographics and browsing patterns before making your link appear down below. This leads to a targeted lead generation as those who click on your link tend to be more or less interested in what you offer. • Increase revenue When your blogs, articles, columns and even landing pages are syndicated on a third party website, chances are, more people will end up buying your product or service. If you are involved in monetizing your content, content syndication directly helps you to increase your revenue. This is one of the better ways to increase revenue with existing content. • Accidental discovery A number of people who arrive at web pages do so accidentally. When they click on syndicated links accidentally, they might turn out to be leads or even prospects. This helps you to make yourself be discovered accidentally. It is a great way to make sure that your content is being discovered by audiences that you earlier had no access to. • Increase and sustain traffic Any form of content syndication leads people to click on your links. That increases traffic to your website. When you continue to be a part of content syndication programs, you will be able to sustain your increased traffic over a period of time; and that is very important for traffic generation and sustenance. While content syndication can be amazingly good for your traffic, certain myths still lurk around. In this section, we dispel 3 myths that are doing rounds across content marketing departments. Myth #1: Syndication reduces traffic This is one of the biggest myths around when it comes to content syndication. Many people believe that if their content is published elsewhere, people will begin to look for it elsewhere. That is really not the case. The fact that you are trying to syndicate your content on some other website shows that you need more traffic. Content syndication is done in order to increase traffic and thus, reduction in traffic is a rather absurd idea. Myth #2: Syndication is not good for SEO Many SEO professionals mistakenly believe that content syndication is not good for SEO. SEO professionals believe rightly when they say that content duplication is bad for SEO. However, content syndication is a process by which you are only letting your thumbnail, title and an excerpt be visible on a third party website for a price; and that is allowed by Google. Thus, content syndication is not bad for SEO at all. Myth #3: Paid distribution makes you look desperate A number of companies believe they will look spammy and even desperate when they let their blogs, articles and other content be visible on third party websites. In reality, it just makes you look more authoritative because your content is visible on a more authoritative website. Nothing could be father than this from the truth. Planning a syndication strategy In order to benefit the most from content syndication, you need to know what you are trying to achieve. Some of the goals could be increasing traffic to the website, making you more visible and building awareness of your products or something else that is a priority. No matter what it is, you need to first describe the motive behind content syndication. If you are trying to build traffic, you will probably want to just leave a text link to your blog post or at the most, a thumbnail, excerpt and the title at the bottom of the page. However, if you are looking to build awareness of your product, you might want to consider other forms of syndication. No matter what, you need to know what you are trying to achieve and why you need content syndication in the first place. Choose the right content syndication partner There are paid and unpaid content syndication partners. Paid ones include Outbrain, Zemanta, Taboola and others. Unpaid content syndication platforms include certain websites which are open to linking your content from their websites. Choosing a paid service is infinitely better because you will be able to track and analyze the

Whether you learned about bitcoins through tech professionals or you learned about them when the police confiscated bitcoins belonging to the founder of Silk Route, an illegal online narcotic drug market place, chances are you have read about them already. Yet, a lot of people we come across do not know what bitcoins are, how they are used and what their legal value really is. In this article, we explain what bitcoins are, how they are used and what their legal status is. What is a bitcoin? Bitcoin is a peer to peer payment system used in a digital realm. The digital currency was introduced in 2009 as an open source software. It has quickly gained acceptance among netizens as a viable form of payment and is often referred to as digital currency, virtual currency, crypto-currency or electronic money. When it is capitalized (Bitcoin), it refers to the technology and network in which it operates. When it used with lowercase (bitcoin), it refers to the virtual currency. Who controls bitcoin and how is it used? Bitcoin is not controlled by a single entity and is, thus, known as a decentralized currency. Bitcoins are created by a process called mining. The process involves users authenticating their computing power and verifying their payments into a public ledger. When they do this, they receive newly minted bitcoins in exchange. One can also receive bitcoins in exchange for currencies, services or even products. One needs to use either a web application or a cellphone or a tablet or a personal computer to send and receive bitcoins. Is it a recognized form of payment? Though the U.S. bitcoin-friendly authorities have often worried about tax-related issues and money laundering which could be used for illegal and potentially threatening causes. Other countries are not so friendly towards bitcoins. In fact, China does not allow people to exchange bitcoins for its local currency. The European Union discourages people from using bitcoins because it does not come with consumer protections. At the moment, more speculators have begun to purchase it rather than actual commercial users. Speculators have hoped that bitcoins will increase in value and they have too. It is often believed that bitcoins might soon become mainstream as merchants will feel inclined to use them, thanks to lower transaction fees when compared with credit card transaction fees, which range between 2-3%. Now that we know what bitcoins are, let us take a look at some of the advantages that they have: • Not so anonymous Those who use bitcoins are not identified by name, which gives them a sense of anonymity. However, particular transactions can be linked to companies and individuals. In some jurisdictions, it is required that personal information is collected when people buy or sell bitcoins against cash. Even when individuals and companies use different bitcoin address for each transaction, their transaction history always links back to the original user. Thus, we can say that bitcoins are no more anonymous than credit card payments. If this were true, fears about bitcoins being used for illegal and criminal purposes are unwarranted. Each bitcoin transaction can be traced back to the original user; and that is a good thing. • Wallets and cryptography We all worry about identity thefts and fake credit card transactions. These fraudulent transactions are becoming increasingly commonplace. Bitcoins, on the other hand, use public-key cryptography. What this means is that a pair of private and public cryptographic keys are generated. A collection of such keys is known as a wallet, in bitcoin parlance. Keys can be generated offline on a computer that is not compromised. Thus, bitcoins could be more secure than credit cards, in a way. However, there have been cases of thefts related to bitcoins as with any other electronic form of payment. • Alternative to national currencies There are a number of countries which have terrible economies. Absurd levels of inflation, devaluation of local currencies and other problems have encouraged people to look at bitcoins as an option. Bitcoin users can, thus, circumvent capital controls, currency devaluation, inflation and other economic problems. Many Argentineans have already begun to use bitcoins in place of their own currency as their country is plagued by inflation. Bitcoin could also be used as a form of international remittance. This is particularly useful to people who work in the Middle East and send money back home in other Asian countries. • Investment option Many people have begun to buy bitcoins as a long term investment plan. However, bitcoins are very high-risk investment options and it cannot be said what their status will be in the future. For investors who are not very experienced, bitcoins might prove to be very dangerous. Yet, experienced investors have begun to buy bitcoins and its value has certainly increased in recent months. Some investors have also advocated investing in bitcoin mining. • Acceptance by merchants There are a number of reasons why merchants would want to accept bitcoins instead of credit cards or other forms of payment. Bitcoins are secure and they are electronic in nature. Though there is a sense of anonymity, the original person can always be tracked back. Moreover, bitcoins have a lower transaction fee than the 2-3% that credit cards usually charge. Companies like Zynga, Clearly Canadian, TigerDirect, Virgin Galactic and others have begun to accept bitcoins as a form of payment. Though there are several advantages to bitcoins, there are an equal number of disadvantages as well. Let us take a look at why people are still skeptical about using bitcoins. • Skepticism by banks Banks have not shown the kind of enthusiasm that investors have toward bitcoins. Many companies that deal with bitcoins have found it difficult to open traditional bank accounts. Lenders are not only wary of bitcoins but also about those who engage in bitcoins. Part of the wariness comes from an assumption that bitcoin users are not reliable. • Black markets Mainstream media has often asserted that bitcoins can be used to purchase

Last month, Google announced that it has begun to encrypt Gmail messages in order to provide an extra layer of security. The idea was to keep content on Gmail protected from both criminal and government snooping. Encryption was already made available as an option in 2010 but right now, you cannot turn it off even if you wanted to. Google explicitly states that no one can read or listen to your messages as they are sent back and forth from Gmail’s servers. This rule holds good whether you are using a public Wi-Fi or you are using your own computer at home. 100% of the message that you send is encrypted internally so that they remain safe even when they are moved internally between Google’s centers. The announcement from Google also makes a reference to Edward Snowden’s revelations in a very subtle manner “last summer’s revelations”. What about the Heart Bleed bug that has affected websites? Google’s decision was a step in the right direction, especially, when recent news reports have begun to flow that the Heart Bleed bug is out there, affecting millions of websites on the Internet. The Heart Bleed bug attacks the OpenSSL software, which encrypts data so that no one can snoop on you. Hackers can easily exploit certain flaws within OpenSSL encryption and steal credit card numbers, personal details and other sensitive information. You might think that changing your password will protect you but it only does so much. If the server on which your information is located has not updated their software to ensure that the Heart Bleed bug is taken care of, it really doesn’t matter whether you change it or not. Gmail and other tech bigwigs have already updated their software to protect you against the Heart Bleed bug. What is worse is, any site that uses the OpenSSL encryption can be compromised and until they fix the patch, there is very little that you can do about it. Tip #1: However, to begin with, you can change your Gmail password along with those for your Facebook, Twitter, Yahoo, Amazon and Tumblr accounts. Tip #2: In whichever website you have saved your credit card information, you should change passwords on them as there is absolutely no way to know which websites have been affected. Current status of Google’s encryption and the Heart Bleed bug As of now, Gmail looks like it is protected and the fact that they made the effort to encrypt all our messages last month is an indication that tech companies are taking security seriously. On the other hand, it also exposes the vulnerability of cyber security, which constantly needs to be monitored and there is no way to make sure that we will always be safe. A heightened sense of vigilance will help us to make sure that our information is not compromised. If more companies begin to follow Google’s example to encrypt all data, risks will certainly reduce to a large extent. Is there anything else that you can do to keep yourself safe? She probably made a pop-culture reference but we cannot ignore the dry humor in Ellen DeGeneres tweet: “I keep getting emails to change my passwords. I’m not falling for it. I’m sticking with “Portia123” thank you very much.” We cannot stress enough on the importance of making your passwords complex and difficult to crack. There are still people who use their birthdays, father’s names and other easily identifiable information as their passwords. It is very easy to hack these accounts and there is no one to blame except the user who refused to make his or her website’s password difficult. Try and make your passwords long and always include letters in upper and lower cases, numbers and special characters. Tumblr, which recently sent an email advising its users to change their passwords not only on its website but elsewhere too, had this to say: “You should also strongly consider enabling two-factor authentication. It’ll go a long way to ensure that no one besides you can access your account. Thanks, and take care”. Try to safeguard yourself online from potential threats by changing passwords and making them complex; and also be thankful that Google was one of the first tech companies to encrypt e-mails. After the Heart Bleed bug saga, encryption, complex passwords and two-factor authentication have become all the more important.

Back in the late 2000s, Twitter was still a text dominated tool that people used to share messages and content. Twitter has now become a visual tool that has helped people to share images as the news happens. Twitter’s immediacy has helped people to share images from extremely dangerous places without wasting any time on typing lengthy captions and text. Twitter images have continued to evolve and change over the years One of the reasons why Twitter has become so important to journalists is because of its evolving attitude towards images and sharing images. Earlier, images were cropped and one had to click on an image thumbnail in order to see what the picture was all about. Now, Twitter came up with its in-stream image preview which is already changing the way we share and view images on Twitter. The new feature has a lot of promise and is one of the most important ways Twitter has evolved in recent years. Twitter’s iOS and Android apps have seen these updates and they help in seamless photo sharing with followers. The new features have helped Twitter to become ever more important when it comes to sharing images online. Understanding Twitter’s new photo uploading features When you add a photo within your tweet, you can now take a look at the entire photo. The full preview helps you to understand what the image looks like when it is actually published. It is also extremely easy to share images from your camera roll now. All that one needs to do is click on the photo icon at the bottom of the tweet box and one can scroll and choose the image that one wishes to share. Another great feature in the new Twitter app is people will be able to see from which account they are tweeting. It shows the avatar and helps Twitter users to avoid accidentally tweeting from company Twitter accounts. A third change is the feature of richer notifications. This feature is available only on Android but is still a great way to ensure that more details about interactions are visible in the Notifications Drawer. Last but not the least, Twitter has gotten rid of borders around timelines on iOS. Now, tweets fill your entire screen instead of borders taking up place. It makes for an easier way to view your tweets instead of being distracted by borders. Before you jump into the conclusion that you do not have to worry about Twitter images anymore, here are a few tips to optimize your Twitter in-stream image preview: • Make sure that your image does not miss out details in the preview Twitter image preview is only 440 x 220 pixels. It is almost like a smaller Facebook cover photo. Make sure that your images are not square. They simply do not look good. Instead, have a picture that comes with a 2:1 ratio. • Keep your image free from clutter If your image has a lot of details and it is more like a collage, the preview might miss out important details when you preview it. This is because Twitter only chooses the more dominant part of an image. • Test your images before tweeting Make sure that you know how your image is going to look before actually tweeting them. It is not difficult to have a different Twitter account only to check images. You could always delete the images once you see how it looks. • Work with the image If you think the image sitll does not look great, try to crop it manually, move the content around within the preview function or just choose a better picture. Twitter will continue to be one of the most important social networking tools around. It might have already trounced Facebook and Google+ when it comes to broadcasting news. In the coming months, one can expect a lot of changes being made to its iOS and Android apps as more people begin to use Twitter from their mobile phones. One of the reasons why Twitter is so important is because it provides the immediacy of sharing content from within a Smartphone very quickly, unlike other social networks whose mobile applications are clumsy at their best.

Google recently turned 15 years old and on that very occasion, it released its latest search algorithm, the Hummingbird. Google Hummingbird has been written about quite often and SEO professionals have almost exhausted all the resources available to them. What we all know at the moment is that Hummingbird gives more emphasis to keyword phrases and sentences instead of plain keywords. It is also a more human and friendly way to communicate with users and almost always results in direct answers. Though Google started to utilize Hummingbird on 30th of August, it was officially announced on 26th of September. There are several things that set the Hummingbird apart from previous algorithm updates. Let us take a look at why this is important and how it is going to affect social media strategies of various companies. Improved semantic search Google Hummingbird places a lot of importance to semantic search than its previous versions. While previous versions have stressed on the importance of keywords, the current update places more importance on context and meaning of a string of words. For instance, it is no more important to worry about the exact spelling of a word. When a certain word combination occurs in a sentence, the algorithm understands the meaning in a certain context, helping users to get accurate search results. In simple terms, the search engine is getting smarter and tries to mimic human thinking and habits when it comes to looking for information. SEO professionals will no longer need to be extremely picky about unique keywords as long as broader keyword phrases and sentences are in place. Mobile SEO We cannot stress this enough. More people have begun to use smartphones and tablets. Thus, more people have begun to browse and access Internet on their mobile devices. This leads to a state where your website or your clients’ websites are accessed mainly through mobile devices. Thus, mobile SEO becomes tantamount to success. People searching for information are more likely to use mobile devices in order to surf and look for information. Thus, mobile SEO will become increasingly important. People are not going to type search queries in a way that they do on computers. Having a thorough knowledge of mobile SEO maybe more than just important. Just make sure that you have read enough about mobile SEO best practices. Structured data mark-up Structured data is going to be ever more important. Google needs to understand what information should be displayed in search results. Thus, when you provide information to Google in the form of metadata, be as specific and clear as possible. The Hummingbird update makes it easier for you to get specific even if you are not writing what you should be. However, using micro-data is always preferable. Nevertheless, you could also use microformats and RDFa. You must also make sure that your structured data is marked up. Google supports snippets such as products, people, reviews, organizations and businesses, events, music and recipes. There is also a different markup for video content which helps your videos to be displayed when searching for videos. Google makes it quite easy to create all the data it needs to display your products and services as accurately as possible. You just need to follow the rules. Social Media is getting more important We already know the importance of social media across the Internet and beyond. People usually find businesses through social media these days. Now, Google Hummingbird places more importance to content that is shared widely by people on social media. This naturally means that the more people are sharing your content across social media, the more often your content will appear in search results. This holds good for Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. Not surprisingly, Google also judges social signals with its own social network, Google+. Most people still do not use it and it is clearly not popular with the average Joe. However, because it is owned by Google and because Google tends to be biased towards its own social network, it makes sense to keep your Google+ active. It is thus an essential step to ensure that your company, products and services are identified and connected with certain concepts that exist in your content so that you appear in search results more frequently. It is not advisable to ignore Google+ entirely. Back links and other links Google has often stated lately that links are not important. It also clearly works against your favour if you try to purchase links and try any of the unscrupulous methods that many SEO professionals attempt to do. Instead, concentrate on building great content that is valuable, shareable and of significance. This is important because websites that are ranked well than your own might link to your website. That philosophy still works. The more genuine links you receive from websites that are authoritative, the better chances you have of being displayed in search results often. Also, link your content to good and authoritative websites such as Wikipedia, certain online encyclopedias, scientific and research journals and etc. This ensures that Google places your web page higher than someone else’s whose web page is not following these methods. It helps Google to understand that your website is credible, authoritative and valuable. Keywords are not dead It has been written extensively that keywords are no longer important as Google places focus on questions, conversations and sentence queries. All these are quite true. However, the importance of keywords is not erased and you must at last use keywords for your own benefit of creating relevant content. When you decide upon a few keywords, you will not stray from the intended topic and will try to stick around the skeleton. That way, keywords are still important in terms of creating content. Engage in keyword optimization but do not engage in stuffing your content with keywords because that is not only bad practice but will make you look very suspicious even for your readers. The best idea is to spend some time looking