WebPro Technologies3,Sukhshine Complex, Sunrise ParkAhmedabad , Gujarat , 380054India Phone: +91 079 26851135 Email: bharati@webpro.in Mobile: 09825025904   

Web Marketing in The Age Of Search

Engines & Social Media

 With Special Emphasis on Google, Bing and

Twitter

In this workshop we shall discuss:  History of the Search Engines

How search engines like Google and Bing can

help you promote your business globally

Future developments in the field of search

What is social media?

Integration of search and social media

A decade ago if a small business enterprise aimed for global presence it had to follow the traditional way of marketing by working out an advertising strategy and have a hefty budget allocated to spread the word about the company and make the company logo visible on an international platform.

 

 Marketing is all about bringing the people to the product whereas Sales is taking the product to the people.

Whether a company is following the off line traditional methods of marketing or is focusing on online internet marketing the main aim is to pull the attention of the buyer to the product. In the traditional methods this task was not easy as the reach that the advertising in newspapers, magazines or on billboards , on TV, etc. gave was limited and at a very high cost.

Basically, the sales force of your company and the marketing team of your company both have to focus on these two important Ps i.e product and people. Of course there are the other Ps like price, promotions, professionalism , place and profit which are also inter-linked to this whole process.

Online marketing on the other hand has a phenomenonal global as well as local reach. But, pulling the attention of the buyer to the product on your online store is an equally challenging job which needs a slightly different approach and a well planned and a well thought of website .

Netizens are info hungry and are always searching for more and more information on the search engines or within your site for additional information either about the product displayed on your site or about your company.

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.

Search Engine Basics

Search Engines display different kinds of listings in the Search Engine Results Pages(SERP).

Broadly there are two types of listings

Organic Search ResultsSponsored Listings

Organic Search Results are the actual results which the Search Engines display as a result of the keywords the surfer keys in.(These listings are a result of SEO done on the sites listed)

Sponsored Listings are paid listings.So, this is advertising not SEO.

SEM & SEO

Search Engine Marketing(SEM) = Search Engine Optimization(SEO) + Paid Inclusions.

SEM is the total package -Advertising,SEO and every other element for the consequent success of the website.The sum total efforts to accomplish conversions and traffic.

Search Engine Optimization is the set of methods aimed at improving the ranking of a website in search engine listings.

SEO is a subset of SEM.

History

Webmasters and Content Providers began optimizing sites for search engines in the mid 1990’s.

Initially the webmasters had to just submit the URL to the search engines and then the search engines would send spiders to crawl that page and extract links to other pages and return information found on the page to be indexed.

SEO Techniques

SEO techniques are classified into two broad categories:-

White Hat Techniques-Methods which confirm to search engine guidelines and involves no deception.

Black Hat Techniques-Attempts to improve rankings in ways that are disapproved of by the search engines.

White Hat Techniques-Methods which confirm to search engine guidelines and involves no deception.

Relevant Content (Content is King) Stay up-to-date Improve upon existing content Real Popularity Bloggers News Sites Social Media Sites

Web marketing is replacing the traditional methods of marketing at a very alarming rate.

We see more and more people wanting to market on the web and are willing to divert a larger part of the marketing budget for online presence of their business.

The options of creating an online presence are many and what will be the optimum fit for your business type shall solely depend on the nature of your business, the online advertising budget, the willingness and the knowledge of your marketing team.

There are various platforms available on the internet , for advertising on the web. Some of them are as follows:

• Search Engines

• Email Campaigns

• Advertising Networks And Affiliates

• Web Directories And Portals

• Press Releases

• Social Media Sites

Search Engines

For building a web presence on the search engines the website has to be made SEO friendly and optimized so as to rank high for the targeted keywords.

This can also be achieved by enrolling for a PPC program and pay the bid amount in order to get a ranking under the sponsored listings list on the search engines.

The footprints can be created on the search engines even if you do not have a website . You can add the details about your business on the Google maps or Bing maps and get a local listing for your business.

Local search as the term suggests caters to geographic location specific searches. Business details can be submitted on the basis of geographic constraints to search engines which display local business listings for geographic specific keywords.

The search engines display local based listings from their structured database of local listings.

Usually the data is collected from the local yellow pages directories and also from the direct submission of details of the business from their maps option where you specify the address of your work place and contact details.

These details get a listing in the local search even if you do not have a website.

Hence, the benefit of the search engines can be adhered to even if you do not have a website and have an online presence for your business.

These listings in a way have a global reach in the sense that if anyone is having a location based search query like ‘seo ahmedabad’ or ‘corporate services London’ from any part of the globe they get the same listings under local search results.

In order to get good rankings for local search results it is essential to have the complete address submitted and verified. If more people write reviews against the results then it boosts the rankings further.

SEO – Search Engine Optimization & PPC – Pay Per Click Campaigns

In order to get organic rankings one has to work on the, on page and off page factors and also try to get as many inbound links as possible.

In short the site has to be made search engine friendly and so qualitative that people would link to it.

But, in contrast the PPC rankings are directly related to the amount you are willing to pay for every click.

You get listed under the sponsored links even if your site’s on page and off page factors are totally zero.

As a result inspite of the immediate business that you get as a result of PPC listings, your website does not create its footprints on the web and once the PPC campaign is discontinued your website disappears in the invisible web.

Though , SEO results are achieved over a period of time but if the SEO campaign is according to the search engine norms and done ethically the benefits that you reap in the long run are worth the wait and effort.

As and SEO campaign not only brings the targeted traffic but also creates the valuable presence on the web for the website in terms of inbound links.

Hence, in any marketing campaign there should be a proper balance and timing for each campaign to be given importance to.

Initially, when the website is new and SEO efforts will take a while to show results, it is important to have a focus on the PPC campaign by allocating a certain budget and by monitoring the campaign effectively on a daily basis. Once the organic rankings are achieved the PPC budgets can be cut down gradually.

Search engines are a source of targeted traffic to your website.

Having a proper plan for creating a presence shall surely yield effective results and ensure a wider long lasting reach on the web.

Now a days search engines have many options on which your business can have a presence on.

For eg. Videos, blogs, discussions, news, books, shopping, images, maps, updates.

By search engines we do not mean only Google.

The other search engines like Bing are equally important

SEM Cannot Ignore Bing From Their Online Marketing Strategy

Bing has lately been getting a lot of attention from the SEM industry. Yahoo and Bing have come together with a mutually beneficial collaboration i.e Yahoo results are being powered by Bing and this surely is making the market share of Bing grow considerably.

Google has from May 2010 onwards come up with major changes. First being the May Day update they call it that because it took place between 28th of April to 3rd of May.

The second change is the Google Caffeine going live from all Google data centres from 8th of June.

The May Day update is an algorithmic change which has been intentionally made to improve the quality of long tail keywords search results.

On the other hand Google caffeine is a new web indexing system.

According to Google they came up with this new indexing system to keep up with the evolution of the web and to meet rising user expectations. Google further has mentioned on its blog that content on the web is blossoming.

It's growing not just in size and numbers but with the advent of video, images, news and real-time updates, the average webpage is richer and more complex

In addition, people's expectations for search are higher than they used to be. Searchers want to find the latest relevant content and publishers expect to be found the instant they publish.

Caffeine takes up nearly 100 million gigabytes of storage in one database and adds new information at a rate of hundreds of thousands of gigabytes per day.

You would need 625,000 of the largest iPods to store that much information; if these were stacked end-to-end they would go for more than 40 miles.

The main objective of Google Caffeine is to index the web faster to offer more fresh content and results to the users.

Hence, speed and fresh content is the future of the web.

If you talk to an SEO about optimizing your website then link building is one of the topics which will surely be discussed as a part of any SEO project.

Apart from a good qualitative site in all respects other genuine methods of gaining natural inbound links as your website goes from one milestone to another are as follows:

Focus all your efforts on making the site informative, qualitative and content rich to get links automatically.

Do not neglect the On-Page Optimization Basics and just go after links. (Very important from the SEO perspective)·

Participate in social media networks for discussions and sharing of information and mention links to the relevant pages to your website. (It need not be the Home Page always)·

Have a social book marking button on your website. 

Make RSS feeds available on your website. 

Issue Press Releases periodically.

The social graph linked with quality search results to inform the searcher about what people are saying about it is the next extention to make the search results more qualitative.

If we compare this to the real time decisions we take, logically we also want to know more about the owner of the company or the company culture before finalizing any deal with a company.

The like buttons of the social media merely state the preferences of the people who are connected with each other and the preferences, likes and dislikes vary from person to person hence that cannot be the metrics to judge or influence the rankings. That can just depict the popularity of the product and inform you about the latest buzz.

Search is not getting replaced by the social media but rather getting supplemented by it and shall become more qualitative, once the search engines have their algorithms for integrating social media in their results up and running.

All marketing plans, efforts and strategies revolve around people and understanding the potential customer or catering to the existing customer is the main focus of any marketing campaign.

The social element can never be ruled out from any business activity as a whole because every business caters to some or the other want or requirement of people.

As all people involved in any kind of marketing are aware of the four Ps - Product , Place, Promotion and Price. We can see that we cannot decide about the product without keeping the people in mind, we cannot decide about the place without keeping the people in mind, we cannot decide about any promotion campaign without keeping the people in mind and again the price also is a people centric decision.

Hence, it is this fifth ‘P' people which is the main aspect around which  all marketing campaigns revolve around. Hence, every business needs to reach out to people with the best possible approach.

Internet marketing offers the best possible platform for reaching out to the potential customer for introducing the products and services or to the existing customer for customer support in the form of social media.

According to Wikipedia:

Social media are media for social interaction, using highly accessible and scalable publishing techniques. Social media use web-based technologies to transform and broadcast media monologues into social media dialogues. Andreas Kaplan and Michael Haenlein define social media as "a group of Internet-based applications that build on the ideological and technological foundations of Web 2.0, and that allow the creation and exchange of user-generated content." Businesses also refer to social media as user-generated content (UGC) or consumer-generated media (CGM). A common thread running through all definitions of social media is a blending of technology and social interaction for the co-creation of value.

Hence social media sites offer a two way conversational platform which offers a fair opportunity to voice opinions and feedbacks to both the parties involved .

There are many social media sites but Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin, YouTube and Blogs are widely used by the netizens. These sites are a good tool for effective online marketing and networking.

SEO has got its own importance and Social media has got its own importance. Since Social media has been integrated by search and real time search is where people go if they want to know what people are saying about a certain topic as of now, SEO and social media have to be used in conjunction by all the companies for a long term qualitative online presence for their business. Both these sources bring in qualitative, targeted inbound traffic which is the main purpose of online marketing.

 Marketing is all about bringing the people to the product whereas Sales is taking the product to the people.

Basically, the sales force of your company and the marketing team of your company both have to focus on these two important Ps i.e product and people. Of course there are the other Ps like price, promotions, professionalism , place and profit which are also inter-linked to this whole process.

Whether a company is following the off line traditional methods of marketing or is focusing on online internet marketing the main aim is to pull the attention of the buyer to the product. In the traditional methods this task was not easy as the reach that the advertising in newspapers, magazines or on billboards , on TV, etc. gave was limited and at a very high cost.

Online marketing on the other hand has a phenomenonal global as well as local reach. But, pulling the attention of the buyer to the product on your online store is an equally challenging job which needs a slightly different approach and a well planned and a well thought of website .

Netizens are info hungry and are always searching for more and more information on the search engines or within your site for additional information either about the product displayed on your site or about your company.

People are more aware as of today about the options available for what they want to buy because of the plethora of information available on the net on each and every topic.

They have become more net savvy and as a result it can be observed that the search patterns of the searcher have also become more specific , which has made the SEO industry to focus more on the long tail keywords.

Hence, first and foremost make sure there is enough content available on your site about each product that you display on the online store front .

Once the visitor is on the website he is a potential customer . The design, architecture, user-friendliness and of course, the compelling content on the landing page of your site will determine if the potential customer will be converted into a regular customer or not.

So, Once again we see that “Content Is King” when it comes to winning over the search engine bots or the visitors coming to your site.

The search engines do not discriminate between a website of a start up and a website of a company running ancestral business, neither do they discriminate the rankings of a company on the basis of their balance sheets.

So all the websites have an equal chance or potential of getting ranked on the first page of the search engine which opens the doors to a whole new world of business and opportunities for that company. Provided, the site has been ethically optimized and offers genuine , focused and detailed content.

Again, it is this very same content which will make other websites link to your site. As we all know inbound links are another factor which work like a vote to your site or like WOM for your site. If only webmasters focus on making the site qualitative rather than have link building strategies and think of ways and means of buying and selling links half the spam related issues would be taken care of.

Reputation is the opinion or a social evaluation of the group of entities toward a person, a group of people, or an organization . It is an important factor in many fields, such as education, business, online communities or social status.

Reputation can be considered as a component of the identity as defined by others

Reputation is 'the result of what you do, what you say, and what other people say about you'.

Online Reputation is a factor in any online community where trust is important.

An online identity, internet identity, or internet persona is a social identity that an Internet user establishes in online communities and websites.

From all the above definitions and statements, the terms:

Opinion Identity Result of your actions and words spoken Trust factor are all important and related to each other when

we define or discuss about the reputation of any person, company, community, group etc.

People find the online reference to your business on the web through the search engines or some referring sites. Moreover now with the real time search as one of the search options on the search engines, what people are writing about your brand or product on social media sites like twitter , facebook, linkedin, etc. Is also one of the sources from where people form an impression about your company.

Hence, first and foremost it is important to create an identity for your business on the web. That is usually initiated by registering an apt domain name, developing a good informative, content rich website and then by optimizing the site for search engines so the netizens can find your website in the top rankings when they search for something related to the product or service offered by your company.

The buzz about your business can also be spread via the social media sites by conversing and sharing information.

Once your online presence or identity is created on the web it is but obvious that people (usually competitors, ex-employees, customers, etc) start forming and voicing opinions about a certain brand and product .

Hence, it is very important to track and monitor what people are saying about your company or product and then offer a humble thanks if the opinion is positive but if it is negative then it is time for your PR team to stand by for the reputation of your company and defend your brand or make improvements accordingly. It is also very  important for every company to have strong social media presence where you can put forward your word.

You can keep yourself informed about what the web world is talking about your company by creating Google Alerts for the company name .

Usually the micro blogging conversational platform like twitter or facebook serves the purpose. But, if you have a blog then you can write in detail and rectify the harm done or enhance the positive aura around the buzz.

When the continuous online presence of your company is found on the search engines and Social media sites and when it is seen that the company has a voice and image of its own then surely the trust factor is taken care of.

Again, prevention is always better than cure so start tracking the website and social media as soon as your website goes live.

Hence, The three steps involved in Online Reputation Management are:

• Monitor

• Analyze

• Influence

In order to get organic rankings one has to work on the, on page and off page factors and also try to get as many inbound links as possible. In short the site has to be made search engine friendly and so qualitative that people would link to it.

But, in contrast the PPC rankings are directly related to the amount you are willing to pay for every click. You get listed under the sponsored links even if your site’s on page and off page factors are totally zero

. As a result inspite of the immediate business that you get as a result of PPC listings, your website does not create its footprints on the web and once the PPC campaign is discontinued your website disappears in the invisible web.

Though , SEO results are achieved over a period of time but if the SEO campaign is according to the search engine norms and done ethically the benefits that you reap in the long run are worth the wait and effort. As and SEO campaign not only brings the targeted traffic but also creates the valuable presence on the web for the website in terms of inbound links.

Hence, in any marketing campaign there should be a proper balance and timing for each campaign to be given importance to. Initially, when the website is new and SEO efforts will take a while to show results, it is important to have a focus on the PPC campaign by allocating a certain budget and by monitoring the campaign effectively on a daily basis. Once the organic rankings are achieved the PPC budgets can be cut down gradually.

Amit Singhal – A Google Engineer who has led the development of real-time search says, "One user following another in social media is analogous to one page linking to another on the Web. Both are a form of recommendation," Singhal says. "As high-quality pages link to another page on the Web, the quality of the linked-to page goes up. Likewise, in social media, as established users follow another user, the quality of the followed user goes up as well."

He also says that "You earn reputation, and then you give reputation. If lots of people follow you, and then you follow someone--then even though this [new person] does not have lots of followers," his tweet is deemed valuable because his followers are themselves followed widely, Singhal says. It is "definitely, definitely" more than a popularity contest, he adds.

Again just like link building it is the quality not the quantity that matters . Hence, whom you follow and the number of reputed followers following you is one of the main criteria for getting your twitter account tweets to get a ranking in the Real Time Search Results of Google.

One of the easiest and most reliable way to get the tweets ranked are to make your Twitter account synonymous to the service or product that you are dealing in and see that most of your tweets are related to that, along with some having a social message, sharing knowledge and ideas and retweets. As this is a conversational platform with social and business objectives .

 

Twitter.com is a social media conversational platform which gives an opportunity to the participants to converse , connect , share news & views, happenings etc. Hence. the rules of effective communication become applicable to all the people, corporate, celebrities and journalists who want to use it for business promotion, brand building .

The tweets from a corporate Twitter account should be managed by some responsible person of the marketing or PR team . The tweets can discuss a problem related to the product, offer a solution, state the benefits of the products or simply quote a saying denoting the company culture. But, they will generate traffic to your site only if they have links to your site and also other reference sites.

By using Twitter scheduling tools (The two most popular ones are SocialOomph and Hootsuite.) you can create the tweets and schedule them for being displayed after a few days or weeks.

Planning and scheduling is crucial and important to any marketing plan. Hence, By planning and scheduling the tweets you save time and you can be more focused on what you want to convey to the followers about your business.

When the tweets are planned you can focus on the keywords you would like to use. As using the relevant keywords in your tweets you can cater to a wide range of the company products and services. For example you plan for 5-6 tweets a day. You can focus on 5-6 keywords in the tweets which surely gives a wider reach than a haphazard statement written just for posting something.

No doubt too much of planning will take away the essence of real time conversation but total lack of planning can take the conversation off track . Hence a proper balance has to be maintained to benefit from this social media platform.

Google offers the most comprehensive real-time results from news headlines, blogs, Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, and other sources.

Google has adapted its page-ranking technology and developed new algorithmic tricks and filters to keep returns relevant, according to a leading Google engineer.

Every marketing campaign involves social interaction. As social interaction online is possible through the various social media platforms like blogging and micro blogging. In an online or internet marketing campaign social media is surely something which is catching up with the netizens.

By just having an account on social media sites and assigning it to any Tom, Dick or Harry from your organization is not going to ensure success from this media. Every marketing campaign succeeds due to its planned, systematic approach. Moreover, every marketing campaign requires constant review at every stage to see and check where the campaign is getting directed to.

Interactions on this media are not a casual chat and neither it is a soft board where you regularly pin the announcements, requirements and achievements of your company . It is neither a market or a mall where you directly sell .

Social media is all about influence and reach. It is about establishing your online reputation. It is about networking and developing an online rapport with every person who may have the potential to directly or indirectly be associated to your business.

This surely needs to have a planned systematic approach and also the identification of the right person who shall be responsible to handle this task.

In my opinion, as this medium is still at an evolving stage and all the people involved in social media are still experimenting and exploring the potential of this media, the CEOs or the top management personnel are the right people to handle this task.

Interactions on this media can either make or mar the reputation of your business. People who are highly concerned about the growth, reputation and WOM of the company are the right people to be allocated this task as there is a lot of human technology involved in this interaction rather than computer technology.

Again it is the person and not the post which should be the deciding factor. As the person identified should have the care and the concern for the online reputation of the business, should have a flair for interacting with people and should have the responsibility to make commitments and claims publicly and at the same time be answerable for every word on this media if the need arises.

It is not necessary that the posts and tweets of this person managing the social media accounts for your company should have the Pied Piper's magical music whereby all the netizens start following him but should surely have the sense and the sensibility to make the followers get interested in the products and services that your company offers.

If You Think That You Have Signed A SEM Contract And Now You Are Going To Win The Web Market Then You Are Wrong.

But, search and internet marketing is much more than just ranking high on the search engines. Just as in the offline traditional way of marketing just giving an Ad. on TV , magazine or newspapers is not enough to get the footfalls in your store or make your phone ring repeatedly for enquiries, there needs to be a full plan of the whole marketing and sales circle. Similarly, online marketing also needs a complete plan to ensure the success of conversions of the online generated inquiries.

An SEO can help you achieve rankings but along with that that the most important thing to focus on is to find the answers to the following questions.

• Are the clicks generated as a result of SEO getting converted into enquiries ?

• Is the landing page giving the right impression about the products, services and the company?

• Is somebody in the organization responsible for the handling these queries with a responsibility attached to it?

• Is my staff who manages the social media cyber savvy or is he just typing in the tweets and posts?

• Does my site appear in all the search options of the search engines?

• Does my company have a voice and approachability on the social media?

• Who in the organization is managing the social media?

• Do we have a legal policy if things go wrong or some web online policies, rules and regulations so that things do not go wrong?

• Does my company have a blog?

• Is it being updated regularly?

• What is the focus of our blog?

Every employee in the company should easily relate to the virtual office (the website) of the company the way they relate to systems and procedures in the offline office. After all the virtual office or store is nothing but a reflection of your offline real presence.