As we gain experience in the entire content marketing cycle- from strategy & planning to content creation to content distribution- we continue to learn interesting lessons in the do’s and don’ts of this marketing strategy.

Recently, we carried out a fairly successful content marketing campaign for a start-up entrepreneur in the health & wellness sector in India. Being very new in the market, the primary objective of the campaign was to create as much visibility for the entrepreneur as possible in relevant channels, while at the same time, maximise opportunities for getting organic search engine (SEO) traffic.

While the results from the campaign more than fulfilled the objectives we set out to achieve, there were quite a few takeaways from the hassles and challenges we faced during the entire process. We list below some of these takeaways for the benefit of anyone who is considering a PR/ guest blogging outreach campaign.

Define and agree on the process to be followed

This may seem obvious but better to state it than not: it is good to define the process to be followed for the campaign with the different stakeholders. Whether you first create pieces of content and then find the right channel to get it published on, or you approach a few publishing platforms first and then create custom content for them— these are decisions that you can agree on upfront. Both of these approaches work and we’ve realised that there are advantages and disadvantages, efficiencies and inefficiencies.

If I were to stick my neck out and indicate a personal preference, it is for the latter approach: identify potential publishing platforms, engage with them and then create something useful and valuable specifically for that platform.

Remember that a PR/guest blogging outreach campaign is fairly labour intensive. While you can create a standard process to follow, it really works optimally in the pre-reachout stage. Beyond that, you will often have to alter approaches on the fly and take actions depending on the responses that you receive. Build in some degree of flexibility into the process.

Another aspect you should define and agree early in the process is related to communication with the target publishers. This is particularly true when you are doing such a content distribution/ outreach campaign for an ‘external’ client. Some clients can be unnecessarily fastidious about every tiny detail.

The client I mentioned above was one such ‘control freak’, which we thought significantly slowed down the process and success rate without adding any additional value. In hindsight, we would have done better to set in stone the entire process, communication details and the boundaries of ‘interference’ before we commenced the campaign.

Get a realistic assessment of the content creation capabilities
After we embarked on this content marketing initiative, we were soon faced with a different problem. The response rate was better than anticipated, so it meant that the number of publishers who were willing to accept contributions from our client was higher than the volume of content that we could expect our client to generate within the stipulated time frame.

This is not a bad problem to have, but it meant one of two things: either scale up content generation capabilities or slow down and delay some of the pieces that were to be submitted. Scaling up the volume becomes a serious problem when the subject matter is very niche and it does require a specialist to offer knowledgeable insights. In the case we are discussing, it did require the specialist who had some strong views to create the content, and so we had to drop off a few publishers who had agreed to publish our content.

The lesson we took away from this experience is that we needed to have a better sense of how much content could be created in what time frame, and the need to better regulate the outreach effort.

Agree on the websites you are going to target for outreach

Set up some broad criteria on the type and “nature” of websites you want to approach for potential content contribution and publication opportunities. The holy grail is, obviously, channels that have a high volume of relevant audience reach/ traffic and also willing to link to you. However, these are also not easy-wins, so make sure that you have alternatives too. For example, you might find sites that aren’t top-draw, but are reasonably relevant and there is an easier opportunity to get a link. In terms of effort-to-return, this tier 2 site could yield a better return in the short term.

In the selection of the site, evaluate whether the content is good in general. Will it be appropriate for the author/ expert to have his/her name there? Review some of the other articles covered by the media to determine the overall quality of the site.

Some of the yardsticks or factors we have used to identify potential websites for outreach are given below.

Get complete clarity from the content platform on what you will get
Once you start approaching the websites/blogs for publication of your content, it is very important to get full visibility on what you can expect from contributing your original content to that channel. The sooner you have clarity, the easier it is for you to bail out in case you feel that the benefit you will get is not commensurate with the effort you have to put in.

Some of the aspects to get clarity on are:

Ensure you get due credit for your content

There is nothing worse in content marketing than seeing somebody else take full credit for a piece of work that you have crafted assiduously. Mind you — we are not talking about some obscure blogger or web publisher aggregating content from multiple sources without permission. We were surprised to find that websites operated by some well-known media houses did this!

For example, a couple of large publishers used almost everything almost verbatim, bar one or two edits, from a piece that was written by our client. The by-line for the article was given to some writer from the publication, and they converted a couple of sentences in the article inot quotes from our client- a recognised expert in that field- thus trying to give the impression that the entire piece was researched and written by the staff writer. Worse, in attempting to make the minor edits to give that perception, the rather incompetent editorial team left behind a trail of spelling and grammatical errors!

We realised that not getting a confirmation from the publication that the article would be published with a by-line for our client was a mistake.

To conclude, some of the specifics of each content marketing or guest blog outreach campaign could vary, but we feel many of the bigger lessons we learnt here could be applied to all campaigns.

- By Manoj Aravindakshan
Manoj Aravindakshan is a search marketing consultant and content strategist. He is the founder of Singapore SEO agency & digital media company, On Target Media.

This article was originally published on the On Target Media website.

In the 11-minute video (embedded below), Ohye provides companies looking for external SEO consultants some useful do’s and don’ts and the process to follow in identifying the right individual or firm to work with.

As a SEO service provider, operating primarily in markets like Singapore and Mumbai where this practice has often been treated as a commoditized service, the video resonated with me on several counts.

I’ll list some of the key takeaways from the video, many of which we reiterate to our prospective clients during the pitch stage. Some of the points below are taken verbatim from the video while some others are edited or elaborated with my views.

• No magic bullet: If you aspire for long-term SEO success, there are no magic tricks that any SEO professional or company can provide. Typically, “SEOs need 4 months to a year to help a business first implement improvements and then see potential benefit”.

  
  

  The duration for seeing favorable results may vary from business to business, website to website, but when companies claim that they can “guarantee” 1^st page rankings on Google within a month, alarm bells must ring very loud.

• Quality matters: “A SEO’s potential is only as good as the quality of your business or website.”
  

  

  Though I don’t agree with the above statement in its entirety, it holds true in the long term.  I’ve seen several instances where very large and successful businesses don’t do nearly as well in search results. On the other hand, we ourselves have helped several SMEs outrank some well-known brands, without resorting to any black-hat SEO tactics or taking risky short-cuts. 

  So while a good SEO consultant won’t be able to take a poor quality business anywhere for too long, he can certainly work with a business that has a decent level of quality and help it compete and succeed.

• Ability to look beyond search rankings: “A good SEO does not focus only on search engine ranking but how they can help the business. It is difficult to do good SEO without knowing a business’ goals, customers and other existing marketing efforts. SEO should complete your existing work.” I couldn’t agree with Maile Ohye more here. It is of course expected that the consultant will recommend best practices for search-friendly websites. However, for too long, both SEO consultants as well as the companies hiring them- especially in the SME segment- have been obsessed over the technicalities of the medium aka the search engine (Google, in most cases).
  

  
  

  As search and search marketing has evolved, I think it is critical for SEO consultants to have a strong marketing mindset. They have to be able to look beyond meta data, java scripts, CSS and server response codes (these are important, of course), and be able to understand and appreciate the nuances of great content and usability and user experience. The ability and instincts to “connect different sets of dots” from across the business and leveraging those to catalyze SEO efforts, are other essential attributes.

  It is important to understand and more importantly, be aligned with, the outcome for the business: be it just traffic, leads or online sales. This focus and alignment on desired outcome can happen only if the consultant has asked for and obtained complete clarity on the stated business goals, its unique value propositions, profile of their target audience and business/revenue model, other marketing methods and channels used (including offline marketing) and competitors.

• User experience & SEO are linked closely: “In a majority of cases, doing what is good for SEO is also good for your users online customers”. Bingo!For a long time, too many people viewed SEO as a silo that was completely detached from the rest of the user experience. It was almost like these were two mutually exclusively phenomena, and the only way one could succeed in the “SEO game” was by throwing usability and user experience out of the window.This disconnect between SEO & usability manifested itself in several forms: lots of keyword-stuffed copy in the lower part of the pages (even top sites like eBay seemed to have resorted to these tactics in the past); text in tiny fonts on the side bar, and so on.

  
  

  Now it is increasingly acknowledged that the user experience matters considerably. There have been several hypotheses that bounce rate and the time spent on a site have a bearing on search rankings (though I don’t think this correlation has been definitively proved). Also, common sense dictates that if the user experience upon landing on a web page isn’t great or trustworthy, the user will abandon the page and defeat the very purpose for which he was brought there.

  So, the key message is: don’t disregard user experience while doing SEO, and don’t treat the latter as something very different from how the user engages with your website. The two can and should go hand-in-hand!

• Active participation in strategy execution is necessary: “One of the biggest holdups is the unwillingness of the organisation to implement the SEO recommendations.” We’ve encountered this scenario several times. We formulate a SEO strategy and provide a list of recommendations for implementation. And then, things come to a standstill. With SMEs it is a case of resource constraints or issues with third-party vendors that we have to deal with, while with some larger organisations, it is the bureaucracy.For example, we did some consulting work for a European subsidiary company of a global industrial giant. Twenty four months after we presented our strategy and execution plan, we managed to get about seven out of the 30+ recommendations we had made.At every stage, there were several reasons why something couldn’t get done sooner:: IT department couldn’t move forward without approvals from the marketing department who couldn’t do much without approvals from their corporate headquarters and so on.Though financially rewarding, the above project was quite frustrating because the strategy we defined never even came close to getting executed.
  

  
  

  If you are a marketer that is hiring a SEO agency, beware of such a scenario playing out and putting the entire initiative at risk. 

  Make sure you have the buy-in of all stakeholders and you will commit the time and resources to actively participate in the process with the SEO consultant. Only then will you have a fair shot succeeding with the SEO campaign.

- Manoj Aravindakshan

Manoj Aravindakshan, a well-known Singapore SEO consultant & content strategist, is the founder of Navi Mumbai digital marketing agency, On Target Marketing that provides SEO, SEM & Social Media Marketing services.

If you are looking to formulate and execute a SEO & inbound marketing strategy for your business, contact us now!

Originally published on On Target Marketing Solutions : SEO lessons from Google: Essentials for contemporary SEO

Images courtesy: Pick the Brain | LaneTerraLever | Website Designs |

One of the objections we keep hearing is that advertising on the content network (or ‘contextual’ network as many prefer to call it) may be fine for a ‘brand awareness’ campaign, but not so much for a “tangible, results-oriented campaign”.

Our experience belies this, as we have found that not only can a contextual campaign deliver measurable results but it can also outperform regular keyword-driven search campaigns by several multiples.

To cite an example, we have been managing a SEM based lead generation campaign for an online education provider. The difference in results from the search campaign vis-à-vis the contextual campaign is staggering: the cost per lead generated via search has averaged at least 3 times the typical cost per lead from the contextual network; similarly, the lead-to-click conversion rate was at least double from the latter.

3 reasons to advertise on the Google AdWords content network

The stark contrasts in results described above obviously merits a deeper dive into the “why” and we can think of 3 important benefits that should make advertising on the content network of AdWords attractive for the skeptics.

1. Enormous reach:

The content network expands an advertiser’s potential reach manifold.  A typical Google search result on a desktop/laptop shows a maximum of 7 ad positions (4 at the top and 3 at the bottom). On the other hand, search results on mobile show about 3 ads. We also know that the volume of search on mobile devices is now higher than volume of searches on desktop.  Put all these together and one can infer that the total advertising inventory available in ‘Search’ has probably come down.

On the other hand, the number of websites and web pages that could potentially display one of your ads continues to grow, with the exponential growth of both new websites and fresh content.

In addition, the content network also increases the scope for remarketing/ retargeting, which are proving to be quite effective avenues in boosting conversions.

Therefore, not using the huge reach offered by the AdWords content network is a huge opportunity lost.

2. Flexibility with multiple ad formats

While text advertising has its own benefits, being able to deliver a marketing message in multiple formats is something that every marketer wishes for. The content network offers scope for delivering image ads/ rich media ads/ video ads, which the search network doesn’t

3. Cheaper (generally)

It probably boils down to a simple demand-supply equation, but we’ve found that in most cases advertising in the content network is significantly cheaper on a cost-per-click basis.

We’ve also noticed in several cases that the rates offered by some publishers for their advertising inventory when approached directly for a media buy are higher than getting similar inventory through the content network. Why publishers would adopt such a pricing strategy is open to debate, but from an advertiser’s perspective it is a great incentive to target those publications through the Google content network (placement targeting / managed placements).

Legacy concerns with content network advertising

A lot of the skepticism with advertising on the Google content network, I believe, is due to legacy issues. For one, it is not “intent-driven” unlike advertising on Google search. Hence, some advertisers believe that this is no different from any form of passive advertising, where the advertising is relying on some form of interruption, impulse, or mere serendipity to get the desired outcome from the advertiser.

That may be true to quite an extent but the results indicate that there are benefits of such “passive advertising”. The visitors or leads one attracts through such campaigns may have to be ‘nurtured’ differently as they could be at a different stage along the buying funnel, but it may be a folly to just ignore the opportunity to reach such an audience.

Another reason for the reluctance to invest marketing rupees in the content network could be historical results. Chances are that one has tried the network, generated clicks but not gotten sufficient leads/ conversions at acceptable cost levels.  However, as Google has come down heavily on dubious sites in its search results in the past few years, the quality of sites that drive clicks can generally be deemed to be much better and relevant than they may have been previously. (this is not to say that poor quality sites, made predominantly with the purpose of displaying ads from Google don’t show up in search results now, they still do! The frequency with which one spots such sites has gone down quite a bit.).

Be open to the contextual network

As an advertiser with a limited search marketing budget, it is understandable that the default thinking is to target the search network only.

However, I encourage marketers to change that default thinking and be open to the idea of using both content and search, or even just the content network, depending on the specific objectives of a particular campaign. We’ve seen some of our clients benefit from this change of mindset, and you could too!

- By Manoj Aravindakshan

Manoj Aravindakshan is Managing Director of On Target Marketing Solutions, a Navi Mumbai digital marketing agency, specializing in search engine marketing and social media marketing. On Target helps clients across different industries/verticals plan, execute and manage Google AdWords pay-per-click advertising campaigns.

Less waiting time for SEOs to see effect of clean-up job
Firstly, Penguin is now integrated with the core search algorithm and will run in real time. Previously, Penguin cast its net periodically, catching ‘non-compliant’ websites for their bad linking practices and low quality of inbound links and penalising them.

Websites that got caught in this net not only had to “clean up” by removing suspicious or low quality inbound links to their website but more importantly also had to wait until the algorithm ran again. This was a frustrating wait for affected websites and SEO practitioners managing these websites as often the results of their efforts were not to be seen or felt.

Now however, webmasters should theoretically be able to see the impact of actions they take to clean up their link profile a lot more quickly. This could mean just days instead of months and years.

Page-level granularity means affected websites have hope
One of the key aspects of this release is that Penguin is likely to be applied at a page level rather than the entire domain. So, if an entire domain was previously affected because of a few low-quality or spammy links to some pages of the site, there is a high chance that those websites could see greater visibility on Google search results because other pages on the site aren’t affected the same way.

For large websites with thousands or hundreds of thousands of pages, this is a boon as it helps them prioritise their clean-up job and work on removing or disavowing bad links to their more important pages first, which will help them cover some lost ground quickly.

Lesser risk of “negative SEO” tactics
A major talking point and frustration for many SEOs after Penguin first wrecked havoc was that of “negative SEO” i.e. anyone could potentially get a competing website penalised by Google by building a bunch of spammy links  pointing to the competing website.  The fact that such websites could get a site-wide penalty and not be able to bounce back quickly may served as a big ‘incentive’ for practitioners of negative SEO. Not anymore.

Monitor ‘entrance visit’ pages closely
The flip side of this update is that we may be seeing a lot more ongoing volatility in search results. Webmasters should not only monitor their Google traffic closely but also check the traffic to their key landing pages more closely and frequently. Even if overall search traffic doesn’t show significant drops, any major drop in traffic to important landing pages should result in a thorough review of the link profile of those pages.

-      By Manoj Aravindakshan

Manoj Aravindakshan is the Managing Director of Mumbai-based SEO and online marketing company On Target Marketing Solutions. He has been in the field of online publishing and digital marketing for about 15 years.

Originally published on On Target Marketing Solutions : Penguin 4.0: Implications for SEO professionals

In addition to these algorithm updates, which Google has become somewhat better at in terms of announcing publicly or giving advance notice of in recent times, there are statements, pronouncements and advice given by Google spokespersons (to be fair, these are often in response to questions asked by eager SEO pros). It used to be Matt Cutts previously, whose word was almost taken as the Gospel; now, there are folks like John Mueller and Gary Illyeswho have become the public face of Google at least in relation to queries and issues related to Google search results. Each statement or piece of advice from them often leads to more questions, discussion, debate and many a time, a lot of confusion among SEO practitioners. A case in point is a recent statement related to how Google treats redirects. It was interpreted that Google now treats both 301 (permanent redirect) and 302 redirect (temporary redirect) the same way and so it is up to webmasters to decide which way to go should they need to redirect some pages. Is it really true? Do we know for sure that is the case? The perils of listening to Google blindly In our quest to get whatever competitive advantage we can manage by being ‘first movers’, we SEO practitioners tend to respond to news of any change (rumoured change would be more accurate) almost immediately and with gusto. Yet, things can change rather quickly. ‘Authorship’ is one such example. If we were to look back at statements from Google from about three years ago, it seemed that Google Authorship was likely to be a key ranking factor for SEO going forward. This got a lot of us recommending and pushing for the implementation of authorship tags on our client websites. In less than two years since, Google had killed ‘Authorship’. In late 2015, the suggestion was to leave Google Authorship markup on the pages in case Google decides to use that in some way in the future. By the middle of 2016 though, Authorship was completely dead

The perils of NOT listening to Google On the other end of the spectrum, there are instances when ignoring forewarnings from Google can prove to be quite damaging. One of the best examples of this is related to the preference for mobile friendly sites in mobile search results. For the first time, to the best of my knowledge, Google gave advance information of an impending algorithm change.  When the algorithm change did happen– termed “Mobilegeddon” by the SEO community ever eager to come up with interesting names- there was quite a huge shake up. All of a sudden thousands of websites that didn’t get their websites mobile friendly lost huge chunks of their search engine traffic. Google has similarly made announcements related to giving additional weightage for secure sites (those using “https”) over non-secure sites in a bid to make the web more secure. Close to two years since that announcement, the number of sites that have migrated to “https” seems to be small compared to sites that haven’t. What would happen if Google decides to “switch on” a  “secure sites filter” is anyone’s guess! Damned if we do, damned if we don’t! How then should we respond? Fair question, but this is exactly where I think we marketers earn our keep. As with a lot of aspects related to SEO, the response doesn’t have to be in binary terms. Deferring action is very much an option. My suggestion is to start by asking a few basic questions

• Does it affect us?  Now?
• How will it affect us in future, if at all?
• Are there any opportunities for us from the change that is being mentioned? How can we maximise potential benefits?
• What is the cost of not doing any change?

Answers will vary depending on a host of factors such as the industry you are in, or the type of business/website you have, the size of your business and the resources at your disposal to take all actions required to respond to the changes, to name just a few. Ideally, we all should be able to carry out extensive research and experiments to test out the benefits or impact of doing/ not doing something. However, not every business will have the luxury of doing that. So let’s go to the next best alternative: look at what some experts and agencies are reporting based on tests they have conducted. Again, look carefully whether the tests and the results are applicable to your specific case– that kind of contextualisation is critically important. In a nutshell, my advice and approach would be to not ignore announcements by Google, but at the same time, don’t treat every statement from Google as the Gospel blindly. A healthy dose of scepticism will stand you in good stead. P.S: Check out this article on Moz  where Rand Fishkin talks about when to listen to Google and when not to. Also, see some of the comments on this report –      By Manoj Aravindakshan Manoj Aravindakshan is the Managing Director of Mumbai-based SEO and online marketing company On Target Marketing Solutions. He has been in the field of online publishing and digital marketing for about 15 years. Originally published on On Target Marketing Solutions : How SEO professionals should respond to Google updates & announcements.

Our response is that we have not seen large correlations in the case of clients for whom we manage both paid and organic search marketing campaigns. Intuitively, it is also not in a search engine’s interest to help a site move up higher in organic search results as it can potentially reduce the budget a company allocates for paid marketing efforts and thereby, directly impact its revenues.

This is not to say that these two forms of search marketing are completely disparate with performance in one having no bearing on the other. Setting aside all “conspiracy theories” pertaining to manipulation of natural search results to drive paid advertising revenues, let’s consider some scenarios that highlight the intersection between the two and how one can influence the other.

How paid search advertising may affect your natural search results
Search marketers have typically used their learning from what is happening with PPC results to fine-tune their SEO strategy, especially with the keywords that need to be focused on, what content needs to be created, etc.

Occasionally, you might see some uptick in the organic traffic shown by your analytics while you are running a PPC campaign. This may be the reason behind the question I alluded to at the beginning of the article. Rather than any artificial boost given by the search engine, the increased organic traffic may be due to an increase in brand searches or influence of personalisation/ past search history in the organic search results.

For example, let’s say a user has clicked through a PPC ad, browsed the destination site and exited. Subsequently, the user does a brand search as he remembers company name – even if not in its entirety- but not the exact domain name, sees the name in organic search results and clicks through once more to the site. Similarly, we know that sites we have visited in the past tends to get shown to us higher in search results, especially when we are “logged in”. This increases the probability of more click-throughs from organic search results and a rise in organic traffic that could owe itself to paid advertising.

How natural search results affects paid search advertising
Let’s say that you are running a paid search campaign targeting both the search network (‘intent-based advertising’) and the content/placement network (passive, contextual advertising). One fine day, you notice that the number of leads you were generating has dropped sharply. Nothing much has changed with the results from the search network, but you find the results from the content network has inexplicably fallen-off a cliff. If you are like most of us, the tendency is to focus on key parameters like bids and budgets, ad creative and landing page to figure out if something has gone awry.

On a project that we managed, here’s what actually went wrong. In the immediate aftermath of the well-publicised (and much dreaded) Penguin algorithm update, a large number of websites were hit by a huge drop in search engine traffic. This included some fairly well-known mainstream media websites/ portals which one wouldn’t expect to be affected by either content quality issues or “shady” SEO practices. Consequently, there was a direct impact on the number of impressions that our clients’ ads were getting and as a result, the number of leads generated for them.

Google tests thousands of changes to its search algorithm in a year with a percentage of results changing rankings on a daily basis. Any advertiser targeting the content/placement/display network needs to be wary of significant changes to organic search results that could potentially throw their paid campaign off-the-rails.

PPC professionals need to keep themselves abreast of happenings in the world of SEO/ organic search, in order to be able to respond faster and more effectively. For example, if trends indicate that organic search results for a particular type of query are giving greater weightage to a particular type of site, determine how you can have your ads on those websites. If you see a lot of YouTube videos ranking high on search results, consider getting YouTube into the advertising mix.

Similarly, you might see a high proportion of job sites showing up (rather surprisingly) for online marketing services-related queries, work out how you can get your ads in there even though they may not seem to be the most appropriate channels for targeting at first.

Key takeaways
In conclusion, here are some key takeaways for search marketers:
- Don’t view SEO and PPC as two water-tight compartments. Take from PPC campaigns to fine-tune your SEO strategy ie. what keywords are better converting, what keywords to build content around etc.

- Monitor what’s happening in the world of natural search results and how rankings are getting affected. In particular, regularly check the websites/ type of websites that are ranking for the queries/ topics that will be of interest to your target audience.

- Be aware of the risk of over-reliance on the contextual network.

- Accept that even paid search advertising may not be entirely within immediate control (it is generally accepted – and rightly so- that paid campaigns offer greater control and predictability than organic search traffic).

- By Manoj Aravindakshan

Manoj Aravindakshan is CEO of Navi Mumbai-based digital marketing agency On Target Marketing Solutions which specialises in search and social media marketing for generating leads and online sales.

See also: Articles by Manoj Aravindakshan | Articles on Google Adwords | Articles on SEO | Articles on Search Engine Marketing

Previously, much of the response to and conversation around major algorithm updates were often very tactical: changing importance of one meta tag over the other; ‘general anchor text’ to ‘keyword-rich anchor text’ back to diversified anchor text, and so on and so forth. I think that has been forced to change, and rightfully so (though I do have reservations on many things Google does with its search algorithm and doubt whether they are actually achieving their professed goal of delivering the best results possible that fulfils a user’s search intent). As a result, recent discussions on SEO are a lot more strategic in nature, with much deeper thought on the overall scope (and limitations) of SEO as a traffic acquisition method.

In this rapidly evolving landscape, I list the following key considerations that every SEO strategy planner must take into account when charting the course for traffic generation through Google search.

Unpredictability in search engine traffic: Predicting organic search engine traffic has always been quite difficult; it will become increasingly harder, if not impossible, to gauge/ estimate organic traffic that one will be able to generate. This makes the jobs of marketers who are tasked with planning and allocation of resources to different traffic channels very difficult; likewise, SEO agencies like ours face the daunting challenge of setting client expectations right.

More and frequent changes: Google is carrying out numerous changes/experimentation with its search results and that too with increasing frequency. These can broadly be considered to be of two types: changes to its search algorithm to determine ranking of websites/webpages in its search results and secondly, changes to the display of what is shown on its SERPs. Therefore, a long-term view with a sufficient cushion in the traffic acquisition plan to absorb the immediate effects of such experimentation is imperative.

Organic results getting reduced prominence: Review of search results for a large number of queries across diverse industries that we at On Target have tracked shows the following trends:

** Lesser amount of space used for organic search results on a page. Different studies claim that a typical Google SERP (Search Engine Results Page) now shows only 13% to 50% of organic results. The exact figure may be debatable, but the reduced ‘inventory’ for typical natural results seems to be the norm rather than the exception now.

** New/ additional elements, besides the usual list of links of websites, being included in search results, with no consistent placement of these elements

**Specific types of sites getting greater prominence in different types of search queries.

Beyond search engine, a content destination: For several searches, Google is often transforming into “content destination” trying to provide detailed answers in what is apparently an attempt to retain users on the search page instead of leading them to other pages.

All in all, these are quite ‘interesting’ times to say the least as far as search marketers are concerned. The name of the game is change, in which success will be determined by the ability to adapt and then adopt a well-rounded content-driven marketing strategy.

By Manoj Aravindakshan
Manoj Aravindakshan is Managing Director of On Target Marketing Solutions, a Mumbai-based digital marketing agency specialising in search and social media marketing.

1. Create a Google Places / Bing Places’ listing for your business:
If you have paid attention to search engine results pages closely in recent times, the local bias is hard to miss. A significant portion of the SERP real estate is now occupied by Places’ results, especially for search queries that have a location qualifier in them (for example, SEO services Mumbai or Dermatologist Navi Mumbai). In fact, visibility in these Places’ results doesnot require a business to even have a website! Of course, there are a couple of verification processes that one has to go through before the local listing on Places’ goes live, but having a presence right at the top of search results will certainly give a huge boost to your lead generation efforts.

2. Submit your website/ business listing to local business directories & online yellow pages:
Online yellow pages and business directories are very powerful channels that can drive business leads, often for free. This is because many of these sites are extremely good at local SEO and have built their own captive audience and traffic over a period of time. Creating a business profile listing on these sites should certainly be high on your marketing agenda. For many of our small business clients, we have found that over 25% of traffic to their website and a significant proportion of business inquiries come via these business profile listings!

3. Build links to your website from other local websites:
The foundation of your link bulding strategy should be ‘local’ and as you look for link prospects, focus on local websites. For example, if we are doing SEO for a client who is focused on generating business from Mumbai, our highest priority link prospects will be Mumbai-based businesses/ websites. We have considerable anecdotal evidence to show that sites get an additional ‘lift’ in local search results as a result of links obtained from other local websites.

4. Get articles published on local websites and publications:
It is commonly accepted that various off-page SEO activities move into the realm of press and public relations. This tip is one such– identify websites and local print publications that carry guest contributions, contact the editor(s) with article proposals and contribute good, original content. Certainly, it is time consuming and takes a bit of leg work, but the results from this are well worth the effort!

5. Ensure your website leaves enough local signals:
While many of the tips above can work for businesses that don’t even have a website, this one is particularly for those with a website. Apart from local geographical signals that you can provide right upfront (for example, ensuring you have a .in or .co.in domain name; setting the geographic targeting in Google Webmaster Tools as India), you should leave appropriate ‘signals’ within the website to indicate that you rank high for local search queries. Some of these steps will include mentioning your location on the Title tag of some of your pages; prominently featuring your complete mailing address; or mentioning your location along with the copyright information on your footer, etc.

Do you have other effective local SEO and digital marketing tips? Please write in and we will be happy to share them here!

This article has been reproduced from Online Marketing Thoughts where it was originally published.

From a simple marketing experiment we conducted, we found that a Facebook page that was restricted by country to be shown in the US only was not indexed by Google. This page has been around for a long time, it is quite active with regular posts from the company and a ‘fan base’ of over 5000 people.

On the other hand, we found that other pages set up more recently, with lesser activity and fewer followers were not only indexed by Google, but also showed up on the first page of Google search results for brand name searches.

Therefore, we feel that you may be negatively affecting your marketing in two ways:
a) Your Facebook page not appearing in the search results means that you are opening up a slot on the first page to some other website that may be completely unrelated.

b) As there is supposedly greater weightage of social signals for ranking of your own website in organic search results, you may be hampering your SEO efforts by preventing your Facebook page from being indexed by Google.

To conclude, my recommendation is to apply Facebook’s country restriction feature for pages ONLY IF you absolutely have to prevent your page from being seen by others.

Answer provided by: Manoj Aravindakshan
Manoj Aravindakshan is an experienced online marketing consultant specialising in search engine marketing.

Some of the antidotes recommended for sites affected by Penguin sound extreme. For instance, I read one suggestion by a SEO consultant on a fairly well-read blog that we should be having more of “Click here” and “Read more” links instead of using keyword-based anchor text. That’s almost like a 180-degree turn; afterall, hasn’t using keyword phrases in the anchor text been part of SEO 101? Yes, everyone in the SEO industry will have to re-evaluate what has been done historically, adapt and adopt new/ different approaches to hitherto successful techiniques, but I doubt we need to go to extremes. If we have to, then I reckon there has been something seriously and fundamentally wrong with the SEO strategy anyway!

Nevertheless, considering whatever is happening, here’s my take on the SEO trends for 2012 and beyond in the post-Panda, post-Penguin environment.

The age of global dominance is over

This probably has nothing to do with the recent update(s), which has been called the update to penalise “over optimisation”. However, what I have been seeing— and this needs to be confirmed with data; till such time, this assertion is based on mere observation— is that there is a significant geographical bias in the search results. For example, a search on Google.com conducted from India tends to show more results from India than a search on Google.com conducted from Singapore. This is a clear sign that it will be increasingly difficult for websites to be in the Global top 10 rankings.

From a user standpoint, that should generally be fine, though there will be cases– let’s say in academic research for instance– where such a geographical bias will not be as useful/ user friendly. From a SEO company perspective though, this certainly has much more significant implications, because a lot of clients still want to be No.1 on Google.com, across the world! Talk about expectation management!

User behaviour will play an ever increasing role

I think the clickthroughs from search results pages and probably, even the actions of a user within a website having landed there, are likely to influence search results greatly. We have already seen quite a bit of personalisation of search results– how much of it is good or necessary is open to debate- and we could see a lot more. Google itself has acknowledged that they have to get the balance right between personalised search results and general results, but I feel that the direction will be towards more personalisation than less.

On a related note, with all the data that search engines have– through analytics, tool bars, etc.–they may also be taking into account the nature of the sites that attract direct traffic, and then use that information to determine relevance of websites/ pages in the search results. For example, let’s say Cricinfo attracts a large volume of direct traffic. Now, a search engine could use some “signals” based on an understanding of the behavior of the users who visit this site, to show relevant pages from Cricinfo for queries related to cricket or cricketers.

From a SEO perspective, the above will mean the need for much more involvement in improving user engagement and retention on a website rather than limiting the focus to just getting users to a website. SEO professionals will also have to look much beyond search engine traffic and consider how to increase direct traffic to websites. Let’s just say that the job description for a SEO professional is undergoing a very quick makeover!

Social “Clout” will matter more

That social signals are being factored in search results is probably a 2-3 year old news. Recent updates from both Google and more recently, Bing, also make this even more important. My take on this is that the key factor that will ultimately make a huge difference is not “where” you are, but rather “who” you are connected to. Just like not all links are considered equal, not all social connection or interaction will be given the same weightage. At the cost of stating the obvious to those who have played the SEO game for long, an article or website on SEO shared by Joe Bloggs will likely carry much less weightage than say something shared by a Rand Fishkin, Danny Sullivan or Matt Cutts.

FOCAL Content

To say that content is king is passe… we all know that! My point here is related more to the attributes of content that will find favour with search engines. Based on the guidelines for good content from Google following Panda and our interpretation of the various updates Google releases each month, I feel there is a 5-point framework for content that should form part of the SEO strategy. Ideally, every piece of content created can score well on each of those 5 points; however, that may not be practical depending on the nature of the business, the business model, priorities, and so on.

Nevertheless, the critieria that I specify for search engine friendly content is “FOCAL”.

>> F – Fresh

>> O – Original

>> C – Comprehensive

>> A – Authoritative

>> L – Localised

I will elaborate each of these attributes on a separate piece focused exclusively on content.

Links will likely get a lot less weightage

Don’t get me wrong; links will continue to carry weightage. However, as search engines become ever smarter in determining relevance of page content to match user intent, they will need to rely a lot less on “external votes”. Moreover, with a much broader array of external signals (social ones, for example), the weightage of different link attributes will change significantly. “Anchor text” is just a case in point.

Link building, particularly of the mechanical sort that a lot of SEO agencies (including us) have relied on- particularly for servicing small to medium sized businesses- will need to make a huge qualitative shift.

Overall, I think that all of the above trends present quite a significant challenge, for both SEO companies as well as clients and will require a huge shift, both in mindset and skillsets.

- By Manoj Aravindakshan

Manoj Aravindakshan is an online marketing consultant and the Managing Director of On Target Marketing Solutions, a Mumbai-based search engine marketing company.

This article was originally posted on the On Target Marketing blog