Bharati Ahuja

Google Instant Live On www.google.co.in (India)

A few weeks ago Google had introduced Google Instant a new way of searching that made search more interactive , quick and easy. Today Google Instant has gone live in India too.

As per the blogpost on Google' blog Google Instant combines three core features -- dynamic results, Autocomplete predictions, and ‘scroll-to-search’ functionality -- to deliver smart, predictive results as you type. The main components of Google Instant are : •Predictions •Instant Results •Scroll To Search Google suggests or predicts what the user might be searching depending on each character the user types in the search query box. The user can select what he is searching for by using the arrow keys and as the user makes the selection the search results keep on changing accordingly. You can read about What is Google Instant and how does it change the search experience for all concerned i.e mainly the users and SEO on our previous blog post when Google Instant was introduced last month.

Google Instant- Now in India (googleindia.blogspot.com)

Google - 10/08/2010

The Use Of Infographics And How To Optimize A Web Page Having Only An Infographic.

Visual presentation of information is a powerful tool. Information graphics, also known as infographics, are a way of presenting information, data, or knowledge with the use of visual tools. Many people are familiar with basic infographics, like weather maps, which have small symbols to indicate areas of low and high pressure, as well as predictions for snow, rain, and sunshine.

Images speak louder than words. One infographic can communicate , help spread an idea and attract attention at a glance. If the graphic was to be represented by words then a certain attention span is required to read and digest the idea but a good colorful info graphic can easily attract attention and convey the message faster. That is the main reason people use slides during workshops and presentations.

Especially when the data is complex and involves jargon and step by step approach a pictoral representation can surely be the best way to convey the idea. Many bloggers have a trend of translating their posts as a graphic for reaching out.

If the blog post has a graphic and textual content there is a possibility of the post being ranked on the search engines under the blog option and also the image option with more viral possibilities and in a way which helps in getting links.

If you have a post where you supposedly have only a graphic to convey the message then in order to get the SEO benefit the titles. Headings, brief explanation, Alt text and preferably hotspots with an image map with important content on the image is very crucial for the SEO of the blog post.

Some Examples Of Infographics On SEO:

Hence in order to have a presence on all the search options it is essential to keep adding fresh content in various forms on the blog like videos, images, text, social media posts, news, discussions, etc. periodically.

SEO - 10/06/2010

Why Blogging Is More Important Than Ever Before And How Can Blogging Help You Maintain The Rankings On The Search Engines?

Fresh content , authority inbound links and social media presence are some of the main aspects of retaining your rankings in the search engines. We all know that all this is easier said than done.

For fresh content you need to keep on updating your site with the latest happenings, developments and the future plans of your company and the future trends of the industry. This infact gives a boost to the inbound links too but again planning for good authority links is a full time exercise in itself. Social media again is about engaging with your followers and sharing content and there by integrating the social link graph to your SEO efforts. If you keep on retweeting links from other sites the SEO benefit from the social media presence to your site will be null.

Hence, it is necessary to host the content on your site and tweet that link and thereby get a platform for voicing your opinion too.

All these aspects – fresh content, social media and the focus on getting links individually may require separate set of skills, focus and plan but in fact are inter connected and interrelated and the main emphasis here is on blogging.

As only blogs can offer you the right platform to host fresh content regularly in the most easy and user-friendly way. If the blog content is unique and on some latest topic then it has the tendency to go viral thereby getting you inbound links and blogs being a social media platform itself it offers the option of creating a community and the possibility of interacting with the visitors via comments. Blogs in addition generate SEO friendly links and make it easy to share and tweet content on other social media sites.

Hence if you have a blog you have the chance of getting ranked in the blogs option of the search engines, have a chance of your social media post being displayed on the updates option of the search engines and also there is possibility of getting the inbound links.

In order to maintain the SERPs and improve upon them having a blog and keeping it updated is of utmost important and if you have good quality posts which have a good social media presence in the form of tweets and retweets then the social link graph surely adds a silver lining to the cloud (In this case your blog) .

SEO - 10/05/2010

Google Turns Twelve Today!

We wish Google a VERY HAPPY 12th BIRTHDAY

On this special occasion I would like to thank Google for all the support, innovations, help and the wonderful informative resources which have been offered to the people of the search industry by Google on all the blogs and videos especially created to share information.

Each and every person associated with the search industry in any way can never function without the tools and resources made available by Google.

Whether it is the webmaster tools or the analytics or the information shared on the Matt Cutts blog or his videos for answering the queries related to SEO, all this have surely enriched our knowledge and made us handle projects confidently in helping the client websites put their best foot forward.

Google has come a long way and surely is a source of inspiration to many.

The Google Timeline for the important events and turning points from 1995 onwards can be viewed here: http://www.google.com/corporate/timeline/#start

Google - 09/27/2010

Do We Really Need To Redefine SEO?

Whenever there is an update in the algorithms of the search engines or there is an update in some way or the other related to search , the blogosphere gets flooded with posts about what is SEO and why SEO continues to have its existence despite of rankings being affected and the display and presentation of search results being different, instant or real time.

This I think reflects in a great way the lack of awareness about the true meaning of SEO among the people who want to adopt SEO as a part of their online marketing campaigns. This in turn makes the SEO professionals and the companies jittery and they try all the ways and means to start sending messages over the web about what SEO actually means.

The search industry got its true existence because of the search engines and because of the fact that people flock the search engines when they want to find about the local or the global availability of some product or service.

With the improvements in the search results and the incorporation of speed in the display of search results the search behaviors are also changing and people are have diminishing patience to search for more beyond the first page and now it is beyond the first 3-4 results.

In spite of, all these changes and developments in the search scenario I think SEO still continues to have its own original true meaning and existence.

Now, what is the true meaning of SEO or SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION. As the term suggests optimization – The best possible way adopted by a site to be visible and found on the search scene.

But, I would like to add to it that it not the visibility on the search engines only but on the web holistically in the best possible ways by means of links, references, comments, videos, news, blog posts, discussions, etc.

For achieving and forging the way ahead for such a presence we need a lot of effort , time, strategy, planning and a quest for a quality web presence which a true SEO will surely try to give to any website that he/she is working on for optimization.

As no search engine gives you a high ranking until you have ethical on-page and off-page optimization which proves that you are popular and recommended by the web world.

Way back in 2000 also SEO meant to achieve a quality web presence and now in 2010 also it has the same basic connotation with added value of additional search options as the web has grown multifold since its early days.

Though SEO is also referred to as advertising but it has a different twist to it than PPC, banner ads, affiliate marketing, etc. As the benefit of SEO does take time to accrue but goes on escalating with time . But, for other marketing methods the benefit stops or discontinues to flow when you stop paying.

I am not against any other marketing methods like PPC, banner ads, affiliate marketing, etc. but they have to be incorporated at the right time of the web journey of the website and then stopped or reduced . But SEO is such a method which starts with day one of your website and gradually goes on becoming richer and goes on adding value to your website and the effort of tuning your website in accordance to the search engine algorithms goes on continuously.

Currently, the SEO blogs mention that we need to change the definition of SEO, but I think that we need to understand and put forward the true meaning of SEO. AS the definition of SEO has not changed but its true meaning has got blurred by the shining reflections of the other media of marketing.

If SEO loses its importance and existence then the search engines will lose their true meaning for ranking websites keeping the quality web parameters in mind as they will become a platform for just displaying Ads. Only those search engines will survive in the long run which can rank quality searches and help people find what they are looking for on the search engines. Else search engines will be the domain of those corporates who can spend more for visibility.

Recently, we have seen what Yahoo faced by giving too much importance to banner ads. The same fate can be faced by search engines who will give more importance to paid search than organic search.

A proper balance of display of paid and organic search is needed from the search engines and the same balance is needed by the search marketers depening on the need of the website.

But what is of utmost importance is that the SEOs need to educate the clients regarding the differences between paid and organic search and also spread awareness about the same.

Let us make the web better and focus on quality rather than make it a money making machine only for some. As the SEO techniques offer a global platform and equal platform for SMEs who have limited budgets and is one of the best web presence stategies for SMEs.

SEO - 09/22/2010

How To Measure Your Twitter Influence ?

Twitter is by and large the most popular micro blogging platforms today, being widely used for personal and professional online conversations and sharing of news, views and ideas.

The relevant parameters on this site are the followers, the people following, no. of tweets, no. of retweets, no. of lists you are listed on, no. of times your twitter account gets mentioned in tweets, update recency, follower – following ratio and the no. of power followers, etc.

As people are spending a lot of time on this social media which is a powerful internet marketing, PR and communication tool all put together , a method of calculating the influence and reach your twitter account has is very important as only then we can get to know where we are heading to.

Moreover, the search engines have Real Time Search results which list the buzz around a topic from these various social media sites. The Twitter tweets dominate the real search results scene across the search engines. Hence Twitter influence , reach and popularity is something that cannot be neglected and has to be monitored by all online marketing companies.

There are many tools available on the web to measure the Twitter influence. Some of them are as follows:

http://tweetlevel.edelman.com/

This tool’s each score is rated out of 100 – in other words, the higher your score, the more important you are. There are four result metrics:

• Influence - what you say is interesting and many people listen to it. This is the primary ranking metric.

• Popularity - how many people follow you

• Engagement - you actively participate within your community

• Trust - people believe what you say

Read more about Tweetlevel’s methodology on http://tweetlevel.edelman.com/about

http://klout.com/

The Klout Score is the measurement of your overall online influence. The scores range from 0 to 100 with higher scores representing a wider and stronger sphere of influence. Klout uses over 25 variables to measure True Reach, Amplification Probability, and Network Score. According to Klout influence is the ability to drive people to action -- "action" might be defined as a reply, a retweet or clicking on a link. We perform significant testing to ensure that the average click-through rate on links shared is highly correlated with a person's Klout Score.

Read more about your klout score here: http://klout.com/kscore

http://twittergrader.com/

Twitter Grader tries to measure the power, reach and authority of a twitter account. In other words, it calculates that when you tweet, what kind of an impact does it have?

According to www.twittergrader.com their algorithm factors are:

1. Number of Followers: More followers leads to a higher Twitter Grade (all other things being equal). Yes, I agree that it’s easy to game this number, but we are looking at measuring reach and I did say all other things being equal.

2. Power of Followers: If you have people with a high Twitter Grade following you, it counts more than those with a low Twitter Grade following you. It’s a bit recursive, and we don’t get carried away with it, but it helps.

3. Updates: More updates generally leads to a higher grade — within reason. This does not mean you should be tweeting like a manic squirrel cranked up on caffeine and sugar. It won’t help either your Twitter Grade or your overall happiness in life.

4. Update Recency: Users that are more current (i.e. time elapsed since last tweet is low) generally get higher grades.

5. Follower/Following Ratio: The higher the ratio, the better. However, the weight of this particular factor decreases as the user accrues points for other factors (so, once a user gets to a high level of followers or a high level of engagement, the Follower/Following ratio counts less).

6. Engagement: The more a given user’s tweets are being retweeted, the more times the user is being referenced or cited, the higher the twitter grade. Further, the value of the engagement is higher based on who is being engaged. If a user with a very high Twitter Grade retweets, it counts more than if a spammy account with a very low grade retweets.

The Grade Calculation: So, those are the factors that go into the calculation of a score. This score is then used to compare a user against all other users that also have a score. The grade is calculated as the approximate percentage of other users that have an equal or lower score. So, a Twitter Grade of 80 means that about 80% of the other users got a lower score. At the time this article is being written, over 2.1 million users have been graded.

The Ranking: The absolute ranking is exactly what it sounds like. Based on all other users scored, what’s your “position” in that list. A ranking of 5,000 means that only 4,999 other people had a higher score than you (at that point in time).

Elite List: The elite list is simply an ordered list of the top users (based on ranking) at a given point in time. This list is updated several times a day. We also maintain lists of the top ranking users based on a narrower set of users (like those in a specific geography, those that match a specific keyword, etc.).

Social media itself is in its budding stage so these tools are also at an evolving stage and give an idea about the klout, influence, reach, level and grade metrics of the Twitter Account.

Social Media - 09/14/2010

Domain Stacking Or Brand Stacking In Google Search Results And Online Reputation Management

Earlier this month Google introduced Domain Stacking in its search results. By Domain Stacking or Brand Stacking we mean that when you search for a particular brand then many search results on the first page are from one particular domain , depending on the brand popularity and authority of that domain.

For e.g if we search for Apple or SEOmoz or Hersheys you will get an idea that the first 7-8 searches are related to a particular brand or domain name.

The main question which arises in this case is :

When we all want quality search results and we want search results having a varied mix then why has Google adopted this algorithmic change ?

Google has not said much about this on its blog or any other media but this should be highly linked with the online reputation management of a brand. When people search for your domain and if the first 7 – 8 results are from your domain then they get to know about your brand through your website.

Though all brands are not getting the same stacked results , the brands which are highly popular and have a domain authority with good back links surely stand a chance to rank for the first few searches on page 1.

It is quite obvious that once you get to know about a company and you are interested in its services or products you would like to conduct a brand research and know more about it. For that the social media sites will surely have the buzz around the brand available on their conversation pages but those again are opinions and preferences reflected in their tweets and like button counts but if the potential customer wants to know more about the company then he will surely want to know what the brand has to say.

Hence, the social media and this kind of domain stacking searches give the all round information to the user and the user can take an individual intelligent decision. As in the long run the user is responsible for his decision – the social media offers suggestions and opinions, the brand site offers facts , figures and information related to their products and the user puts two and two together and comes to a confident decision.

Your brand name is also one of the priority keywords for SEO . If you have the brand name in the domain name itself then it is surely a plus point and the inbound links from the authority domains have an added advantage.

It is too early to say how this change in the Google algorithm is going to impact the correlation between social media and online reputation management but, it is essential to start working on getting a listing of at least 7-8 search results from your domain itself for your brand search query , as this will determine your brand popularity and authority on the web in the long run.

As an average user today comes to know about your brand through social media or search engines . Whether the visitor hears about your brand via the social buzz and then goes to the search engines to find and reach your website or whether he reaches your website first through the search engines and then goes on the social media sites or real time search results to catch upon what others say about your brand does not matter. Having a presence on the search engines and the social media is very important and essential for a online visibility, influence and reach.

Google / Online reputation management - 09/11/2010

The Impact Of Google Instant On Search , Searchers (The Users) And SEO

By now the whole SEO fraternity and the web industry knows that Google had a press conference yesterday wherein they announced the launch of Google Instant which aims at making the search experience more fast , fluid and fun.

Google Instant Launch Event

The 3 main components around which Google instant revolves are :

Instant results,
Predictions
Scroll to search.

Google Instant has an impact on the display of search results, the searcher and of course the SEO industry. Let us first talk about the searcher as the search industry cannot exist without him.

Google Instant churns out predictions for what the searcher may be searching depending on the most likely terms possible which are smarter offering a suggestion to the searcher as he keys in every character. Even when you don’t know exactly what you’re looking for, predictions help to guide the searcher. The top prediction is shown in grey text directly in the search box, so you can stop typing as soon as you see what you need.

In short people who are not sure about the query they want to search they get the suggestions as he/she types but this time along with the display of SERPs changing accordingly and instantly without hitting the ‘ENTER” key. The arrow keys are to be used to make selections.

What is important to note is the speed with which it all takes place. Its fast and really fast. Google Instant can save 2-5 seconds per search. Google claimed yesterday that in just an hour that Google Instant has been up it has already saved 36,542 hours of our time. Well if time is money then it surely has added that much productivity potential also to every industry as search is a vital aspect for research and knowledge for each and every industry.

Marissa Mayer of Google who presented this concept stated that Google Instant isn't search as you type, it's search before you type. She even mentioned in an interview that Google Instant is to search what power steering is to a car and it surely helps people with slow typing speeds.

Google Instant can save 2-5 seconds per search

With Google Instant

Before Google Instant

Google Instant is starting to roll-out to users on Google domains in the US, UK, France, Germany, Italy, Spain and Russia who use the following browsers: Chrome v5/6, Firefox v3, Safari v5 for Mac and Internet Explorer v8. Please note, users on domains other than Google.com can only access Google Instant if they are signed in to a Google Account. Google will continue to add new domains and languages over the next several months. Google Instant is not yet available on mobile, but Google plans to release it soon.

Last but not the least the impact on the SEO industry. SEO has its bread and butter coming from search so it is highly important to know and analyze the impact of Google Instant on SEO.

Google Instant Should Make The SEO Industry Flourish Rather Than Perish.

Whenever there is any new technology or update released related to search people keep on making predictions and statement like SEO is dead but as Danny Sullivan of Search Engine Land tweeted during the launch of Google Instant –

The Tweet- “ironically, SEO keeps living despite "SEO is dead" predictions that keep dying over the years. there's been plenty’

Yes, SEO cannot be dead because as long as there is search people will work on their website to make them rank higher. Hence SEO and Search go hand in hand. With Google Instant the need and importance of SEO remains the same or infact is much enhanced as people would like to see their websites rank for all the possible predictions related to their terms and would surely be ranked in the first 3 of page 1. This should make the SEO industry flourish rather than perish. So SEO is not dead but has become more exciting and challenging.

Google instant has not affected the rankings. The basics of the search are the same. So for whatever terms your site has been ranking it continues to rank for them on those SERPs. But, in the long run there is a possibility of the search behavior changing.

When the searcher gets the predictions and results at the speed of thought his patience to scroll down to other lower results and going to the next page for searching may diminish. Of course only time will tell and this will solely depend on the quality of the search results on page 1 especially the first 5 . If Google keeps on ranking Wikipedia and other such websites for initial rankings people will be forced to scroll down but that may have an adverse effect on Google and people may shift to using Bing for a traditional kind of search experience.

Well only time will tell what will be the actual impact of Google Instant on the search behavior but it surely will result in smart search and thereby saving a lot of time and thereby reducing disguised employment.

Google / SEO - 09/09/2010

What Is Landing Page Optimization And Why Is It Important ?

A landing page is the page on which the visitor to your website lands on or views as a result of clicking on the link available to your website from various sources.

A visitor can reach your website via various resources. It depends entirely on the footprints that your website has created on the web.

The major sources, from where the visitor can arrive at your website or your online office/store are:

• Search Engines
SEO
PPC

• Direct Visits

By Directly keying in your website address for a HTTP request

•Referrals

           Banner Ads
         Social Media Sites
           Affiliate Advertising
           Directory Listings
           Various Articles where your website has a mention
          Email Signature Links
          Others

As you can see that from whatever source he lands up on the specific URL of the page if the page has the relevant content and gives more information about what he read at the source point then the interest level of the visitor will get enhanced which can get converted to an enquiry for further details. If the site is an ecommerce site it even has a possibility of a direct conversion i.e he may buy the product online.

So, the landing page content enhances the interest level but there are many other subtle factors which work in the background for the positive influence of the page on the visitor. Firstly when the visitor lands on a relevant link of your website if the design is clutter free and has a balance of images and content and the readability and navigation has an easy flow then that interest level gets retained for a longer time increasing the time spent on the site and also reduces the bounce rate.

Hence, when we talk about landing page optimization, we are in the sense referring to the harnessing of all these factors like web design, color combo., ease of navigation , quality content and the right first impression because in this kind of optimization we are catering to the psychology of the visitor and trying to finalize a sale. Unlike the SEO where you have to keep the search engine robots in mind while the optimization process so that the targeted market can be reached.
So ,SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is all about the marketing of your product on search engines and Landing Page Optimization is all about ensuring that the marketing effort gets converted to sales on your website. Your landing page is your efficient salesman online , making your potential customers feel welcome.

In order to acheive success online a holistic efficiency is required on all spheres marketing, sales, accounts (your online payment gateway) , delivery of the product and order tracking.