Archive for category SEO
Bitten by Google Panda? One important lesson to learn
Posted by Aniruddha Badola in Marketing, SEO on August 29th, 2011
Bitten by Google Panda? One important lesson to learn
A cursory browsing of SEO & webmasters related forums will reveal that many of them have suffered a lot from the spate of Google Panda updates. Many sites which has good rankings earlier and used to get huge traffic from Google suddenly got penalized severely. As a result, a huge chunk of their revenue just disappeared. This applied to small as well as large websites. These sites may or may recover fully but what this has put in to sharp focus is that one should not rely totally on one source of traffic.
To ensure that your website doesn’t suffer from drastic and potentially fatal drop in traffic, a comprehensive link building efforts straddled across all internet has to be evolved.
Using social media as well as traditional link building methods will mean that you do not put all your eggs in one basket.
Using a diverse source of traffic also means that your website has a better link profile which is highly recommended by search engines. Additionally, not all your users come from one source. One section of users may come from Google, while others may be from Bing, Facebook or blogs. As internet evolves, you will also have to tweak your link building efforts to include the latest link sources.
In next few years, social networking sites may pip search engines as major source of traffic. Including them in your SEO efforts will benefit dramatically for those times.
Enovabiz Solutions is a SEO company India which provides website design, development and promotion services. “Websites that bring business”
Is Google benevolent on Link buyers?
Posted by Aniruddha Badola in Google, SEO on August 2nd, 2011
Many webmasters complain that no action is been taken against websites that blatantly use paid link to boost their SERPs and page rank. It is common knowledge that a whole link selling/buying industry is flourishing.
Links from blogs and websites are sold and bought in large numbers. In a high profile incident, J.C. Penney was found to be indulging in buying of links on a massive scale to boost its search rankings on Google. Once the news came out in open, Google did penalize it briefly. After few months, J.C. Penney’s search rankings were restored to great extent.
Webmasters and SEO consultants have been wondering if buying links is a good strategy considering absence of any concrete action from Google. Though, webmasters have received notices regarding unnatural links, it is not that widespread as of now. These notices have surely not made much impact on link buyers and sellers.
Will we be seeing any further activity on this front? Will Google be able to curb this menace and that too without inflicting any collateral damage like we saw with Panda update?
Online Ad Spending set to double to $50 Billion by 2015
Posted by Aniruddha Badola in Google, SEO on July 28th, 2011
Industry analysts have estimated that online ad spending will reach an astounding figure of $50 billion by 2015. This will be almost the double of online ad spending in 2010 which $26 billion.
This is largely due to increase in banner ad marketing. These figures highlight the fact that internet marketing is growing at a frantic rate as well as increased usage of internet all over the world.
For any business making its presence felt on internet has now become a very crucial step. It has reached such proportions in some advanced economies that companies without any web presence are in danger of becoming irrelevant soon.
Online shopping is surging, more people are on internet thanks to Smartphones & tablets, Facebook and social media sites have made people addicted to internet. With such huge usage of internet, companies have figured out that reaching their customers where they spend most of their time make more sense. And hence, huge increase in online ad spending is being predicted.
Apart from online ad spending another type of marketing is also being adopted by most companies. Search engine marketing or SEO aims at promoting a site on search engine such as Google & Bing. Almost everyone must have used search engines to find some services or products. Most likely, you must have clicked at top listings of the search results. SEO company use various tactics to rank websites higher up in search listings.
In the last few years, Social Media Marketing (SMO) has also emerged very strongly due to increased popularity of sites such as Facebook and LinkedIn. While exact figures for SEO and Social Media marketing are hard to get, it can be safely assumed that they match Online Ad spending and will only go north in next few years.
It is very vital that any organization keeps a part of their marketing budget for online whether it’s banner, PPC, SEO or SMO. Because if you don’t now then you may soon perish!
Enovabiz Solutions provides website design, development and promotion services. “Websites that bring business”
Google Panda Update 2.3 Live: What’s your experience?
Posted by Aniruddha Badola in Google, SEO on July 27th, 2011
As widely mentioned in media and confirmed by Google, a minor Google Panda update has been made.
The recent update is one of the about 500 changes Google is making to their ranking algorithms every year.
Google told Search Engine Land, “this update incorporates some new signals that help differentiate between higher- and lower-quality sites.” “As a result, some sites are ranking higher after this most recent update,” Google added.
We also noticed improvements in many keywords in three of our own sites. Were you affected? Share with us your results and observations
Fox on Cool Google Engineers, Panda, and UGC
Posted by Aniruddha Badola in SEO on July 20th, 2011
Vanessa Fox, a former Google employee and now a well respected SEO, was recently interviewed by Eric Enge. Check out the interview on Eric’s blog
The interview covered a host of issues and believe me, it is a must read for any SEO who wants to know a little bit more on how Google works. After all, Fox worked for Google. I will suggest reading this interview at least a couple of time to absorb and assimilate. The article is not just for SEO consultants but for any website owner.
Here are few interesting bits of this interview
“there is a wall between the organic search people and everything else at Google”
Fox states that there is wall between the organic team and the Adwords team. This segregation ensures that the organic search team is concerned solely on providing the best search results to users. They are not bothered about the revenue side of Google.
According to Fox, Google’s engineers are very loyal and love their jobs. She even claims that they have very high professional integrity. NERDS!!!
I will say that Fox, is just being too liberal with her compliments.
“Panda is platform for new ways to understand the web and understand user experience”
Panda has been in news for months now and has been hated with full fervor by most SEO experts and site owners. Fox, delved in detail with Panda and provided many deep insights in to it.
Fox stressed that Panda is important and is here to stay. Panda is a platform for new ways to understand the web and UX.
According to her, there are no short term or quick fix results for those affected by Panda updates.
A better solution will be to have an unbiased and dispassionate observer check out the site and provide feedback. Try to find which aspects of a site needs improvement. There are so many signals now apart from just links: Site speed, content quality, User experience, Content uniqueness.
Vanessa said that adding value to a site will play an important role. After all, there are so many sites saying virtually the same things with just different words. Content Sameness needs to be tackled with user generated content like forums and reviews.
Bottom line: Sites will need to be lot more interactive and useful then they ever were if they hope to succeed.
“I think it becomes harder to reverse engineer Search engines for a number of reasons.”
Search engines like Google and Bing continue to be more obscure. It is becoming difficult to try game them. No, it has got nothing to do with specific intentions but the nature of web right now. With so many signal around it will be almost impossible to measure impact of any one search signal.
Unlike the old simple days, when there were no twitter, Facebook and Google + buttons, now there are so many signals that try to game will soon become an exercise in futility.
Is your SEO Company acting like News of the World?
Posted by Aniruddha Badola in Enovabiz, SEO on July 14th, 2011
By now everyone must have heard of News of the World’s (NOTW) hacking activities to get scoops for its hungry-for-bytes, voyeuristic readers. NOTW has been accused of hacking phones of everyone from murdered children to terror victims to royalty to celebrities to get news.
NOTW is quite famous and has a long history. It is one of the most celebrated tabloids in Britain but this one mistake from their over-eager reporters has tarnished their credibility for ever.
While, NOTW and its owners deserve every bit of condemnation and punishment, what we can’t loose sight of is public’s own insatiable appetite for sleazy news and sensationalism.
News and media outlets are filled to gills with inane news and tidbits of celebrities of every shape, size and character. Murderers, sex maniacs, philandering spouses, corrupt tycoons, are our new heroes.
Daily new celebrities are destroyed and newer ones created. There is a mad race to get the most weird and inconsequential news. Public is getting hungrier and media is feeding everything it can lay its hands on.
NOTW also succumbed to this pressure and went further. It treaded in to a zone which was not only legally untenable but also morally reprehensible.
Similarly, SEO industry is also many times accused of indulging in tactics which are deemed unacceptable in an Internet where rules are made by one entity called Google. SEO companies are always under pressure to deliver extraordinary results (which many times they themselves promise) with even more extraordinary deadlines. As a result, what we see is link selling and buying and other sleazy tactics on a huge scale to influence Google search results.
All this and much worse activities, often called black hat tactics, are carried out rampantly many times without the client’s knowledge. Clients just like NOTW’s readers smug and happy never bother to ever think on what methodologies were used.
Have you also hired a SEO company for your SEO campaign? Have you ever tried to know how they are going to achieve top rankings for you? If not, ask today because in case your SEO company is violating Google’s webmaster guidelines then it won’t be the SEO company that is going to be punished but your own WEBSITE!
Enovabiz Solutions provides website design, development and promotion services. “Websites that bring business”
What can Delhi Belly teach about Internet Marketing & SEO?
Posted by Aniruddha Badola in Marketing, SEO on July 7th, 2011
Delhi Belly is full of expletives, potty jokes and a whacky plot with few fine performances.
There is no ‘Delhi’ in Delhi Belly except for a fried chicken from a roadside vendor which inflicts one of the lead characters with the world famous Delhi Belly.
The producer Aamir Khan said, the film is an Adult comedy. If profanities make a film adult then I guess it is one.
But apart from abusive language, there is nothing much adult about it. And, certainly not much Delhi. The storyline though bit novel (by Bollywood’s standard) is not something that we have not seen in last few years.
So what is the reason behind the success of Delhi Belly? What can we learn and apply from to marketing especially internet marketing.
1) Pedigree: Delhi Belly’s is backed by Aamir Khan, who is probably the biggest star in Bollywood right now. Anything form his production house automatically garners eye balls and whips frenzied media hype.
From internet marketing’s perspective, what you can learn is that, if you have a name in your industry, cash on it. If you have been successful with your earlier products and ventures then while launching a product, remind your audience/niche about your previous success.
If you are newbie then you can contact internet marketing gurus and get them to back or endorse your product.
2) Publicity Blitz: Delhi Belly was releasing on the same date as ‘Buddha Hoga Tera Baap’. Aamir Khan is a master at managing media. In his last few films he has courted media like never before. For this film also, he ensured that the film got as much attention from media as possible. He certainly succeeded.
If you are also launching your site or product, then your only chance is all out promotion. Whatever industry you are in, chances are that it is already overcrowded with thousands of similar websites. If you are thinking about succeeding on the strength of your product or services then you can be in for a long haul. While promoting your website, explore & exploit every avenue. Blogs, article directories, web directories, press releases, book marking. Offer guest posts on other blogs related to your industry. Be proactive and regular about it. Article directories are a great way to get traffic and also search rankings. You can hire a SEO company to do your promotion or do it yourself if you have time and expertise. These tactics are low cost and highly effective. Get the word out about your website/product.
3) Controversial: ‘Delhi Belly’ courted many controversies. From the lyrics of a song to jokes on a popular car brand to expletives – everything in this film was intended to raise eyebrows. And it served producer’s purpose also.
Similarly, if you want to get instant publicity for a not-so- stellar website/product/services then be controversial. Take potshots at rivals, call names to industry leaders, align yourself with a camp and be open about it. Anything to stir the pot and get attention. Be careful with this approach because it can backfire magnificently.
4) Exclusivity: ‘Delhi Belly’ asked for an adult rating certificate from the Indian censor board and got it. The producers publicized the fact that this movie had adult content and hence was unsuitable for viewing with family. This tactic made people more curious about it. Since people under 18 were not allowed to watch this movie, this raised inquisitiveness even more. This contributed to more people coming to theatres just to see what the heck is there in this film.
When people are prohibited/forbidden from doing something, they are more tempted to do it. Make your launch only available to only certain people. Only invite certain people to test your product or even better openly proclaim that this product is only for certain kind of people. You can do it by releasing it to only certain niche or by your pricing strategy. Make people curious. Make them want to join your network. If you can do so then your chances of success improves tremendously.
Watch DK BOSE from Delhi Belly
Enovabiz Solutions provides website design, graphic design and promotion services. “Websites that bring business”
7 Deadly SEO Sins
Posted by Aniruddha Badola in Google, SEO on June 20th, 2011
Even after so many years, SEO industry is still misunderstood by many people and even by many SEO practitioners themselves. Last few months have been very turbulent for SEO industry. First there was a hype about content farm dominating and spamming Google search results. Google in response brought out Panda update which further muddied the already muddy waters. Panda update failed miserably and ended up creating an image that Google is selectively targeting rival sites and sparing sites associated with it (like eHow.com). Panda update also garnered harsh reviews because of it inability to make distinction between thin content farms and many genuine small sites. In the process, many smaller websites and genuine good quality were also penalized.
Google’s ways for judging a site are still thought by many to be shrouded in mystery. Google has a reason to do so, to prevent people form gaming their search algorithm. But that been said, there are some basic factors which can be followed to avoid penalties and to be in good books of Google.
Today, we will discuss 7 deadly sins of SEO which are still committed by many SEO consultants and webmasters with alarming regularity
1) Excessive use of Flash, JavaScript, Ajax, Images: Many web designers pride in developing all Flash websites. Flash websites may look beautiful but serve very little purpose most of the times. Similarly, sites using JavaScript extensively for menus are also quite a norm. Such sites more often then not do fare badly in search engine rankings. The reason is that search engine spiders cannot read the text embedded in the Flash and hence cannot determine what the site is about. This is a great barrier for search engines as there will be very information for them to evaluate and rank a website. Similarly, websites with JavaScript menus are not easily navigable for search engine bots. Bots rather than trying to figure out may well leave your website when faced with a dead-end.
Amazingly, a lot of websites are made completely with images. Whole paragraphs after paragraphs for content are embedded in text.
What is not surprising is that these websites do badly in search engine rankings.
2) Improper Use of Title tags: Title tags are perhaps the most important part of a page. Not just search engines but users also use that information to glean information about a website. Embed your most relevant keywords in your title tags. And make sure you use those keywords in your content also. Sites with irrelevant title tags will never be found in top pages for search engine results for any decently competitive keyword.
Another sin is use of duplicate title tags. Many websites are guilty of using same title tag across all the web pages. This can really confuse search engine bots as they will have tough time to know which page is most relevant for a keyword!
3) Thin content: A lot of sites have low quality content and almost negligible. If you think a subject requires a separate webpage, then make sure the webpage has decent amount of content. Few lines or a paragraph may look like thin content to a search engine bot. With Panda update still ravaging the internet, you have to be very careful on this issue.
A webpage should have both decent quality and quantity of content with appropriate keyword density.
4) Keyword spamming: Over jealous SEO experts stuff content, alt tags, attributes, title tags, meta tags with keywords just like a guy love bombs his girlfriend. But here, search engine Bot may feel offended, very offended. Use keywords naturally. Do not write content for search engines but for real human beings. And you will be fine.
5) Cryptic URLs: Search engine spiders have come a long way. Earlier they used to be absolutely clueless when faced with long-winded, cryptic URLs with punctuations and identifiers. Now, even though spiders can read and parse them correctly, static URLs rank better then dynamic URLs. No reason to persist with them when you have better options.
6) No link building: Many website owners think that just having a website and putting some content on it is enough. They are wrong. A website’s success depends on how much traffic it gets. A site with no promotion will be virtually unknown on internet. The best and most affordable way to spread the word is SEO through link building.
7) Black Hat techniques: Many SEO consultants want quick search engine rankings and try to go the easy way. The easy ways are usually tactics which involve spamming Google’s algorithms. Though, i appreciate the sentiment, the problem is that Google doesn’t. Google comes down hard on such sites by removing the site form search results altogether. Recovering from such penalties is almost impossible. So, better safe than sorry.
Bing widens its alliance in its war against Google
Posted by Aniruddha Badola in Google, SEO on May 5th, 2011
Steve Ballmer knows that to beat Google, he has to make alliances. Steve announced partnership with Blackberry which will make Bing the default search on all Blackberry devices.
Bing’s Blog has this post on the announcement
“Central to this collaboration, , Blackberry devices will use Bing as the preferred search provider in the browser, and Bing will be the default search and map application for new devices presented to mobile operators, both in the United States and internationally. Also, effective today Bing will be the preferred search and maps applications with regular, featured placement and promotion in the BlackBerry App World carousel. ”
Given the popularity of Blackberry devices, Bing can be assured of even more users in coming months. Just some time back, MS also announced a partnership with Nokia in which Bing will available on all Nokia smartphones and tablets. This will be in addition to Windows Phones that will be developed by Nokia.
Both these developments will only mean more adoption of Bing search engine which has already won plaudits from experts and public alike.
Microsoft’s search engine Bing is an underdog and is fighting a tough battle against Google. Microsoft which in past had been at the receiving end of negative publicity has changed it tacks. But it seems that MS is bent on making new friends one at a time to shore up its users.
A smart move considering Google search engine is making enemies as if there is no tomorrow. Google search results are indundated with spam results and despite its overarching powers has failed to punish guilty sites.
How to build relations through Blogs?
Posted by Aniruddha Badola in SEO on August 24th, 2011
How to build relations through Blogs
I read an interesting post on http://bit.ly/pIk9Od. It provided me a great food for thought. Though, what the writer said is not very different to what many of us must have been doing, the author has done very well to actually write a blog post on how blog reading can help anyone in building relationship, creating network while reading blogs- an activity which is religiously followed by millions of internet users.
The post is lengthy, so I will sum up it here:
1) Share interesting blog posts: Whenever you come across a blog posts which piques your interests and you find informative, share it with others. The receiver will appreciate the fact that you considered that posts can be useful to that person. One can do that either by mailing them or tweeting it.
2) Summarize it: Many a times blog posts are of technical nature – full of figures and facts or just too lengthy. Read the post in its entirety. Note down the points or sections which you think that will be useful for someone else. You can also crate an easier version of the article for laypersons. You can then post in on your own blog and discuss it with your subscribers. Sharing your blog posts on twitter and Facebook will help spreading that information virally.
3) Engage with the blog author: When you read a blog posts, do chime in with your views or experiences. If you have something more to add or even disagree to the posts, you can write your own response post.
4) Bookmark the posts: If you read some useful posts then you can bookmark it on any of the better known bookmarking sites. This will benefit not only you but also many other readers also.
Blogs, Commenting
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