Bharati Ahuja

SMX East 2013 was held soon after Google’s 15th birthday where Google had made 2 big announcements:

1. Secure Searching Being Made Default For Everyone
2. “Hummingbird” search algorithm is live and especially designed to handle complex queries.

These announcements have created quite a stir in the search marketing world and at SMX the discussions for organic search revolved around the following major topics:

1. Not Provided Keyword data
2. Hummingbird Algorithm
3. Mobile is the future
4. Where is SEO going in 2014

Major Takeaways From SMX East 2013 Related To Organic Search

About Not Provided Keyword Data:

100% “Not Provided” keyword data in GA will soon be a reality.
Accept it, get used to it and move beyond keyword data for search analysis.
Focus on the “Search Queries” data provided by Google Webmaster Tools.
Google is working on getting better and Google’s take on “Not Provided” is that we only want to respect the privacy of the user and protect the user.
But as Greg Boser rightly pointed ...” what blows me off is that retargeting is considered cool but organic search data is not.” as advertisers continue to get the keyword data.

About Going Mobile

Mobile is the next big thing. Hence, go mobile.
By end of 2013 there'll be more mobile devices than people.
The conversion rate of smartphone vs. desktop is .3x vs. 1x. The challenge for marketers, then, is understanding how conversions work.
Have a direct connect with your audience across all devices. Do responsive design and also offer an App.

About Structured Data , Entity Search And Authorship Markup

Entity search is about understanding the meaning of the search query and goes beyond just mapping word to word for giving search results.
Search is heading to authorship and semantics.
HTML was made to determine how a page looks and not for what it means.
The semantic web has a Data Tier, Logic Tier and the Display Tier.
Implement Twitter Cards and Open Graph on websites.
Authorship Markup is one of the main pillars of the semantic search era.
90% of the data on the web has been created in the last 2 years.
Authorship Markup connects the web searchers with the author.
Authorship should be used on pages which have articles and insights about a certain topic .
If you have multiple authors listed for an article only one author pic. Will be displayed in SERPs as Google’s search UI currently does not support multiple authorship.
Authorship needs to be verified via an email on the domain or by linking to the Google+ profile of the author.
Under the contributor links of Google+ link to sites and blogs not to individual pages.
Author byline is another important authorship indicator.
Regarding the distinction for the author and publisher rel=author is for the person and rel=publisher is for the organization.
Have rel=author, rel=publisher and organization markup should implemented on the relevant pages.
Danny Sullivan’s take on Hummingbird(the latest algorithmic update).. Hummingbird is all about tying together entities and bringing entity search to the next level. It isn’t a “we don’t use links anymore” algorithm, it’s more of a “we’re still looking at all these signals, but we’re also looking at more streamlined, refined signals” .
Stop worrying about how search algorithms are changing and focus attention on how user behaviour is changing. Searchers are getting smart and kids are way over facebook.
Search engines need to understand and decode what gestures and conversational queries actually mean.
According to Duane Forrester of Bing the future search is like ... Someone has an iPad, they look at a picture of the Empire State Building, they tap the picture – the speak and ask “what can I drink there?”
Search engines need to make connections, understand gestures, context and demand and Entity Search is headed in that direction. So, its not about Bing v/s Google or Google v/s Bing. Often both engines have to be solving for the same problems, so whatever path they follow the destination is the same... “ To meet the demand of the user”.
According to Greg Boser, building quality content for your audience and multiplying that audience by good social strategy is the key. If you have an audience then you have links too. Audience is everything. Leverage mobile , do responsive design and also offer an App. This connects you directly to your audience. In order to survive its not only about the white box (Google). According to Danny Sullivan a Search Marketer is a person who keeps working on trying to understand how the information is being searched.

SEO in 2014 is very much here to stay and by no means is SEO dead but it is all about Content, Context, Connections and Correlation Search marketers need to move away from keywords, rankings and links. If you mange SEO in-house then Distribute SEO tasks , create an SEO education plan and expand SEO beyond the SEO team as Social media is not 100% of one person's job but its 1% of everyones job.

Previous Articles written by Bharati Ahuja on the above topics:

The Indian Ecommerce Industry today maybe in nascent stage today but has the positive potential of an amplified growth in the near future.It is changing the way businesses are done and sowing the seeds for a whole new economy. Rising incomes and a greater variety of goods and services that can be bought over the internet is making buying online more attractive and convenient for consumers all over the country. The internet is opening up new avenues for the people in rural India which is changing the lifestyles, the quantity and quality of consumption which is helping change mindsets in the rural areas.

A quick glance at the eBay India Census 2012 report indicates that e-commerce is here to stay. eBay Census 2012 research findings were based on an analysis of all online buying and selling transactions by Indians on eBay between July 1, 2011 and December 31, 2012. At eBay India today, every one minute a mobile accessory changes hands and every two minutes a mobile handset. It has 4,306 e-commerce hubs today, of which 1,015 are hubs in rural India, indicating that consumers in the smaller towns of India are a major force in this online growth story.

According to IBEF (Indian Brand And Equity Foundation) The sector is classified into four major types, based on the parties involved in the transactions –

Business-to-Business (B2B)
Business-to-Customer (B2C)
Customer-to-Business (C2B) and
Customer-to-Customer (C2C)

According to an Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI) report, the overall e-commerce market in India has recorded a robust CAGR (Componded Annual Growth Rate) of 54.6 per cent and crossed USD10.0 billion during 2007–11. It is estimated to add another USD4 billion and reach USD14 billion by end-2012. Segment-wise, B2C dominated the sector with a 56.0 per cent share in 2010–11. Together, the B2C-C2C segments have shown significant growth; their aggregate market size stood at USD9.9 billion in 2011, while that for B2B segment was estimated at around USD48.8million. However, B2B’s acceptance is on an upward trend due to its rising awareness amongst Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs), which are close to 13 million in number.

The United Nations estimates that just 31% of India’s population lives in urban areas, compared to 50% in China, 74% in Russia and 85% in Brazil. As a result, sales from consumers outside of metropolitan areas already make up half of total sales at some leading online retailers in India.

Flipkart today is valued at Rs1,000 crore, and speculation is rife that the e-firm, in fact, is worth at Rs5,000 crore. It recently raised $20 million. Other Indian players – Myntra, Jabong, India Plaza and Junglee – are also eating into the e-commerce pie.

Notably as can be seen in the image below, on the investment front, the sector enjoyed inflow of around USD800 million in 2011, up from USD110 million in 2010. Investments made in e-commerce businesses by PE firms alone more than quadrupled to USD467 million in 2011 compared to USD99 million in 2010. The number of deals increased to 78 compared to just 22 in 2010. The robust deal activity continued in 2012, with USD242 million invested during the January-April period. The trend over the period reflects that the average deal size has more than doubled due to increasing traction in e-commerce activities, which requires larger investments for growth.

However, the major issues which the ecommerce companies face are as follows:

1. The challenge of having a good distribution network but many ecommerce giants are developing their own distribution networks as delivering charges form a major component of the product cost – ranging between USD1.0–4.0 per item.

2. The huge investment made in ecommerce ventures has the potential to give beneficial returns in the long run only if the customer base increases.

3. The turn around time for delivering a product can be reduced to 1-2 days only if the distribution system is improved and this also will help retain old customers and add to the list of new customers.

4. Retaining an existing customer is more profitable for a company since acquiring a new customer; on average costs USD15.0–20.0.

5. Only the ones who can face these issues and retain customers and survive online can get a piece of the pie of the online market as fundamentally weaker companies would lose out to established players . Hence a focus on improving the distribution system and retaining the existing customers is the key to ecommerce success.

On an average day on eBay in India:

According to a study by Forrester , India is expected to record the highest growth in the Asia Pacific region during 2012–16. The trend would shift with the online retail segment contributing equally to the total market size, considering it is expected to grow significantly in the coming years. The B2C segment would continue to lead the e-commerce market, thanks to the budding Indian Internet population, supporting demographics, ease of payment modes and customer-centric innovative policies.

We all by now know that by adding the Authorship Markup to our blog we can have the author pic. Displayed in SERPs in Google. Adding the Authorship Markup is complete and possible only if the author has a Google+ profile and it has a two way link from the content to the Google+ profile of the author.

The author pic. being displayed in SERPs is surely a good thing. It correlates the content with the author and givs him an author identity and also people start recognizing the author not only by his writing but by face too.

Android is the operating system by Google powers over 1 billion smartphones and tablets. Google says, since these devices make our lives so sweet, each Android version is named after a dessert: Cupcake, Donut, Eclair, Froyo, Gingerbread, Honeycomb, Ice Cream Sandwich, and Jelly Bean and the latest version of Android is named KitKat.

Indian developers have come up with a suggestion for the next version. they have suggested that the next version of Android should be named 'Ladoo'. Ladoo is a round shaped sweet made of flour, sugar and clarified butter and is served on festive occasions and religious ceremonies.

This group of developers wanted the KitKat version to be named as KajuKatli but as they were late in putting forward the suggestion they have started a campaign to call the next version as Ladoo.

If you support this suggestion then visit http://ladoo.co/ ... Lets Make Android Delicious

Matt Cutts the head of the spam team at Google had recently tweeted and asked small website owners to submit their site via a Google Docs form

On the form Google has mentioned....

“Google would like to hear feedback about small but high-quality websites that could do better in our search results. To be clear, we're just collecting feedback at this point; for example, don't expect this survey to affect any site's ranking.”

Usually the big brands have an edge over the websites of small companies mainly because of the extensive web presence and more number of inbound links due to their popularity.

In reply to one of the tweets @mattcutts replied ...” We're looking for feedback from a wider circle of folks so we can assess the scope of things.” He has also further mentioned ... This is a separate attempt to see if there's small, good sites that should do better

In reply to @robdwoods tweet on the 29th of August 2013 it seems only few have filled the submission form and Google wants more data to come to conclusions...

Author : Bharati Ahuja

Google rolled out the “in-depth articles” feature for search results last week. Google says .... to understand a broad topic, sometimes people need more than a quick answer and research indicates that atleast 10% of people’s daily information needs fit this category -- topics like stem cell research, happiness, and love, to name just a few.

In the coming few days when this feature gets rolled out for main search results you will see the results as follows if your search query is about a broad topic. This will be rolled out on google.com in English to start off with.

Google also added on the Google search blog that they are happy to see that people continue to invest in thoughtful in-depth content that will remain relevant for months or even years after publication. This is exactly what you'll find in the new feature. In addition to well-known publishers, you'll also find some great articles from lesser-known publications and blogs.

This feature surely focuses on the fact that how serious Google is about quality content which is timeless and offers a lot of quality information to the user about a given topic

How To Optimize your site for the "In-depth articles" Feature:

Along with the meta data on the page and other on-page SEO factors if you focus on the following aspects in case of articles which are written in detail then the potential for that article to appear under the “in-depth articles” increases.

1.Schema.org Article Markup

Specify the following attributes of the article markup using the Article Markup Schema:

headline
alternativeHeadline
image (note: the image must be crawlable and indexable)
description
datePublished
articleBody

2. Authorship markup

Authorship markup specifies the author and helps Google to display the details of the authors and experts in the search results.

3. Pagination and canonicalization

It is but natural that the in-depth articles will be lengthy and can be multi-part . In such cases the proper pagination markup using rel=next and rel=prev can help Google algorithms correctly identify the extent of such articles. In addition, it’s important that canonicalization is done correctly, with a rel=canonical pointing at either each individual page, or a “view-all” page (and not to page 1 of a multi-part series).

4. Logos

Hence,

Create a Google+ Page and link it to your website. Choose an official logo or icon as the default image.
Use organization markup to specify your logo.

Author : Bharati Ahuja

Danny Sullivan of Search Engine Land recently hosted the Whiteboard Friday at MOZ where he spoke about how search had evolved since the early days of the search engines. Search has surely evolved and will keep on evolving but along with it the mindset and the thought process of an SEO has also evolved or rather should evolve side by side.

25 Points That Point Out The Evolving SEO Thought Process:

1. Adapt to web developments before Google incorporates them in the search algorithms.

2. When Google announces an algorithm update wait for the update to be executed, check for the changes in the WMT and GA reports and then tweak the website accordingly.

3. All updates may not affect all sites.

4. Be prepared. Adhere to WWW standards of web development even if they are not integrated in the algorithms yet.

5. Focus on Content and context and then connect on social media so that the content gets correlated correctly .

6. Forget “Keywords” and focus on “Keyness”. http://blog.webpro.in/2012/04/forget-keywords-and-focus-on-keyness.html

7. Forget “PageRank” and focus on “Authorship”. http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2214849/Googles-Knowledge-Graph-Implications-for-Search-SEO

8. Follow Google Guidelines for mobile search. http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.in/2013/06/changes-in-rankings-of-smartphone_11.html

9. Represent content on site as data as per www.schema.org especially for videos, reviews and local contact details.

10. You may use any third party SEO tools but always have a presence on Google WMTs and Google Analytics.

11. There may be umpteen social media sites but Google+ Account and Google+ business page are the passport to your online identity.

12. Value and encourage UGC (User Generated Content) in the form of reviews and comments.

13. On-page SEO forms the foundation for indexing hence can never be ignored.

14. Correct Technical SEO ensures the site to be future-proofed hence needs apt attention.

15. Off-page optimization is all about trust and authority and not about links.

16. Page one rankings may increase traffic but the social media signals and UGC will influence sales.

17. It is a knowledge sharing economy and people look for answers on the search engines . The content on your site should offer solutions.

18. SEO is not limited only to the SEO team but each and every team member needs to be aware of how social media , content and SEO are integrated . Neither is SEO a onetime process, hence SEO has to be an ongoing process and has to be integrated in the whole marketing mix.

19. SEO is less about bots but more about people. Customers will love the company only if the employees love it first. Hence, educating the whole team about SEO should be an on going process and the SEO should include training the client about the new developments as a part of the SEO project.

20. The SEO is not only working on the keywords and rankings of the site but is helping the business to develop an online brand and also helping the business to establish the trust and authority factor by helping these signals integrate , get correlated and also get indexed by the search engines ensuring long term presence.

21. SEO is not about SERPs but the importance of SERPs cannot be ruled out. High Rankings lead to a high CTR (Click Thru Rate) which leads to increased traffic with a potential for good conversions.Hence, SEO is beyond rankings does not mean that high SERPs are no longer a long term goal of an SEO campaign but it means that the website has to reach out and branch out and gain quality web presence before it is ensured of a good high ranking search presence.

22. Though SEO is earned media, its success is heavily dependent on the owned and shared media. Hence, constantly keeping a track of the owned and shared media cannot be ignored by the SEO even if they are managed by another agency.

23. Increase in the number of visits from search engines indicates that the SEO is working in the positive direction.

24. Increase in sales indicates that the social media signals are generating the right kind of WOM in your favour.

25. Though some companies may call SEO by some other term, never believe in the clichéd statement ...”SEO IS DEAD”.

Today a true SEO does not limit herself only to Google Algorithms but looks beyond and thinks about how a website can adapt to the web standards which are applicable and integrated by search engine algorithms as of now and also works on the standards which have a potential of being integrated by search algorithms in future . This does not only ensures a long term good health of the website but also makes it prepared to face any algo updates without getting adversely affected.

SEO should not only limit its self to perform repair functions on the site to get into search results but just like a good engineer applies scientific, economic, social, and practical knowledge in order to design, build, and maintain structures, machines, devices, systems, materials and processes.

A good SEO needs to apply technical specifications that define and describe aspects of the World Wide Web which directly or indirectly affect the development and administration of web sites and consider include the interoperability, accessibility and usability of web pages and web sites from the WWW perspective. Instead of dissecting the algorithms we need to understand the standard norms of web design and development which will make the web a better place and websites robust technically.The SEO industry is at that point of the graph where its going to scale new heights and emerge as more meaningful and essential for website owners and search engines as well. Content and quality have been king since the first web page was published but Google has been successful in penalizing the low quality content and help clear the content and the linked clutter on the web with its algorithmic updates recently.

As the web evolved the search engines evolved and only when the SEO mindset will also evolve side by side the status and the reputation of the SEO industry will achieve the due respect and importance in the coming years.

Author : Bharati Ahuja

We all in 2013 are convinced that a good online presence is as needed for a businesses to exist and grow as sunlight is needed on Earth for the flora and fauna for the same reason. Every business big or small is struggling to achieve a good online presence and trying out various online platforms to put their best foot forward.

The integrated use of the paid media, earned media and owned media are the 3 main routes to overall web presence.

Earned Media:

Organic Visits
User Generated Content
Reviews
WOM on Social Media Via Likes, Mentions and ripples

Owned Media:

Branded Website
Company Blog
Branded Social Media Accounts
Branded Content Published on various platforms

Paid Media

PPC
Display Banners
Sponsorships
Video Ads.
Paid Video Content

The customer’s online journey is getting increasingly complex with the emergence of new devices, media and new technologies. The intersection set of earned , owned and paid media is what gets the business owner the maximum benefit.

Valuable informative content is at the crux for establishing an online thought leadership and creating the trust for any brand. Content Marketing is an online strategy which helps the brand to harness the benefits of all the earned, owned and paid media and dive into the sea of online opportunities.

The SEOs today are leaving no chance to call Content Marketing as the New SEO but, this statement is as misleading like the statement “Link Building Is SEO” was when black hatters resorted only to link building as SEO when PageRank Technology was implemented by Google.

In 2013 SEOs have to think from a wider perspective because, when we speak about the convergence of the earned, owned and the paid media we are referring to the web as a whole and not only to the search engines.

Content marketing is a good SEO strategy but it is not the new SEO. Today a true SEO does not limit herself only to Google Algorithms but looks beyond and thinks about how a website can adapt to the web standards which are applicable and integrated by search engine algorithms as of now and also works on the standards which have a potential of being integrated by search algorithms in future . This does not only ensures a long term good health of the website but also makes it prepared to face any algo updates without getting adversely affected.

Search engines are not the WWW. They are a subset of the WWW superset. Search engine algorithms try to get quality signals from the web and constantly endeavour to improve the search results so that they can cater quality search results to the user. Instead of running after the algorithmic updates and changes if we as SEOs focus on what makes the web a better place and implement the quality factors on the websites as per web standards then we can be prepared before the search engines use them in their algorithms.

For example Microformats is not a new concept www.microformats.org domain was registered on 26th January 2005 and since then the site is adding content on how microdata can be added to the websites.

But, it is in 2012 when Google launched the Knowledge Graph that the SEOs started focusing their attention on microdata.

Why did SEOs wait for Google to add structured data to WMT and in their algorithms for it to be called it a standard? Microfromats was already a standard in early 2000 but Google was able to integrate it to its algorithms partially only in 2011. Whether it is your website or the social media presence all the platforms have a web standard to adhere to, I think we should not wait for the search engines to integrate those standards to start using them but logically implement them as we make our online presence felt on that platform.

http://www.W3c.org is online since 1998 and since then has been sharing knowledge regarding web standards. Currently w3c.org has content on :

Web Design and Applications
Web Architecture
Semantic Web
XML Technology
Web of Services
Web of Devices
Browsers and Authoring Tools

W3C laid the foundations of today's Web with standards such as HTML (in 1997) and XML (in 1998). The figure below shows the large number of forward-looking W3C recommendations that emerged from these earlier technologies, and shows the organization's current focus on device-independent data and the promise of a "Semantic Web".

Efforts to achieve the "long-term growth for the Web" that is enshrined in W3C's mission statement, are today guided by the principles of "accessibility, internationalization, device independence, mobile access and quality assurance". In the orange bar of the figure below, these priorities underpin W3C technology recommendations that include standards such as Extensible HyperText Markup Language (XHTML) and Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), listed under "Web Applications".

By giving importance only to the Google algorithms we are paving the way for Google algorithms to become the standard and helping it to monopolize the web.

Google in order to get complete social signals data introduced the Google+ social media platform and has integrated authorship markup and local search such a way that everyone is compelled to have a Google+ account if they want to keep their search presence alive.

From the time the term SEO has been coined, SEOs have been executing repair functions on the websites to make them search engine friendly but its high time we move on from thinking about search engines and start thinking about the quality standards which are friendly to the web eco system and build and structure our online presence (earned and owned) as per the web standards before they get accepted by the search engines.

For this change of approach the SEOs also need the support of the website owners who need to accept that SEO cannot be considered purely as advertising but need to accept that SEO means making your site so robust technically that when the search engines trying to crawl and index the site it is able to do so and extract the relevant data despite the frequent algo quakes by the search engines.

Just like a good engineer applies scientific, economic, social, and practical knowledge in order to design, build, and maintain structures, machines, devices, systems, materials and processes. A good SEO needs to apply technical specifications that define and describe aspects of the World Wide Web which directly or indirectly affect the development and administration of web sites and consider include the interoperability, accessibility and usability of web pages and web sites from the WWW perspective. Instead of understanding what Google wants, we need to understand the standard norms of web design and development which will make the web a better place and websites robust technically.

Only when the website, the social media accounts and the paid media are following the ethics and the science of the WWW the web presence will get the needed visits, mentions, shares and the WOM which is expected as the ROI for the whole integrated effort put in. If your SEO focuses only on the search engine aspects like some SEOs did in mid 2000 by focusing on link building only to be attacked by the Penguin update later and you have to restart backwards by putting effort to remove all the links that you built. This reminds me of the snakes and ladders game that we played in childhood where the player reaches almost the finish of the game but has to go back all the way because he comes across a snake just one square before the finish box.

Today it is not only about search engines but also about users who have become more tech savvy and the consumer attention which is getting fragmented with digital channels proliferating, with people having access to devices and the internet on the go 24x7x365. The ability of being constantly connected has made the decision making process directly dependant on the UGC and WOM generated on networking sites by.

A user relies more on what his fan, follower, friend or a person in his circle has to say rather than what the website owner has claimed on his website. Hence the content on your website and the content generated on the various social media platforms by your customers, employees, etc. has to be in sync. for the company credibility to be established which in the long run adds to the trust factor.

SEO ensures the ability of the web presence to get indexed and crawled and get correlated to the targeted search queries. The quality of the content defines the ability of the content being shared further on social media which in the long run establishes the thought leadership and the trust factor. Good quality SEO may get the site page 1 rankings for the targeted keywords but conversions may be a challenge without gaining the trust factor which is an offshoot of the semantic web.

Search engines either integrate web standards like XML sitemaps, Schemas, Meta tags,etc. or they create their own standards like the Google created the Authorship Markup. As an SEO we have to tune and tweak the websites as per the search engine preferences but also focus on the standard procedures specified by the WWW and as an SEO process make the site immune to all the algo changes by focusing on the user and the WWW as a whole.

Author : Bharati Ahuja Images are a very important aspect of any website. Images speak louder than words but to select the right images for a website is always a time consuming task. Many opt for the stock photos available on the web. But, does the use of stock photos have a negative impact on search engine rankings. This is what Matt Cutts – the head of the spam team at Google has to say. In August 2010 we wrote a blog Post http://blog.webpro.in/2010/08/type-of-images-you-use-on-your-website.html which shared the following thought regarding this question. A picture speaks louder than words. Images on a website have got their own importance from the search engine’s bot perspective as well as from a visitor’s perspective. Hence the images that we add on each every page should be well thought of and of related to the content. The images add the color coefficient to the web page and also offer text content to the search engine robots in the form of ALT TEXT which is one of the on-page optimization factors for SEO.

handshake isolated on business background (Photo credit: SalFalko)

Usually, we see most of the sites buy ready images from the numerous websites available for the same. We see board room images, people shaking hands denoting partnerships and finalizing deals. These images have perfect models modeling for the pictures and having perfect smiles which may be a dentist’s delight. But, the questions asked in this context are: • Do these images project the right impression of your company? • Is your team so well-groomed (look-wise) as depicted in the website images? • Don’t you think that such images are an insult to the hard working team that you have? I am sure you have the answer for the above questions. No company has a perfect looking team and the atmosphere at work is constantly not all grins and smiles and achievements. To reflect the true image of your company the images put for the product page,’ the team ‘or ‘about us’ page should be the actual pictures of your team members and the actual shop floor pictures of the product being manufactured or the of the office in which your staff is working to make the targets set by you a reality. Having no images on the site is better than having the artificial smiling images. If you just adopt this change I am sure it will add to the credibility of your online business. Focus on the content and value your product and people by putting them forward on the real estate of your web page. Putting the right content and reflecting the true image of your company is like adding the soul to your website. Matt Cutts in the video mentions that maybe in future Google might think about this. Hence according to me letting the website be an actual reflection of the business image you have real time and the website reflecting the actual infra structure and team is always a better option than having stock photos reflecting people and the office place as something totally opposite of what your actual business is or you and your team are. As Matt Cutts mentions in the video original photos may be considered as a quality factor but though they are not a ranking factor now but it is pure logic that having a true identity will surely add to the trust factor in the minds of the visitors and gradually when Google incorporates this in the algorithms then it surely will add on to the online trust factor too. As Google says cater to the user qualitatively and the search engines too are taken care off eventually, when they are ready and have updated their algorithms to add those signals.

My first guest post for SEJ in September 2010 was about the shift from the traditional media of marketing to the internet media of marketing http://www.searchenginejournal.com/the-traditional-media-of-marketing-to-the-internet-media-of-marketing/23947/ at that time this question of who should manage the digital media which demands a multiple partner proliferation had just started brewing . In 2013 it has reached a turbulent stage as is described by the 2012 CMO Insights survey by Accenture.

The 2012 CMO Insights survey is the third in a series of studies sponsored by Accenture and aimed at understanding the opinions, challenges and points of view of senior marketing executives from around the world.

Results are based on online surveys across 10 countries with 405 senior executives who are key marketing decision makers in their companies.

According to this survey,

Turbulence is the new normal for chief marketing officers (CMOs). The main reason being competing business demands, proliferating channels and partners, and a disconnect between the talent they have and the capabilities they need.

Every digital marketing company I am sure will be able to relate directly to this as we face a real challenge when an overall ROI has to be calculated. It becomes more challenging when there are multiple marketing services providers but the tasks of each of these service providers are mutually inter-dependant for overall success.

For example if SEO , Social Media , Content Creation are handled by different agencies with no clear strategic leader coordinating all these activities then a lot of confusion, chaos and the blame game begins which is not less than a catch22 situation.

According to the survey for business survival CMOs need to:

• Fundamentally change the marketing operating model.

• Build new skills internally.

• Get the right set of partners.

• Drive digital orientation throughout the enterprise.

The Partner Proliferation list according to the survey is as follows:

When all these activities are to be managed in-house it requires a very big budget and specialized skill sets or if outsourced it needs precise coordination. The challenge that the online business owners small or big brands face today is how to the get the maximum ROI from the selected set of the above activities they decide to focus on for a wider and a qualitative digital presence.

From the list above it is very clear that the digital orientation is the most important demand of the day but 19% of the CMOs say that digital orientation suffers from the lack of integration across the business and when it comes to other partners they are weak at execution and delivery.

Hence the need of the hour is to:

· Fundamentally change the marketing operating model

· Build new skills internally

· Get aligned with the right set of partners

· Drive digital orientation throughout the enterprise

The main focus being the digital orientation which is needed throughout the organization. The shift is not only on the media used for marketing but a shift is needed towards a whole new process of thinking from the digital perspective in order to gain a profitable overall ROI .

The whole survey is summarised as below and the full report can be downloaded on http://www.accenture.com/SiteCollectionDocuments/PDF/Accenture-CMO-Insights-Report-PDF.pdf