#SMX Advanced Seattle (8th June 2011) Day 2 (A Curated Resource)

The details , discussions and the slides shared on Day 2 can be found on the following links:

SMX Advanced Seattle Agenda – June 8, 2011

http://searchmarketingexpo.com/advanced/2011/full_agenda2

SMX Advanced Liveblog: Social Data & Search With Bing’s Stefan Weitz

Day two of our SMX Advanced conference is set to begin shortly with a keynote session on the “Confluence of Social Data & Search.” Bing Director Stefan Weitz is due to give a presentation/demo and then chat with Danny Sullivan.

 

Read more on the following link:
http://searchengineland.com/smx-advanced-liveblog-social-data-search-with-bings-stefan-weitz-80698

Read more on the following link:

http://outspokenmedia.com/blog/

Bing’s “Honey Badger” – An Upgrade To Webmaster Too

This morning at our SMX Advanced conference, Bing’s Stefan Weitz announced “Honey Badger” — Bing’s latest upgrade to its Webmaster Tools.

Read more on the following link:

http://searchengineland.com/bings-honey-badger-an-upgrade-to-webmaster-tools-80738

Hashtag for the show is #smx catch up with the trending topic for the SEO industry onhttp://twitter.com/#!/search/realtime/%23smx or you can follow @smx

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The Happenings And Discussions At #SMX Advanced Seattle On Day 1 - ( 7th June 2011 - A Curated Resource)

I am sure every SEO and Internet Marketing Person would have loved to be at Seattle on the 7th of June 2011 to attend the SMX Advanced and catch up with what is the latest in the search industry. Atleast I was and hoping to be there next year or hoping SMX Advanced to select one of the cities of India as the venue.

Thanks to all the live blogging and Twitter by which we can keep ourselves virtually present at the event.

The details , discussions and the slides shared on Day 1 can be found on the following links:

SMX Advanced Seattle Agenda – June 7, 2011

http://searchmarketingexpo.com/advanced/2011/full_agenda

On Tuesday morning, SEOmoz’s Rand Fishkin presented evidence at our SMX Advanced conference that there’s a high correlation between Facebook Shares and ranking well on search engines. In afternoon, the head of Google’s web spam team Matt Cutts said that Google doesn’t see Facebook Share data at all. An SEO-search engine catfight? No, both actually agree.

 The Bing Party SMX Advanced  Seattle 2011

Read more on the following link:

http://searchengineland.com/its-not-he-said-she-said-over-google-rankings-facebook-shares-80601

Day one of our SMX Advanced conference is wrapping up with a late afternoon tradition: Danny Sullivan’s “You & A” conversation with Google’s top spam cop, Matt Cutts. The session is due to start at 5:00 pm PST but, just between us, it’s bit hectic up front and gut feeling is that we’ll be a little late. (In other words, the Cuttlets are already out in force and Matt is being mobbed.)

Read more on the following link:

http://searchengineland.com/smx-advanced-liveblog-you-a-keynote-with-googles-matt-cutts-80576

It’s the first session of the show so Danny spends some time going over the housekeeping stuff. He explains how people are supposed to tweet the sessions, how it would costs eight gazillion dollars to outfit the entire room with power strips and lots of other housekeeping stuff. You’re not here so that stuff probably doesn’t concern you. Luckily for you it’s time to get to the search stuff.

Read more on the following link:

http://outspokenmedia.com/internet-marketing-conferences/seo-periodic-table/

How hard can a panel called “The Really Complicated Technical SEO Infrastructure Issues” be to liveblog, right? It’s not like the panel is full of totally smart people who can think rings around the rest of us or anything…

Read more on the following link:

http://www.bruceclay.com/blog/2011/06/the-really-complicated-technical-seo-infrastructure-issues-smx-advanced/

Links To The Slide Decks by @jennita and @randfish of @seomoz :

http://www.slideshare.net/jennifersablelopez/the-social-mind-vs-the-seo-mind
http://www.slideshare.net/randfish/interesting-data-from-the-2011-ranking-factors

Matt Cutts Has The Panda With Him  SMX Advanced Seattle 2011 - Hey! Don't  Miss The Shoes...

Hashtag for the show is #smx catch up with the trending topic for the SEO industry on http://twitter.com/#!/search/realtime/%23smx or you can follow @smx

Bing Incorporates Facebook Data Into Search Results - Tapping The Collective IQ Of The Web

Search + Social Media = Search , Discuss & Decide
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Bing says that they know that decision matter and they just made search more social by incorporating the Facebook data in search results. Bing will now pull Facebook likes—from news, celebs, and movies to bands, brands, and burgers to inform you about the opinions of the people whom you are connected to so that it helps you to decide i.e Bing & Decide.

Search, shortlist products and websites, see what your friends have to say about it and then decide. If you have activated Facebook results, you will see which pages, products and websites your friends like and recommend. Its like bringing the IQ of the web to you so that you can decide.

View the video released by Bing in this regard.

Bing had made a similar announcement on their official blog in October last year

http://www.bing.com/community/site_blogs/b/search/archive/2010/10/13/bing-gets-more-social-with-facebook.aspx

Google too has been working on the social signals for search and had made a similar announcement on 17/02/2011 on their official blog

http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/02/update-to-google-social-search.html

View Google's stand on the Search And Social Integration

As you can clearly see that Bing is incorporating the Facebook ‘Likes’ and Google is focusing on Twitter for the social media integration, the presence on Twitter and Facebook both are equally important.

SEMPO reports a decline of SEO spending in 2011 but an increase in social media spending in 2011. This is in future is going t have a very positive aspect to SEO as the Social Media spending are actually supplementing search only.

Now SEO companies have to educate their clients on how to use social media effectively in addition to educating them about how search works and the importance of quality web presence.

An article based on the SEMPO study can be read on:

http://www.searchenginejournal.com/sempo-decline-in-seo-spendings-2011-good-news-for-seos/29817/

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Bing Searches Hit The 30% Mark In The US Market

It’s the first time Microsoft has captured this large a market share of the search world. The kind of qualitative changes Bing has been coming up with on the Bing Webmaster Tools and local business portal it clearly indicates that Microsoft is serious about search.

According to analysis firm Experian Hitwise.

As SEOs if we have been focusing on search engine optimization rather than Google Optimization the efforts put in all this time are going to start bearing results. As I can already see in the analytics for the sites managed by us the organic traffic from Bing is picking up.

If you have been adding your sites to Bing Webmaster Tools also and have been focusing on ranking on Bing too you are in a Win-Win situation. Well I am all smiles and welcome the competition as this will make the search scene more qualitative and innovative and will give us the nutritive food for thought and the true challenge for genuine SEOs.

The international Panda update of Google, the increase in the market share for Bing, Bing’s local business Portal Launch and improved Bing Webmaster Tools are making the search industry come of age and gain its true place on the online marketing scenario.

Traffic Sources And Significance From The SEO & Web Presence Perspective

The Google Analytics Usually has the following 3 main metrics  for Traffic Sources:
·     Direct Traffic
·        Referral Traffic

·        Traffic  From Search Engines

Usually when the SEO discusses the site performance with the client the no. of visits from the search engines are the focus factor as that is the key parameter on which the SEO campaign focuses on. But, keeping in mind the holistic nature of SEO it is very important that all the above 3 metrics should be monitored and all these three metrics should show an increasing trend.

Every source of traffic has got its own significance and shows a mark made for presence in that niche.

Direct Traffic
Direct Traffic signifies the repeat visits or visits as a result of people keying
in the website URL in the browser and visiting the site.

Direct Traffic comes from people who already are familiar with the brand, know about your site, are regular visitors to your site, have come to know about your site through WOM or as a result of some real world advertisement campaign where you promoted the URL of your website.

An increase in the direct traffic over a period of time implies a good improvement in the WOM and brand awareness. Usually people do not bother about monitoring this metric and hence miss out on this aspect of web presence and web visibility.

If its an ecommerce site direct visits and repeat visits prove that the people are showing interst in the site and are buying again or intend to buy which if delved further can give a much richer insight about the site.

Search Engines:

Usually only the traffic from the search engines is kept a track of and monitored as that is how the success of an SEO campaign is usually measured and drilling it down further it is the no. of visits from Google that are focused and chased as a priority as most of the SEO campaigns cease to be search engine optimization campaigns and become Google optimization campaigns. Sometimes due to the client perceptions and some times due to the narrow perceptions of the SEOs themselve.

No doubt an increase in the search engine traffic from varied keywords will tell you volumes about the SEO work done on your site but just giving importance to search engine traffic will isolate your presence only to search engines and if this traffic gets affected due to some reason or other then your site is left stranded and loses web visibility.

If the SEO campaign is just focusing on Google and not considering traffic from Bing and other upcoming search engines then things get more narrowed down and in future if other search engines gain more market share the SEO campaigns will have to be reworked then. Hence over all importance and focus needs to be given to other search engines also, especially Bing, Ask and Blekko.

Referral Traffic:

Referral traffic is the visits your site gets as a result of the clicks on the URLs of your websites on other external sites on the web like the social media sites – Facebook, Twitter, Linkden, etc., the sites on which you are running affiliate programs, directory listings, industry portals, online memberships, blogs,etc.

These visits signify the presence of your site on the overall WWW which again should show an increasing trend in the analytics as this spreads the presence of your website on the web beyond search engines and adds a certain element of quality if the referrals are from authority, quality , topical , trustworthy sites as this is directly related to your inbound links too.

Each traffic source has got its own importance and adds to the aura of quality web presence. Hence traffic from all the sources needs to be monitored and measured and necessary steps to be taken improve and increase the traffic from all these sources.

This cannot be done only by the SEO. The website owner or atleast one person from the company needs to take active interest on the visits from the direct and referral source in co-ordination with the SEO .

SEO is becoming more holistic in nature and demands a quality web presence on the world wide. If the website owners want a continued quality web presence they need to adapt to the evolution taking place on the online scenario and act accordingly .I think that the ideal break up for traffic sources percent wise would be
Direct Traffic : 33.33%

Referral Traffic : 33.33%

Search Engines: 33.33%

Which signifies an optimum overall presence and such a site will face less harm from the vagaries of traffic coming from one source in case of any sudden changes due to algorithmic change or whatever the case maybe.

Is The Content On Your Website Helping The Visitor To Take A Decision?

Content has a wider connotation now especially after the integration of social and search.

Right from the time the first web page was developed , the most important aspect has undoubtedly been – ‘CONTENT’ – ‘Content Is King’ as it is rightfully said.

The content on the website speaks volumes about your company and also helps you in the SEO of the site. But keeping in mind the dynamics of the evolution of the web, importance has to be given to all the content generation media directly or indirectly related to your website on page or off page.

Every single word you write on your website is surely the content directly affecting the quality score of your website.

If every page on your website  targets a unique set of keywords then the possibility of every page becoming the landing page for those set of keywords can surely become a reality and  hence ensure those many organic search rankings .

For example: The domain www.malibuplastica ranks on page 1 for the products and services of the company with different landing pages as per the content on that page.

Keyword                                                         Landing Page
Polycarbonate sheets -                                  http://www.malibuplastica.com/index.htm
Polycarbonate Sign Boards -                        http://www.malibuplastica.com/signboard-sign-facia.htm
Polycarbonate Domes And Pyramids -     http://www.malibuplastica.com/Polycarbonate-domes-pyramids.htm
Polycarbonate Anti Riot Shields -               http://www.malibuplastica.com/polycarbonate-anti-riot-shields.htm

This is from the perspective of the search engine spider to make relevant pages rank for different keywords and have focused landing pages with relevant keywords.

But from the perspective of the visitor landing on the relevant page is the first step. The actual journey of buying from the site or contacting the company representative starts from there. The first impression is of course the overall design but the design aspect is so relative that what catches the  fancy of one visitor may not appeal at all to the other. 

But after the first few second s of a quick assessment of the design the eyeballs move on to read the content. If the content is interesting enough and offers a detailed information about the products and services, the comparative analysis , pricing details along with ease of navigation and minimum no. of clicks then surely the interest level is retained and this influences the decision of the online buyer.

An online buyer needs information immediately else he goes back to the search engine to search for more .   The website content should compel the visitor to go on reading the  info. Available on the site and make him feel confident of buying from the site.

Usually the comparative study, the reliable payment gateway, trust seal and an SSL certificate boost the confidence of the buyer to finalize a decision.

A website is built for the visitor but the spider specifics are equally important.  When we talk about content we usually refer to the on page content but the off page content influencing the site is equally important.  The integration of social and search is making this more and more important.

What you post or tweet i.e the content of the tweet or the post you share on facebook, the links that you share , the topics, conversations , comments and blogposts that you like ,  your email signatures, etc.

On the flip side the User Generated Content -  what others write about you on the reviews, comments, and in their tweets especially if a link and your social media account has a reference to are all part of the content which influence the holistic quality score of the content and yes if the visitor also refers to the social media before he decides to buy from your site then that it indirectly influences the online buyer’s decision.

If The Likes Are The New Links Then Paid Likes Will Magnify The Spam On The Web

In a recent article on http://www.webpronews.com/topnews/2010/11/23/if-likes-are-the-new-links-content-quality-should-increase it was mentioned that if according to Bruce Clay Likes are the new links then the way the links are sold by many companies , the likes also will become a saleable product increasing the spam and low quality search results on the search engines.


According to me, undoubtedly the social and search integration with the social graph influencing the search results is something which is surely going to be woven in the search engine algorithms. In fact it already has been claimed by one of the SEOs that Twitter presence and engagement helped him in improving the SERPs.
(Read About It On: http://www.seroundtable.com/archives/023315.html)

But, the extent to which the likes, tweets, blog post comments, reviews, etc. will influence the rankings and how they will be woven into the algorithms will depend on the search engines and their access to the relevant data.

But, the most important point of concern is that if the likes too are bought by the companies like the paid links then the spam generated thus will result into a noise pollution on the web.

It is a big irony that the PageRank concept which was implemented by Google to fight the keyword spam which was resorted to by the web marketers and SEOs in early 2000, actually paved the way for a spammy link building industry.

Now, the social media indicators which should help in adding an opinion or additional valuable information to the links also have a possibility of adding volume to the same spammy link building industry. The whole concept of earning links and likes on the merit of quality content is being replaced by the concept of buying links and the likes by some of the web marketers just to give a quick boost to the SERPS of their client sites.

If, we want to avoid having a world wide web with social media sites ending up with fictitious accounts, search results with manipulated low quality searches, clients unnecessarily diverting funds to paid links and likes and other such influences which results in the spammers making money and an over all imbalance and clutter on the web then it is the responsibility of every web marketer and SEO to say NO to paid links or likes and educate the client with the facts about the search engine visibility and ranking ethics and convince them to take the right path to progress on the search engines.

If, this is not done then the SEO industry shall soon lose its credibility and people might give more preference to paid search which again will result into a lopsided growth on the web.

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Weekly Update About The Search Industry - Google , Yahoo, Bing. - A Video

View the following video to update yourself about the weekly developments in the Search Industry by

http://www.seroundtable.com/

The topics discussed in the Video are:

•Bing Gets Something Google Can't Get, Facebook Data

•Did Google's Marissa Mayer Get Promoted or Demoted?

•Google Updates Link Reports Before Bing

•Google Improves Parameter Handling For Faceted Navigation Control

•Google Testing Highlighting Search Results On Mouse Over Event?

•Google Testing AdWords At Bottom Agai

•Yahoo Looking To Sell Again? This Time, I'm All For It

•Yahoo Was "Down a Bit" Yesterday Afternoon

•Yahoo Closing More Directories, Now UK Directory

•Surprise: Google's Q3 2010 Earnings Up

•Google Maps Penguins - Peguins For Street Views

•SES Chicago 2010 Live Blog Coverage Schedule

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Search Marketing A Valid Career Choice

If one fine morning you go to your parents and tell them that you have decided to be a search marketer then it is quite likely they will expect a detailed explanation about what this career choice is all about and what will the future be like a few years down the line.

Search engine marketing, or SEM, is a form of Internet marketing that seeks to promote websites by increasing their visibility in search engine result pages (SERPs) through the use of search engine optimization, paid placement, contextual advertising, and paid inclusion.[Usage of the term "search engine marketing" has been inconsistent. The trade association Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization (SEMPO) includes search engine optimization (SEO), and SEO is also included in the industry definitions of SEM.

The world wide web has reached nearly every nook and corner of the world and people refer the search engines for more information, buy and sell online and also make friends online. The web has got woven in our social and business fabric like never before and is here to stay and influence our life decisions.

Hence, traditional methods of marketing have been replaced by web marketing and as a result there is a lot of demand for people who are equipped with the knowledge of web marketing.

A Classic example of this can be read on this link:

http://www.fastcompany.com/blog/ariel-schwartz/sustainability/pepsi-ditches-super-bowl-embraces-crowdsourced-philanthropy-inste

Like in every field in this field also you can take up a job in a web marketing firm or start on your own as an entrepreneur with a small investment or work as a freelancer.

A few years back Search Marketing mainly meant SEO (Search Engine Optimization) or PPC (Pay Per Click) but now search has a wider connotation and the search engine also have wider search options. Social media Optimization has also come under the umbrella of Search Marketing now.

Once you decide to take up search marketing as a career then be prepared to constantly upgrade yourself with the latest developments as regards their algorithms and techniques which keep on changing.

  • Enroll yourself for a training course on Internet marketing
  • Work on projects passionately without giving much importance to the pay packet initially
  • Once you gain the expertise and skill for marketing a website the future is promising, provided you are prepared to work hard.

WebPro Technologies has been optimizing websites since 2003 and conducting training on SEO since 2007. At WebPro we believe that one never ceases to be a student. The charm of being truly educated is to accept that we all keep on learning something new at every stage of our lives and career. This applies very aptly to the field of SEO.

Read More On The Following Related Articles:

http://www.webpro.in/seo-training-at-webpro-technologies-ahmedabad-in-depth-courses-as-well-as-week-end-courses-for-corporates/

http://www.webpro.in/using-the-internet-effectively-for-studies/

http://www.webpro.in/pagerank-obsession-patience-perseverance-and-seo/

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