Tag: Internet Marketing

5 Killer Tips to Achieve Success with Niche Blogging

June 25, 2012

Every company needs to have a blog and perhaps if every individual had a blog of their own, things would be much better. A blog allows visitors to gain insight into a corporation’s or an individual’s mind and help visitors in accessing material that may otherwise be lost in time and space. However, both individuals and companies should avoid generic blogs that do not have a direction. Instead, by identifying niche categories and topics that are relevant to a corporation’s services and products, or an individual’s profession and business interests, one can set up niche blogs that help companies and individuals towards becoming thought leaders in their identified areas. To maintain a niche blog is not an easy task, and it requires an incredible amount of discipline, effort and expertise. Here are some tips that help businesses and individuals to achieve success with their niche blogs. Identify and Justify your Niche It is very important for companies and individuals to identify particular niche areas that interest them. These topics are subjects should always be related to one’s profession or products & services that they may offer. By choosing particular areas of interest, one can make sure that blog posts do not digress from the original niche. This helps readers to identify your blog with a particular niche area and visit umpteen times for information, updates and in-depth opinion. Niche blogs are driven by expert opinions and thus it is very important to choose topics in which you have considerable expertise. Once niche areas are identified, it is necessary to justify the choice of these topics with valid and reliable facts. These may come in the form of level of expertise, marketing plans, future professional development and business goals. Observational Learning, Modeling and Applying Bloggers need to observe other people’s writing and blog posts as well. In fact, psychological theories of observational learning are extremely important in the field of blogging. Only when a blogger observes other blogs will he know how to choose topics, work with the flow of a blog post and ultimately provide expert opinion to his readers. It is advisable to make a list of blogs and authors who write about the niche areas that you have chosen. Once you make a list, you could choose to actively observe them, by trying to communicate them with the help of social media or commenting on your model’s posts. Modeling must not be understood as copying. Modeling is again a psychological term that denotes the process of learning from those who we identify as worthy enough. Niche blogs and subject matter experts may be studied, observed, modeled and their qualities may be modified to suit the needs of your niche blog. Layout, content, style of writing, presentation of topics and frequency of posts may all be observed and modeled. By observing and modeling one may also break from existing norms and do something more radical. The more radical and controversial your niche blog will be, the more traffic it will attract. Research, Learn and Contribute In order to become a thought leader in the identified niche, you would need to read white papers, research documents, blogs, books or just about anything that would help you to know your topic well. Only when you know your niche topics well enough will you be able to write about it expertly. Only when you write with an expert’s knowledge will you be able to hold the interest of knowledgeable readers, who will help you sustain your blog in the long run. Moreover, if you do not have a keen interest in your chosen topic, you probably would not be able to blog in a sustained and long-term manner. Planning and Setting Attainable Goals A niche blog requires a lot of discipline, tenacity, perseverance and effort from your side. You would need to become clear about every nook and corner of your niche area and chart a plan for writing content accordingly. You must identify your target audience and stay tuned to the latest happenings in the area. Do not expect to write unrealistic number of blog posts. It is simply not possible. Instead, have a realistic goal of a few posts per week, depending on how much time you can devote. Surprise yourself and Your Readers Niche blogs have the capacity to go viral, solely because no one else is writing about those topics. It is in your interest to be unpredictable but relevant, random but structured, shocking yet informative, controversial but never offensive. Surprise yourself with occasional posts that may stir up a controversy. Controversial topics lead to comments, discussions and footfalls. Readers love to visit blogs that have an alternative view to existing beliefs and ideas. Finally, after following these 5 topics, you must never lose interest in your original goals and must continue to carve a niche for yourself in the identified niche topic. Originality, unconventional ideas and opinions, discipline and hard work will take you a long way in your quest to becoming a thought leader.

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How to Write Clickable Ad-text in Google Adwords

June 21, 2012

The most difficult task in Search Engine Marketing is “writing an ad copy ” that works. This is because the Google ads have limited space and it is not easy to fit everything you want to convey about your business in just few words. Moreover the website visitors will just glance at the ads, so the ads should catch their attention at the very moment. The ad itself does not sell, it just grabs the attention of prospective customers, so they click on it and in turn are taken to the website where actual sales happen. So writing an effective ad copy that generates high CTR is the key to the success of the Search Engine Marketing campaign. Writing an ad copy involves thoughtful approach and careful observations. While Writing an Ad Copy, Consider the Following Questions: How to make a strong call to action that will impact ad performance Why to include the keyword in the title Does price inclusion in the ad text reduce unwanted click? The following tips will help you in writing an effective ad copy that stands out and generate result. Highlight the USP of Your Product/Service The USP differentiate you from others. So highlight what makes you different from others. Why customers should go for your product or services. Your proposition should be something which your competitor cannot and should not offer. You may be providing free shipping, For example the USP of FedEx is “When your packages absolutely, positively have to get there overnight.” Use Question to Arouse Curiosity or Interest If your ad can arise curiosity among the visitors they will definitely click on it. But make sure your landing page is equally effective else the conversion will be less. For example you can say “Want to make money working from home?” Include Price and Promotions If you are running any promotion for customers, make sure the message reaches to customers. So include any promotion or any special price in your ad text. For example you can add “Get 50% off when you buy now.” Tell About Benefits Before Features If you can show what will be the benefit of your product/service, then someone looking for it will be enticed to click on your ad. For example a person with obesity is more likely to click on ad that says “Loose 30lbs in 30 days.” Include Keyword in Your Ad Text The ad text must contain atleast one of your keyword. This is because the adwords ads are contextual and when people are searching for a keyword, they are more likely to notice your ad if it contains the keyword. Capitalize Every Keywords It has been seen that Capitalizing keywords have boost CTR by 80%. So make it a practice to capitalize every keyword, but do not capitalize words like in, an, of etc. Match Your ad to Landing Page Whatever products you are advertising on the ad should be present on the landing page else it will create confusion among customers and this will reduce the conversion rate. Create Trust Through Endorsement When you associate a testimonial of a celebrity or a renowned person to your product or get the review from a trusted brand, it will build trust among users. For example you can include phrase like “ranked #1 virus cleaner by PC World” Tell a story If you include a personal experience in your ad text that is more likely to bring attention. For example “How I made $6000 in a day” will surely make customers enthusiastic and they will want to know more. Use Dots in Description Text Using dots in the description creates an impression that there is more that can be seen upon clicking on the ad. Mindvalley Labs published a report that compares the CTR and Conversion rate of similar ads, but one with dots at the end and other without dots. Think Yourself as a Google Searcher There is nothing better than putting yourself in customers shoes. So if you can think like a visitor who is searching for the exact keyword you are advertising. If you are advertising “Stain remover”, you are willing to find, “how to remove stains”. So users might be interested in if he sees ad that says “How to remove stains quickly” or something similar. Try Using the Keyword Free “Free” is a magical keyword when it comes to online advertising. But this may not fit in all and every products and services being advertised. However if you have a product or website that has something free for every users, you must include it. Remove Common Words Common words like a, an, the, and, on etc. consumes word. So avoid them as much as possible because ad text has limitation in characters. Use Call to Action Phrases If it is an image ad, it is easy to add a call to action button and make it standout. But we can use the same approach in ad text by utilizing call to action phrases. Some of the phrases that can be used for this purpose are “Try Free”, “Download Now”, “Save 40%” etc. Components of Google Text Ads The Text Ads of Google Have Three Components as Mentioned Below: Headline: This is the first line of Google text ad. This is the main text of the ad that is noticed by customers. The main goal of any ad is to grab customer’s attention. So you need to make this as attention grabbing as possible. Also include keyword in the headline too. People are more likely to click on the ad if they find something similar to what they are looking for. The headline is limited to 25 characters only. Description: The ad description contains information about the products or services you are offering and how it meets the need of the users who is looking for something related. The description has a limit of 70 characters and it is spread into 2 lines. Each line can have a maximum

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How to Use Social Bookmarking for SEO

June 15, 2012

When you mark a webpage that you want to visit later, read later or simply share with your friends or acquaintances, it may be described as social bookmarking. There are several services that offer social bookmarking, beginning with Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn to specialized services like Instapaper, Digg, StumbleUpon, Sphinn, Delicious, YouTube, Flickr and many more. In fact, there must be more than 200 services out there that help you bookmark socially. Socially bookmarked links go viral or at least they receive more traffic than links that are not shared socially. Why Use Social Bookmarking Sites for SEO? As SEO professionals, our utmost priority is to drive traffic to the website and to increase the ranking of the page. This can only happen when there is a surge in the traffic and when the target audience click on links and arrive at the designated page. By making sure that the link is being shared on social networking sites, we can ensure a steady or even exponential traffic to the page. SEO professionals thus have to ensure that apart from traditional search engine optimization, they must take Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google Plus, Pinterest and other social networking sites into account. Links that are shared from credible social media accounts add to the relevance and contextual importance of that link. Here are some important tips and tricks while using social bookmarking for SEO. Identifying Target Audience It is important for SEO professionals to identify a target audience and connect to them via social bookmarking sites. Since social media is a two-way communication, participating in communication and discussion may help in promoting your own bookmarked links. Using Tinyurl It may become necessary to shorten your URL before sharing, as it adds to the visual appeal and also makes sure that precious character-space is not wasted. A disadvantage is there is no way one can brand a tinyurl. However, spending money on customized URL shortening services may help. Temporally Optimized Sharing One must bookmark or share links only when followers are most likely to be online. There are several services like Buffer, SocialBro and HootSuite that help in addressing this issue. Automated Sharing You could use automated social bookmarking services but it may not be a very good idea. People recognize when social media accounts are automated and it doesn’t take too long for people to unfollows or unfriend you. Rather than using automated tools, hiring an employee on a part time basis to do your social bookmarking may be a better idea. Using Keywords and Keyword Phrases As an SEO strategy, even while sharing or bookmarking links on social media sites, it is important to utilize keywords in a non-intrusive manner. By doing so, readers will know what your link is all about without having to guess. Moreover, links that are tailed with descriptions with keywords have a higher chance of being ranked well. Choosing the Right Social Network Depending on the context of your content, you could choose the right social bookmarking service. If t is something personal or something that taps the goodwill of your reader, you may choose Facebook. For business and professional related posts, LinkedIn or Twitter can be more useful. Images can be bookmarked on Flickr or Pinterest while videos can be bookmarked on YouTube. Issues with Social Bookmarking for SEO For successful social bookmarking, one needs to be hard working and patient. It simply does not make sense to bookmark your own sites across all the social bookmarking sites as no one would be interested to click on such links. On the other hand, it may become impossible to create a social bookmarking account that is genuinely active and has thousands of relevant and worthy links that are updated regularly. Many people have tried to bookmark the same link from a hundreds of different accounts. However, if they all come from the same IP address, it may never help you drive traffic to the link you have shared and instead may get you banned from the social bookmarking site altogether. Another method is to collaborate with many people and begin social bookmarking on a team basis. However, this is very time consuming and may ultimately not be successful either. If you are a company or individual who would like to use social bookmarking sites for your benefit, you may approach SEO professionals who have the tools and software to bookmark sites and promote your links on social media.

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How Google Plus May Influence SEO Strategies

June 15, 2012

Google+ is a social networking entity that was launched way back in June 2011. Initially, it was touted to be the Facebook killer that would change the world as we knew it. Within a few days, it gained a massive number of users who later seemed to dwindle down in terms of active usage. However, Google+ continues to be an important social networking entity that influences the way we engage in Search Engine Optimization. Being a product of Google, Google+ has a tremendous impact on search results and the plus button is the key to success in SEO. Let us take a look at how Google Plus is going to change the future of SEO. Search, Plus Your World A few months ago, Google integrated Google+ with its search engine function and called it ‘Search, Plus Your World’. Though initially criticized by many, Google+ integration into search results changes the way we look at SEO. The idea behind ‘Search, Plus Your World’ was that users rely more on their friends than a search engine, when it comes to search results. If a friend or acquaintance deems a link to be worthy, a user may click on that link more often than he would click on a link suggested by search engines. Google thus creates a map similar to Facebook’s Open Graph and helps connect people with their readers, content and websites. It helps people to evaluate how content and relationships with people are interlinked. Thus an author who has more connections on Google+ may be more reliable than someone who does not use Google+ actively. Contextual Information The most appealing factor of using Google+ is that search results become more contextual. With all Google products now housed under a single umbrella, all your account activity will influence your search results. Depending on the context of the search, the results would appear. Indirectly, we may assume that content producers who have an active audience on Google+ will have a better SERP, especially in niche areas. Thus, rel=”author” and rel=”publisher” tags become increasingly important. SEO professionals will then need to concentrate more on the context of a business in terms of its target audience than mere link building as was followed earlier. Importance of Social Signals After the advent of ‘Search Plus Your World’, everything that appears in search results is influenced by social signals. What is important to people who are relevant to you (friends, acquaintances, thought leaders you follow, etc) is important to you as well. Thus, your results are more relevant to your account activity than domain authority and links. This is not to say that domain authority is not relevant anymore. It just means that Google now considers your social signals when providing you with search results. SEO professionals will thus have to concentrate more on social media optimization of websites and blogs along with old school SEO. The Importance of +1 Button The +1 button needs to be implemented in every blog or website that you own, so that visitors click on that. It is similar to Facebook’s Like button, but only, Google uses this button to recommend content to your followers or contacts when they search for certain keywords. This is particularly useful in carving a niche for yourself in the area chosen. Moreover, a +1’d link has a higher Click-Through-Rate (CTR). This means, it might be shared later on Twitter, Facebook or back again on Google+ increasing social signals and driving traffic. SEO professionals need to remember that a Google +1 button can indirectly lead to higher ranking of page. While traditional SEO practices can’t be ignored, it helps a lot to integrate Google Plus and the +1 button into social media optimization efforts. Thrust on Content Google has always reminded us that content is king. With Google Plus and the +1 button, we may take it for granted that if the content is not up to the mark, your website or blog will not be ranked high. The idea thus is to write great content within your niche, use social media to share what you have written and then do the basic groundwork of SEO like you always have. Personalized Search At the end of the day, it can be summarized that Google Plus and the +1 button will lead to more personalized search results. What matters to your contacts and friends are assumed to matter to you. What matters to you will thus be assumed to be important for those in your network. All that personal data will influence your search results. SEO professionals will then need to place more emphasis on active social media engagement, instead of link purchasing and submitting to directories alone. Google Plus, SEO and the Future Analysts and thought leaders who have been studying the effects of Google Plus on SEO have noted that email marketing will become more important in the future. SEO may be divided into two categories: personalized and non-personalized. For the personal SEO, social signals will need to be evaluated and optimized. For non-personal SEO, traditional SEO strategies will need to be employed as usual. Low quality linking and link purchases will no longer be relevant in niche areas unless SEO professionals are dealing with a very generic topic that has no audience. It will become important to seek the support of those who have social authority. Probably, having a higher Klout score or Author Ranking will become more important.

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10 Advanced Settings of Google AdWords to Boost Your Campaign

June 15, 2012

When companies decide to launch a Google AdWords campaign, they would need to bear a number of factors in mind. While much of AdWords settings can easily be understood and customized to suit the needs of a particular campaign, many companies tend to ignore the specific details that are very important. One may call these specificities as ‘Advanced Settings’. SEM professionals understand that these advanced settings not only consist of all the steps available in AdWords’ very own Advanced Settings tab, but also consist of a few other customizations and tweaks that one may need to engage in manually. Let us take a look at the top 10 advanced settings of Google AdWords to boost your ad campaign. The Advanced Settings tab in Google AdWords has some of the most important techniques to launch a successful campaign. Let us take a look at all the options that Google provides under this tab. 1. Schedule: Start date, End date, Ad Scheduling This option allows users to set a particular date to launch a campaign and to turn it off, when the campaign is no longer needed or when the season comes to an end. This option helps campaigners to automate ad scheduling and avoid lengthy and unnecessary campaigns which may become relevant and hurt a company’s marketing efforts. Ad Scheduling on the other hand allows users to set certain days of the week or particular times during a day for campaigns. This may be particularly useful once you profile your target audience and how they behave temporally. Ad scheduling also provides the option of setting the percentage increase/decrease in bids by hour, day or week. 2. Ad Delivery: Ad Rotation, Frequency Capping Ad rotation helps you to evenly rotate and optimize ads based on which ad is doing well at the particular time. Again, ad rotation depends on how much time you can invest in managing AdWords campaigns and how best you understand which campaign may be particularly useful. SEM professionals usually can help you understand ad rotation and its importance. Ad Delivery Options to choose from: Optimize for clicks: The ads expected to provide more clicks will start showing more frequently Optimize for conversions: Frequent showing of ads expected to provide more conversions Rotate evenly: All the ad copies currently active will be given equal preference and will be rotated and shown same number of times. Now, this will be continued for 30 days and then the ads will be run with ‘Optimize for Clicks’ features. These settings work upon the available ad performance data of the particular campaign and its ad group(s). Campaign launchers sometimes witness a number of impressions but very few translate to clicks. This may hurt a campaign’s quality scores and frequency capping helps to reduce the number of impressions during a particular time. It could be a given day, a week or per month. You also choose whether the limit applies to each ad, ad group, or campaign. 3. Demographic Bidding As the name suggests, it helps you to segregate your audience according to their gender, age or other criteria that you may notice in your Google AdWords demographic reports. Over-performing or underperforming demographic segmentations can be identified and bids may be modified accordingly. 4. Social Settings This setting allows you to incorporate the +1 button and annotations. Google+ is Google’s social networking endeavor that may also add to your revenue and ad campaign to an extent. You may request your friends, acquaintances or just about anyone else to click on +1 when required. 5. Automatic Campaign Optimization This setting helps you to analyze historical conversion data in your campaign. It is particularly useful if you do not have time to do it yourself or hire a professional. However, you may bear in mind that by choosing this setting, you are giving Google a lot of control over your campaign. In most instances, it is advisable to optimize a campaign with the help of professionals who know how Google AdWords and SEM work. 6. Campaign Experiment AdWords Campaign Experiments help you to sequestrate certain factors of your AdWords campaign and test certain areas by segmenting your traffic the way you please. You could test keywords, bids and placements, according to Google. However, there are limitations to the number of experiments you can carry out and at present there is no API support, which means you will have to use their web interface. However, it can be a great tool to test different keyword match types. If this is a little confusing, hiring an SEM professional may be necessary. Apart from the 6 settings available under the Advanced Settings at Google AdWords, here are other ‘advanced settings’ that you can utilize yourself by tweaking your campaign a little bit. 7. AdWords Sitelink Google first unveiled Sitelink way back in 2009 and it consisted of 2 to 6 links under an advert. Now, AdWords Sitelinks come with social, call, location and product extensions. Exploiting available Sitelink real estate should be your primary goal, and you might want to play with your campaign in order to do so. 8. Negative Keywords Google allows you to filter out negative keywords which may bring unwanted traffic that is not relevant to your ad campaign. By avoiding certain keywords, you may direct desired traffic who actually might click. This helps in improving the click through rate and directing our ads only to relevant searches. Usually words like free, cheap are used as negative keywords. For e.g. – for a Website selling designer watches, negative keywords would have been cheap, inexpensive, discount, affordable, free, etc. Hence, ads won’t appear for any keyword having any of these phrases in them. Also, for the brand names which they are not selling (e.g. – Christian Dior, Rolex) can be used as negative keywords since they would cut down unqualified traffic. 9. Separate campaign for Display Network By creating a separate campaign for display networks, you will easily be able to make changes or experiment

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Google’s Penguin Update

May 8, 2012

When Webmasters and Bloggers are still struggling with Google Panda Update, the new algorithm in the name of “Google Penguin Update” has come up as yet another threat to a considerable number of websites. Google has rolled out this update in order to decrease the ranking of all such sites that are violating the existing quality guidelines. The Penguin Update is focused to penalize those who are using tricky webspam tactics for over optimization. In post Penguin Update period the Penguin update can not only decrease the traffic of the websites but it also has a big tendency to damage the SERP ranking. Penguin Update has been launched as an effort to promote quality content and reduce webspam. Google’s Penguin Update is an improved version of Panda Update which was released on the 24th of April 2012. It aims at demolishing all those websites that are over-optimized with webspam techniques. Many sites have been seen to use wrong tactics and a shortcut to bring traffic and rank higher than expectations; these tactics are of no use to the users and Google’s new algorithm is targeted to penalize such sites. Therefore, while Google Panda will fight against low quality pages the Penguin will focus on spam content. You can be safe and stay away from being hit by Penguin update if your website is not using any spammed, old-fashioned strategies. It is mainly going to affect those websites which are loaded with low quality contents and abuses the guidelines of inbound linking. If you are wondering whether your website can be hit by Penguin or not, it’s easy to find it out. Simply search with common keywords in Google to check whether it is getting the same rank that it used to get previously. Check the website statistics to find out whether there is a major traffic drop compared to the previous stats. If it is yes, you are likely to be hit by Penguin Update and if there is no change, then you are safe. To Avoid being Hit by Panda do the Following: It is time to stop comment spamming; commenting on high page rank websites for the sake of getting BackLinks or using automation commenting over-stuffed with keywords and links, will make Google identify them easily and the sites using such spam techniques will be penalized in Post Penguin age. Avoid the contents which are overflowed with same keywords. Since keywords are an essential part of SEO and it is the keywords that help the users to get relevant contents by means of search engines; repeating the same keywords again and again make Google suspect and penalize. Avoid duplicate content; you cannot attain high rank in SERP by copying contents. Therefore, instead of copying contents from others, concentrate on making your unique, fresh contents. Otherwise, you many face penalty and your blog may get banned from SERP. Link Building Tips for Surviving the Penguin Update: Whenever you post fresh contents to your site make it a point to share it on your social pages like Google+, Facebook or Twitter. During Link building do not make the mistake of linking to your homepage, rather link to the inner content pages. Keep in mind that apart from external links, internal links are also very important and will help both Google and your visitors to crawl your site easily. Avoid over-optimization by diversifying your anchor texts. There should not be a feeling that you are you are forcibly trying to rank a site for a particular keyword, therefore, try to diverge your anchor links in a natural way. Keep focus on quality, not quantity; having a large number of backlinks from untrustworthy sites, you can be penalized, therefore, prefer high quality, small number of posts rather than large number of low quality ones. Focus on producing high quality contents that people like to link from websites and from their social profiles. Do not worry! Google Penguin update is not going to affect those websites which are using pure SEO and high quality contents. This new algorithm is surely meant to give the users a better way of searching and better search results. It will also give a boost to high quality blogs or websites by ranking them high in Search Engine Results. If your site is already a victim of this update and has lost ranking an traffic we can bring it back by our purely white –hat technique of Link Building. Before the situation gets more worse contact us today and allow us to help you to regain your lost position. Mail us at info@indusnet.co.uk

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Top 10 Blunders You Must Avoid on Twitter

April 17, 2012

While Twitter is an amazing tool to drive traffic to your website or to market yourself as a professional, it can also become a liability if you do not follow certain rules. In fact, there are certain blunders that many people commit, and end up wasting their time on Twitter and worse, harming their own business and credibility. Here are the top 10 blunders that you must avoid while using Twitter. Being Impersonal One of the biggest blunders on Twitter is bring impersonal. Agreed, that it is a micro-blogging service where you do not need to engage in personal conversations. However, it is still a social network where certain aspects of who you are need to be projected. First off, it is important to have a clear picture and then have links to your blog or website. Secondly, do tweet at times about your life and not just about the product or business you want to promote. Try and be nice to people, and maintain cordiality and a degree of familiarity. Not Customizing Background There are several great businesses and professionals who just do not use a custom background for their Twitter profile. This is a unique space where you could give out a lot of information that is not possible within the 140 characters bio. Also, don’t go overboard and write a story about yourself in the background image. That really is a blunder. Not Being Active There are great Twitter accounts that I unfollowed because they were just not tweeting anymore. It is very important to remain active and tweet at least a few times in a day. Consistent tweets that are informative, fun and useful are always appreciated. However, tweeting 10 times within a span of 10 seconds and not tweeting for the rest of the day is a blunder too. Space your tweets across the day. Don’t be Noisy One of the most annoying blunders is to tweet too much. How much is too much? Well, that is a difficult question but no one likes to see your tweets and links constantly appearing in their stream. It is important to resist tweeting all the time. If you really have to tweet anything that comes to your mind, have a different Twitter account for that. Do not confuse your business, personal and anonymous Twitter accounts. Each has its special purpose! Following too Many People The idea is not to follow everyone you see on Twitter. The trick is to follow only the most useful people in your industry and a few others from other areas of life. Following too many people will send a wrong signal that you are not an important business who has authority or influence. Being Full of Yourself Of course, Twitter is a great place to market yourself. However, it would be a nasty blunder if you tweeted only about yourself, your business or what you want to market. 70% of the tweets must not be self promotional. Only around 30% of the tweets could be used to promote yourself. Otherwise, you will come across as a hustler. Being Cold Many twitter users tend to be cold and non-responsive. It is not only rude, but a big blunder not to engage with your audience and talk to them. If you do not connect with your followers and audience, they will eventually get bored of you and will unfollow you. It is important to engage in Twitter conversations and participate in them. Not Being Helpful One of the most selfish acts could be to not help others on Twitter. Whether they ask for it or not, if you come across questions in your stream that you are in a position to answer, make sure you do so. Otherwise, you might be mistaken for a cold and profit minded business that cares about no one but promoting oneself. Not a great strategy to drive traffic to your website. Spamming Your Followers No matter how tempting it is to share links related to your products, your blog posts and just about anything that is related to you, you must not overdo it. You will come across as a spammer who has more malicious intent than just self-promotion. You can get blocked for appearing as a spammer. Being Irrelevant There is nothing worse than being irrelevant. If you are a design company and start tweeting about politics, you will confuse your followers, who may eventually unfollow you. The idea is to stick to what you claim is your mission on Twitter. If you need to tweet about other things, you can always have a second Twitter account that can be used for non-professional purposes.

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Top 10 Local Search Optimization Ranking Factors

March 22, 2012

Local Search Ranking Factors depend on a number of things that businesses do online, to promote their products and services. David Mihm, who is a well respected Local Search Ranking expert, released a comprehensive list of factors, which he updates each year. Here is what we think about the top 10 Local Search Ranking Factors that he speaks about. Physical Address in City of Search It is very important to make sure that a business’ physical address matches the city in which the company must be listed. Having an address in London and listing it under New York City may not be a very great SEO technique. However, when a company may have operations in different cities but has only one physical address, mentioning that could be a good idea. Manual Verification of Business Ownership It is now possible to verify that your business belongs to you, by asking Google to send a postcard to the physical address which can later be returned to Google to complete the verification process. This service is available in most countries except a few. In such cases, one might want to contact other search engines like Yandex, if you are in Russia or Baidu if the business is located in China. The driving point is to validate a business’ physical existence in a particular city with the help of a search engine. In most cases, it just happens to be Google. Correct Category Associations While listing your business in Google Places or in yellow pages online, it is important to make sure that it is listed under the right business category. Looking at similar advertisements and listings could help you to decide under which category your business belongs. Traditional Structured Citations It is important to make sure that your business is also listed in traditional and conventional listings which include yellow pages, classifieds and other such listings. Getting listed on local portals and local sites help a lot too, and that adds up to the credibility of your business being important to the place you want to optimize your name under. Listing Company Address Though many companies frown at this idea, it is a very important step to make sure that your business is crawlable. When a business address is listed in a company’s website, it not only adds credibility but becomes easier for search engines to recognize your business is local. Well-ranked Company Website It is of course important to have a website which is search engine ranked. it must be well ranked in order to make sure that it is crawlable and listed high in order of importance. Following SEO techniques of keeping metadata clean and using appropriate keywords, not indulging in unfair SEO practices, and publishing quality content in a consistent and timely manner help to increase a site’s ranking. Moreover, getting links from higher pagerank sites would increase a page’s pagerank as well, ultimately resulting in better search engine ranking. High-quality Inbound Links This is an area that most companies find difficult to understand. Companies need to makes sure that internal links to their own sites are provided appropriately. However the links should be relevant and appropriate to the published matter. Company Phone Number A phone number has psychological implications of immediacy, availability and reliability. Thus, when you list your company’s phone number, it automatically helps people to recognize that your business is reliable in local contexts. The key is to have a local number and listing it in a manner so that it is crawlable. Using 800 numbers may not be advisable as they don’t give the local flavor. Local Area Code on Google Places Of course, any local ranking factor depends on your presence on Google Places. It is important to add a zip code or area code, as that can be searched by web crawlers too. by doing so, your business tends to becomes searchable based on exact location within a city. Location in Page Title It can be very useful to have the city and state in which your business is located in, within the page title of Google Places landing page. While address can always be mentioned within content, it is equally important to mention the city and state within page title. Apart from these 10 factors, there are a few more ways to improve local ranking. It is always prudent to go through all the reviews that your business may have received. More the number of reviews, the better it would be for local ranking. It is not necessary that one must have only positive reviews. Negative reviews could be used to correct what is wrong within the organization. Of course, requesting for reviews isn’t such a bad idea either if done in an acceptable and honest manner. Having a presence on social media sites like Facebook and Twitter is very important. One could invite target audience to like a page or get them to follow you on Twitter. This could be a novel method to let people in your business’ vicinity know if you have discounts and offers. Most people discover local business with the help of their GPS-enabled smartphones and maps. Thus, optimizing your website for mobile devices and making sure that you are available on Foursquare and other check-in services may help people to find you, when they use Google Maps, or any other map service for that matter. All this might sound like work, but there is nothing better than having a strong local presence for the success of your business. It might take a while, but eventually all the handwork will pay off.

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Designing Websites and Products that Evoke Positive Emotions

March 19, 2012

Cognitive science helps us to understand that there is more to consumer decisions and choices than just good products. While good products and designs are fundamental to their own success in the market, certain choices and decisions made by consumers are not limited to the intellectual quality of a product’s benefits or superiority over others. Design’s Underlying Cognition Psychologists believe that consumers make decisions on an impulse, and the attitude and opinions they develop towards a company, its products or its designs are largely based on their own life experiences, mood states, emotions and certain personality characteristics. One could say that psychological processes like perception, memory, emotions and cognitive schemas play very important roles in consumers’ decision to purchase certain designs and reject others. Jeroen van Erp, co-founder of Fabrique, a multidisciplinary design agency proposed an inverted pyramid model that depicts designers as having the responsibility of creating aesthetic products which provide meaning and evoke emotions in consumers. It is a role that is perhaps more profound than that of an entrepreneur’s, whose job is to profitably sell his products. Psychologists also emphasize that many purchases are emotional in nature, and attitudes are formed when there is an emotional reaction towards a product, when certain memories from past life experiences elicit strong emotions in consumers. These emotions are elicited when a consumer encounters certain product or a design. Emotional Design: Why We Love (or Hate) Everyday Things by Donald Norman explores the underlying psychological process of buying. The book helps designers and manufacturers to understand why it is important to consider emotions, perception and other cognitive processes while creating websites or designing products. Emotional Designing for an Internet Driven World In a world that is dominated by ecommerce and web-driven marketing, a company’s website becomes an intermediary between products and services and consumers who purchase them. A well-designed website has the ability to capture and sustain a consumer’s attention, and this attention can be translated into a positive perception if the design or layout of the website attempts to do so. Perceiving a website positively usually results in processing of that positive information and associating it with positive life experiences. For instance, a website that is designed aesthetically may encourage a consumer to associate those colours with an art class that they took in school, which probably was a very positive and satisfying experience for them. These positive memories evoke positive emotions and mood states that help consumers to associate that particular website with joy, satisfaction or even self-actualization. Emotional Designing for Webpages If we are talking about how one could elicit positive emotions when designing a website, one must understand that the web page is akin to canvas. The canvas can be ‘painted’ with aesthetic images, contours and colors. Intuitive navigation and task-oriented functions are processed by visitors as credibility, trustworthiness and security. These perceptions evoke positive emotions that may translate into loyalty and continued visits. Of course, positive text and careful usage of words, avoiding jargons and not being circumstantial and tangential allow for information to be rendered in an aesthetic manner. Apps and Emotions While designing web or mobile applications, similar psychological and cognitive themes can be applied. An intuitive interface, colors associated with trust, simplicity and minimalism, and reduced clutter in app design help in evoking positive emotions as well. Using minimalism, intuitive layouts and contours, and elegance can help in evoking positive emotions from products and devices as well. Thus, a designer must bear in mind to consider aspects that have direct emotional consequences. Tapping Sensual Responses Sensual stimuli that activate visual, tactile and auditory receptors usually evoke emotions. Products and websites must be designed to please the eye. If possible, websites can have audio in the background and touchscreen capabilities of applications and websites allow for tactile stimulation. It isn’t possible yet to tap olfactory (smell) and gustatory (taste) responses when designing websites, but one can’t predict the future! Emotions are strongly connected to social situations and thus anything that can be shared, help in starting conversations and be an extension of consumers personality always help. Thus, designing for emotions is to remember that customers can and do make decisions based on feelings, impulses and mood states and not based only upon rational arguments and logic.

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Keyword Analysis – Factors that influence choice of Keywords

September 3, 2010

By Santanu Mukherjee Keyword Research is an important aspect of Search Engine Optimization and Internet Marketing. Keywords for your website should be chosen cleverly so that those terms define your site and at the same time are widely searched. Say you have a website on “online games”. Then “online games” seems the obvious keyword. It not only defines your site but has a huge search volume. However – though it seems apparent that this is the best keyword there can be few practical problems. For example:  it’s possible that many websites are trying to achieve a good rank using this particular keyword (this often happens with keyword that have large search volumes) and so the competition is increased. The higher the competition, the less chance your site has of achieving a good ranking. You need to be very careful when choosing keywords. This article will guide you on how to choose the right keywords for your website. Brand Keywords (Brand epitomizes a company and helps build a strong sales base): Brand Keywords are usually a URL, a Company name, Company abbreviation etc. All these should be included in your keyword list as a matter of course. Brand keywords are vital in maintaining the reputation of your company. For example:  if you type “Samsung” into Google and get, instead of the company website, a dealer’s URL you’re not going to appreciate it very much, You won’t feel that the brand Samsung is particularly strong. In order for any company to keep the flag of its reputation flying as high as it should, its brand name or names should be taken into consideration while optimizing the search engine. Already Ranking Keywords (use Google analytics to identify these): Say your website is already achieving a ranking through existing keywords. This means you are getting value from them already. Targeting new keywords and forgetting the terms that already rank is not a wise decision: that’s like throwing money away for no reason. While new key phrases must be researched and incorporated into your SEO drive, you should also devote some effort to these “already ranking keywords”. Maintain or improve their rank and your site will be that much more visible to potential customers. Unique Product Name or Trademark Name: Let us consider a client who has launched a new venture. It will take some time for the venture to become popular. Initially, then, there may be no search volume for that particular term because the new service is not yet known to anybody. However – whilst optimizing the client’s website the new venture or the service must be considered in the list of keywords. Gradually, as the venture becomes popular, the improving rank will start paying the value. Geo- Location perceptions (Search volumes for “produce” for US & India are different): Geographic Location is the next important thing to be considered. If you don’t understand where a client’s market is targeted then you can’t judge their culture. Hence, your choice of keyword may be wrong.  Geo-Location plays an important role in local searches.  If you’re dealing with a website for a restaurant, café or a departmental store, for example, then you should obviously consider their geographic location before you finalize the keywords you intend to use in their site. Be aware, too, of search terms that have a high meaning or search volume in one geographic location but not in others, An example: the term “produce”, which means vegetable market in the USA, has a good search volume in America. There is almost no search volume for the term “produce” in India. You need to know that the keywords you choose have the right search volumes for the geographic location your website is targeting. Services or Products (Get under the surface of the industry): Study the website in detail and try to find out what service or services the company offers. If necessary, speak to the client so you can get to know exactly what it is they do and sell. So, for example: if the product is “insurance”, then you have to understand whether the site owner is an insurance company or an insurance agent. If a company’s product or service is very niche then choosing a keyword or keywords is easy. There might not be many competitors but if the service is popular it should have a good search volume. Competitors (Don’t re-invent the wheel): As I mentioned earlier, competition plays an important role in choosing the right keyword. If there is one apple and many people to eat, then obviously the probability of getting the apple for 1 person decreases. You can apply the same logic here. If many websites are targeting the same keyword then the probability of good rankings for any given website becomes smaller. This is why keywords that have a high search volume but a low competition are ideal targets. Broad, Exact, or Phrase: A keyword may be categorized as “Broad”, “Exact” and “Phrase”. Let’s define these one by one.  Say you own a luxury hotel in Kolkata, which has an authentic continental restaurant.  Now: people coming to Kolkata and looking for Hotels may search with keywords like “Hotels in Kolkata” or Luxury Hotels in Kolkata”. These can be considered as “Exact” keywords. Any variation from these exact terms may become either “Broad” or “Phrase” keywords. If someone searches with the term “luxury hotel in Kolkata with authentic continental restaurant”, the search becomes narrower and the probability of ranking for your hotel with this keyword becomes much higher.: because the searcher is looking not just for a luxury hotel in Kolkata, of which there are many; but for a luxury hotel in Kolkata that also has a continental restaurant. There are fewer luxury hotels in Kolkata with continental restaurants – but yours is one of them. This falls into the “Broad” category. A “Phrase” is basically a broad keyword where the “Exact” keyword is in the right order. “Luxury hotels in Kolkata with authentic continental restaurant”

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