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SEO Top 10 – Best SEO articles, April 1-15, 2019

admin — Sun, 14 Apr 2019 09:18:39 +0000

The SEO space has been abuzz with articles evaluating the impact of the March 12, 2019 core algorithm update. This particular algorithm update was reportedly much bigger than many other Google algorithm updates over the past several months. We’ve compiled our own list of the SEO Top 10 articles that have been published from around the world in the first fortnight of this month – which will hopefully give a clear picture of the most important happenings in the world of SEO.

1. Growth in mobile traffic
A recent blog post on Stone Temple Consulting blog studies the mobile versus desktop traffic trends between 2016-2018, based on data from SimilarWeb. This data is from US web traffic, so there may be differences in the proportion of web traffic in India. However, some of the patterns of web traffic will be interesting for users in other parts of the world too.

The key data reported in this article are: a) mobile traffic accounts for almost 58% of visits to websites while desktop traffic is 42% b) desktop users spent more time on websites; moreover the average time spent per visit is getting shorter for mobile users c) the bounce rate of mobile visits continues to be higher than that of desktop users.

The implication is that online marketers will not only have to make their websites mobile friendly but they’ll also have to ensure that the mobile experience is truly optimised as mobile users seem to be a lot more impatient!

Read the report here.

2. Building authority in local SEO
As Google continues to give a lot more weightage to local results in the main SERP, it makes sense to continue to understand the nuances of local SEO. The fundamentals remain the same: ensure that you are giving a lot of local signals to Google in the content you offer, whether it be in the content or the links you obtain for the site. Ensure that you are getting a lot more local links.

Read this article by Jesse McDonald on how to build authority in local SEO.

Adobe 2016 Symposium foresees huge potential for digital marketing in India

admin — Fri, 03 Jun 2016 04:05:59 +0000

At Adobe’s Symposium 2016, the company discussed about the huge potential for digital marketing in India and also highlighted about the growing gap between countries, industries and companies who have embraced the digital experience (at the core of their strategy) and those who lag.

Over thousand business and marketing leaders attended the Symposium to learn about transformative digital strategies that can better a brand’s position amidst the strong competition. Bigwigs like Flipkart, MakeMyTrip, Royal Bank of Scotland, and Taj Group shared details on how their companies are making strategic and structural changes to make sure digital is delivering a compelling customer experience.

Umang Bedi, Managing Director, South Asia, Adobe

“Digital natives in India are forcing businesses and brands to offer amazing customer experiences across platforms and devices. This trend is accelerated by the government’s focus on strengthening the nation’s digital roadmap, driving a wave of digital transformation across India. The convergence is opening up enormous opportunities for brands and making it imperative for marketers to create a consistent consumer journey to win brand loyalists.”

According to the new Adobe Digital Index report, Best of the Best India, which was released at the Symposium, Indian businesses with a digital mindset are reaping the rewards of their transformation. Also, the growing importance of mobile and app usage is seen to be driving organizations to invest time and resources in defining a clear mobile strategy that has the power to transform their business. It is estimated that leading companies are allocating up to 20% of their marketing budgets to mobile, globally.

Tamara Gaffney, Principal Analyst, Adobe Digital Index:

“A leading digital mindset goes way beyond having a nice website, or a new mobile app. The leaders in this space have put digital experience at the centre of how they engage with customers. Their advanced digital strategies are helping them offer a rich, compelling and consistent customer experience, so they are staying ahead of the curve and driving better business results.”

Highlights from the report

Smartphone traffic is growing in India across all industry sectors, but is experiencing the fastest growth in the Banking and Finance sector, followed by technology sector and media & entertainment.
The growth in performance and return in mobile traffic is driving increased investments to attract more leads in the marketplace.
Brands are continually striving to build an ecosystem that drives innovative and personalized online engagements as mobile optimization is transforming how consumers are fulfilling their digital needs and cutting back their overall online time.

Source: Adobe 2016 Symposium foresees huge potential for digital marketing in India

Reference: Adobe Unveils the Power of Experience-Led Business at 2016 Symposium

Image courtesy: krusecontrolinc.com

Google testing card/box style interface on desktop & mobile search results?

admin — Mon, 23 May 2016 15:23:43 +0000

Google is continuing to test a card based user interface for its search results in newer geographies. This time, the new interface is being testing on both Desktop and Mobile SERPs

The interface tests were first spotted on May 19 with desktop searches on Google Singapore. We brought this to the attention of some leading SEO blogs, including Search Engine Land, Search Engine Round Table & The SEM Post that reported the story in detail. Search results on Google India did not seem to be affected at the time – and for the next couple of days as well. However, today we have we have spotted similar tests being conducted on Google India search results pages. We’ve carried out these tests from Navi Mumbai, India and it is very likely that users in other parts of India may see very different result formats, considering the nature of such tests.

Key features of new Google search interfaces

To see how Google is displaying organic and paid ads for different query types, I have run a series of queries related to company name, product, recipe etc.

Screenshots highlighting the new formats in both mobile & desktops SERPS are given below. Some of the key highlights include:

a) Knowledge Graph also being shown the top of the search results instead of the right hand side.

Here is the screenshot of the desktop search result for company search term with a knowledge graph on top instead of right side.

A mobile search result for company search term

b) Product Listing Ads and Knowledge Graph presented in the centre well before regular organic results for a ‘recipe’ search term

A mobile search result for recipe search term

c) Product Listing ads, Local listings, Google Image Search results before regular website listings for a “product category” -type query

A mobile search result for product search term

Here is the full screen version of the company search term.

Implications for search marketers

Search marketers and publishers should expect to see some fluctuations in the traffic to their websites, even in temporarily, while Google carries out such interface tests.

While it will not be wise to panic, search marketers will be prudent to focus on the things that they can control and respond.

Source: Google testing card/box style interface on desktop & mobile search results?

- By Kiran Nagula

Kiran Nagula, Assistant Manager with Navi Mumbai digital marketing agency On Target Marketing, is a passionate search engine marketing professional with a keen interest in the dynamic world of SEO & SEM. Follow him on Twitter

Sophisticated marketers allocate almost 46% to content marketing: report

admin — Sun, 22 Nov 2015 11:11:09 +0000

Content marketing can be defined as a strategic approach of marketing, which involves creation and distribution of valuable, relevant and consistent content in order to attract and retain a defined audience and to encourage profitable response from them. Most organizations have increasingly adopted content marketing in recent times, but only a few of them have been really effective at it. Some of the world’s best marketers know how important it is to have a documented content marketing strategy and an editorial mission statement. Frequent meetings with their team and experimentation with various tactics are some of the methods that top marketers adopt in order to ensure their content marketing success. We present some of the key takeaways of the 2016 B2B Content Marketing Benchmarks, Budgets and Trends report, published by MarketingProfs in association with the Content Marketing Institute:

• Documentation of content marketing strategy, knowing what it takes for content marketing to be successful, good communication with the team, and experience are the factors that increase the effectiveness of content marketing.

• Most effective content marketers meet daily or weekly to discuss the progress of their content marketing strategy.

• Most of the sophisticated marketers allocate 46% of their marketing budget to content marketing.

• Lead generation and sales would be the most important goals for B2B content marketers over the next 12 months.

• The priority of B2B content marketers over the next one year would be to focus heavily on creating engaging content.

Most organizations use content marketing today, but –

• Only 32% of them have content marketing maturity at a sophisticated level.

• Only 30% of them claim that they are effective at content marketing.

• 40% of them have a clear understanding on what an effective or successful content marketing program looks like.

• Only 30% of them actually have a documented content marketing strategy.

• Only 28% of them have a documented editorial mission statement for their targeted audience.

• 44% of them conduct team meetings in person or virtually to discuss the progress or results of their content marketing program.

• 54% are of the opinion that these team meetings help the organization to be more effective at content marketing. Among them, 70% say that daily or weekly meetings are more valuable.

• 76 % of them have stated that they were likely to produce more content in 2016.

• 93% of them use social media as a part of their content marketing tactics, of which usage of illustrations and photos constituted 76%

• 75% of them say in-person events are effective tactics.

• 94% of them use LinkedIn to distribute content.

• 66% of them find LinkedIn effective.

• 66% of them use Search Engine Marketing to promote or distribute content.

• 55% of them consider Search Engine Marketing as effective.

• 72% of them encourage their audience to subscribe to their eNewsletters.

• 85% of them considered lead generation to be the most important content marketing goal in the next 12 months.

• 28% is the average percentage of their total marketing budget spent on content marketing.

• 51% of them are willing to increase their spending on content marketing.

• 60% of them consider producing engaging content to be among the top content marketing challenges.

Find out more about the 2016 B2B Content Marketing Trends report here.

- Excerpted by the NetMarketer Editorial Team

E-mail marketing still important channel for B2B marketers: report

admin — Sun, 22 Nov 2015 09:58:50 +0000

Buying process in the B2B segment takes longer than in the usual B2C segment. The reasons for this are typically large investments, higher stakes, and the involvement of several decision makers in B2B marketing. Most B2B marketers have been using e-mail marketing for decades, but an astounding 53% of them continue to struggle with their low click-through rates. All this and more are part of a recent report released by Dun & Bradstreet NetProspex.

The objective of this report is to understand the most challenging obstacles to the success of email marketing that B2B marketers have been encountering all this while. It also includes the insights given by many of the business, marketing, and sales professionals; most of whom are from the B2B marketing segment.

The report underlines some important findings that are elaborated below:
• E-mail marketing very important tactic for B2B marketers: Among B2B marketers, 87% consider email as one of their major tools to accumulate leads. For 60% of the respondents, increasing engagement is the most important objective of their email marketing strategy. In order to achieve this purpose, it is essential to begin a conversation with the target audience before getting them to consider the offer. Relevance of the conversation also plays an important role in email marketing.

• Improving click-through rate (CTR) is a big challenge: More than half of the respondents covered in the 2015 B2B Benchmarks survey have cited improving click-through rates as the toughest challenge of their job. None among the target audience would like to click an email that does not interest them. Knowing the audience is the first step, while having meaningful and relevant content in the email comes next. The idea is to inspire the target audience to take action with the help of effective engagement.

• Good design and well-crafted call to action are both important: The use of a great design and attractive graphics seldom cover up a poorly crafted call-to-action. Useful information or an attractive deal communicated in the most engaging and personalized way is the most effective method for increasing click-through rates. If the B2B marketers succeed in doing this, the target audience would not only click on the targeted link, but would also be grateful for the offer.

• Targeting the right audience is critical: Identifying and targeting the right audience is absolutely necessary to yield results in e-mail marketing. By working hard towards developing a clean and accurate list, B2B marketers can make a greater impact with their personalized messages and calls to action. Among the respondents of the survey, 43% feel that listing profitable segments for targeting is the most difficult methods to execute.

• CTR is most important metric: Among the survey respondents, 73% are of the opinion that click-through rates are the most effective means for measuring the performance of e-mail marketing, closely followed by conversions. Most of the marketers felt that they were very successful with email marketing as compared to the previous year.

Continuous refining of e-mail marketing strategies based on the lessons learned from previously executed campaigns is the best way for B2B marketers to expect more success in their future campaigns. A/B testing and other methods of research can help in learning what drives the reader or a visitor to click on the targeted link and get converted to a customer.

More than 70% of the B2B marketers have acknowledged that they can benefit from the expertise outside of their organization, and this is the reason why they have outsourced their email marketing programs either wholly or partly.

For more details, download the e-mail marketing trends report.

- NetMarketer Editorial Team
Image courtesey: AlwaysSports.com

‘Mobilegeddon’, Google’s ‘mobile-friendly’ algorithm hits several top sites

admin — Mon, 27 Apr 2015 02:46:02 +0000

Google’s much-talked about, and dreaded, mobile-friendly algorithm- now christened ‘Mobilegeddon’ by the SEO community- started rolling out on April 21, 2015. Unlike some of the other major algorithm updates, this one did not show any significant swings in the immediate aftermath of its roll-out. However, close to a week after its roll-out, several search ranking and visibility tracking tools are reporting that traffic to some of the world’s largest sites have been hit hard with this update.

SearchMetrics lists some of the big winners and losers in the battle for visibility in the US following the mobilegeddon update. The prominent losers include the social site Reddit, Fool.com, NBCSports.com. One of the world’s leading SEO/ inbound marketing sites, Moz.com is also reported to have been affected by this update (not officially verified). An article on TFM&A insights indicates that Wikipedia and even the BBC may have taken a hit for not being mobile friendly.

India’s leading online retailer, Flipkart.com is likely to have been impacted by this update.

Mobilegeddon is one of the rare Google algorithm updates about which Google had given a strong heads-up back in February.

These are early days yet, and the dust is yet to be fully settled on this one. Over the next few months and weeks, we can expect to see mobile traffic to websites facing some flux. Marketers, especially targeting the consumer segment, can ill-afford to ignore the mobile search segment as part of their marketing mix, as search volume via mobile devices continues to rise. In fact, 2015 is touted to be the inflexion point where mobile search will overtake desktop search.

- The NetMarketer Editorial Team

We gratefully acknowledge the image source: thecodelesstravelled.com.au

Facebook ends Bing search partnership

admin — Sun, 14 Dec 2014 22:50:14 +0000

Social media giant Facebook has put an end to its two-year partnership with Microsoft’s Bing search engine as the provider for web search results on the social network. For the short term, Facebook is limiting search results to show content from within the network. According to reports, this is to enable Facebook to focus on enhancing its user experience, though the search and social media watchers continue to speculate that Facebook is working on its own search engine to rival that of the market leader Google.

Intuitively, the decision makes a lot of sense as few people (anecdotally) seem to go to Facebook and perform searches expecting to see anything other than people’s profiles or company pages. However, considering the enormous captive user base of Facebook, a powerful web search capability might seem to offer its own opportunities.

While Facebook has maintained that it will continue its partnership with Microsoft in various other areas, we suspect the removal of Bing search from Facebook will be a greater loss for Bing than it is for Facebook.

There has been some recent ‘flux’ in the search space and realignment of existing relationships after Mozilla had announced in November that it had entered into a 5-year relationship with Yahoo to be the default search engine on the Firefox browser (default search engines in Russia and China will be Yandex and Baidu, respectively).

Google Penguin 3.0 rolled out globally

admin — Sat, 25 Oct 2014 12:41:51 +0000

If it is October, it must be time for one of the dreaded Google algorithm updates, or so it seems. Google’s dreaded Penguin algorithm update has been reportedly rolled out on Friday, October 17. It is reported that this latest update affects about 1% of search queries globally. The last Penguin update was rolled out in the early part of October 2013.

The Penguin algorithm is intended to penalise sites with poor link profiles or those deemed to be indulging in unnatural link acquisition activities. The first of the Penguin series of updates was rolled out on April 24, 2012. There was another major Penguin update on May 22, 2013 which was among the most severe ones, affecting several well-known sites. Subsequently, Google rolled out another version of this update in early October last year.

As with any algorithm update, some sites seem to benefit from it, while many others seem to get penalised. However, the buzz in the SEO industry about this latest Penguin update has been considerably muted, indicating that this update may not have been as severe as a couple of the previous updates.

The Penguin updates over the last two years has forced SEO agencies as well as natural search marketers in general to re-evaluate how and where they acquired inbound links to their websites from. Two well-accepted tactics of the past, viz. guest blogging and online press release distribution have also come under Google’s radar, with the search engine either devaluing or penalising links obtained from such sources. The question that search engine marketers face is, what really is a “good” and “natural” link? Should they even consciously try to obtain links, because as some pros say, the good links are the ones obtained without asking.

-The NetMarketer Editorial Bureau

Facebook Atlas ad serving platform relaunched, promises ‘people-based marketing’

admin — Thu, 02 Oct 2014 10:43:47 +0000

Facebook has relaunched Atlas, an ad serving platform designed to help advertisers and digital media buyers to create, buy, measure and optimise their digital campaigns. The announcement from Atlas indicates that this is a complete rebuild of the original platform to address current marketing challenges such as “reaching people across devices and bridging the gap between online impressions and offline purchases”.

The new Atlas solution will use “people-based marketing”, moving away from the use of cookies which is the prevalent method to serve and measure advertising. “Cookies don’t work on mobile, are becoming less accurate in demographic targeting and can’t easily or accurately measure the customer purchase funnel across browsers and devices or into the offline world. People-based marketing solves these problems,” writes Erik Johnson, Head of Atlas, on the Atlas blog.

Atlas Solutions is a Facebook company, after the latter acquired it from Microsoft for a reported $100 million in 2013. Not only will Atlas use data from Facebook to help advertisers with their targeting, but the data available to Facebook from different users of the Atlas platform is likely to be used by the social network to develop or customise its offerings.

The question is whether Atlas can become a viable competitor to Google’s DoubleClick solution.

- The NetMarketer Editorial Bureau

Yahoo Directory to be ‘retired’ end of 2014

admin — Mon, 29 Sep 2014 03:22:27 +0000

The Yahoo Directory, one of the earliest and most reputed online directories, is being “put to death” by Yahoo by the end of this year, according to a post by Jay Rossiter, SVP, Cloud Platform Group at the company. The announcement was rather inconspicuous, considering that this directory was at the forefront of the evolution of the Internet and how users found information. Infact, Yahoo started out as a directory and its name is the acronym for “Yet Another Hierarchical Officious Oracle”.

The Yahoo Directory had lost most of its appeal to SEO professionals over the past few years with successive algorithm updates by Google progressively devaluing links from directories, including ones like Yahoo that did have an editorial control on the quality of websites that got added to the directory. However, the annual listing fees of over $200 certainly did not seem justifiable for marketers considering both the declining link value as well as the lowering popularity and usage of Yahoo as a search engine.

There was no statement from Yahoo regarding refund of amounts for websites that have already been charged a full-year’s listing fees. We suspect that Yahoo might consider offering pro-rated online advertising credits instead of refunding the money paid by those listing in the directory.

The general directory model seems to certainly be coming to its end, with Microsoft’s bCentral directory having already been shut down several years ago. There are a couple of large directories with significant annual listing fees, such as Business.com and BOTW.com; however, it remains to be seen how long these sites can continue to operate a business model based on directory listing fees.

- The NetMarketer Editorial Bureau