Factors to get higher Page Ranks

In the past few days I have been interviewing lots of candidates from Search Marketing agencies as well as the potential candidates responsible for managing digital clients and providing Client Servicing and Account Management. Whenever I ask a question on Page Rank and what are the factors that determine higher page ranks I get different answers. I thought this post would help us to put some of those criteria's and thoughts in place.

Ranking plays such a large part in search engine optimization. Let’s look at just what affects ranking. Keep in mind, however, that different search engines use different ranking criteria, so the importance each of these elements plays will vary.



Location: Location doesn’t refer here to the location (as in the URL) of a web page. Instead, it refers to the location of key words and phrases on a web page. So, for example, if a user searches for “puppies,” some search engines will rank the results according to where on the page the word “puppies” appears. Obviously, the higher the word appears on the page, the higher the rank might be. So a web site that contains the word “puppies” in the title tag will likely appear higher than a web site that is about puppies but does not contain the word in the title tag. What this means is that a web site that’s not designed with SEO in mind will likely not rank where you would expect it to rank. The site www.puppies.com is a good example of this. In a Google search, it appears ranked fifth rather than first, potentially because it does not contain the key word in the title tag.



Frequency: The frequency with which the search term appears on the page may also affect how a page is ranked in search results. So, for example, on a page about puppies, one that uses the word five times might be ranked higher than one that uses the word only two or three times. When word frequency became a factor, some web site designers began using hidden words hundreds of times on pages, trying to artificially boost their page rankings. Most search engines now recognize this as keyword spamming and ignore or even refuse to list pages that use this technique.



Links: One of the more recent ranking factors is the type and number of links on a web page. Links that come into the site, links that lead out of the site, and links within the site are all taken into consideration. It would follow, then, that the more links you have on your page or leading to your page the higher your rank would be, right? Again, it doesn’t necessarily work that way. More accurately, the number of relevant links coming into your page, versus the number of relevant links within the page, versus the number of relevant links leading off the page will have a bearing on the rank that your page gets in the search results.



Click-throughs: One last element that might determine how your site ranks against others in a search is the number of click-throughs your site has versus click-throughs for other pages that are shown in page rankings. Because the search engine cannot monitor site traffic for every site on the Web, some monitor the number of clicks each search result receives. The rankings may then be repositioned in a future search, based on this interaction with the users.

Page ranking is a very precise science. And it differs from search engine to search engine. To create the best possible SEO for your site, it’s necessary to understand how these page rankings are made for the search engines you plan to target. Those factors can then be taken into consideration and used to your advantage when it’s time to create, change, or update the web site that you want to optimize.

Difference between WebConferencing and WebCasting

I have been using both Web conferencing as well as Webcasting for a long time now. But, sometimes when clients ask me what to use for some of thier events or a promotion of a product to a particular audience, they are confused. So I tought of putting up the comparoison and also the right usage both for Web conferencing and Web Casting. Hope you find it useful to make the decisions in the future on what to use.

Both Web conferencing and Webcasting eliminate travel costs, increase productivity, and allow people in geographically dispersed areas to meet or hear presentations in real time. They both are used for sales and marketing, communications, and online learning. Vendors in both markets continue to enrich the conferencing experience with video, search, and more user control. Sometimes this means the differences between the two conferencing tools tend to blur.

However, the two types of media conferencing have different purposes and involve different technologies for communicating information. Webcasting is a video and audio streaming presentation tool for events, while Web conferencing is a collaborative tool for interactive meetings. In five years, these technologies will converge, but this will happen only after the existing distribution and network issues are solved. In the meantime, resellers will offer both solutions as two different lines of business. If a decision seems difficult to make, the cost may be the deciding factor.

From a functionality perspective, Web Conferencing involves:

Information sharing. The presentation material typically involves slides, but spreadsheets and word processing documents are also common. The meeting leader may share the desktop or application with globally distributed participants (e.g., to demonstrate software, design products, or review creative material).

Live audio. The audio may be the traditional circuit transmission of Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN) or Voice over IP (VoIP), which sends voice data in packets using IP with the Internet as the transmission medium — but either way, full duplex audio is key to the communication process. One clear advantage of VoIP is that calls do not incur a cost beyond paying for Internet access — just as users don't pay for sending individual emails.

Real-time polling and quizzes. A presenter can get a sense of the audience's background and opinions or the quality of the experience they are having in the session through polling or asking multiple-choice questions. Web conferencing products have out-of-the-box functionality that allows polling results to be shared with participants in graphical format.

Archiving. Web conferencing products record audio and synch the recording with the slides, allowing replay from the Web server. Users can control the slide movement to hear certain sections again or skip over others.

Webcasting Delivers Live Or Taped Video Events Over The Internet:

A one-to-many stream of video and audio. High-quality video with or without data slides is central to the presentation. One difference between Webcasting and Web conferencing is the use of streamed audio and video. Since most users don't have fast enough access to download large multimedia files, the client browser or plug-in can start displaying the data before the entire file has been transmitted. Conversely, if data comes more quickly than required, the excess data is saved in a buffer. If data doesn't download quickly enough, the presentation will not be smooth.

Audiences that range from 50 to 5,000. Viewers listen and watch the live or on-demand presentation through their computer speakers. They do not expect to interact online, although in some Webcasts, they may submit questions through a chat feature.

Availability of other media and additional services. A slide presentation may accompany the video and appear in a separate panel on the participant's computer screen. Depending on the Webcaster and the functionality chosen for the event, the viewer may also see the agenda, send text questions, or move to a Web site and access other material by using navigation tabs.

Recordings. A live Webcast generally is recorded for an on-demand audience that typically is larger than the live audience, which accesses the replay at a convenient later date. Some Webcasts are produced only for on-demand access from a Web site.

Media players. Webcasting uses standard technology and software that is easily accessible or already on most computers. Participants need a media player such as QuickTime, RealPlayer, or Windows Media Player; a Web browser with an Internet connection of 56K or above; and Macromedia Flash Player.

As vendors in these two conferencing markets grow their offerings, customers must understand their specific requirements to make the best purchase decision. Here are some guidelines based on use cases. In these situations, the users want:

To see the participants when having a small group discussion. The focus on documents means that Web conferencing is most appropriate for this situation, along with Webcams mounted on participants' computers or installed in the conference room. Some vendors like Raindance Communications have the "follow me" feature — whoever is speaking appears in the video section of the screen. With Web conferencing, video quality is generally poor but viewers do get some sense of who the speaker is.

The speaker to use slides and take questions at the end. If you want to see the speaker on TV interspersed with slides and the group size is more than 50, a Webcast is most appropriate. However, if a still picture of the speaker with his/her voice over the slides will suffice, use Web conferencing instead. Both formats can incorporate text or telephone Q&A at the end and allow recorded playback. The extent of playback interactivity varies with the provider but is usually more extensive with a Webcast than with Web conferencing.

To close the sale on a new product by showing results of a study. The focus is on data with supporting visuals and discussion among a small group. Web conferencing will work well with the presenter highlighting sections of data with markup tools.

A charismatic presenter who will interact with a panel. The focus is on communicating with the participants, which suggests a Webcast. High-quality video is important if there are no slides and people are the center of the event.

To depose witnesses over the Web. When law firms conduct depositions, which are witnesses' sworn testimonies outside of court, they need high security and often good quality video. Either a Webcasting or Web conferencing provider with demonstrated strong security can provide this service. If broadcast-quality video is essential, a secure Webcaster may be the best choice.

Web Conferencing Tools

Recently while working for a client, they asked me to suggest them a Webconferencing tool and also build a strategy on how to really put the tool into the use within the organization. I started doing a lot of research on what are the tools available in the market. I am now sharing those tools we can use and also a brief synsopsis on each one of them.

Adobe Connect Pro. Adobe offers a hosted and an on-premises solution with the same host and participant experience. The product has the standard pre-meeting, in-meeting, post-meeting features, but it adds learning features. The meeting-centric product handles 100 participants, and the Web event product scales up to 1,500 participants. Adobe offers per-host, per-port (simultaneous participant), or per-minute pricing with the opportunity to prebuy blocks of minutes.

Cisco WebEx. WebEx was one of the early and most popular Web conferencing vendors, particularly for sales activities. WebEx is a hosted solution only, but Cisco has added a router add-in so that firms can keep internal conferencing traffic inside the corporate network to enhance security and save on roundtrip bandwidth. Cisco's Meeting Center can handle 500 participants, its Training Center supports 1,000 participants, and its Event module can scale to 3,000 participants. Cisco offers per-host, per-port (simultaneous participant), per-minute, or per-use pricing.

IBM LotusLive. IBM offers a hosted solution through its acquisition of WebDialogs that focuses on external meetings and Web events. The product has meeting capacity for 1,000 participants. Participants do not have a download, but the host must have a Microsoft Windows plug-in to use the application-sharing feature. The product provides the most common pre-, in-, and post-meeting features including Web touring and live video. Pricing is a per-host model.

IBM Lotus Sametime. Sametime is IBM's real-time collaboration tool kit, which includes presence, instant messaging, voice integration, video, and Web conferencing. The solution is targeted at internal meetings with support for up to 250 participants. Sametime clients are available for Windows, Macintosh, and Linux. The pricing model is per user with a perpetual license.

Microsoft Live Meeting. This hosted Web conferencing offering of Microsoft is sold through Microsoft Online Services or from partners. The solution provides pre-, in-, and post meeting features, as well as some learning features like breakout rooms, testing, and material distribution. The offering supports 1,250 participants, which allows use in small meetings, Webinars, and large events. Microsoft offers a per-user model with no charge to participants joining from outside the organization. It also has a per-minute pricing model.

Microsoft Office Communications Server. Microsoft's on-premises Web conferencing solution is part of its real-time collaboration platform. The "RC2" version of this product, when linked to the Office Communicator client, offers participant video, application-sharing, and the traditional features. While the product is typically used for internal meetings, it does allow external participants to join. The offering supports 250 participants. The pricing model is per user for internal users, though external participants can join at no cost.

Hope you find this information useful in case you are also considering to implement one Webconferencing tool in your company.

In my next blog I will now touch base on some of the strategies we should look into to make the use of Web Conferencing tool as well as the implementation within the organization successful.

Should we pay bloggers to talk about our brand?

Well, the answer is YES.

Nokia sent out there phones for the review last year and asked the bloggers to review and give their feedback. The phones got a huge response, and most of the bloggers appreciated Nokia's effort of being transparent and authentic in sharing the information with the consumers. Kmart gave some bloggers a free shopping spree in exchange for a blog post about the experience — a practice which is called sponsored conversation. With appropriate protections for disclosure and authenticity, this practice will take its place alongside public relations and advertising activities in the blogosphere. Marketers should take advantage of sponsored conversation as an entrée into the online conversation. To succeed, you should get to know the bloggers you plan to work with and set expectations across your organization.

Marketers already try to influence bloggers through public relations activity. They also pay for ads on blogs. Seen in this context, sponsored conversations are an extension of existing activities. As long as bloggers don't hide who's paying them and have freedom to write whatever they want, I think paying bloggers for the conversation about your brand will fit in well with the other forms of marketing through blogs.

Marketers buy ad space on popular blogs like TechCrunch and Huffington Post just as they would on any other site; Intel recently worked with blog ad network Federated Media to have 100% of the ads on a gaming blog created by Boing Boing's bloggers. Best Buy went further, working with Six Apart's blog network to deliver not just ad units but a sponsored question-of-the-day that inspired bloggers to respond to in their personal blogs.

Ford recently offered Jessica Smith of Jessica Knows a Ford Flex car for one year; she now blogs about her family's experience with the car and participates in Ford events. (View Source)

Why and How to Pay bloggers to start the conversations:

The blogosphere can be a powerful marketing channel — even consumer bloggers know they have more influence than their peers. That's why you should start now to recruit bloggers who will act as brand ambassadors for your brand. Working with bloggers is:

Cheap and scalable. Kmart worked with Izea, a company that manages the process of reaching out to bloggers for paid conversation. The payment to each blogger was only $500 in shopping credit.

Far-reaching. The number of people reading blogs alone has grown by 50% in the past year and now one in three Indians online are doing so at least once a month.

Great for search engine optimization. Because blogs generate links and change frequently, they rank high in organic search results.

Persuasive. Blogs represent relationships with communities of readers. Through blogs, marketers can listen to, talk to, energize, and support potential fans and new customers.

How To Do Paid Conversations Effectively

The rewards of paid conversations are promising, but there are risks as well, including brand backlash if you conceal your relationship with bloggers. To participate effectively:

Mandate disclosure. Require that any sponsored content includes disclosure of the paid sponsorship and that any sponsorship network you work with has similar requirements.

Ensure freedom of authenticity. It's tough to let go, but it's best to let bloggers you work with write whatever they feel is appropriate, rather than trying to coerce them to write positively about your brand.

Partner with popular blogs that are relevant to your brand. Relevance and context are the keys to working with bloggers. Behind every blogger there is a person, and each person is different. Some will work with marketers, and some won't. Some are personal, and some are professional.

Don't talk and then walk away. Your relationships with bloggers should be a long-term commitment used to listen to feedback to help improve marketing in other channels such as advertising, public relations, merchandizing, and CRM.

Moving to CRM 2.0

Many organizations these days are overwhelmed with this new phenomenon: The Social Media. The Social Media which I call as Web 2.0, includes fast-growing peer-to-peer (P2P) activities like blogging, RSS, file sharing, open source software, podcasting, search engines, and user-generated content.Out of the total 50 Million Online user base — 82% of users come from the Urban Cities and out of those 81% now read blogs at least monthly, and 73% are members of a social networking site like Orkut, Facebook or LinkedIn. (Reference)

Even more amazingly, almost one-third of all youth publish a blog at least weekly, and 41% of youth visit a social networking site daily. These new technology and social changes are transforming the way all businesses operate, create products, and relate to customers.

Web 2.0 changes the game for your CRM strategy too — big time! CRM strategies are moving beyond their traditional goal of optimizing a two-way relationship between an enterprise and customer to include the simultaneous relationships that customers have among themselves. Including social networks changes the definition of CRM from the stale exchange of data to a live, vibrant network of connected individuals who share their abilities, expertise, and interests.

So, in this new world Web 2.0 your company will be able to:

Collaborate with Customers and Partners in new ways

This will result in genuine business relationships form, and the external perception of an organization changes from sterile and faceless to a collection of individuals who are ready to help

Collaborate within the enterprise to deliver more value

Online networks with even basic profiles of its individual members' experiences, locations, and interests can cut problem-solving time by enabling faster connection between a questioner and a person who has solved similar problems in the past. An internal social networking capability can also help the individuals responsible for creating relationships with customers to pull together the "right" team of individuals who will resonate with the prospect at a personal level.

What I am now describing are the new methods or new CRM landscape which all the marketers should definitely learn to navigate with.

1. Power up market research with "listening" capabilities.

Traditional: Engaging with customers begins with understanding their needs and goals, behaviors, and their value to the enterprise. This activity has traditionally been the domain of market research.

CRM 2.0: But if you redefine the role of market research to include the capabilities for actively "listening" in the Social Computing context, then you should establish customer sounding boards for researching decisions. You can monitor market buzz and measure ongoing trends and customer perceptions using solutions from BuzzMetrics and Cymfony (a division of TNS Media Intelligence).

2. Make marketing more relevant with "talking" capabilities.

Traditional: The traditional role of marketing is to support outbound communication to prospects and customers to raise awareness for products and services and establish favorable attitudes towards your brand.

CRM 2.0: However, marketing in the world of CRM 2.0 must establish a dialogue between sellers and buyers. This means developing capabilities to have conversations with your customers. Use interactive dialogue and help your brand fans spread your message more easily through social networks like Twitter and Facebook. Establish the ability to communicate continually with customers and monitor responses using blogs.

3. Boost selling with "energizing" capabilities.

Traditional: Old-school CRM thinking defines the role of sales primarily as carrying out the tasks of identifying decision-makers, making contact, and securing orders.

CRM 2.0: Next-generation CRM thinking consider the use of customer opinions to increase sales through ratings and reviews using discussion forums. Learn how to designate lead customers to energize others through brand ambassador programs. Link with and gain introductions to influential customer network members by using business-oriented social networking and contact management solutions like Linkedin and Plaxo.

4. Strengthen service with "supporting" capabilities.

Traditional: In conventional world we support users by addressing there problems and issues through different mediums like Telecon or Videoconferencing and remote access. Sometimes our support people need to personally visit the customers to resolve there issues.

CRM 2.0: In the new world of the social and connected customer, help customers to support each other. To enable customers to solve each others' problems, consider solutions that support customer forums. To enable customers to build solutions together, think about using Wikis like Confluence, Socialtext, and Wikia.

Customers who are using social technologies to seek better experiences threaten to make traditional approaches to CRM obsolete. For the most part, enterprises understand that there's no choice but to jump in and improve how they architect a differentiated customer experience and use some of the new technologies — blogs, communities, wikis, widgets, social networks, and the concepts of dynamic applications — to their own advantage. The most important question is not what technology to use; most important is determining who you're trying to reach, what you're trying to accomplish, and how you plan to change your relationships with your customers.

Hope you found my blog post useful. If you have any comments or queries do mention the same below and I would try to answer the same as soon as possible.

How to improve your B2B site experience

Tomorrow I need to go to a B2B client to present them a strategy for improving there B2B website. While doing a complete plan which includes Strategy, Web Designing, Content Strategy and Social Media I thought i'll update it in my blog as a summary of my whole analysis.

B2B site owners need a shift in mindset to turn their underperforming sites into business assets. To initiate these changes:

Start with a frank assessment of your current online and offline capabilities. To know which steps of site improvement will require the most work, start by looking at what you already have. Examine your service, communication, and product divisions and ask yourself, "How customer-centric are we? What are our strengths? What are our weaknesses?" Documenting these starting points will help you identify where you will need to seek outside help versus which aspects of Scenario Design, usability, and branding you can manage in-house.

Define clear business goals for the site. Web sites can contribute different kinds of value to your business. But if you don't know which goals are most important, you won't know how to prioritize one set of user goals over another. Set clear goals for the site — whether driving revenue, reducing service costs, or attracting new customers. If different business goals apply to drastically different user groups, ask yourself whether they can be served on the same site or if a separate site or sitelet is warranted.

Test your site against real user goals. To ensure that you have all of the right tools users need to accomplish their goals, break user tasks into their component pieces and underlying motivations. Then, conduct an expert review. Site owners should review their sites on a regular basis to ensure that task paths remain clear of clutter.

Set a strategic development plan. Sites won't go from mediocre to great in one fell swoop — nor will your site stop needing care and feeding over time. To ensure that site development projects continue to advance, be sure your plan includes milestones and measurement metrics. Metrics should cover both user goals like task completion and satisfaction feedback, as well as business goals like conversion rates, revenue increases, and service cost reductions.

Online Display Advertising: Cost Based Models

Whenever I am having a meeting with the clients and present a media plan based on impression / conversion they often wonder what I mean by CPM. Clients also ask me that they have heard a lot on being Online Medium as totally measurable and ROI driven but wonder how do we really make that happen. They sometimes are so ignorant that they even ask me to suggest what will work best with different models that are available. To answer all those queries I thought of mentioning it in my blog and refer them to the same in case they ask me on this sometime again.

Evaluating display ad campaigns on a cost basis allows marketers to track the efficiency of the channel and begin some simple comparisons, such as comparing banner ads and search on their "cost per click" (CPC) or even television and banners on "cost per unique viewer."

CPM (cost per thousand impressions) has been popular since the start of online advertising. CPM remains one of the most popular cost metrics used, though these days it's rarely the only metric employed for a campaign. It allows simple comparisons between campaigns and future opportunities (many publishers use this on their public rate cards).For example, even if marketers pay for a campaign on a cost-per-click basis, they can get reporting on total impressions and simply divide their total spend by impressions and multiply by 1,000, thereby generating a similar metric across differing campaigns. Nonmarketers such as CEOs or CTOs can often more easily relate to this type of measure than to online-specific metrics, such as time spent interacting with an ad, that are less directly related to costs.

CPC is a very popular metric for marketers trying to drive direct action from an advert. More than 65% of database marketers in a recent survey say they use response rates as a key metric. However, it can also lead to advertisers paying for many clicks that are not from the target audience, such as clicks by mistake or invalid clicks from Web crawlers, and even expose them to click fraud. As a marketer, using your own ad serving tool for measuring clicks (and visitors) can help establish a standard measure, rather than trying to compare metrics from a variety of tools for each campaign.

CPV (cost per visitor) gives insight to Web site owners. CPV is where advertisers pay publishers based on how many viewers of display ads then actually visit the advertiser's Web site. These metrics are most useful for advertisers aiming at driving further interaction from consumers, rather than general brand awareness or attitude, and of course take no account of what the visitors do when they get to the Web site; they could, for example, leave immediately once they arrive on the landing page.

Some marketers now impose stricter rules on what counts as a "visit" (which is sometimes still called a "click"), such as "visitors spend at least 3 seconds on the landing page," to get over some of these problems.

CPA (cost per acquisition/conversion) gives a metric comparable across channels. CPA metrics allow marketers to measure success based on customers acquired through a campaign. Of course, "acquired" may have different meanings for different marketers: For a retailer it may simply mean a site visitor or someone who puts goods in the shop's online basket or perhaps only those who actually buy.

For brand marketers, it may be measuring those who click through to a certain area on a Web site, those who sign up for an email newsletter, or those who take some other type of direct response activity via the ad landing page like asking for more information on debt management, for example. Google has heavily promoted this as a metric, with CPA management tools included in its AdWords product and within the affiliate network (previously known as DoubleClick Performics Affiliate). Introducing some type of "quality" measurement within the definition of acquisition — so, for example, only counting those email subscribers who remain subscribers for three months — helps marketers assess success on a more valuable scale than simply volume.

CPE (cost per engagement) is emerging as a metric. CPE is a newer ad model whereby advertising is offered free, with advertisers paying only when viewers actually engage with the ad itself (thus differing from CPA, which looks at consumer activity post exposure). "Engagement" can be defined in a number of ways, such as completing a survey within the ad, entering a competition, or watching a certain amount of video. Online video ad providers pioneered this payment system in 2008.

This method is seen to push back more responsibility for ad performance onto the ad creative than other methods such as CPC, which were thought to place the bulk of the burden of performance onto the publisher. It is also a way of measuring interaction with newer types of creative — such as video ads or ads with product comparison tools within them — that may drive significant interaction but not actually click-throughs. However, as "engagement" means something different for every marketer, such metrics are not comparable across campaigns even for the same marketer, limiting their value.