Praveen: SEO, SEM, Online Marketing

In Pay Per Click Marketing through Google, Yahoo, MSN advertising is done on search and content websites. Users type in queries and find sponsored results for each keyword. Users then click on the Ads based on their liking.

In display marketing the websites you advertise on, provide extensive details like quality of traffic on their website, as a part of media kit. For example information on user’s geography breakup, economic class break up, age group breakup, gender breakup etc. However search engines never provide such details to advertisers. At the max they give search volumes, competition volumes, estimated clicks for each keyword, geography and ofcourse the hot keyword trends in the market.

In countries like India, where Google market share is about 80% and with Alexa rank in Top 3, you can safely assume all demography of people browse Google.com.

The keywords driving traffic to your website can give a lot of information about the nature of audience present in that particular market.

• Group campaigns, adgroups based on theme, product.

• Target each set of keywords in each location, content, language, Ad Scheduling.

Let’s discuss with an example of shopping site. Assuming shopping site extensively advertise on all products, in each location separately. Just by looking at your campaigns, you can identify:

1. The best performing location that generates traffic

2. The best performing product for each location

3. The least performing product for each location.

4. Location wise serious buyers can be identified, Looking at Avg time spent for each campaign in Analytics,

5. Time range with maximum activity on the site. Users are active from 8:00 am to 10:00 pm or throughout the day?

6. Which product page has highest bounce rate? Look at Campaign/Adgroup wise Bounce rate.

7. Which location has maximum repeat customers? Look at % New Visit for every campaign

8. Judge the competition in the market. Competition in Market is directly proportional to competition in PPC bidding.

9. Identify seasonal changes by change in traffic, location wise.

10. For B2B products or High Value products, if majority of conversions take place from content network. Quality of users buying your products is quality of users browsing those content sites.

11. Best location that generates maximum sales, you can do this if you set up E-Commerce Revenue Tracking in Google Analytics.

Your PPC Account can act as a pulse for your online business.

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The need to market & optimize videos.

1) High traffic/Popularity on Video Sites such as Youtube.com, Google Videos, Daily Motion, AOL-cut, Yahoo Videos and other video search engines,

2) Availability & increase in usage of broadband internet in India.

3) Search Engines moving towards Universal Search.

4) Social Sites enable sharing and voting best videos.

5) Increase in traffic to Torrent sites and forums where people share videos

Ways to Market Video Content

Marketing & Optimization are 2 different terms, Marketing is creating new and optimization is refining the existing content. Marketing is mainly push, Optimization is pull.

Social Media including videos is a place where there is a very thin line between the two, both exist simultaneously. For example: Viral Marketing is both Push and Pull. Videos is also both Push and Pull. Advertisers need to push only to an extent beyond which pull has to take it forward.

1) Include Your Website Name inside your Video

2) Keep posting Videos Frequently

a) Post Videos about your Company, Investor Information.

a) Post videos on Product Usage

b) Post videos on Customer Testimonials

c) Post Videos on Training and Development Program

d) Informational B2B programs in your Videos

e) Awareness about your Industry

3) Upload Videos in all possible video search engines such as youtube etc.

4) Submit your Videos to Digg, Stumbleupon and other such content sites.

5) Embed Videos in your Blogs, Websites etc.

6) Give Links to all your videos in your sitemap

7) Give links to Videos from inside the content or article.

Include Digg this Button on webpages which embed videos

9) Include Keyword rich content, brand names in Titles, Descriptions of Videos around the Videos.

10) Include ror.xml Sitemap or podcast RSS feed and submit to google, yahoo and other search engines.

11) Ask Users to Post comments, this will add the content on the page.

12) Create a Textual version (SubTitles) of the video in all languages of your TA and embed in your blog

13) Give links of your sites which link to Youtube video, inside Youtube Video page.

14) The Page which embeds the Video in blog, website must have keyword in H1 tag as Heading.

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Pay Per Click (PPC) Marketing India

PPC Campaign Management is a service where an advertiser chooses to pay money for displaying his Ad on search engines for keywords he/she chooses. Advertisers are given the flexibility to Target his audience as per their needs.

PPC advertising is the only revenue generating service for search engines; therefore it is their duty to consistently add value advertisers, unlike SEO where it was webmaster’s duty to add value to users.

The underlying issue for promoting on Organic results was ‘adding value’, since it was the duty of search engine algorithms to determine whether a web page is relevant for a query or not.

In Sponsored Advertising (PPC) the underlying issue is ‘Objective of Advertising’, since the advertiser gets to choose the keyword and landing page however it is the objective of advertising that determines the effectiveness. Therefore the Advertiser has to do job of the algorithm.

Advertiser must know their business/market well for effective management.

Know your Business

1) Geographical area of Business Operations

a. Locally, Regional or National Operator

2) Constraints

a. Service only to certain economy class, education class, etc.

b. Some services you do not provide.

3) Time of Operations

a. Time of the day, day of the week, for business operations

4) Objective of Advertising (Most Important)

a. Generating Leads for Business

b. Generating Traffic

c. Brand Building

d. Populating Database

e. Any other

Advertiser has to not only be clear with his objectives but also be able to measure the results effectively.

Know your Market

A) B2C – Pay Per Click Management

In this case your target audience is everyone who is browsing internet or at-least the majority of them. Your objective can be any of the objectives listed above. The main players are Classified Sites, Travel, Dating Sites, Portals, Auto Sites, and other websites which attract amount of traffic:

i) The best Ad position is #3 with conspicuous ad text

ii) 20% of the keywords generate 80% of the relevant traffic.

iii) The long tail of keywords helps in maintaining the average cost per acquisition for entire program.

iv) There is always a list of negative keywords, negative sites where you don’t want to display. Unless you don’t care about branding.

v) Small changes might make great impact.

a. Test and try Different Ads to maximize CTR

b. Land Users on relevant pages

vi) Remember your target market is large in number therefore

a. Advertise to as many users as possible

b. Be highly specific in your Ads to display just the right communication. Attract only the right traffic.

c. Users can directly perform action, therefore offer necessary details, information, privacy policy in the landing pages.

d. Results are directly measurable as users perform online activity such as click, registration.

vii) The Keyword mix in most of the accounts general contain the below composition.

a. Branding Keywords (< = 1%)

b. Keywords Generating Relevant High Traffic

c. Keywords Generating Relevant Low Traffic

d. Keywords whose CPC is affected due to market competition

e. Keywords generating Irrelevant high Traffic

f. Keywords generating Irrelevant low Traffic

Relevancy is not in the Keywords but in the traffic. Measurement has to be done as traffic being relevant or irrelevant more than keyword being irrelevant or relevant.

A) B2B – Pay Per Click Management

In case of B2B marketing the strategy is different. In this case you can filter down your target users to last level. For example: Your business is looking for HNIs to invest or export commodities. Here Awareness, branding is the key issue, users may return back online later on. I will not buy a tractor after clicking on a PPC Ad. Keep keywords as low as possible.

viii) The best Ad position is #1 with your USP in the Ad text, or track record.

ix) Bid on just branding keywords and few targetted keywords.

x) No long tail of keywords.

xi) Display on Sites where your Target Audience mostly concentrated. Display on Blog, review sites, industry news sites.

xii) There is always a list of negative keywords, negative sites where you don’t want to display. Unless you don’t care about branding.

xiii) Display as much information about your company, Awards, Certifications on landing page. Be sure to mention Phone numbers and email everywhere.

xiv) Target Time, Date, Geography, Ad for every Ad

xv) Remember your target market is specific & therefore:

a. Advertise to only targeted people

b. Be generic in your Ad, display your USP consistently.

c. Don’t expect users to directly perform action.

d. Results are not directly measurable as lead conversion make take time.

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Link is simply a reference to another webpage from a given page.

A single most important assessment of a link is “Does the Link add value to the published content?” and therefore to the end user reading the content.

1) When a user reads the content, the link on the content must contain additional information that directly relates the given document.

2) The degree of correlation between the information on the given document and the linked document can be the value given to the link. This is measured by the text around the link to the entire passage of linked document. You can measure the co-relation, co-occurrence, frequency, prominence of keyword usage in both the documents.

3) The content on your document & the linked document is interdependent in certain way. There must be good reason/objective of relationship.

Think in terms of you being Google.com, who is fighting to reduce spam and ensuring best possible websites rank on web search results.

I would give high importance to links from content which find maximum value to end users.

Links from Yahoo Answers

With Yahoo Answers you are building a relationship with users by offering help or answers to their queries. Therefore your link increases the value of the content written.

Links from Digg.com

People vote digg articles and popular articles rise on home page are the ones which significant users have voted. Links from such content has high value. Also if you mention that your content has received certain number of Digg Votes, and giving a link to the page on Digg, it would add value to your content and links on them.

Links from Del.icio.us

On del.icio.us people would tag your site with keywords; they would tag your site only if your content is useful. Link from del.icio.us is a value and links from content which is linked from del.icio.us is also equally valuable.

Links from Social Sites/Web2.0 sites

In such sites there is user voting or collective intelligence. If your website gets voted as popular, this means users want your website because they found something useful. Therefore your links to your website has a value.

• Include the number of times your content has been viewed on your site that might just increase the link value from that content.
  

Why Linking is called Relationship Marketing?

Links connects documents hence 2 different content. Consider a web page to be an Organism and link is the relationship between both web pages. Therefore link building is called as relationship building. In examples below there is clear relationship between 2 web-pages hence linking counts.

1) One company owns many websites, they can link to all of them in their about us page, partner page or footer. The relationship between websites is clearly stated (as owned by single parent company). Hence each link counts in the algorithm.

2) In e-commerce websites you give a link to payment gateway, Visa, Verisign. There is a relationship of a service provider. The links here also has a value.

3) In a single website all pages are interlinked. The deep linking of pages, interlinking counts as all of them has relationship of being under a single domain.

4) Suppose your website gives link such as “To read this document click here to download Acrobat reader”. Here there is a relationship between your website and Acrobat reader, as without acrobat reader your content is unreadable. Similar relationship with Winzip. Software Download links count

5) Using Certifications such as certified seller, Google certified professional. This relationship displays the authority of the content displayed. Hence Links count here as well.

6) Testimonials on other websites. Suppose you are a service provider and other have highly recommended your service on their website, this will boost your rankings. There is a clear relationship here as client and service provider.

7) Online Alliances, where your site powers a complete section of other website, here there is a clear relationship maintained which makes value of link go higher.

Links on Answers, Blogs, Forums is giving a reference to your website for users posting queries. Here there is relationship between the both. The link is supposed to contain information or document which is of value to other person as he/she is seeking the same.

In all cases it would advisable to clearly mention the purpose of relationship explicitly on the website. It can be in privacy policy page, Terms and condition page or Business Partners page etc.

Why Link Exchange does not Work?

The objective of relationship is visibly clear to boost search engine rankings.

How to Build Relationships/Linking?

1) Create Great Products however small it may be, such as plug-in or a gadget which is of high value to end user. People will subscribe and will link to it. This is a relationship you have built with end users.

2) Write useful content valuable and worthy to end users. People will link to it, Digg it, Tag it etc. This is a relationship you build with users of providing advice, tips etc.

3) Publicize company news, company events as a part of PR activity, the relation you would like to have with community.

4) Build Alliances with related websites, share your product in exchange of traffic and ask them to link to you.

Conclusion

Stronger the Relationship higher is the value of the link.

Just ensure your link is search engine readable, and does not look like spam. If companies invest quality time and think innovatively, they can build higher quality links than shooting 1000’s of spam mails every day/night on link exchange.

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The Indian Online Industry is not even a decade old, that is the reason why people who are holding top positions in Online industry today are from related fields like advertising, Marketing, IT, Technology etc…

There a lot of companies/agencies into online business in India, who are looking to hire people with experience more than the company age or even industry age!

Due to high growth rate & success of existing online companies, new companies have emerged with backing of good VC funding. This has resulted in growth in demand for manpower in online industry both from small companies to large MNCs. This has particularly increased in past 3 years and tends to grow at this rate for few more years.

Online Marketing individuals are assessed on one or more of below marketing skills:

A) Search Engine Marketing

B) Display Media Buying/Media Planning

C) Search Engine Optimization

D) Web Analytics

E) Product Marketing

F) Content/Blog Writers

G) Account Management

There are various Job Boards which are exclusively meant for Online Jobs:

A) Alootechie Job Board,

B) Content Sutra Job Board

H) Internationally the Job Sites for Online Marketing are:

A) Online Marketing Jobs

B) Jobs in Search

C) Marketing Pilgrim

D) E-Consultancy.com

E) Craigslist.org

F) Indeed.com

G) Simplyhired.com

On popular Job sites you can use Keywords from above skills to get various job listings from online companies.

The jobseeker should have understanding of the company’s business before taking the decision of making a career move, more so in the online marketing industry. There can also be a lot of cases where there are high paying jobs available in the market, but you may not appreciate company environment & working style. When looking for jobs in startups or newly established Online Business, be sure that you believe in the company’s business model & vision before making a move.

The Major categories of Companies having presence in Online Industry are:

1) Indian Online Businesses

2) Successful Indian Offline Businesses with Online Presence

3) Indian Online Agencies,

4) BPOs, Web Based Services.

5) MNC online businesses with Indian Operations

Indian Online Businesses

These are companies, which are 100% functioning online. Their business model completely operates online. These companies have been started by Indians and mainly operated in India. There are companies which have back end support of a larger group like Reliance starting out Zapak.com, Yatra.com.

There are other companies who started as small startups and with good VC funding & experience these companies have been operating successfully online for a long duration. For example: Makemytrip.com.

Offline Businesses with Online Presence

There are lot of offline businesses who have been successful in their field of businesses are finding new markets, newer channels of finding & reaching their customers through online media. There is significant awareness among companies which have encouraged them to start their respective online divisions.

Many of the businesses are

A) Traditional newspaper & Print media sites.

(HT, Times, Express & more)

B) Banks and Financial Institutions,

(ICICI, HDFC, LIC and All Major Private Banks)

C) Shopping & Retail Businesses,

(Indiaplaza, Futurebazaar, Ebay, and more)

D) Travel & Tours Businesses.

(Travelguru, Yatra, Ixigo, Cleartrip.com, Makemytrip.com & more)

E) Academic Institutions such as career coaching & counseling.

F) Export & Import Trade Businesses.

Every Top player in above industry has significant online presence and has considerable business coming through online & Internet Media.

Online Agencies

These companies were started initially by single person or group of few people, with major business into providing services to other online companies or assist offline companies in online advertising. There are agencies that are into online marketing services business alone and there are offline ad agencies having a separate online marketing division.

There are Top Agencies such GroupM, Pinstorm, Mediaturf which serve all Top brands in India. There are other US agencies such as Tribal Fusion operating in India. Almost all top offline AD agencies now have a digital arm offering services in Online Advertising & Marketing Activities.

BPOs & Web Based Services

These are companies who operate like normal call centers, provide services to outsourced projects from clients across various countries. They might operate in Indian work timings or other geographic work timings.

There are Top companies such as WNS Global, Technovate, Fareportal, Cleartrip.com and many more.

MNC online businesses with Indian Operations

These are Top companies such as Google.com, Yahoo.com, MSN.com, AOL.com, who have setup their Indian Operations. These Companies are mainly looking for best Talent from Top colleges in India, and experienced people from other online companies.

You have to decide on what type of company and what role you would like to work in Online Industry. If you are job seeker in Online Industry, then all the best to your career! Don’t forget to keep reading my blog…

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