Why Regular Website Maintenance and Monitoring Is The Key To Online Success

A website needs regular website maintenance to function properly. There are many issues related to websites which need regular attention so that the website can remain unharmed by malicious attacks and can always remain updated with the latest information and content.

Regular website maintenance is the key to online sustainability. Website owners think that once their CMS website has been built, you don’t need to do anything more to it other than add content but that is just one aspect of the overall website maintenance.

cost cutting on web maintenancemay be Penny Wise But Pound Foolish

Website Maintenance comprises all the activities needed to ensure the smooth functioning and operational integrity of the website.

The activities which fall under WEB MAINTENANCE are:

  • Website Publishing
  • Website Quality Assurance
  • Manage Communication With Website Visitors
  • Measure Success Of The Website
  • Manage technical aspects of the website

The no. Of people needed in the team may vary from 1 to 5 or more depending on the size and complexity of the website.

The decision of maintaining the website in-house or outsourcing to an agency also depends on the size of the website and also on the availability of people having the required knowledge to maintain the website in-house.

Website maintenance is a challenging task that many businesses do not have the time for. Some may lack the knowledge and tools needed for proper website upkeep. One solution is to hire a company that specializes or offers web maintenance services.

Usually people invest a huge amount developing a good website and many times also spend on promoting the website online but in the name of maintenance they assume that only adding content is enough and as they can easily manage that via the CMS very little attention is paid to the other aspects of the website. Such as,

  • Check for errors and broken links
  • Check for security holes
  • Install new tools, plugins and functions
  • Update contents
  • Update back-end platfom and software patches
  • Back up database and content, etc.

Today if you have a medium sized dynamic website or a large eCommerce website then while allocating budgets for SEO, PPC, Social Media, Content, etc. One needs to allocate a certain budget for the regular maintenance also.Else, such a cost cutting may prove to be Penny Wise But Pound Foolish.

Though your SEO may warn you many times with the technical issues but may not make the actual changes on the website as they may require a web developer to execute those changes or it may not fall under the scope of the SEO Contract.

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

There are many activities when executed in coordination ensure the success of the website and help the website owner achieve the goal for which the website was developed in the first place.

If you are planning to invest in a small basic website or a medium size dynamic website or a large eCommerce website then please consider all these aspects before venturing out on the virtual sands for business. As many times individually each agency may be doing their bit but the overall success is a mirage because of the lack of coordination.

Hence all these activities can be managed in-house by having a dedicated team or outsource it to different specialized agencies by defining the scope of each agency very clearly and appoint a person in-house to co-ordinate with the different agencies to achieve holistic success or find a company which offers turnkey solutions and offers all these services under their hood.

SEO - 03/27/2014

Responsive Web Design Or A Mobile App – How To Decide?

Undoubtedly the future belongs to the mobile. Speaking at SMX West last week Google’s Matt Cutts said that he “wouldn’t be surprised” if mobile search exceeded desktop queries this year. A similar comment was made by a Google speaker informally during a roundtable discussion at the International Franchising Association conference in New Orleans earlier this year.

As per a recent report published by Cisco, some interesting mobile market trends can be witnessed in the next 5 years:

● Monthly global mobile data traffic will surpass 15 exabytes by 2018.

● The number of mobile-connected devices will exceed the world’s population by 2014.

● The average mobile connection speed will surpass 2 Mbps by 2016.

● Due to increased usage on smartphones, smartphones will reach 66 percent of mobile data traffic by 2018.

● Monthly mobile tablet traffic will surpass 2.5 exabyte per month by 2018.

● Tablets will exceed 15 percent of global mobile data traffic by 2016.

● 4G traffic will be more than half of the total mobile traffic by 2018.

● There will be more traffic offloaded from cellular networks (on to Wi-Fi) than remain on cellular networks by 2018.

Cisco Forecasts 15.9 Exabytes per Month of Mobile Data Traffic by 2018

The global web traffic coming from mobile, smartphones and other small screen hand held devices have been on a rise for the past 20 months. On the contrary, web traffic coming from desktop devices are on a decline.

So the major question is that in order to prepare your website for the mobile arena should you go for a responsive design or should you create a mobile App ?

Responsive web design (RWD) is a web design approach aimed at crafting sites to provide an optimal viewing experience across a wide range of devices -from desktop computer monitors, tablets to mobile phones. In particular, reacting to the width of the browser window -- not just flowing the text, but often changing aspects of page layout. Responsive web design is the latest web design trend of 2013 and becoming a standard practice for the web design industry .

A Mobile App resides on the device, and doesn't require Internet access to run (although it may require Internet access to perform most tasks). Mobile app code may be native code, written (or generated) for each mobile platform (Android, iOS, Windows, etc.), or it can be HTML, CSS, and JavaScript wrapped in an "app shell" using a tool like PhoneGap or RhoMobile -- or a combination of these approaches.

The decision should be made after considering the following aspects:

What Is Your Purpose?

If you have a product that offers potential for ongoing micro-purchases, then a native application is the way to go. A shopping cart on your website can facilitate this, but the in-app purchasing system is so simple and tied into all the rest of a user’s purchases on the platform that it is second to none. Else a Responsive Design may be the right solution to reach out to users across the mobile platforms.

What is your budget?

A Responsive Design demands a lesser investment than a Mobile App. If you have a limited budget go ahead with a Responsive Design. If mobile transactions and in-app purchases represent a significant portion of potential revenue, investing in app development could be the smart decision. But if you can’t afford the spend immediately, start with a responsive website and add the native app as part of a future iteration.

Is SEO important?

If you need to develop a search presence first and then go ahead with the online business then a Responsive Design is a safer bet as Apps are recommended for specific functions and mobile transactions but if you have to create an online brand presence and awareness first then a Responsive Design is the right decision as compared to a Mobile App. But again if you have a larger budget and can invest in both then why not?

Do you need to make frequent updates?

If you expect to have frequent design updates, a responsive design may be the simplest way to ensure your users are accessing the latest information.

If you decide to go ahead with the decision to develop an App. Then,

  • First consult the analytics and find out the no. Of people accessing your site via Android, iOS and other mobile platforms.
  • Determine the main purpose of the App.
  • If you will be sending and receiving massive amounts of data then an app will generally work faster than a responsive website since it doesn’t rely as heavily on Internet and network speed to serve up information.
  • If you need to use the camera, GPS, scan feature, or other phone functions , then an app is likely the way to go.
  • One of the great features in a mobile app is the ability to craft personalized experiences for the device. Since a mobile application resides on the user’s device, it is capable of targeting and crafting the user experience. For example, within a mobile app a user can create and save a profile, which allows them to customize their interactions. Apps have the ability to provide the most tailored User Experience.

The differences between an App and Responsive range from the subtle to obvious, but the answers lie in truly understanding your goals, target market, and restraints. In many cases, both a mobile app and a responsive website is the right decision and after considering the above aspects one can confidently take a decision depending on the need, requirement and resources available.

Top 5 Ways to Annoy Your App Users

  1. Forced registration.
  2. Complicated navigation.
  3. Preference amnesia. 
  4. Long forms.
  5. Ratings prompts
5 Mistakes to Avoid When Creating Branded Apps

  1. Recreating the web experience.
  2. Ignoring the rules.
  3. Throwing branding out the window.
  4. Overlooking privacy.
  5. Assuming there's an audience.
Others / SEO - 03/19/2014

What Is EXIF Data ? Does Google Use EXIF Data From Pictures As A Ranking Factor?

EXIF stands for Exchangeable Image File, and the data provided can be stored to JPEG, RAWand TIFF image file formats. The data itself can reveal some pretty interesting stuff about your photos. As well as the exact time and date you clicked the picture (provided your camera time and date was correct, of course), a lot of technical information regarding the photograph is captured as well.

The Exif tag structure is borrowed from TIFF files. For descriptive metadata, there is an overlap between EXIF and IPTC Information Interchange Model info, which also can be embedded in a JPEG file.

The Exif format has standard tags for location information. As of 2014 many cameras and most mobile phones have a built-in GPS receiver that stores the location information in the EXIF header when a picture is taken .

As digital content determines your search and web presence, any data connected with the how, when, where, why of the creation is very important. As this meta data establishes correlations and adds meaning to the content.

EXIF data can offer information which can help search engines establish correlations with the search queries made by the users especially for the queries that require freshness and the file format.

Meta data accessed via EXIF is accurate and genuine hence the search engines may gradually rely more on it and may also start using it as Matt Cutts explains in the video below:

If you want the explore the data on the images then EXIFdata.com is an online applicatation that lets you take a deeper look at your favorite images!

The details I got about an image on exifdata.com  are as follows:

EXIF Data Summary
EXIF Data Details
Google / SEO - 03/03/2014

How To Tackle 5 Major SEO Issues Having An Adverse Effect On Your Site

If your SEO has resorted to certain SEO techniques which are now creating an adverse effect on the site due to the latest algorithmic updates then you have to resort to undo all this by having a systematic and structured approach.
All the side effects of all the incorrect SEO methods implemented can be rectified and undone most of the times, but a lot of patience and step by step strategy is needed .

How To Tackle 5 Major SEO Issues Having An Adverse Effect On Your Site

Let us discuss a few issues which maybe hampering the search presence growth of the site.

  • Unwanted Links
  • Scraper Sites
  • Duplicate Content
  • Dynamic URLS
  • Page Load Time

Unwanted Links

Make a list of inbound links to your site using any tool like Screaming Frog or any other SEO tool. Make a list of inbound links which Google shows in Webmaster Tools. Filter out the links which according to you are spammy.

Try to manually remove those links if possible or send a request to the webmaster of that site to get the links removed.Use the Disavow tool even if you have not got a manual penalty in webmaster tools.Keep monitoring the external links section in the webmaster tools and if the links that you have been successful in removing are not showing in webmaster tools then you are progressing. Repeat the process till all the unwanted links are removed .

Duplicate Content:

I came across an issue with a site which had a lot of legal case studies on their site and the similar case studies were available on many other sites as these details were provided by the legal registrars in PDFs which could be added on the site as it is without modifying any content. This content was very helpful for the client as they could send links to these case studies as references when discussing similar issues and inform the about the legal decisions taken.

The site was a genuine site but due to the Panda update the site had been affected adversely. The action taken was to shift all these pages under a subdomain and refer that subdomain as a news site. The subdomain is regularly updated with fresh content and case studies with additional inputs from the client. This solved the issue of duplicate content and logically categorized the content.

But, if you have an issue of duplicate content within the site then using the canonical tag or a 301 redirect correctly is the only way out.

Scraper Sites

There are many sites which copy content from other sites and post them on their blogs or sites. Though Google can detect a scraper site as the original content will have an earlier indexed date but there may be times when the scraper site outranks the original site which may affect the search presence of the original site.

Google has an option for that now . You can fill the Google Scraper Report form . webmasters can submit scraper sites that has copied their own content by providing Google with the source URL, where the content was taken from, and the URL of the scraper site where the content is being republished or repurposed, and the keywords where the scraper site was ranking on.

Dynamic URLs

Dynamic URLs are generated when the content on the page depends on the selection the user makes and the content is displayed from the databases. Hence the content varies from user to user. Dynamic URLs often contain the following characters: ?, &, %, +, =, $, etc.

A dynamic URL is a page address that results from the search of a database-driven web site or the URL of a web site that runs a script. In contrast to static URLs, in which the contents of the web page stay the same unless the changes are hard-coded into the HTML, dynamic URLs are generated from specific queries to a site's database.

SEOs used to have a SEO Friendly URLs for such pages which eliminated the parameters. As of today this is not considered correct. Recently Google announced that Google wants the necessary parameters in the URL and can index such URLs. http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.in/2014/02/faceted-navigation-best-and-5-of-worst.html

For example on the basis of the selection of area, type and budget I make on a real estate site the URL generated is :

http://example.com/portfolio/?location=Canggu&type=Apartment&price=250.000+-+350.000+USD&propertylist=

This is itself a dataset which conveys a meaning that this page contains data in the range selected which can be very useful for a user who makes a similar search on Google.

Hence, retain the necessary parameters in the dynamic URLs and do not point them to a single SEO Friendly URL. As this may be considered incorrect by Google because the URL will remain constant for each selection but each time Google indexes it the content will keep varying which does not serve any purpose either to the user or the search engine.

Page Load Time

Regarding Page Load Time And Speed Google says: Speeding up websites is important — not just to site owners, but to all Internet users. Faster sites create happy users and we've seen in our internal studies that when a site responds slowly, visitors spend less time there. But faster sites don't just improve user experience; recent data shows that improving site speed also reduces operating costs. Like us, our users place a lot of value in speed — that's why we've decided to take site speed into account in our search rankings. We use a variety of sources to determine the speed of a site relative to other sites.

For decreasing the page load time the best way is to login to the webmaster tools account and go to ‘Other Resources’ then select the ‘Page Speed Insights’ 80% of the issues will be tackled if you follow the suggestions on the PageSpeed Insights Page.

But at times when all the SEO effort put in to undo the harm does not show results then the best decision is to start afresh by killing the site. But before you take such a drastic decision, its worth the while to give it a try before saying quit.

SEO - 03/01/2014

Why Superlatives Like Best, Guru, Expert In Title Tags Are Misleading And Should Be Considered As Spam



The Title Tag is the most important aspect of the page not only for the search engines but also for the user.

According to W3C :

The title is not part of the text of the document, but is a property of the whole document

The <title> element in HTML is designed to provide a short piece of text that should stand for the document in cases such as:

  • window title bars 
  • bookmark lists 
  • result lists from search services 

Titles help users find content, orient themselves within it, and navigate through it. A descriptive title allows a user to easily identify what Web page they are using.

The Title Of Each Web Page Should:

· Identify the subject of the Web page

· Make sense when read out of context, for example by a screen reader or in a site map or list of search results

· Be short

It may also be helpful for the title to

· Identify the site or other resource to which the Web page belongs

· Be unique within the site or other resource to which the Web page belongs

The titles are equally important to the search engines. Search engines also identify the subject of the web page via the titles and correlate the context of the web page content to the relevant search queries.

Regarding Titles Google says:

Google's generation of page titles and descriptions (or "snippets") is completely automated and takes into account both the content of a page as well as references to it that appear on the web. The goal of the snippet and title is to best represent and describe each result and explain how it relates to the user's query.

Titles are critical to giving users a quick insight into the content of a result and why it’s relevant to their query. It's often the primary piece of information used to decide which result to click on, so it's important to use high-quality titles on your web pages.

Google has also shared some tips on managing titles for web pages on https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/35624?hl=en#3 .

But according to me Google needs to combat this subtle spam which is quite prevalent on the web as of today.

People many times write misleading titles especially by adding adjectives like best, excellent, expert, etc. in titles and get priority in the search results when people search for services and products and use these adjectives in their search queries.

For example if you search for “Best SEO Company in ..... “ (please fill in the place you live in to complete the query) then do you genuinely get a list of the best companies available? No, we get a list of search results of websites which have used the word “BEST” in the title.

The reason is that the search engines are still using word to word mapping for correlating websites with search queries instead of ranking websites semantically. Though search engines are working on semantic search and are trying to combat the spam with regular algorithm upgrades, but dealing with these spammy titles is something which the search engines need to deal with on a priority basis.

Any kind of spam misleads the search engines or/and the user. Just as spammy link building reflects false popularity, these kind of titles many times misleads the user. As the search engines do not list the logically 10 best companies in the search results on the basis of all the factors which define a ‘BEST COMPANY’ for the service that the user is searching for, but is just bringing forward the websites having best in the meta tags. In the past when people resorted to keyword spam by repeating the keywords many times also resulted to the same problem.

Calling yourself an expert, the best, guru, etc. does not make you an authority on the subject and as organic search is the earned media its high time Google started penalizing sites using such terms in meta tags especially in the titles.

Google / SEO - 01/30/2014

Content, Guest Blogging, Authorship Markup And Social Signals

Content, Authorship and social signals seem to be the buzz for the SEO blogs today .The herd mentality in the SEO Industry is very common. Google announces a few features and makes certain announcements on the Google official blog and all the so called SEOs make certain presumptions by reading other blogs and go on a writing spree further. All this in fact is just causing more confusion and is misleading many people in the SEO Industry who call themselves SEOs but do not understand the true meaning of SEO Recently, · Matt Cutts wrote a post about Guest Posting http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/guest-blogging/ · Google refined the SERPs by restricting the rich snippets by 15-20%. For reference, here’s exactly what Cutts said at Pubcon in October 2013: We want to make sure that the people who we show as authors are high quality authors. And so we’re looking at the process of possibly tightening that up. It turns out if we reduce the amount of authorship we are showing by just about 10 or 15 percent, we’re radically able to improve the quality of the authors that we show. Which is another nice signal for those searchers and users who are typing into Google and say, “Ah, I see this picture, I see this person is an author. This is something I can trust. This is content that I really want to see.” So it’s not just going to be about the markup; it’s going to be about the quality of the author. · Matt Cutts openly declared that Twitter and Facebook signals are not integrated in the search algorithm and they are indexed like any other web page on the internet. Hence what should a genuine SEO takeaway from all this? I think the above mentioned happenings are all inter-connected. The major takeaways from these series of announcements and changes are as follows: 1. The authorship mark up which gave the perk of having their pics. Displayed in SERPs by just adding a piece of code polluted and diluted the quality of search results. Adding authorship markup does not guarantee the authority of the author on the topic. 2. To earn the benefit of getting the author pic. Displayed in SERPs only adding code is not enough. One needs to write quality content and prove his authority . 3. The authorship markup gives the content writer or brand an identity but if the content is shared by multiple users and authority accounts of that relevant industry then it adds to the goodwill and generates an authority factor. 4. Writing Guest posts is not wrong but writing low quality guest posts just to get links back is wrong and falls under the category of spam. 5. If you write in-depth posts and share insights and detailed information about the topics related to your industry then it helps the author gain a wider out reach and is not considered spam. In fact guest posting in-depth article on authority blogs will boost the search presence of such an author. 6. Hence, guest posting is not detrimental to search presence but the purpose behind it makes it right or wrong. 7. The quality of content, the frequency and the engagement determine the overall authority. 8. If you create content using high quality standards and it has in-depth information about a topic, then it will be shared by people and referred by other sites, which will add to the connectivity and relevance then it has the potential to have a high authority and trust factor – making it a valuable resource Google will be unable to ignore.
9. Currently Twitter and FB social signals are not being integrated into the ranking algorithm but the pages are getting indexed and those pages may have quality links to your site URLs which in the long run can improve search presence. 10. A social media presence even if does not give you any direct benefit for search bring in targeted referral traffic which in the long run can affect the search presence as Google does have referral traffic metric in analytics. 11. Google+ account is your passport for your web identity. As all the Google products are merging into this account one cannot ignore Google+. Its not only a social media site but also has the local, reviews, business pages, images, videos, community conversations, etc signals woven into it. 12. Measure and monitor the progress of the site via Google Webmaster Tools, Bing Webmaster Tools and Google analytics. 13. There is no quick fix for optimizing your site for search engines but it is all about earning the search presence via overall quality web presence. If you have an overall good web presence then you can have a presence in Google results there is no vice versa. 14. Work out a strategy to gain quality web presence rather than looking out for quick fixes on the site for ranking in SERPs. 15. Guest posting, on-page optimization, social media presence, commenting on blogs, etc. all will work positively if done with the right purpose of getting your online identity get correlated to quality content by adding in-depth insight to any topic and for reaching out to the right audience. 16. Technical SEO adds to the momentum of the on-page and off-page factors. As technical factors of the site ensure the correct crawling and indexing of the site which in the long run determine the direction in which the site is heading to on the search engines. The only way to get quality search presence is to focus on all factors qualitatively.
Please do not say Guest Blogging is dead or SEO is Dead .SEO, Email Marketing, Guest Posting, Building links qualitatively and genuinely, Commenting on Blogs, social media ....are not dead but are very much alive. The only thing dying is the spammy way of implementing each of these things. Hence add the right purpose to the task and you will add life to it.
SEO - 01/27/2014

Google Says: Twitter And FaceBook Social Signals Are Not A Part Of The Ranking Algorithm

Google’s head of search spam, Matt Cutts, released a webmaster video today answering the question, “are Facebook and Twitter signals part of the ranking algorithm?” The short answer was a clear cut "NO".

Facebook logo Español: Logotipo de Facebook Fr...

Matt Cutts recently has spilled the beans regarding the social and search integration and has openly declared that Twitter and FaceBook pages are not passing on any social media signals for web search rankings directly.

He says, FaceBook and Twitter pages are treated like any other pages on the web index for Google. If they are able to crawl  the Twitter and the FaceBook pages then they those pages are indexed.

But the algorithm does not calculate any special social signals like the no. of followers, likes, mentions, etc. as the relationships between social identities keep on changing and many times the index may be not updated accordingly as sometimes the third party social media sites block Googlebot and they are unable to crawl the pages and may not have accurate data.

Hence the algorithms are not yet updated to influence the web search rankings according to the FaceBook and Twitter pages social signals. Matt Cutts clearly says that the FaceBook and Twitter pages are treated like other pages available on the web and no special social media signals are passed on by the algorithms to influence the rankings based on that data.

But, that does not mean that Twitter and FaceBook are no longer important because they are very powerful social media sites and the URLs shared on these platforms have a very wide outreach which increase the potential for that URL to gain popularity on the web. This popularity has the potential of creating good quality inbound links which in the long run influence the search rankings.

But what Matt Cutts has not yet answered is ...

Are Google+ pages passing social signals to influence web search rankings?

Google can crawl the Google+ pages and they know about the dynamics of the changing relationships between Google+ identities too real time. So, should we assume that only Google+ accounts, Google+ pages, Google+ Local, Google+ Communities, YouTube , Google Places and other such Google products are the only sources for the social and search integration?? Well , according to me the answer is in the affirmative.

First the authorship markup made it mandatory to have a Google+ account as the markup can be verified only if you have a presence on Google+ then this information regarding Twitter and FaceBook signals not being treated as true social media signals but like any other pages available on the web is making it very clear that if you want a good search presence you need to have a Google+ presence along with quality content on your website and blog.

According to me though this may result in making Google monopolize the search arena but atleast the link building spam will be combated. Hope the other social media sites share their social signals data with Google completely and in real time so Google can get a broader picture about an identity and hence get their due search presence. Only Google+ social signals again can be a very narrow view point about an identity which in the long run can again affect the quality of the search results.

One of our previous videos published on YouTube regarding social and search integration and quality inbound links.

Conclusion:

Please do not take it for granted that just because you have a good social media presence your search presence is going to improve. Publish quality content, share it on social media, after a good outreach when people link back to the post the popularity signals that is the quality inbound links will help improve the search presence. So,quality content is again the king. SEO Is A Necessity, Content Creation Is A Strategy And Social Media Is The Channel

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Google / SEO / Social Media - 01/23/2014

B2B Content marketing v/s B2C Content Marketing

Though there is a person behind the business to whom you want to market a product or service , there is a difference between marketing to a business and marketing to a person. A B2B purchase is based more on reducing costs, streamlining systems and saving time, effort and money to buy for further sale whereas B2C marketing is geared to make a direct sale to a customer for end use. Hence the B2B and B2C marketing differ as follows:

  • The Purpose of buying: A B2B buyer is buying for resale but a B2C buyer buys the product for direct use.
  • The Price: As the B2B buyer is buying for resale the price offered to him has to be competitive enough.
  • The communication with the buyer has to be as per their need via the right channel.
  • Purchase quantity: The B2B buyer will mostly buy in bulk to get a competitive price but a B2C buyer may just buy a single unit an may be willing to pay a high price.

B2B v/s B2C

When there are such stark differences in the focus between both the kinds of marketing then does B2B Content Marketing differ from B2C Content Marketing?

  • The goal of B2B Content Marketing and B2C Content Marketing is the same but the difference is in the approach.
  • The B2B purchase is a result of a logical decision but a B2C purchase for direct consumption is more driven by emotion and the immediate need of the product at that point of time. For e.g a B2B purchase for jackets for further resale may be a very logical decision made before the season arrives for the use of those jackets but a B2C decision to buy a jacket may be during the peak season when the B2C buyer is ready to pay a high price to purchase it. Hence catering to the B2B logical decision the content should be based on the intricacies of how the decision will be more profitable but the decision made for B2C which may be driven more by utility should focus on how the product is going to be more useful to the buyer and why he needs to buy it immediately.
  • Whether the content is for B2B or B2C audience it should be honest and fulfil a need. i.e give accurate information, offer a solution, answer FAQs, etc.
  • The content should be published regularly with consistency of thought to win the confidence of the readers.
  • The content should be not be a sales pitch though the objective of the content is to acquire new customers. The order should be educate > engage > acquire and not vice versa.
  • B2B buyers usually take decisions in their offices where mostly they are using their laptops or PCs but B2C buyers increasingly are using their smartphones to make purchase decisions hence the content created should accordingly cater to multi screen devices to influence the potential buyer to make the decision.
  • The social media platforms used by B2B buyers and B2C buyers also varies. B2B buyers usually prefer LinkdenIn and Twitter and the B2C buyers are usually influenced majorly by FaceBook but the tweens and teens are also getting influenced by Instagram, whatsapp and Snapchat social signals.
  • B2B content ideas and content usually comes from the employees but for B2C the content usually comes from your satisfied customers in the form of feedback and reviews.
  • Emailing informative content to B2B buyers may be accepted by them as they are constantly looking for more and more information to come to the most profitable decision but emailing content to a B2C buyer may not be welcomed as a B2C buyer wants the information readily available in the right format when he is making the decision and usually gets annoyed if bombarded with emails.

B2B and B2C Content Marketing Trends:

B2B vs. B2C: 10 Marketing Experts Have Their Say (SlideShare) from Babcock & Jenkins

The Following Stats By The Content Marketing Institute give An Idea About What To Expect In 2014 As Regards Using Content As A Marketing Strategy:

  • 86% of B2C marketers and 91% of B2B marketers are using content marketing as a key part of their strategy today.
  • 60% of B2C content marketers expect to spend more in 2014 than was spent in 2013.
  • Over the past year, only 55% of B2C content marketers saw a budget increase.
  • 58% of B2B content marketers plan to spend more in 2014 than was spent in 2013.
  • Over the past year, only 54% of B2B content marketers saw a budget increase.
  • 69% of the least effective B2C marketers plan to increase their budget.
  • Only 55% of the most effective B2C marketers plan to increase their budget.
  • Brand awareness is the top content marketing goal for both B2C (79%) and B2B (82%) marketers. Customer acquisition (71%) and retention/loyalty (65%) are the next-most common goals for B2C respondents, while lead generation is next among B2B respondents.
  • Web traffic is the top content marketing metric for both B2C (66%) and B2B (63%) marketers. Social media sharing is relatively more important to B2C respondents, who are far less interested in measuring sales quality and quantity.
  • Lack of time is the top challenge faced by both B2C (57%) and B2B (69%) content marketers. B2C respondents are relatively more concerned with producing the kind of content that engages, while B2B marketers are more concerned with producing enough content.
  • 39% of B2C marketers have a documented content strategy, compared to 44% of B2B marketers.

Is the content strategy for your brand ready to face this emerging trend?

SEO - 01/13/2014

In-Depth SEO Training At Ahmedabad Management Association By WebPro Technologies

We shall be conducting an in-depth SEO training at Ahmedabad Management Association from 20th January 2014 onwards.

 &

IN DEPTH SEO TRAINING


Days: Monday to Friday,Dates: January 20 to February 4, 2014 (12 days)Timings: 6.30 to 8.30 p.m.  Download brochure here :

http://goo.gl/A6Auhx

COURSE CONTENT

Module 1: Introduction to Google

· What is Organic Search Engine Optimization?

· What is Pay Per Click (PPC)?

· White Hat vs Black Hat optimisation?

· How does Google work?

· How does Google see the world?

Module 2: Site Architecture and Keyword Selection

· Importance of Keywords

· How to choose your keywords

· Why use multiple keywords

· How to find niche keywords

Module 3: Content Design and Page Optimisation

· How to optimize your keywords

· What is a website theme?

· How to optimize page and file names

· How to structure your page content

· How to optimize Meta tags

· How to optimize page title tags

· How to optimize Meta description tags

· How to optimize h tags

· How to optimize alt tags

· How to optimize title attribute tags

· How to avoid the misuse of header tags

· Choosing the best writing style

· How to avoid penalisation

Module 4: Linking Strategies

· Why are links important?

· What is Google PageRank?

· What are internal links?

· What are the three types of external link?

· What are the best sources of links?

· Should I link to blogs and social media sites?

· What is a link farm?

Module 5: Technical Considerations

· CSS vs table based design

· Understanding website frames

· How to choose the best domain name

· How to choose the best hosting company

· How to validate your website pages

· Canonical Issues

· Authorship v/s Publisher Markup

· Customized 404 pages

· Microformats and Schemas

· Twitter Cards And Facebook Open Graph

Module 6: Introduction to Content Management Systems

· Introduction to WordPress, Joomla, Drupal, Magento

· Demo.

Module 7: The Importance Of Social Media Presence and Its Integration With Search

· Google+ and other Social Media Platforms

· Google+ Profile And Google+ Business Page

Module 8: The Latest Google Algorithm Updates

· What is the significance of the Panda Update?

· What is the significance of the Penguin Update?

· The Humming Bird Overview.

Module 9: Google SEO Tools

· How to setup and use a Google Webmaster Account

· How to verify your website

· How to setup and submit a Google sitemap

· How to produce and install a robots.txt file

· How to use a 301 redirect?

Module 10: Monitoring Traffic

· How to setup Google Analytics

· Google Analytics live demo.

Module 11: Maximizing Conversions And Metrics To Monitor For Search Presence

· What is website usability?

· Why is it important?

· How to design the ultimate website

Module 12: The Periodic Table Of SEO Ranking Factors and SEO Workshop

· Your chance to ask questions about your own websites.

SEO - 01/12/2014

Content Marketing Is A Business Strategy...How To Design A Content Strategy?

Any business serious about a quality web presence and a wider and priority search presence needs to focus on publishing quality content regularly.

Hence, content is at the core of any online marketing activity. As a result the term “Content Marketing” has surfaced as a new wave online. But, we need to understand that “Content Marketing” does not mean marketing the content , but using content to market the product or service which your business offers.

Just adding blog posts written by any third party regularly does not achieve the purpose of content marketing. One needs to have a content strategy which needs to be implemented, monitored and the outcome measured regularly too.

Content Marketing

How To Design A Content Strategy?

  • Decide upon the categories of topics which need to be published on the company blog or as guest posts.
  • Decide upon the different formats of the content
    • Text Content
    • Videos
    • Audio
    • Infographics
    • Images or Cartoons
  • Have a clear idea about the type of audience.
    • Is it the existing buyers you are targeting?
    • Is it the potential B2C buyers?
    • Is it the potential B2B buyers?
  • Have a clear idea about the demographics of the audience.
    • The age group of the audience to be targeted.
    • The gender if necessary
    • The geolocation of the audience so that the right terminology is used which is prevalent in that location. (Local or Global)
  •  Decide upon the outreach and distribution channels to be used for sharing and promoting the content.
    • Twitter
    • FaceBook
    • Pinterest
    • Linkedin
    • Youtube
    • Google+
  •  Work out a set of norms to engage with the audience on social media platforms when they reply and respond. Company representatives on social media platforms should engage with the audience based on the rules and norms set by the company to avoid wrong messages to reach out online.
  • After all this exercise the analysis of the social media metrics will surely give an idea about the direction the content wave is reaching out to. The social media metrics via Google Analytics gives an idea about how the content strategy is getting executed. As social and search are integrated the no. of unique visits to the site via referral social media sites also is a positive indicator about the content strategy and the social media campaign being implemented. As per statistics social drives 25% of inbound traffic!!
  •  Always have an Editorial Calendar which will organise the publishing of content. The headers in the calendar can be as follows:
    • Date Created: The date when the content was written and submitted by the author to the team.
    • Category: The category of the content.
    • Title: The title of the content.
    • Date To be published: The date when it is scheduled to be published.
    • Author: The name of the author.
    • Editor: The name of the person who edited the post.
    • Target Audience: The audience for which the content has to be targeted so that the social media platforms are accordingly selected for its outreach and promotion.
    • Outreach Channels: The list of social media platforms on which the blog post has to be shared.
    • KPP(Key Performance Parameters): The key parameters which determine the success of the content : for e.g. likes, downloads, retweets, conversions, etc.

Get Found, Get Shared, Get Leads, Convert.

Social and search integration has to start at the site level. The website which is at the nucleus of the whole search and social ecosystem has to be optimized first to be found on the search engines as 80 % of the people start with search engines. An optimized site ensures that your business is found on the search engines when the user is searching for a product or services related to what you have to offer. The social media signals add to the trust factor and build confidence for the brand. Next when the potential buyer contacts you the conversion depends how fast and accurately his queries are answered and whether the impression that he gathered during the search experience matches with the real time experience he has with the sales staff .

Some Important Points To Ponder On About Content Strategy: 

  • See that content is created by subject matter experts.
  • Every piece of content should add value.
  • 73% of B2B content marketers are producing more content than they did one year ago
  • We're in the age of data driven marketing
  • Content Marketing is a business strategy
  • Think about ROO (Return On Objective) when analysing metrics.
  • The content should focus on the utility aspect , inspire the reader in some way or empathise with the reader so that the reader is influenced by the content in a positive way to achieve the objective set and achieve the purpose of publishing and promoting the post.
  • The main content marketing metrics which measure the success or failure are outreach, engagement and conversion.
  • Don’t sell but share knowledge.
  • Real influence isn't huge fan & follower counts, it's niche communities that take action.
  • Its not quantity of leads, but quality and conversion rates that matter
  • Conversions may not be immediate ...28% of invited executives engage in program after 7 months.

 

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SEO / Social Media - 01/09/2014

editorial-policy-WebPro-Technologies-LLP-Ahmedabad

Editorial Policy: Human Expertise, Enhanced by AI

At WebPro Technologies, our content reflects over two decades of experience in SEO and digital strategy. We believe that valuable content is built on accuracy, clarity, and insight—and that requires human judgment at every step.

From 2024 onwards, we have been using AI tools selectively to brainstorm ideas, explore perspectives, and refine language, but AI is never the final author. Every article is researched, fact-checked, and edited by our team, ensuring relevance, accuracy, and originality. AI supports our workflow, but the responsibility for quality and credibility remains entirely human.

This hybrid approach allows us to combine the efficiency of technology with the depth of human expertise, so our readers get content that is both informative and trustworthy.

At WebPro, we see AI not as a replacement for human creativity, but as a tool that helps us raise the standard of excellence in the content we share.

SEO Ahmedabad

What we offer

Contact Info

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info@webpro.in

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Sunday: Closed

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