Bharati Ahuja

SMX East 2011 – Part 2

Day 1 at SMX East ended with an evening forum with Danny Sullivan which had an overall focus on search and social.

Some of the statements made by Danny Sullivan and which were shared on Twitter were:

It’s a Google’s world. We just rank in it. Or not.
The 4 Cs Of SEO Success: Code, Content, Connections (links) & Conversation (social).
Link Earning instead of Link Building
Is link building dead? Great question asked by audience member. Audience & @dannysullivan say no!
Social media is the new link building
Reminder to all: .Co is fine, .Com is always good, & .Co.CC was the pure evil that got obliterated.
You rock as a brand if the CPC for your brand is pennies on the dollar and you have 8 sitelinks.
Is there a way to know when you have arrived as brand? - Yes, when you have a Google ad rep
If people leave the site because their info need was fulfilled it's not a bounce
"If you have no Panda problems, don't fix things"

On Day 2 - 14th Sept. 2011 My Focus was on the Technical SEO Track Sessions. They were as follows: Duplication, Aggregation, Syndication, Affiliates, Scraping, and Information Architecture Presented By: · Brian Cosgrove, TPG · Vanessa Fox, Search Engine Land · Matt Heist, High Gear Media

Too much syndicated content dilutes the value of the original content.
THE CHALLENGES - Feeds from suppliers, Too many categories, Items are too similar
Writing unique content is the cost-of-entry for SEO
TOOLSET FOR SUCCESS - SEO Strategy, Keyword Mapping, Content Strategy,Work flow,Style Guide,Content Calendar, Creative Brief
If you have too many sites and the content is distributed and thin then it is not good
Have fewer but content rich sites with clear audience segments
Content resonates in search AND social.
With the evolution of Social (joining Search from a distribution perspective), premium content that is authoritative AND fresh will flourish

Schema.org, Rel=Author & Meta Tagging For 2012 Presented By: · Janet Driscoll Miller, Search Mojo · Topher Kohan, CNN · Jack Menzel, Google

Semantic (Structured Code) The semantic web is a “man made woven web of data” that facilitates machines to understand the semantics .
TYPES OF STRUCTURED DATA FOR SEO - Rich Snippets, Rel=Author, Schema.org
TYPES OF RICH SNIPPETS Reviews , People, Products, Businesses & Organizations, Recipes, Events, Music
REL=AUTHOR RESTRICTIONS - Doesn’t support multiple author blogs , Only works on same site (i.e. won’t work yet for syndicated content), Only works on self-hosted sites
SCHEMA.ORG - Created by Google, Bing and Yahoo! - Launched June 2, 2011 - Way for engines to easily identify types of content
Some Problems - Schema is a “New” mark-up, Standards not in place, Not a big ROI right now
But, it is the right time to implement as these are in all probability to be given importance by the search engine. Hence, when they will become a priority the site which already has these snippets and microformats in place will have a probability to be ahead .
Best Time to Implement is when - Moving to a new CMS, Launching new templates, Launching a new site, Site redesign, Down dev cycles
Some of our related blog posts on this topic are:

http://www.webpro.in/what-is-hcard-integration/ http://www.webpro.in/authorship-markup-and-the-rel-attribute Real Answers For Technical SEO Problems Presented By: · Vanessa Fox, Search Engine Land· Todd Nemet, Nine By Blue The main discussion was on - How To Evaluate Site Architecture For Technical SEO Without Launching A Browser?

Look at things like… Network, Web access logs, HTTP response codes, HTTP response headers and talk to the network admins/developers
Checking load balancing
Checking server latency
Checking network latency
Checking for duplicate sites
Web access log analysis
Monitor and check crawling inefficiency
Identify Duplicate Content Problems
Have a proper error handling page
Make the site Cache friendly

Making Data From Google Webmaster Central & Bing Webmaster Tools Actionable

Presented By: · Duane Forrester, Bing· Vanessa Fox, Search Engine Land· Tiffany Oberoi, Google· Myron Rosmarin, Rosmarin Search Marketing, Inc.

Stop Running Reports. Start Providing Analysis.
Reporting is Pulling data and plugging it into a spreadsheet - Analysis is: Making sense of data, providing insights for improvement and providing explanations
The Webmaster Tools are valuable sources of “Diagnostic Data”that enable you to provide a more thorough analysis of problems your site may have so you can take action toward improvement
Numbers without something to compare to don’t mean much.
Everything is Relative
Pull data at appropriate time intervals

Eventually everyone has to accept the fact as Danny Sullivan said that it’s a Google’s world and we rank in it or not… The presentation’s last slide said: :)

God, grant me the serenity to accept

the things I cannot change,

Courage to change the things I can,

And wisdom to know the difference.

Day 3 Sept. 15th 2011 The conference on the third day was only for half a day till 3:00 p.m Link Building: Why You're Doing It Wrong

Presented By

· Jenny Halasz, Nine by Blue· Byrne Hobart, Digital Due Diligence · Rae Hoffman-Dolan, Sugarrae SEO Firm

Link building is important. But,

Try to build natural links. Go for quality over quantity
Guest Post = Your Inbound Link Value
When you write guest posts see that you put few links and make the post as informative as possible
When you write a guest post or any blog post on any general topic try to correlate it with your niche industry so that it has a probability of going viral in both the fields

According to Rae Hoffman-Dolan Points to consider…

Check for existing writer guidelines before contacting
Send personal and individual emails
Use names whenever possible
Prove you’re not a bot
Ask a genuine question
Never assume they know who you are
Include a potential topic idea and example post
DO NOT MENTION LINKS (but do mention edits)

Beyond Rankings: Actionable SEO Reports Your Boss Will Love

Presented By: · Vanessa Fox, Search Engine Land· Max Thomas, Thunder SEO· Marty Weintraub, aimClear

Rankings as a metric is easy to understand hence the popularity but, Only looking at rankings does not give an idea about indexing and crawling
Measure the impact of changes made on the site
Monitor Errors Over time alongwith Google Page Not found errors

According to Vanessa Fox : Do not look at keyWords look at people use searcher personas to connect SEO to conversion Personas > related pages for those personas > Keywords for those pages > Rankings for those pages

Cluster by category impressions, clicks, CTR, Avg. Position
Organic impressions = Technical SEO + Sematic SEO
The Title tags the main tag responsible for high CTR
If you have high rankings and If your CTR is bad then your title tags are probably bad.
People don’t pay for what they don’t understand.
Empower Your Primary Client
Make it easy for them to convey easily what’s happening Don’t wait for them to tell you. Figure it out. Ask questions.

Reports Should Demonstrate:

What’s working
What’s not
Where to focus resources
Connection of SEO/SMM to sales (or conversions)
How to explain to key decision makers so they understand

Don’t highlight their LACK of digital knowledge. Instead chalk out the difference between goals and metrics very clearly in a layman’s language. Do not use digital jargon while conveying the importance of goals or explaining the metrics to the client. One size Report does not fit all. Reporting should be done as per the client’s understanding.

SMX East 2011 – Part 1

SMX East 2011 conducted from the 13th of Sept. to 15th of Sept. in New York had the agenda focusing on the following categorized topics Day-wise:

Day 1– 13th Sept. 2011	Day 2 – 14th Sept. 2011	Day 3– 15th Sept. 2011
SMX Boot Camp	Social And Vertical Search	SEO
The Big Picture	The Big Picture	Analytics & Conversions
Enterprise & In-House	Technical SEO	SoLoMo
Best Of SMX Advanced	Paid Search	Paid Search
Sponsors And Partners	Sponsors & Partners and Site Clinics	Site Clinics

The complete agenda can be viewed on http://searchmarketingexpo.com/east/agenda

My main area of interest was organic search hence I attended the sessions focused on SEO.

An SEO conference is a platform for multiple sessions and it is very difficult to make a choice of what to attend but the main highlights and takeaways of what sessions I attended are as follows:

Day 1 – 13th Sept. 2011

The Big Picture Track - The Great Correlation vs. Causation Debate Presented by:

· Eric Enge, Stone Temple Consulting

· Micah Fisher-Kirshner, Become, Inc

· Mitul Gandhi, seoClarity

· Kristine Schachinger, SitesWithoutWalls.com

· Tony Wright, WrightIMC

Correlation is: A mutual relation between two or more things where one has a measurable effect on the other.
Causation is: A relationship in which one action or event is the direct consequence of another.
In every Causal relationship there is a Correlative One, but there is not a causal effect in every correlative one
We sometimes perceive something to have an effect but it may not have an effect as that can be a misperception.
The only way to eliminate false positives are is to measure test everything over a period of time with a wide array of data.
Almost everything in SEO is correlative not causative.
In causal relationships, you can directly measure that A does CAUSE B
In correlative relationships, you can only measure the STRENGTH of the effect of A on B
Correlations are a place to start not an end. Have a sanity check and and question its sensibility before coming to conclusions.
Before testing be sure of what is the return on your investment to collect and test this data?
Make sure that you are considering all important variables in time and do not rely only on snapshots in a short time span.
Be sure you have enough data and factors to run a linear regression
SEO is on a time line on a linear position. A single trend is not a pattern or a causal relationship.

The Big Picture Track

Panda-Proofing Your Content
Presented By:

· Justin Briggs, Distilled

· Horst Joepen, Searchmetrics

· Heather Lloyd-Martin, SuccessWorks Search Marketing

· Chris Silver Smith, KeyRelevance

Only 12% of websites in Google index were affected by Panda update – Matt Cutts
We are content marketers if we have a blog or a site.
“Panda isn’t simply an algorithm update. It’s a platform for new ways to understand the web and understand user experience.” (Vanessa Fox)
“It’s not a new algorithm – it’s a new factor.” (Danny Sullivan)
“It is easier to reliably detect social spam than link spam.” (Stefan Weitz and Maile Ohye)
Combination of automated metrics and human factors;
It’s a method for modelling webpages and websites which have certain usage profile combinations, scoring those combos, then using the scores to rank pages. (Chris Silver Smith)
When you produce cheap content then it is not meeting any goal
Create Quality content – Search Engines do not pay your bills your customers do.
Stop asking what Google wants. Find out what your users want.
Evaluate your content assets
Plan the Repurpose of content
Develop an editorial calendar
Watchdog the quality
Leverage it when properly planned and evaluate
Get everyone on the same page about SEO content. This could be a quick discussion - or an in-house training. Consider what works best for your team

Enterprise & In House Track

In-House SEO Operations: How Things Get Done

Presented By:

· Laura Callow, intuit

· Simon Heseltine, AOL Inc.

· Erika Mamber, Demand Media

· Ulli Muenker , Bloomberg

Use SEO as one of the fundamental building blocks in everything you do on your website.
Ensure SEO is a part of the DNA of your organization.
Build buzz and cultivate mindshare.
Tailor the buzz for the relevant audience and add your spin
Make it actionable
Be seen, be heard, be involved
Educate, Elaborate, Excite, Empower, Evangelize
Share the SEO why behind the what, because understanding builds a sense of ownership
If opportunity cost > available resources + cost of vendors Then hire vendors Else don’t hire vendors
Ensure your team works according to an accountable system for delivery. Boil up to meet company / business objectives and vision

SEO / Social Media - 09/19/2011

Social Media Engagement Is Much More Than The Count Of Followers, Klout Score, likes, Shares & Google+1s

Author : Bharati Ahuja

Since Google started focusing on social and real time search results, the search marketers are on a spree to shout out the importance of social media presence to their clients especially for SEO campaigns.

But, the main questions here are:

What is the purpose of the presence ?
What kind of presence will boost the social persona which will have a direct positive correlation and will leverage the search presence and visibility?

Google says, that their main objective is to give relevant search results to the users . For that they keep on working on the search algorithms and keep working on the prioritization of the ranking factors. They introduced the PageRank concept to improve the quality of search results which gave origin to the link spam on the web. To improve upon this when the social media sites got inhabited by users and people started sharing online Google started taking these signals to improve the quality of search results. The main reason being that if people recommend a certain product or appreciate a certain link then it will act like a vote just like an inbound link does. Moreover this kind of recommendation would not only be a vote but a personal preference and a choice too.

Hence if at all a social media presence wants to boost the search visibility then the social media engagement and interaction has to be a quality interaction rather than a voluminous number. Just as in case of inbound links it is the quality links and natural links which Google wants to reward . Similarly if your social media signals convey the message that you share about a certain topic in your niche your identity gets associated with it.

Social persona is all about trust, authority, great content on links which you share and which get shared further via shares and retweets . If the time and effort that you are spending on social media is not creating this kind of persona then you are probably wasting time. Your grandparents are also probably having a facebook presence but their objective is not to pass the social signal juice to Google but maybe its just to keep in touch with you.

Hence to develop the right base to create a right social persona and aura which will generate the right signals to the search engines :

Develop trust by having a regular presence and a genuine complete bio description with links to your site and blog.
Share knowledge by asking and answering questions and thereby prove your authority in your field.
Share links from your site share valuable content and links from other sites to appreciate efforts made by others in the same field or niche that you want to focus on .
As a high conversion rate is more important than more traffic in numbers, a good WOM developed by the social media presence is more important than more no. of followers.
Do not narrow down your circle to only those with whom you are comfortable interacting with widen your circle , follow more and more people to know more about your industry and reach out to more.
Trust cannot be built in a day, work patiently , honestly and genuinely keeping your ego in check so that people feel comfortable to interact and share the industry trends with you but in case things do not go as per your principle you always have the unfollow and block option.
Do not fake a personality. Don’t just try to be a natural but simply be one. In the social world it is not necessary to agree to everyone and please everyone and neither it is true vice versa hence voice your opinions and raise objections when necessary. Have a right avatar pic which reflects your true personality.

Your Klout score, no. of followers, no. of likes, shares, +1s, etc. will all be meaningless if you do not meet the above quality criteria as Google will leverage your search presence and visibility when people trust you, consider you as an authority in your field or atleast as an active participant in the discussions related to your niche who has personal opinions to share and has a genuine identity.

Social Media - 09/06/2011

The Importance Of Attending SEO Conferences , Expos And Events

Author : Bharati Ahuja Knowledge has to be improved, challenged, and increased constantly, or it vanishes. Peter F. Drucker Since 2000, I have been upgrading my knowledge about SEO from the various blogs, forums, discussions and of course the plethora of information available on the Google webmaster blog and videos. The knowledge has been implemented on numerous websites to gain the necessary search engine presence and improve valuation of the digital assets of the companies concerned since then. The field of search marketing is constantly changing as the search engines keep on upgrading their algorithms and the search behavior of the people also undergoes evolution over a period of time. To keep up to that pace of upgradation is a challenge in itself. Though there is a lot of fresh information on the web about the latest developments in the field there comes a time atleast once a year when you want to interact with other professionals in your field to exchange news and views to get the confirmation and the confidence about all the self learning a person does. In mid 2000 I used to search for such conferences , workshops, seminars and meetups so that I could get a chance to listen to other like-minded people , discuss and share knowledge and information mainly about organic search. But, usually such conferences were either held in Europe , America or Australia. In India I managed to attend some workshops organized by Google but they were focused on Adwords as a Google Product rather than SEO. Such conferences are real time social media interactions which make you speak and listen as you discuss, share and thereby enhance your knowledge. Even if you are the shy kind you get to learn a lot merely by observation which have a lasting impression opening up new vistas of thought and imagination. As someone has aptly said,”The true sign of intelligence is not knowledge but imagination” With this purpose of reaching out to people and sharing knowledge about SEO in 2007 I had approached Ahmedabad Management Association and offered the SEO programme designed by me which they readily accepted and as I had expected all the participants were people related to the web development and web marketing industry who were all on the lookout for such programmes to get confirmation and confidence about what they knew about SEO. This year in October we will be reaching out to other cities via our “Online SEO Training Programmes”. Of course the opportunities vary from country to country and the decision of attending such conferences and workshops depend on the budgets, the distance to be travelled and the no. of days that you can spare for such an activity. But, Especially for the search industry I think as we make provisions from our business funds for Research and Development, Branding, etc. we should also create budgets, reserves , provisions and save for attending conferences and workshops which in the long run prove to be an investment rather than an expense. Such conferences do not only give knowledge gaining and marketing opportunities to the professionals of that niche industry but if well coordinated , conducted and organized are giving rise to the MICE (meetings, incentives, conferences and exhibitions/events) tourism market which give an overall boost to the economy. For the first time in Jan 2011 ClickAsiaSummit was held in India at Mumbai which was totally focused on Search and Social on a large scale inviting speaker from other parts of the world. I find myself lucky to be able to attend a second conference this year that is SMX East to be held in New York from 13th Sept. 2011 to 15th Sept. 2011 and I look forward to attend all the sessions focused on SEO. Danny Sullivan on http://daggle.com/lessons-thoughts-year-anniversary-starting-business-2649 has mentioned about the SMX East conference to be - "........on track to be our biggest search marketing conference ever, SMX East, with record attendance." Related Links About Conferences and Events: http://searchmarketingexpo.com/east/ http://blog.webpro.in/2011/01/highlights-of-conference-click-asia.html http://sphinn.com/story/210293/ http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2008-08-06/news/27704880_1_tourism-market-tourism-secy-mice

SEO - 09/03/2011

A New Dimension To Ecommerce And Online Shopping

Author : Bharati Ahuja

TESCO has been adjusting to the local Korean market and had to compete with the numero uno company in Korea that is Emart .

For this they had to find an answer to the question - Could we become no. 1 without increasing the no. of stores?

And they did find a unique, enterprising innovative answer which has brought them to the 2nd position in Korea.

View the video for the answer:

Main Takeaway:

Don’t wait for people to come to your store or wait for them to find you on the internet and search engines. Go one step ahead and take the store to the people.

Make it available wherever you think people can squeeze in some time to use their smart phones to shop.

Don't wait for them to find and search for your store. Create Virtual Stores to blend into their everyday lives.

A true blend of virtual and real time life.

Innovative Indeed.

E-commerce / SEO - 08/24/2011

Google+ Verification Badges For Profiles

Google Is rolling out profile verification badges for celebrities, public figures, and people who have been added to lots of circles.

Google says that this is just the beginning and have not stated that how a profile can be applied for a verification badge.

Google - 08/20/2011

Google Testing Infinite Scroll On The Search Results Page

There is an article on http://searchengineland.com/yes-google-is-testing-infinite-scroll-web-results-89659 today that Google has confirmed that they are indeed testing a form of infinite scroll web search results.

I have not seen this feature live on Google as yet but, if this feature goes live then I think it is going to be a quality improvement on the search results page.

It will be win-win situation for all, the user, the website owner, the search engines and SEOs.

The User Perspective:

If the scrolling is fast and easy then then user will surely scroll for more for a wider range of search results before taking a decision.

Website Owner Perspective:

The website owner will be less obsessed for getting his website ranked on Page 1 and focus more on quality aspects of the website.

The SEO Perspective:

The statement “SEO Is Beyond SERPs” will get its true meaning and SEO discussions will be beyond Page 1 rankings finally. Making the site stand out with a perfect title and description will be the main focus for getting a high CTR for the site.

The Search Engine Perspective:

The search results page will get a quality and meaningful update and will add more speed to the search activity. The user will be able to search more in less time. The search results page will become truly mobile friendly.

Overall it is going to be a smart move by Google if this gets finalized as I do not think there can be any reason why the user will reject such a development on the search page. After Google Instant this infinite scrolling feature will add the instant factor to the whole search process when searched from the desktop, tablet or mobile.

Hope Google makes the Infinite Scroll Web Results feature go live instantly.

Google / SEO - 08/18/2011

Matt Cutts Webmaster Video On “Underscore v/s Dashes In Urls”

Matt Cutts in this video explains how Google interprets the underscores and dashes in the URLs.

I was under the impression that there is not such thing like an underscore in the English language and the dash being a hyphen would separate the words and take each word separately , but there is more to it.

Dashes are preferred over an underscore in the URL as a dash does separate out each term and each term gets indexed separately but an underscore joins the terms and indexes it as one term.

If you already have a site which has used an underscore in URLs you need not bother to change all the URLs as it is not very much a ranking factor. But incase you are developing a new site then opting for dashes in the URL is the correct option.

SEO - 08/17/2011

Matt Cutts, Ben Gomes and Amit Singhal From Google Give You An Inside Look On How Search Works

This video is about Google's search leaders Matt Cutts, Ben Gomes and Amit Singhal who give you an inside look on how search works, they share stories on what it has been like to work together over the past decade, and discuss where they see search heading in the future. Moderated by Search Engine Land's Danny Sullivan.It is a must view for all the people who are passionate about search and want to have an insight about how Google deals with search and search algorithms.

Some of the points discussed in the video are:

Amit Singhal introduces himself and says that academically he has done Masters In Search and a PhD in search – (Well he says yes there is such a thing but this back when search was the sleepy domain for the librarians)

Ben Golmes shares that when he joined Google his previous Boss had asked him “Do you think Google will ever be 1/10th size of Altavista?”

Matt Cutts introduces himself and says that he was a graphics guy and wrote the first version of safe search at Google and in the process found out that there are bad guys on the internet and since then he has been dealing with them now as the head of the web spam team of Google.

We take simple principles of how language behaves and build algorithms based on those principles in an environment of the modern web.In the real world these algorithms are challenged with all its complexities and the most relevant pages have to be produced for the query made by the user.

Danny Sullivan asks Google how do you decide what is not working and what is broken and how to fix it?

Amit Singhal says all their algorithmic changes are based on one principle that is - So what is best for the user, they develop science around it and then measure what is best for the user.

He further says that there is rigorous testing done before they finalize on any ranking algorithm update. There are approx. 500 changes to algorithm every year and Google runs around 20000 tests every year.

The answers to the following questions are considered along with many other considerations before deciding to go ahead with the new algorithm.

Is it good for the web eco system at large?
Would it benefit authors?
Would it benefit high quality content?
Would it keep the Google system simple so that it can be maintained much longer?

Ben Golmes adds that being very rigorous for testing is essential to the speed of moving fast so that they are constantly sure that they are the best for the users at any given point.

Matt Cutts says that at times under certain circumstances they may take manual action.

Matt says at Google we are obsessed about speed and we would like to give the most relevant result as fast as possible to the user.

All search in the future seems to be mobile and Danny Sullivan adds that we will not even be searching but it will be happening to us.

Bharati Ahuja

Google / SEO - 08/12/2011