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.

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 |

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

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

What impact has the frequent “flux” with organic search traffic (SEO traffic) had on your traffic? How do you keep your website immune to the vagaries of Google algorithm updates?

Plancess website is quoted often by several third-party vendors and affiliates due to the authentic and genuine information it provides. In fact, Plancess was the eLearning website listed by the top career portals on the day of JEE Main 2015 for providing answer keys, text/video solutions and paper analysis.

How important is mobile traffic to you now (and going forward)?
[VT]: Nearly 45% of our website traffic is via mobile and tablet devices- thats close to 10000 visitors on a daily basis! We expect mobile traffic to go further up as we recognize this global trend. So, we have made PlancessJEE.com mobile-compatible / responsive- easy to read and interact on any screen-size and interface.

To enhance the user experience to the fullest, not only have we optimized our website for mobile devices, we also look into the browser and technology being used. Based on a deep understanding of our users and their usage patterns including operating systems, screen resolutions and several other variables, we have identified the exact pain points of users when using our website. We use this understanding to prioritize fixes and enhancements that can help users get the most from the website.

Please describe in more detail how you analyse user behaviour.
[VT]: We do this with A/B testing or multi-variate testing (MVT) using various tools. We look at heat map analysis and in-page analytics to give a leading indicator of what changes would work best. We implement the “challenger-champion” approach. Any new development is first introduced as a challenger to a certain section of the audience- and if the value addition to business as well as user experience via the challenger is more than our champion, only then we make the necessary changes through out. This way, the bulk of our traffic is always having the best experience out there.

Looking ahead, what is your mobile strategy going forward?
[VT]: Going forward, we’re building more products with a mobile-first mindset such that the product itself is designed in a way that can be engaging for mobile users. This is in-line with the overall strategy at Plancess to keep useful content front and centre of our offering. We aim to provide
the best intellectual experience, rather than having a mobile app without top-notch content.

In this regard, we’re building a module based eLearning approach via an Android/iOS application, and an assessment platform to complement the user learning. Further, we’ve identified some really amazing indicators of tracking user behaviour on this mobile app – which is not only customized for the right technology, but will also serve as a personal dashboard. It will provide a completely unique experience for every individual using the app and help them derive genuine value out of the product. We’re going to launch these within the next few months.

What advice would you give to start-ups in relation to quickly scaling up traffic acquisition?
[VT]: Digital marketing is not as easy as it seems to be- and it is not because of the tools that it is based on, but because of whom the marketing is subjected to. At Plancess, we believe that our users are not only intelligent and motivated, but also extremely dynamic. They can judge right from wrong- and are increasingly connected. Best quality content and user experience are critical. A happy customer is worth a lot more in today’s world. I would suggest the following do’s and don’ts for marketers trying to scale up traffic acquisition.

Do
a. Build content – original and authentic information
b. Offer great user experience – customer-centric as opposed to product-centric
c. Provide pre-sales and post-sales service- small gestures go a long way
d. Look for and develop referral/social traffic

Don’t
a. Engage in Black-hat marketing – be it with SEO or making false-claims, etc.
b. Focus on short term gain at the cost of long-term relationship with users – they’ll know (as will Google!)
c. Lead with a sales-driven approach instead of user value addition (counsellor approach)

What are the major challenges you face currently in relation to your online marketing efforts?
[VT]: – Finding new channels that can perform as well as our existing channels
– Going on a commission per sale as against to commission per lead with our affiliate partners
– Reaching newer audiences/ geographies: bulk of our website traffic is from tier 1/tier 2 cities but we really need to penetrate the interiors of the country to become a household name for students preparing for JEE.
– Online merchandising – many of our users still don’t have access to online banking and hence depend on parents. Hence a lot of sales have to be closed offline (COD) as against completing the transaction online.

How do you see online marketing evolve in the next couple of years?
[VT]: With growing Internet penetration, online marketing will undoubtedly provide the vital interface for firms to their target customers. Also, the growth in mobile phone usage enables easier reach to users. From a user perspective, access to information will become much easier and convenient. Users will be more informed, mobile and self-aware.

From a marketing perspective, it is the time for customer centricity overshadowing product centricity. In the eLearning realm, with most academic resources being available online, education is going to become a hot space with companies fighting for large ‘traffic-share’ instead of just having a strong ‘market-share’.

Recognising this, we are betting on providing the best content rather than the best technology – because in the long run, the value that users derive from our product will be the key differentiator critical to our success.

In the first of a two-part article featuring edited excerpts from the interview, Vaibhav attributes their success to a strong content-driven strategy. He also feels that search marketing is still a need-to-have avenue, when compared with social or display advertising that seem to be more of ‘good-to-have’ avenues. Vaibhav also has a slightly contrarian view on the growth/ effectiveness of online display advertising.

What have been the most effective strategies you have employed to grow the traffic to your website? Why do you think they have been effective?
[Vaibhav Tamrakar]: Plancess has always been a content driven company- and we strongly believe in the notion that content is king! We believe we have the best quality content in our preparation material, carefully crafted by our team of in-house experts and Top 100 IITians, whom we call our “Gurus”.

As part of our content strategy, we launched JEE Mag- a blog generated in-house- that serves as a one-stop portal for all news related to JEE, preparation techniques, tips-n-hacks from our Gurus and any other query that a student might have. We continuously strive to put the best resources on our website that have helped thousands of students realize their dreams.

Our sustained efforts at translating students’ dreams to reality have also helped us achieve our own goals. Today, hundreds of thousands of JEE aspirants flock to our website. We hope to keep them engaged with the quality of our content and the latest information pertaining to engineering.

What’s your take on the relative effectiveness of search marketing (both organic and paid-for) when compared social media marketing, other display advertising and offline marketing?
[VT]: Social media marketing: I believe Social is a ‘good-to-have’ platform, from a customer engagement perspective, and to give a potential touch point in case the user has some product related query, or is looking for some information. From a brand recognition perspective, it makes sense to be present where our users spend a lot of their time so that the brand gives an impression that we’re there when you need us.

At the same time, it is not a mission critical platform– i.e. if the social media page is not very active, it doesn’t mean the brand is not doing well. It might well be doing wonders with the product, and yet not really be up-to-date on social.

Search, on the other hand, is a vital ‘need-to-have’ platform. The user is becoming increasingly Internet-savvy. They cannot be coerced to view only one brand- and more often than not, are comparing various offerings via the Internet. Being strategically present there as a brand becomes really important.

Display advertising: A few years ago, display advertising was a really good mechanism to bring to the user product-centric marketing by displaying the best product offering from a company. Users did not actively check out brands on the Internet- and mostly used it as an information portal.

However, as the Internet has blended in with users’ lives, coupled with screen size getting smaller and smaller (read mobile/wearable devices), display advertising is losing its charm. Moreover, as the websites are themselves trying to provide the best UX to users, a lot of advertising gets unnoticed (‘banner blindness’).

On the other hand, search is not just ‘static SEO’ anymore due to personalisation of search results and a host of other factors. As a result, the ads/search experience is heavily customised to what the user wants. Consequently, these targeted search ads tend to yield much better conversion rates compared to display advertising.

Offline marketing: With increased Internet penetration and the proliferation of portable Internet devices- users tend to be always online. The amount of attention to billboards, banners/posters (outdoor advertising) gets has been reduced to minimal.

In fact, the millennials and the generation Z have pretty much taken over from the baby boomers and generation X. This generation likes the flavour of open space, free information and being connected to each other. Hence static marketing like print media/ TV commercials largely go unnoticed when compared to referral, social and online behaviour. Only brands that have a universal appeal – catering to a very diverse range of markets – across cultures, language, ages barrier – look towards these channels owing to their non-targeted approach. And of course, it is quite difficult to monitor ROI from these channels.

- See part 2: Customer-centric marketing, great user experience are key

See more news, views and tips on Search Engine Marketing, Display Advertising and Social Media Marketing, with an Indian context.

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).

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

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