For many active SEO professionals, this may just be a refresher; for those starting out or online marketers at small businesses who prefer to do SEO themselves, we hope these tips will be useful. (While search engine algorithms consider hundreds of factors in determining relevance of a page to match a query, these are some of the factors SEO professionals have much more control of).

Coding & Other Technical Factors

Choose a reliable hosting provider
The hosting provider should be reliable and the servers shouldn’t take too long to respond. If the website is unavailable very often, search engines wouldn’t give much importance and consequently users too will not be able to access it.

Maximise/ optimize site speed
Google has confirmed that loading speed (speed at which a page is loaded) is an important ranking factor. Your visitors too would like a site which loads fast.

Practice canonicalization
Have only one version of a URL. For eg. if you have URL versions www.myshop.com and myshop.com, and Google has indexed both, Google may consider it as duplication of content. So it is better to have either www.myshop.com or myshop.com.

Ensure integrity of code
Engage markup validation services and make sure there are no coding errors (or more realistically, minimal coding errors) on your pages, so that it is easy for search engines to crawl the page
Also, check for CSS errors with a markup validator. It makes the job easy for search engines.

Keyword Usage Factors
Get target keyword in the URL
Try having the keyword in the URL for category pages, product pages, service pages etc. It helps search engines in identifying the page and ranking better.

Add keywords in the title tag
Write attractive titles with your keywords in it, preferably right at the beginning. Keep in mind that title is the first thing searchers see in the search results.

Use multiple variants of keyword in anchor text
Link to your landing pages from other pages using keyword variants. While previously the theory was to use the same anchor text to link to a page, that thinking has changed in recent times as it tends to create a rather unnatural link profile. Most SEO experts now agree that having different versions of the keyword phrase as the anchor text is the way to go.

Insert keywords in H1 text, Alt text and Body text
Have keywords in your H1 tags (headings)- while the value of keywords in header tags is not what it was a few years ago, it is still good practice to do so. It is as much about user friendliness as it is about achieving high rankings.

Alt text Having better alt text (with product features and benefits) for your images helps you rank higher in image searches.
Body text- Use your keywords wisely in the body text. Besides inserting them at the beginning of the content, use it at appropriate places such that keyword usage doesn’t seem contrived and affects the quality of the content. .
Write concise meta descriptions
Have something a searcher would like to see as meta description for every page. While meta descriptions are no longer considered a ranking factor and hence not really a SEO factor per se, they could be quite influential in generating clickthroughs from search engine results pages (SERPs). And ultimately that’s what a SEO marketer wants, isn’t it?

Create unique, good quality and fresh content
Reams could be written only on the topic of content, but follow this basic rule: make your content as unique, fresh and usefu as possible. Show the best of it ‘Above the fold’- Google really likes it.

Linking Factors
Build link popularity ie. increase quantity and quality of inbound links
Try to acquire backlinks from good and somehow-related places in a manner that seems natural to search engines. It helps you in reach, earning respect and ranking as well.

Take care of internal linking
Have appropriate internal links with anchor texts; never overdo. It helps both search engines and visitors to move around easily.

Get rid of broken links
Search engines crawl the links they find on a page. So check your site from time to time and make sure there are no broken links.

-Naveen Kodapully
Naveen Kodapully is a SEM Manager, responsible for managing both organic and paid-for search engine marketing campaigns for clients, with On Target Marketing Solutions, a Mumbai SEO company.

Net Revenues (Display advertising)

Google recorded a net display advertising revenues of $1.71 billion in 2011 while Facebook registered a slightly higher $1.73 billion in the same year. In 2012, the research company forecasts the US display revenue growth of Google and Facebook to be nearly at the same level, about 48% year-over-year (y/y). In short, Facebook is expected to earn $2.58 billion while Google may earn revenues of $2.54 billion.

At this growth rate, Google is set to surpass the social network provider Facebook by 2013. eMarketer estimates US display ad revenues at Google to grow by 45.3% y/y to $3.68 billion while Facebook would grow by 27.6% y/y to $3.29 billion.

US display advertising market

The overall market registered a growth of 25.2% y/y to $12.4 billion in 2011. It includes spending on sponsorships, online video, rich media and banner ads. Facebook’s share was 14%, up from11.5% in 2010, while Google’s share was 13.8% in 2011.

Forecast for 2013 & 2014

In the next year, Facebook’s share is expected to grow to 16.8% while Google’s share may rise to reach 16.5%. According to eMarketer, this figure would rise to $15.39 billion in 2012. Both the companies together are expected to generate display ad spending share of 33.3% of the total US market in 2012. This figure is expected to rise to 38.8% in 2014.

In the meantime, Yahoo! share of the US display market may slide to 9.1% in 2012, a major decline from 18.4% in 2008. Microsoft’s share is also likely to decline from 4.5% in 2011 to 4.4% this year. AOL’s share may go down to 4% this year, from 4.3% in 2011.

Source: eMarketer Press release
http://www.emarketer.com/PressRelease.aspx?R=1008856

According to Debra Aho Williamson, principal analyst at eMarketer, “Twitter is positioning itself for strong growth over the next few years. […] to achieve a trajectory similar to Google and Facebook, Twitter still needs a proven, turn-key ad platform and a significantly bigger user base to deliver the reach advertisers demand.”

“Twitter does have an advantage over its competitors, however, in terms of advertising performance,” said Williamson.

On Twitter’s international expansion, Williamson said, “Twitter’s continued expansion of its international sales force will help more than double the company’s overseas revenue each year for the next two years.”

In the present, about 90% of Twitter’s advertising revenues are contributed from the US sources. The contribution of other countries was just about $26 million to the total ad revenues in 2011. Although the expansion of international sales force would diversify the revenue sources in three years time, still 83% is estimated to come from the US.

Twitter vs. LinkedIn

The latter earns more ad revenues from sources outside the US. However it being a business-related social networking site, the total ad revenues and growth rate does not match to the Twitter’s level.

According to eMarketer’s forecast, this year LinkedIn would record a 46.1% (year-on-year) increase in its ad revenues to $226 million mainly due to money coming in from abroad. The market research firm estimates that US advertisers may count for 60% of revenues only by 2014.

Source: eMarketer Press release
http://www.emarketer.com/PressRelease.aspx?R=1008806

In all, Facebook’s total monthly active users grew 39% y/y to 845 million at the end of the year 2011.
• USA – The home market registered an increase of 16% y/y to 161 million in 2011
• Brazil – The other country that recorded impressive increase in the number of Facebook users was Brazil. With a growth of 268% y/y to 37 million monthly active users, this country is expected to well exceed India in the number of users this year. Although, Orkut still ruled the Brazilian social media space.

On its competitors, Facebook said, “We compete broadly with Google’s social networking offerings, including Google+, and also with other, largely regional, social networks that have strong positions in particular countries, including Cyworld in Korea, Mixi in Japan, Orkut (owned by Google) in Brazil and India, and vKontakte in Russia.”

On its future plan, the company said, “We continue to focus on growing our user base across all geographies, including relatively less-penetrated, large markets such as Brazil, Germany, India, Japan, Russia, and South Korea. We intend to grow our user base by continuing our marketing and user acquisition efforts and enhancing our products, including mobile apps, in order to make Facebook more accessible and useful.”

According to the filed documents for IPO with the US SEC, Facebook said, “We have achieved varying levels of penetration within the population of Internet users in different countries. In China, where Facebook access is restricted, we have near zero penetration. We continue to invest in growing our user base, particularly in markets where we are relatively less penetrated.”

The company’s filing made it evident that user base grew significantly across all geographies, but India and Brazil were the ones who showed the maximum growth. The biggest social networking site, Facebook, still considers Orkut, Google’s social media platform, as its rivals among other competitors in different countries.

Source –
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/tech/social-media/Facebook-India-users-doubled-in-2011/articleshow/11741742.cms
http://ibnlive.in.com/news/facebook-india-users-doubled-in-last-one-year/227201-11.html

However, in its place we now have the almost-monthly/ bi-monthly Google Panda update, which leaves SEO marketers in a similar state of flux. As of this writing, we have had about 5 updates (we are currently on Panda 2.5, as it is commonly referred to). Apart from the first two updates, and particularly the second one on April 11, 2011, the rest have been relatively mild.

The thing that makes it difficult for search marketers is that while the entire Panda update was supposed to have been about quality of search results, the results that you actually see on Google search results pages are quite inconsistent. You’ll still find websites with hardly any unique or good quality content and terrible user interface rank very high for some reaosonably competitive terms, which makes you really wonder: are the brilliant minds at Google anywhere close to addressing the quality issue? [Of course, the quality of Google's search results seem to be so much better than the other options available that some of the poor results we see get ignored as minor inconveniences.]

Nevertheless, it is getting close to a month since the most recent Panda update on September 28; time to speculate when the next one will be round the corner. The holiday shopping season in the US and Europe will be heating up and Google has had a history of rocking the boat for many online retailers at about this time. Will it happen again this year? We’re sure to read more about it in the next few weeks.

Also, videos are not just suitable for B2C marketing; they are equally useful for B2B marketing. An increasing number of B2B companies have their own channels on video distribution sites like YouTube in a bid to increase their overall visibility, brand recognition and may be even drive traffic to their own websites.

For small business marketing, using video for marketing might seem quite daunting. It often starts with the first piece of the video mix: video content production. Obviously there are three important considerations: the video must be professionally produced; it must be easy to produce and lastly, it must be fairly inexpensive and cost-effective.  As we learnt from one of our valued clients in the online B2B publishing space, it is not difficult to meet all of the above criteria. This publisher has successfully launched its security videos channel, which includes professionally produced product and corporate videos including a voice over! The best part is that these videos are created out of existing material and don’t require special filming and camera crews. The effectiveness of this tool for marketing purposes, both from a cost and impact perspective, can be seen from the fact that some leading brands in the global security industry have added this product to their marketing mix and producing great video content. We are convinced that if such video content can be used effectively in the rather niche security industry,there is no reason why it can’t be used well in other sectors.

Of course, creating video content is only the first part of the video content marketing mix. For most effectiveness, the other two pieces are equally, if not more, important- video publishing and marketing. We’ll touch upon that in a separate article.

None of the major search enigne marketing blogs/ websites seem to have reported on this yet, though we’ve noticed a couple of isolated posts on some webmaster forums from affected website owners.

Watch this space as we learn more in the next few days to see if the fluctuation we have noticed in the last couple of days is an aberration or if there is something more to it that search engine marketers and SEO comapnies like us need to be concerned about.

Following the loss in England, the Indian cricket team and the administration were accused of: a) lack of enough preparation: the team did not give itself enough time to get used to the different conditions they were likely to encounter and several of its players were not in their peak physical and mental (due to fatigue, perhaps) fitness b) lack of enough practice: the Indian cricket team boasted of some of the best individual players with personal records that are among the best ever in the history of the game, but they didn’t seem to practice their skills for the task at hand enough c) taking things for granted: a “show up in England and we’ll win” attitude.

Now, I see almost identical parallels in the world of SEO. Very often, as soon as a website reaches the top rankings for some keywords, clients feel it is the time to back off and take the foot off the accelerator. ‘We should now get into ‘maintenance’ mode’ – which in business terms translates into “Let’s stop investing on SEO activities as our goals are being met now.”

In fact this should be the time for marketers to increase the margin of separation from their competition; identify newer opportunities; and try to “future-proof” their position. As the Google Panda attack showed in the last few months, things can change (even if it is short-term) very quickly. What might have worked in the past may not work as well in the future. Therefore, while a website is at the top of search rankings, it’s time to take the time to review what’s working well, what needs to change, what can be done better or different (and differently). Remember, if one is not continuing to add content to your website, the competition might be; if one doesn’t continue to build links and external popularity, the competition may be. Very soon, like the Indian cricket team, the website will be off its perch.

SEO is interesting and challenging because of its rather paradoxical nature; the more it seems to change every day as newer and newer ‘ranking signals’ come into play, the more it seems to remain the same ie. do well on content, accessibility and popularity and you are likely to do well with your SEO. The only counter to the constant flux that SEO faces is to ensure that there is continuing diligent effort; don’t let complacence and the heady feeling of reaching the top act as dampeners. The fall from the top can be pretty fast and steep.

- Manoj Aravindakshan

[If you are looking for a Mumbai SEO company to plan and execute a long-term SEO strategy, get in touch with us. Call +91-22-64506796 or e-mail sales(at)ontarget-media(dot)com].

What does it mean for marketers looking to attract search engine traffic? Not much, really- at least not for now; Google is still way too dominant and takes so much of the market share that it makes sense to focus SEO or even paid search marketing efforts on Google, particularly if budget is limited.

If the target audience is end consumers (as opposed to businesses), then it might make sense to invest in SEO/SEM for Bing/ Yahoo, specifically. Otherwise, we suggest marketers to wait and watch.

The message  said that when the sender searched for a keyword phrase “best travel agency in Singapore”, our website was found on page 19 and not on page 1. That was followed by the typical pitch that all SEO companies make: the importance of being on the first page of Google. If we were convinced that being on page 1 of Google would be useful, we could avail of a free chat for some FREE & good advice.

The thing is, we are not not trying to be on the first page of Google for “best travel agency in Singapore”; we are not even a travel agency!  Little did this SEO company bother to check that they were pitching to another SEO firm, and they had ignored one of the fundamentals of marketing: targeting.

This applies as much to a company marketing SEO services as a company selling any other service. The probability of success with a “spray and pray” approach is far too low to be expending too much time, effort and money.