Bharati Ahuja

The Search (SEO) And Social Media Integration –Will The SERPs Be Influenced By The Social Graph

The latest buzz in the SEO world is about the integration of SEO and social media. We all know that Search Engine Optimization is a must for every website. No website can rank high for the targeted keywords on the search engines unless it is optimized according to the norms of the search engines.

As the main purpose of any website is to have conversions , conversions are possible only if there are visitors to the site and these visitors 80% of the time find your site through search engines. So, SEO is important and the lifeline of web marketing.

Now, the fact is that the social media sites like www.facebook.com, www.twitter.com , etc. have started having a lot of traffic as these social media sites appeal to the intellect by having business and social objectives with a micro blogging conversational platform. So, people find answers to certain queries by sharing links as well as get an opportunity to voice their opinion.

If the web traffic is found on these social media sites then it is simple marketing logic that you need to display the message about your products and services where you will get the targeted audience. If your targeted audience is on Facebook and Twitter then your company surely needs a presence there.

Once your company decides to allocate valuable time on facebook and twitter then it is very important to work out a strategy for putting forward the right impression about your company and create a valuable online reputation.

But, before that let us understand how has the search and social media started integrating with each other and how they supplement each other.

Google and Bing both have real time search results and organic search results. Organic search results have the list of sites which have been optimized for the targeted keywords. But, the real time search results are displayed from the latest posts and tweets from the social media sites as real time search is all about fresh and latest content on a certain topic, happening or event.

The netizens are always info hungry and want more and more latest content on the web. So, as the law of economics goes if the demand increases the supply also increases. All the search engines have started working on how they can roll out the best results for real time and organic listings because when we talk about real time search results from social media sites we cannot ignore the umpteen no. of links being shared on twitter and facebook.

The million dollar question is : will these shared links, comments, likes and votes have a direct co-relation to the rankings to the sites for organic search?

Well, we can get the answer to this question only once the search engines update their algorithms regarding the influence of the social graph on the rankings in the time to come. But, we as website owners and SEOs surely can keep all the options open and be in a win-win situation by engaging in social media by being a socially responsible netizen, keep in mind the theories of inter-personal relations, etiquette, ethics and develop a social reputation which will by itself give a boost to the business objectives you have.

One cannot create an identity on the social media by just tweeting quotes or retweeting famous top tweets or by following the herd mentality. Carve a niche for yourself by being unique and by sharing knowledge and information.

Sales and conversions no doubt are the business objectives but social media is not a market or a mall for displaying goods and services but a platform for interacting with each other and developing the goodwill and a genuine online reputation for your company which surely will result in recommendations and a good WOM and needless to say that in return the realization of the business objective cannot be far behind.

The more you share it shows that more you care the more you care the better you fare.

SEOs Cannot Ignore Bing From Their SEO Strategy

Bing has lately been getting a lot of attention from the SEO industry. Yahoo and Bing will be coming together in with a mutually beneficial collaboration i.e Yahoo results will soon be powered by Bing and this shall surely make the market share of Bing grow considerably.

In anticipation of this and in order to make sure that the web presence of their websites is assured SEOs surely cannot ignore incorporating Bing in their search strategies.

WebProNews spoke with Janet Driscoll Miller of Search Mojo out at SMX, who presented on this topic.

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Google Caffeine Going Live From All Data Centres

Google has from May 2010 onwards come up with major changes. First being the May Day update they call it that because it took place between 28th of April to 3rd of May. The second change is the formal announcement of Google Caffeine going live from all Google data centres on 8th of June at the Search Marketing Expo – Seattle.
The May Day update is an algorithmic change which has been intentionally made to improve the quality of long tail keywords search results. On the other hand Google caffeine is a new web indexing system.

According to Google they came up with this new indexing system to keep up with the evolution of the web and to meet rising user expectations. Google further has mentioned on its blog that content on the web is blossoming. It's growing not just in size and numbers but with the advent of video, images, news and real-time updates, the average webpage is richer and more complex. In addition, people's expectations for search are higher than they used to be. Searchers want to find the latest relevant content and publishers expect to be found the instant they publish.

Caffeine takes up nearly 100 million gigabytes of storage in one database and adds new information at a rate of hundreds of thousands of gigabytes per day. You would need 625,000 of the largest iPods to store that much information; if these were stacked end-to-end they would go for more than 40 miles.

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

View the following video to listen to what Matt Cutts has to say about the evolution of the the Google indexing architecture from 2001 onwards and Google Dance ( the term Google Dance I am sure must be familiar to all the SEOs who are optimizing sites since 2002) .

What to do when Your Website Gets Hacked And You Lose The Rankings In Google.

Lately it has been a crisis management period at WebPro with 2 of our major sites being hacked. I guess we have to accept and live with the evils in the world along with the blessings bestowed upon us. This also truly applies to the virtual web world.

I would like to share the nature of the attack on these websites to help you be prepared with what should be the course of action in case (God forbid) your website faces the same misfortune.

Both the websites nearly faced the same brunt (Lets call them site A and site B) but the problem was detected by us at different stages.

The hacking attack involved the altering of the HTML code of the home page and number of links added which created backlinks from all unwanted spammy horrendous sites for site A and for site B the same task was achieved by the hacker by uploading 2 files one HTML file and one PHP file on the server without any alteration on any of the web pages.

We have a practice of keeping a track of each and every site regularly . Hence, Site A alteration in the code was detected immediately and the necessary action was taken. The indexing and the rankings got affected but got immediately restored before the indexing, caching and webmaster tools (WMT) report was affected for that site.

For site B two files were uploaded as mentioned above. One was an HTML file which had a list of 500+ links with a very weird file name and the other was a .PHP file which had the script to create the horrendous and spammy backlinks. This was detected by us only when we saw the links showing in the WMT and the analytics not showing any targeted traffic as all the site was not ranking for any of the keywords. All this happened in a matter of 4-5 days.

The action taken was as follows:

• Both the files .htm and .php were deleted

• The FTP username and password was changed

• The request for removal from search and cache of Google for each of the 500 – 600 URLs was given individually in WMT

Luckily the domain was not banned by Google as I said it was detected early and the voluntary removal of such content gave an indication of not having this intentionally on the domain for cheap PageRank improvement purposes.

The URLs were removed by Google in a matter of 2 days. But it took 10 – 12 days to get back the rankings and I am actually surprised at the fact that the rankings in fact are better and the keywords which had page 2 and 3 rankings are now on page 1.

The WMT tools data has not been fully updated yet but I guess it’s a matter of time.

Though the SEO is not responsible for the loss of SERPs in such a case but I think SEOs should be equipped with this knowledge also to help the client in every possible way to come out of such a crisis keeping the client’s interest in mind. After all the best way to avoid evil is to know it.

Whether the help is rendered on a chargeable basis or offered free depends entirely on the company policies. But, I think it should surely be one of the points mentioned in the SEO contract.

Last but not the least, it was truly a good learning experience - not that I am hoping for more.

PageRank Obsession, Patience, Perseverance And SEO

From my past experience I have seen SEOs concentrating and focusing on PageRank and even using it as one of the USPs for selling their SEO packages by mentioning that the SEO pakage they offer shall improve and increase the PageRank.

But, is it so important a factor or feature from the SEO perspective ?

In my opinion the answer is NO. I do not think that link building and Pagerank are the factors which should be given importance and prominence to in a SEO project. As I always say that link building itself is a wrong term - Links should not be built but they should get built in the process of the web journey of the website on the WWW because of great content and information on the website.

So, what are the points that should be given importance in an SEO project?

Now, with the redesigned page of Google with more search options available the focus should be to rank high as possible on all the options. Atleast the efforts have to be geared towards that. The Google search page has got options on the LHS like images, blogs, videos, news, updates, maps, books,etc.

Instead of concentrating on only the ranking on the search page the ranking on all these option results also offers a lot of opportunity for targeted traffic.

Apart from this surely it makes sense to have a presence on the social media sites where people are mostly hanging out. So the relevant and relative postings on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, etc. surely add to the qualitative and targeted traffic.

Hence, its high time SEOs overcome their baclink and PageRank obsession and concentrate on the factors that really matter - Offer qualitative content in all froms i.e in text, in images, videos, blogs, posts and tweets on social media sites, maps, etc. and see your website go places and attract targeted traffic and automatic natural inbound links like never before.

The only thing required for getting such inbound links and traffic is patience and trust me Patience and Perseverance Do Pay.

Google Home Page - Now With An Option Of Change Background Image

Google recently announced on its blog that you can choose a photo from your computer, your own Picasa Web Album or a public gallery hosted by Picasa which includes a selection of beautiful photos to change the background image.

Google's iGoogle feature which helped the users to personalize the Google home page according to their preferences had its debut in 2005. That feature was more focused on offering widgets to be added and personalized the page as per individual functionality needed a click away. Though the iGoogle feature also had the option of changing the image it was never highlighted.

This link on the home page of Google which says ' change background image ' is highlighted by Google by giving the link on the home page and making it very obvious that it is only for the background image.

We all know that bing.com always have picturesque images in the background and that has become its identity.

So, does this option suggest that Google is copying bing ?

Well, if the answer is yes then I don't think Google needs to go the bing way just to offer this feature to the users as Google's identity lies in the purity of the white color on the home page and that should be retained.

Though Google had this feature also available on iGoogle since a long time people have always opted the Google home page to remain white in color with the colorful Google logo on it with the search box - THE GOOGLE IDENTITY - SEARCH.

Hence, Google should stop offering these non-funtional options and give more qualitative options from the search perspective.

Inbound Links And SEO

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

I am of the opinion that the term 'link building' itself is an incorrect term. Links do not have to be built but they should get built naturally in the process as your website starts getting a wider web presence and preference.

As every link is like a vote to your site and goodwill of your company and that has to be earned as part of the web journey of the website.

If we focus on the quality content, have a good site internal linking architecture, have a site which is visitor friendly as well as robot friendly then getting high SERPs is not a difficult task.

Once you have high SERPs trust me there will loads of directories and portals adding your site in their listings even without you knowing about it, as they too are looking for quality listings.

Once upon a time the dmoz listing was something that you always wished for once you submitted your site in dmoz as that surely was a valuable link. I dont know if it still has that importance but I still manually add each site to dmoz.

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

Focus all your efforts on making the site informative, qualitative and content rich to get links automatically.·
Do not neglect the On-Page Optimization Basics and just go after links. (Very important from the SEO perspective)·
Participate in social media networks for discussions and sharing of information and mention links to the relevant pages to your website. (It need not be the Home Page always)·
Have a social book marking button on your website.
Make RSS feeds available on your website.
Issue Press Releases periodically.