Bharati Ahuja

How The Semantic Web, HTML5, Microformats And SEO Are Inter-Linked

The only constant (K) on the World Wide Web and the SEO world is change. SEO and the web are constantly evolving .Google’s constant endeavor for improving the quality of search results is a known fact. Google introduced the PageRank technology to deal with the keyword spam that was prevalent in the mid 2000. But this innovation brought with itself the link building spam as an off shoot.

It also recently came up with the Panda Update to control the content spam and improve the quality of search results further. But this focus on content has already started an exodus of content in all forms on the web. How Google is going to determine the grain from the chaff is going to be the next big challenge now.

The following 4 quadrants explain the information and social connectivity very effectively.

Photo credit: http://www.novaspivack.com/

created by Sebastian Faubel with Inkscape Vector Illustrator. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The next big evolution is the semantic search which is a much wider and deeper concept based on the science of semantics which has the potential to improve search accuracy by understanding searcher intent and the contextual meaning of terms as they appear in the web eco system or within a closed system like the search engine index, to generate more relevant results.

The Semantic Web is a set of technologies which are designed to enable a particular vision for the future of the Web – a future in which all knowledge exists on the Web in a format that software applications can understand and reason about. By making knowledge more accessible to software, software will essentially become able to understand knowledge, think about knowledge, and create new knowledge. In other words, software will be able to be more intelligent – not as intelligent as humans perhaps, but more intelligent than say, your word processor is today.

Semantics adds extra information to help you with the meaning of the information.

The Semantic Web does not only exist on Web pages.Web 3.0 works inside of applications and databases, not just on Web pages. Calling it a "Web" is a misnomer of sorts — it's not just about the Web, it's about all information, data and applications.

Data is the foundation on which such a web and search world can exist. Data in itself is meaningless but when data gets linked because of its relationships with various data sets available on the web, it becomes useful and meaningful and solves the purpose for which it was being searched as data becomes contextual due to the inter-connected relationships . The more it is connected the more powerful it becomes and gives more related information. Google Plus has that secret unlocked potential of correlating, connecting and linking all the data related to a profile and then integrating it with search with its data about people, places and pages.

Web 1.0 was about static pages linked together,

Web2.0 can be defined as the emergence of the web since the last boom of the .com’s (new web based sites/applications/technology- i.e.,Adsense, Wikipedia, Blogging), and the dynamic websites designed/programmed in terms of user interaction and web-based interaction .

The classic example of the Web 2.0 era is the “mash-up” — for example, connecting a rental-housing Web site with Google Maps to create a new, more useful service that automatically shows the location of each rental listing.

Web 3.0 works inside of applications and databases, not just on Web pages. Calling it a "Web" is a misnomer of sorts — it's not just about the Web, it's about all information, data and applications.

For such a semantic web, HTML5 which is a collection of features, technologies, and APIs brings the power of the desktop and the vibrancy of multimedia experience to the web and amplifies the web’s core strengths of user interaction and connectivity.

HTML5 includes the fifth revision of the HTML markup language, CSS3, and a series of JavaScript APIs. Together, these technologies enable you to create complex applications that previously could be created only for desktop platforms.

This is where Microdata comes in and it’s going to fundamentally change the way we discover and consume content on the web.

Microdata is a component of HTML5 aimed at adding more semantics and contextual information to existing content on a page. By doing so, Microdata provides others, like search engines or browsers, with more information about the contents of a page.

Microdata is an attempt to provide a simpler way of annotating HTML elements with machine readable tags than the similar approaches of using RDFa and Microformats.

Microdata vocabularies provide the semantics, or meaning of an Item. Web developers can design a custom vocabulary or use vocabularies available on the web. A collection of commonly used (and Google Supported) Microdata vocabularies located at http://data-vocabulary.org which include: Person, Event,Organization, Product, Review, Review-aggregate, Breadcrumb, Offer, Offer-aggregate. Other markup vocabularies are provided by Schema.org schemas. Major search engines rely on this markup to improve search results.Content expressed as microdata on the web page gets correlated easily to the data vocabulary it is giving information about making it easy for the search engine find relevance and connectivity.

Google has stated they only support a handful of these Microdata types which include: reviews, people, products, businesses and organizations, recipes, events, music, and video content. If your website has any of these types of content, you’re eligible for a Microdata implementation.

In one of our previous posts we have explained how to use the hCard microformat on http://blog.webpro.in/2010/05/what-is-hcard-integration.html and it can be seen clearly that if you express the contact address on the web page in an hCard format it becomes data having specified fields for street address, city, country, etc. which makes the content more co-related and meaningful.

The semantic web adds more meaning to the query for a search rather than just mapping words during the search process.

As an SEO I think it is high time we started incorporating microformats wherever possible . Some of the content which can be represented as microformats or as data are as follows:

Reviews

People

Products

Businesses and organizations

Recipes

Events

Video

To check your markup, use the rich snippets testing tool.

More details about microformats on http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=146897

Panda or no Panda content has been king since the first web page was published on the web. It is Google who has become capable in picking quality content in 2012 and hence wants to reward sites with quality content with more visibility. But just adding content is not enough what has to be focused is how well the content is inter-connected to establish relevance.

More than the no. of inbound links it is important how well your web page gets inter-linked on the web as a whole. Sharing the links on social media and adding websites to Google web master tools and Bing web master tools help us achieve that purpose to a great extent but it is the representation of content in the form of data which ensures relationships and adds context will be the main task for an SEO in future.

The on-page SEO factors (used optimally, avoiding the over optimization) + The inter-linked connectivity of the aspects mentioned in the 4 quadrants above will determine the success of SEO campaigns in future.

My Views On The WSJ Post “Google Gives Search A Refresh” – Semantic Search, Google And Bing

Author : Bharati Ahuja

Lately The Wall Street Journal Post is dominating the social scene among the search marketers and anyone interested in a search presence or rather a presence on Google.

Search has been the Google domain ever since they started the company. Since then Google has been working on the quality of the overall search experience from the search engine and the user perspective.

First and foremost let me mention that as a search marketer or rather a SEO (As there is a lot of confusion nowadays related to this term I better be very clear, yes I am an SEO and I am proud of it) I am very happy about all the changes that Google has made to its algorithm in 2011 and the updates seem to continue on a good pace in 2012 too.

I think all these changes are drawing a clear, distinct line between organic search campaigns and paid campaigns. All of these developments will make SEOs and website owners think beyond rankings and keywords, because the true meaning of SEO is to ensure quality search engine presence on maximum search options by focusing on overall quality web presence — enhancing the quality aspects of the website and reaching out to netizens via various modes of social media.

Finally the search industry has matured and is qualitatively marching ahead. But, this has not happened overnight the search engines (Google And Bing) have been constantly working to improve the quality and display of search results by giving more and more search options over a period of time. The study of the user behavior being at the base of all the decisions as the user behavior is also constantly evolving over the years.

The WSJ Post says:

Amit Singhal, a top Google search executive, said in a recent interview that the search engine will better match search queries with a database containing hundreds of millions of "entities"—people, places and things—which the company has quietly amassed in the past two years. Semantic search can help associate different words with one another, such as a company (Google) with its founders ( Larry Page and Sergey Brin).I don’t know which interview they are referring to, as there is no link to the interview. But, Amit Singhal has been discussing and announcing the updates about the Google Algorithm since 2 years all excited like a kid in a candy store and Google has been working on Semantic Search for quite some time now and the launch of SPYW is the first step towards it which just has the social dimension to the relevance factor.The semantic search is a much wider and deeper concept based on the science of semantics which has the potential to improve search accuracy by understanding searcher intent and the contextual meaning of terms as they appear in the web eco system or within a closed system like the search engine index, to generate more relevant results.

Currently Google focuses on the Keyword-Search System. The WSJ article clearly mentions that… …“ Google isn't replacing its current keyword-search system, which determines the importance of a website based on the words it contains, how often other sites link to it, and dozens of other measures.”

But it is also mentioned in the post that ….” Google is aiming to provide more relevant results by incorporating technology called "semantic search," which refers to the process of understanding the actual meaning of words.”

Of course the real impact and implementation of this kind of update on SERPs can be judged only when Google blogs about it on its official blog and starts rolling out such semantic search results.

According to me if your site has a lot of relevant content and the content is kept fresh by updating it with the latest happenings and developments and the links are widely shared on social media and have a good amplification factor along with the possibility and potential of that content being inter-linked on the web then one need not worry about the SERPs or the search traffic for that site to be affected adversely.

If at all Google in the near future starts rolling out semantic search the relevance to the logic of the intent, the keyword mapping in the query and the freshness of the content will all matter collectively. The search engines have been working on semantic search since the advent of web 2.0 and the following PPT which was created for the first SEO Training conducted by me in 2007 where I spoke about web 3.0 and Semantic Search has an example.

(Slide 90 to 93) explains an example of Semantic Search which seems to be becoming a reality in 2012.The slides explain Semantic Search as follows:
n The Semantic Web is a set of technologies which
are designed to enable a particular vision for the future of the Web – a future
in which all knowledge exists on the Web in a format that software applications
can understand and reason about. By making knowledge more accessible to
software, software will essentially become able to understand knowledge, think
about knowledge, and create new knowledge. In other words, software will be
able to be more intelligent – not as intelligent as humans perhaps, but more intelligent
than say, your word processor is today.

n The classic example of the Web 2.0 era is the
“mash-up” — for example, connecting a rental-housing Web site with Google Maps
to create a new, more useful service that automatically shows the location of
each rental listing.

n In contrast,
the challenge for developers of the semantic Web is to build a system
that can give a reasonable and complete response to a simple question like:
“I’m looking for a warm place to vacation and I have a budget of $6,000. Oh,
and I have an 11-year-old child.”

n The Semantic Web does not only exist on Web
pages.Web 3.0 works inside of applications and databases, not just on Web
pages. Calling it a "Web" is a misnomer of sorts — it's not just about
the Web, it's about all information, data and applications.

SEO Training -WebPro Technologies

View more PowerPoint from WebProtech

Bing too has been working on semantic search since a long
time. The following 2009 video of Webpronews.com says it all where Javed Panjwani, the Business Development Executive at Wolfram Alpha , explained, a traditional search engine creates a Web of documents and essentially generalizes what a user is looking for. A computation engine, on the other hand, personalizes the search results, where the reference was to Semantic Search Results.

More WebProNews Videos

As an SEO I feel more than happy and look forward for all the coming updates (if any in the near future hopefully), because when the search is based on the relevance of content, social mentions , outreach and amplification and the logic of the query rather than only the word by word mapping of the query adds quality to the whole search process.

With this kind of the basis for search SEO will gain more meaning and the SEO industry will gain more respect and authority as the prime edifice on which SEO in this kind of search model will be based on content, intent , social graph and the trust factor rather than link graph.

As Matt Cutts has made it very clear in all his SEO videos that SEO is all about putting your best foot forward and SEO is not spam. One of our past guest posts also points out the sentiment behind this that SEO is not magic but pure logic and hard work.

I have not got a chance to see the SPYW results as they have not yet been rolled out universally but according to my experience and what I have read on the search blogs I think SEOs should not rant about it but indulge themselves in research and rejoice at the fact that it is the true growth of the search industry and finally search has come of age and matured. Of course only Google can tell us when this will become a reality.Waiting for the next Google blog post to shed some more light on this and let us know when the changes mentioned in the WSJ post will become a reality.

SEO - 03/16/2012

What Is Content Strategy And Why Do We Need One?

Author : Bharati Ahuja

If you have a website and you are serious about its web presence then I am sure you must have heard the clichéd line “Content Is King”.

After the Panda update we see many people claiming themselves to be content writers and offering content writing services. I am saying this as the no. of emails that I used to receive for link requests which were nothing but requests for spammy link exchanges are now decreasing and the no. of emails from companies introducing themselves as content writers is on the rise.

Content has been king since the day the first web page was published but now its importance by Google as a ranking factor has made content the most discussed aspect of web presence.

In Information Architecture for the World Wide Web, Lou Rosenfeld and Peter Morville write, "We define content broadly as 'the stuff in your Web site.' This may include documents, data, applications, e-services, images, audio and video files, personal Web pages, archived e-mail messages, and more. And we include future stuff as well as present stuff."

In today’s context the definition of content has a much broader connotation as along with the stuff on your website it also include the opinions that you share across the social media platforms , comments that you posts on other blogs and also the guest posts that you write, etc.

For such a broad spectrum for content creation, definitely one needs planning and a strategy to implement it successfully.

Usually, people start by publishing blog posts on their blog and think that the bit regarding content creation is taken care of but in fact that is just the first step and then it has to go a long way to reach out to the targeted audience and invite their opinions to add on to the content and make it more qualitative.

The basic questions to ask before creating content are:

·What content do we want to put on the web?
·Why do we want to do publish that content?
·People ask question on search engines. To which questions we can provide answers for?
·How can we give more detailed information regarding the products and services we offer?
·What will be the best medium for that content (Text, video, infographic,etc)?

The content on your site and associated to your persona on the web which is inter-linked on the web via a ripple effect which establishes your expertise. If there is consistency in the content created and shared, if the content is contextual and if your blog has developed a good community along with a good readership list then an authority is established.Hence, quality content contribute to the trust and authority factor.

One of our previous blog posts on http://blog.webpro.in/2011/10/after-link-building-spammers-it-is.html
answers the following related to content creation and content strategy?

Q1) Why do we need more quality content ?
Q2) What is quality content?
Q3) Can borrowed content or content written just for the sake of adding words to your site work in your favour?
Q4) How to come up with quality content regularly?

Along with the regular content on the blog, posting comments on authority blogs, discussing on relevant topics on social media, uploading related videos are some other ways of adding on to the content correlated to your web presence.

In recent times the methodology of creating content has become very simple but to come up with the right strategy to accrue the maximum benefit from the quality content created is the major challenge.

Last but not the least creating fresh content is a constant and a continuous endeavor which does not reap immediate results. It takes years to establish an authority and an identity on the web hence keep going and do not quit.

I’ll share a poem I had read long ago but do not know the name of the author.

This proves the unique content you create may be remembered by generations and may outlive you so please make use of the Authorship markup by Google so that your content does not get published as “Anonymous” in future on the web like the poem below:

"Don't Quit," Author Unknown

When things go wrong as they sometimes will;

When the road you're trudging seems all uphill;

When the funds are low, and the debts are high

And you want to smile, but have to sigh;

When care is pressing you down a bit-

Rest if you must, but do not quit.

Success is failure turned inside out;

The silver tint of the clouds of doubt;

And you can never tell how close you are

It may be near when it seems so far;

So stick to the fight when you're hardest hit-

It's when things go wrong that you must not quit.

SEO - 03/06/2012

SEO Or SEO Not - Do We Really Need To Redefine Or Rename SEO ?

Author : Bharati Ahuja

The SEO blogosphere every year is bombarded with posts about “SEO IS DEAD” but from Jan. 2012 and infact from the last quarter of 2011 there is a new trend of acknowledging the fact that “SEO IS VERY MUCH ALIVE” but is packaged with a message about :

How it is different ?
Why it is called as the NEW SEO ?
How SEO is facing an identity crisis ?
What are the new awesome metrics to measure SEO success ?
Why it needs to renamed as something else ?
Why Content Marketing is the main mantra ?

Image via Wikipedia

I think this is because people who have invested in SEO campaigns are expecting results which accrue as a result of an all round web presence over a period of time. Without an ounce of doubt an over all quality web presence if planned and executed well in the long run has the potential of rewarding the business with an influx of the exponential online opportunities available on the web.

An over all web presence can be attained by an over all online marketing campaign.What is an overall online marketing campaign? Assuming that you have a reasonably well designed website ensuring a good UX thenAn Overall online marketing campaign = SEO + Blogging + Social Media + PPC (At the right stages of the website journey and purpose) + Content Creation + A/B Testing for effective landing pages + The Study of Analytics for regular analysis and improvementEvery website is different and has to be also analyzed and assessed, as per its purpose and the potential it has for it to be successful. Usually people hire SEO services and think that they will win the online market by just ranking high for the targeted terms. But, the reality is that your SEO may be working on the many ranking factors and may be successful in achieving the high rankings for your site but just ranking is not enough , once you rank high the next step is to assure that the ranking gets the click, once it gets the click then the conversion or the execution of the call to action of that page has to be the metric which needs to be looked into, once the conversion takes place only then the calculation of the ROI is possible.

If we analyze the whole cycle above each and every step is inter-related and when all the people involved at various steps work in coordination , understanding for each others’ scope of work and communicate effectively only then the true success can be achieved.

Every journey starts with some destination in mind and by selecting the mode of transport to reach there. Once you decide to create an online presence for your business and tread on the virtual sands of the web world focus on what you want to achieve with the website you already have. Hence, Putting the the right team in place to achieve the goals of your web presence is the first and foremost task.

Business owners usually appoint an SEO company or a PPC company and wait for the results to accrue. But, it is very important to have a strategy and a basic plan in place with the scope of work for each party clearly chalked out.

If your agency has a proper team of web designers, developers, social media experts, content writers, landing page A/B testing experts, Analytics experts,etc. then the company may be able to justice to the job . But with such a high end team the charges also for such a campaign will be sky rocketing which only companies with very high budgets can afford.

For SMEs who have small and limited budgets usually appoint individual SEOs who comparatively charge less because of their low cost of operation. But, they need a lot of support from clients for any all round campaign.

Panda or no Panda CONTENT IS KING since the day the first web page was published on the WWW. It is Google who has become capable in picking quality content in 2012 and hence wants to reward sites with quality content with more visibility.

Today the public opinion is also woven into the social fabric which adds to the quality factor which Google is giving importance to.For the social media signals and content marketing to accrue SEO benefit to the site the overall online presence is necessary, it is this correlation which has set the inter-connectivity between SEO , Social media and content marketing.Yes, as we said above “SEO IS VERY MUCH ALIVE “ and I think it cannot die as long as people are using search engines to find information on the web. SEO does not need a new name and is definitely not facing an identity crisis. Just like the on-page factors and the off-page factors which have been responsible for ranking , the social media signals and the freshness of content (On site and UGC) have been added to the list of ranking factors and the SEO needs to have a strategy for ensuring that the right and strong signals are generated via these platforms for the site.Content marketing and social media presence are not the new SEO or are replacing search ,they are supplementing SEO along with all the other on-page and off-page factors on which we have been working on till date.Every marketing campaign is about results and returns, but SEO is a part of the whole online marketing puzzle and to complete the full picture every piece needs to be placed in the correct place and the correct order.

SEO - 02/22/2012

Integrating The Print Media, Mobile And The Online Media With QR Codes

Author : Bharati Ahuja

The user is always at the nucleus of any online marketing campaign. The user wants the most relevant information at the most easily accessible option which involves the least navigation and search activity in the whole process of finding the relevant information.

The challenge today is to reach out to more and more people via all the available options possible. We talk about integrated marketing and also integrating search and social but integrating print and online media via mobiles is something which has an easy accessibility and one can reach out to the targeted segment more effectively.

QR (Quick Response) as the name goes it can generate a quick response and is very cost effective. The use of the QR code can enhance the print media by empowering it with the digital dimension. QR Codes can be added to the newspaper Advertisements, coupons, visiting cards, leaflets which one distributes, etc. so that people can add the contact info or view your site readily from their smart phones without any delay and at their convenience.

For example below is the newspaper advertisement of a garment store and under the QR Code they make it very clear by mentioning how to use it and the reader can directly go to the latest collection on their website.

Key Points To Keep In Mind While Using The QR Codes:

· See that the reader reaches the most relevant landing page as per the content on the print media

· The landing page should have the call to action like a form, a buy button, contact details, subscribe button or whatever is the purpose of the page

· One can easily track the ROI from such a campaign as the page can be easily tracked and monitored via analytics and one can even create a special landing page for such a campaign to calculate the ROI and study the response to the Ad.

This is gaining popularity and soon becoming the norm for integrating the print media with the digital media for easy accessibility and a wider outreach.

Mobile / News / SEO - 02/02/2012

Click Asia Summit 2012 ( Day 3 #CAS12 ) Master Classes By Mahesh Murthy And Gillian Muessig

Author : Bharati Ahuja

Day 3 of the Click Asia Summit was all about the master classes on social and search.One could attend 2 workshops that day . One was before lunch and the other one was after lunch. My work essentially revolves around SEO campaigns and I usually opt for SEO focused sessions but this time I decided to attend Mr. Mahesh Murthy’s workshop on “Creating great multi-media campaigns in an integrated world” just to acquaint myself about how other marketing companies approach a given multi media campaign.

Participants were broken up into teams, and a digital marketing project was given to each team, at the end of the session each team had to present the digital marketing campaign worked out by each . These were graded and analyzed at the end.

Before the teams started working on the project, Mr. Murthy gave an overview and an idea about what an ideal digital marketing campaign should be approached.

He pointed out that for every digital marketing campaign one should list out the following:

· Priorities to achieve via the campaign

· Process to achieve the same

· Template to judge the campaign

He also pointed out with an example of 4 videos the importance of having a strategy and making it go viral and also highlighted the reason for a video or any content to get shared.

· The first and foremost the audience has a lot of choice today so content should be remark worthy

· People share content because they want to be popular among their friends

· If the info comes via a friend it has a high trust factor

Hence,

Strategy + Virality = Success

What media you choose depends on what message you want to convey. People are not averse to marketing but they are averse to marketing that bores them.

"Digital is not niche anymore. It is mainstream" - Mahesh Murthy

The four videos taken as case study were as follows:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bUD3E5-rfrc&feature=related > All strategy but no virality

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8jgGK4NJ8Hk&feature=related > No strategy but all virality

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YR12Z8f1Dh8&feature=fvsr > bad strategy but all virality

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=owGykVbfgUE&feature=relmfu > all stategy and all virality

Mr. Murthy gave the project of designing a digital campaign for a water purifier . All the teams came up with different ideas and I am sure everyone left the place with their dimag ki batti being jaloed (minds Ignited) and I am sure Mr. Murthy too got some ideas for the next water purifier digital campaign his team may have to work on.

After this we dispersed for lunch and I got back to a session on Analytics, Glorious Analytics! By Gillian Muessig from SEOmoz

The session was divided into the following 4 categories :

Session I - Follow the Money... Backwards!
Choosing KPIs for your business

Session II - Tracking Social Media Metrics
Tracking things that matter in social media campaigns and understanding ROI

Session III - Tracking Conversion Rate Optimization Metrics
Layout, A/B and multivariate testing, and measuring results

Session IV - A Few Reliable Tools
An overview of: Google Analytics, Facebook Analytics and SEOmoz/OpenSiteExplorer.org

After the first 2 sessions , it became more of an open Q & A session where people started asking questions and Gillian answered patiently .

The questions were so varied and were SEO specific hence everyone got to learn something from what problems and issues they were facing on their sites.

The day ended with Gillian (or SEOmom as she is known as ) giving vouchers for a Spa to participants who had asked good questions and I personally got an SEOmoz souvenir which was a token of appreciation for all the help that I had offered. I am still wondering in what way I had helped out?? Infact it was the other way round for me and the pleasure was all mine.

SEO / SEO Events - 01/22/2012

The Key Takeaways From Click Asia Summit 2012 ( Day 1 and 2 #CAS12) …

Author : Bharati Ahuja

This is the second year consecutively that I have attended the Click Asia Summit Conference. It is sort of becoming a habit now and am already looking forward to the 2013 summit. Its not because of the gloss, glamour, delicious food or the happiness I experience every time I have to go to Mumbai (The city where I was born and spent 23 years of my life) but because of the sharing of knowledge related to the digital marketing world .

This interaction is the best way to start the year with confidence and set the right direction especially for entrepreneurs like me who work with very small teams and limited budgets. Conferences like these are an energy booster and help to plan for the coming year.

I have attended many conferences across the globe but when such an event takes place in India and especially in Mumbai , it gives me a sense of pride and pleasure.

#CAS12 the 3 day digital conference and networking started off on the 15th of Jan. 2012 with with an evening full of networking, conversations, and of course, laughter at The Comedy Store!

Day 2 post lunch had many options of sessions to select from but the day started with everyone attending the Keynotes by

Dr. Shashi Tharoor ( Member of Parliament, India) who spoke about “The Impact of digital media on politics and India in general”

Dr Tharoor highlighted the impact of social media on news , politics and India in general. He has been one of the early adopters of social media and has influenced celebrities to follow suit . He said that freedom of speech is the mortar that binds the bricks of our democracy together but free speech in Sweden isn't the same as free speech in Surat . He went ahead to say that Unlike a newspaper, social network sites are like postmen who take the news to your door. He also added that one cannot sue the phone companies for sending a defamatory or obscene SMS, similarly a person who puts up something defamatory on FB should be prosecuted not FB itself.

He totally spoke pro social media and said that social media is inescapable and is here to stay. He also added that a message needs a medium it is the message which is important and not the medium.

Lucy McCabe from OgilvyOne Worldwide,Singapore spoke on “The Digital marketing 2.0: The big picture“

She spoke very effectively and highlighted the point that the people of the library era and the people of the Google era think differently. My vote for the best speaker for the day went to her because of the way this difference was presented in her presentation.

She said that the shift of the source of information from the traditional library has made Google the new norm.

For the people of the Google era digital is not about technology but it is just stuff which helps them with their homework and other day to day activities. In 5 years from now we will not be attending conferences on digital marketing because it will be just stuff. She then spoke about the social media impact and redefined the digital relationships between people and brands in a whole new way by saying that people did not come on FB to make friends with brands, 50% of people who use FB have never 'liked' a brand since that's not the reason they are on FB and digital is not about the clicks, its about the conversation. On this medium brands should ask "what can we give back" if they want time, money, advocacy and data as a digital exchange. Customers don't wake up and go "ooh, wonder what branded digital content I can interact with today"

Connect Me -> Be Useful -> Entertain Me. Three things people want from brands .

Finally she focused on the fact that The future of agency lies in solving problems with innovative ideas.

Cyriel Kortleven from New Shoes Today , Belgium spoke on “Get a creative boost... Break the curse of knowledge “

He started his keynote with wired 7 questions for triggering creativity . He said that our brains see something and make assumptions with almost everything we do . His digital marketing analogy with the human brain was quite interesting where he highlighted that the curse of knowledge is that we get stuck into thinking patterns and habits and we can break the borders of the box for thinking patterns and habits by not limiting our power with buts and ifs , but unleash the power of 'and' by asking and what else.

Post lunch the sessions were divided into 3 categories as follows:

TECHNOLOGY/MOBILITY TRACK
SOCIAL MEDIA TRACK
SEARCH & SOCIAL TRACK

My interest and inclination as usual is the social and search sessions hence I glued my attention to those sessions which were as follows.

The first session was by Mr. Sandeep Amar on Social media impact - An analytics overview .

For him social media meant only Facebook , the idea I just could not digest. He seemed to be pro FB and totally against Google which again was very annoying for me to sit through and listen to. The audience spoke more than him and he was unable to answer any questions satisfactorily.

He went ahead to say that Negative posts receive more comments and less Likes. This calls for marketers to delve into their Facebook Insights. The very thought of FB = Social Media which he put forward made me lose interest in the session.

Rajesh Sharma’s session was on “Beyond the initial hype – building sustainable and scalable digital businesses, the PE perspective ! “

He put forward the question – Will Ecommerce boom or burst in 2012?

As per his presentation the key points were:
There are more no. of enterprises coming up online
Technology is no longer a challenge anyone can get a website made but only the setting up of the ecommerce venture is easy sustaining it and making it grow is a challenge.
It is not necessary that the people who set up the business may be the right people to scale up the business . Hence we need experts for every specialized job.

For the success of the Ecommerce Business we need an EAT Model

E- Experiences
A – Aspirations
T – Transactions

The dotcom 2000 burst was because the T was missing then. Now people buy confidently online.

Mahesh Narayanan highlighted the urgency to go mobile ASAP and to Make sure to track and measure your reach,whether through your app or through your mobile site. He said that mCommerce will become big in the next couple of months in India and the consumers on the go should be focused.

Vivek Bhargava spoke on “How to use analytics and other technology tools to plan a content strategy for an Enterprise Business “

His mantra was to focus on the psychographics and the target audience and the most reliable strategy was to create videos and see that they go viral. He also highlighted that SEO is now all about web presence optimization and the content was the glue to conversations and If a user is engaged with your brand then the propensity to buy from that brand is much higher compared to others.

Manish Maheshwari spoke about Reaching internet-dark mobile users…in as less as 5 hours

This session was about how to use SMS to reach out to people who do not have internet access , what he spoke about was SMSing via http://textweb.com/ which has the internet on SMS .

He pointed out that :

SMS kills all others (Mobile web, apps) in terms of accessibility, reach
An average Indian Send 29 SMS a month
SMS, as advertising medium has 5% interaction rate
SMS is most used app on mobile phones, even on smartphones.

Chris George - Search and social : Digital marketing in the SME sector in India

He shared that:

76% of people think that companies lie in advertising
India has second highest base of #Linkedin users
41% of internet user trust information published on #Facebook
We are at the intersection of search and social
Aim of SMM should be - brand building and crowd sourcing...creating advocates
The selection of the social media medium depends on the message which needs to be sent across and the messenger matters.

Lalit Bhagia The multi- tasking digital consumer

He focused on the point that The challenge today is to get the attention of the consumer's nonstop limited attention 87% of the people are on social media while watching TV . We are multi-tasking all the time, hence the content that we share or upload on aour site or Apps should have an overall appeal and should pull the visitors attention from all the other task that he is doing at that moment.

Cross-leveraging SEO & SEM Benedict Hayes (Moderator) Navneet Kaushal, Hareesh Tibrewala,Benjamin Gonsalves

The day ended with a panel discussion on how to cross-leverage SEO & SEM.

The focus on this session was that at the end of the day whatever SEO and SEM strategy that you have the campaigns are judged by the ROI they generate.

SEO Events / Social Media - 01/20/2012

Google Adds Google+ To Give Us Search Plus Social Results

Google has always been synonymous to search . In 2011 the integration of social signals to search was the most common topic of the SEO blogosphere and everyone was trying to figure out how the social signals will be integrated into search results.

Google just yesterday announced on their Inside Search blog that : “…We’re transforming Google into a search engine that understands not only content, but also people and relationships….” Of course this endeavor of Google started in October 2009 and has been working on it since then.

Yesterday a major change has been announced and three new features as follows have been implemented:

Personal Results: which enable you to find information just for you, such as Google+ photos and posts—both your own and those shared specifically with you, that only you will be able to see on your results page.

Profiles in Search: both in autocomplete and results, which enable you to immediately find people you’re close to or might be interested in following.

People and Pages: which help you find people profiles and Google+ pages related to a specific topic or area of interest, and enable you to follow them with just a few clicks. Because behind most every query is a community.

Together, these features combine to create Search plus Your World.

Google says: Search is simply better with your world in it, and we’re just getting started….

The change is live now, though not everyone will see it until it fully launches over the next few days. It’s only for those signed-in to Google.com and searching in English.

Google has introduced a prominent new toggle on the upper right of the results page where you can see what your search results look like without personal content. With a single click, you can see an unpersonalized view of search results.

Amit Singhal has concluded the blog post by saying:

We named our company after the mathematical number googol as an aspiration toward indexing the countless answers on webpages, but that’s only part of the picture. The other part is people, and that’s what Search plus Your World is all about.

After Google announced this ‘Search Plus’ feature the SEO blogosphere filled with post on how this will affect the search industry and what will be the possible pros and cons of this additional feature.

Danny Sullivan Of Search Engine Land wrote:

Google’s Results Get More Personal With “Search Plus Your World”

A Blog Post On Mashable Said:

Google Merges Search and Google+ Into Social Media Juggernaut

Matt Cutts wrote a blog post on his blog titled:

Sharing a search story

The major concern is that Google might favor only the Google+ social signals and hence try to influence the use of Google+ more that other social media platforms. But, this was clarified by Google executive chairman Eric Schmidt who says Google+ content is not being favored over Twitter and Facebook by Google’s search engine. Rather, those companies can be treated the same if they grant Google the right permissions to access their content.

Danny Sullivan wrote about this on :

Schmidt: Google+ Not Favored, Happy To Talk Twitter & Facebook Integration

I think the blending of social results in search is not only the inevitable evolution of search but the reflection of what took place when civilizations evolved. We can just say that the stone age of search is over and now search even has the ability to reflect what people in your community are talking about and recommending. It is basic human nature to search for a want and then discuss with peers about their opinions and then take a decision. Since ages we have been doing this but now we have to just adapt ourselves to the virtual world for this kind of an action.

To a certain extent I believe that if Google wants to improve the quality of search results and combat the spam on the web then yes, it is highly essential that the search engine can access data from a resource it has full control on. But, from the search engine perspective only time will tell how well Google succeeds in integrating the social signals from other social media sites like Facebook and Twitter else with the kind of hold Google has over the search market it is going to be, Google Google all the way…

Google - 01/11/2012

Google+ As A Complete Blogging Platform Diverges To Converge And Converges TO Diverge

Author : Bharati Ahuja

Google+ is a platform with some great features for sharing content. Moreover, it does not have the limitation of characters like Twitter which is truly a micro blogging platform. With the trend moving towards content excellence and content marketing and Google+ profile becoming the most integrated identity for an online presence. As the circles concept of Google+ makes it very easy to reach out to different groups of people and share what you want to share to the selected circle. Google+ has the potential of becoming an excellent blogging platform for all purposes personal and professional.

We have been till now blogging on our blogs and then sharing the link on the social media platform but with Google+ the blog post content , comments and the link to be shared on other social media sites can be available on the same platform.

With social media signals being incorporated in search the need to have a quality social media presence which reflects the trust and authority factor of the brand is highly imperative. Hence we can see the SEO blogosphere filled with posts of how blogging and social media presence can help the SEO and online presence of any site.

I think all the clients who cannot maintain a separate blog for various reasons can start off their blogging journey via their Google+ business page which will not only associate and correlate valuable content to their social profiles but also pass of the necessary content correlation to the social signals for getting integrated to search. The content shared and the UGC content generated can be in the form of images, videos, text, links, etc. a whole plethora of content options available to correlate to the social profile.

I think from the users perspective also when you share your comment or views on the Google+ profile where the blogpost link has been shared you have a better chance of correlating that content to your social profile rather than commenting on the blog where the blog post is published.

Eventually all the Google+ data being accessible by Google is an overall added advantage . So, atleast from the search perspective currently Google+ has a win-win potential to become a complete blogging platform converging your overall web identity on a single platform .

(Google+) = Blogging (Personal + Professional) + Social Media + UGC + Location + (+1 Counts) + Image Albums + Videos + Recommended Links to integrate your overall web presence = Search Plus

Image As Shared on http://goo.gl/bTA5d

Google / SEO / Social Media - 01/09/2012

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