Why people love SEO
Google suggests webmasters to invest in SEO and also provides a SEO starter guide. But hey, that’s not the only reason why people love SEO. There’re many, many of them. Let’s walk through some:

SEO helps your customers find you easily
The basic and probably the most important benefit of SEO is that it helps increase the findability of a site on search engines. States suggest that over 91% of the internet users rely on search engines for the information they need. SEO helps give them the most relevant answers to their questions.

SEO helps you gain predominance in your niche
If you’re ranking high on most of the highly-searched keywords in your industry, then your business thrives at an even better rate. It works like this: suppose you want to have a burger, the first name to strike your mind would quite possibly be McDonald’s. Similarly when you think of online shopping, it’s Amazon. That’s because brands such as Amazon and McDonald’s have made themselves ubiquitous in their niche, leaving a lasting impression on our mind.

SEO rocks for you when the tide is low
Word for WP is a good example here. It’s the only copywriting firm that’s dedicated to WordPress, but unfortunately it’s not invested in SEO and hence doesn’t rank organically on any revenue-generating keyword – a great opportunity lost.

SEO is often better than paid advertising
While both SEO and PPC are important for a successful online marketing campaign, SEO often eclipses PPC when it comes to small businesses. Though it’s difficult to rank high on generally-searched keywords for such businesses, they can leverage options such as local SEO and geo-targeted keywords.

SEO is a crucial part of the emerging trend – inbound marketing
We all are gradually moving toward inbound marketing. At ResultFirst, we love calling ourselves SEOs still but this new trend is seemingly making a lot of sense. Aside from search, which is its pivotal part, inbound marketing includes all free-traffic driving sources such as email, content, PR, social etc.

Unfortunately, some people still despise SEO!
Especially content marketers, designers and people who’ve unfortunately come across black-hat SEOs. A few bad eggs in our industry have tainted its image bad by manipulating rankings, using an endless list of dodgy practices and ending up everything in chaos. There’re a hell lot of sites duped. There’re sites penalized, too. But all this should (and must) not stop people taking an SEO service. Rather, they should be cautious enough to zero in on the right firm.

What’re your thoughts on search engine optimization? Let’s know in the comments.

Use Google Webmaster tool for your own sake

Your first step after getting attacked by Google Panda or Penguin should ideally be to use webmaster tools for getting the exact picture of what Google thinks about your site. If the notice by Google reads ambiguous and unclear, you can always go to Google’s webmaster SEO forum for more advice. It’s important to know what to fix before taking any course of action.

 Make your content compelling and sharable enough

After Google Panda, your content should be compelling enough that its readers get bound to share it on their social networks. Content should now be that king who is much talked about and has good number of admirers or followers – or else content is the king of less significance to Google.

Moreover, flush out those rank-claiming content sins. Thin content, which includes heavy template footprint, content farms, duplicate content, empty content pages and high ad rate to content, should be completely avoided. And keep in mind that everything you write should have its own value so that the chances of your write-ups getting popular can increase. Therefore, avoid re-written content, which doesn’t give value, as well.

Start building a community and make the best of Google Plus authorship

Yes, in the pre-Panda world, Google didn’t care about your social signals (Matt Cutts even confirmed it in an interview in the mid of 2010). But soon after Panda came into existence, this changed. (In fact, in December 2010 Google started claiming that it uses social signals as a factor in ranking a site, but this became more prominent and robust after Panda.)

Your social strategy should now not be limited to community building. It should also be about getting the best from associating your name to your content, so you not only get headshots in search results but also higher rankings. You can read more about Google+ authorship here.

Reduce the bounce rate

Targeting the pages with high bounce rates, you can enhance the quality of your site. Edit the content of such pages, or change/remove it completely in case it comes under the content sins we have already mentioned. Adding a suggestion fly-box – clicking on which would redirect the reader to another post/page from your blog/site – on that page would also be of good help.

Go mobile

Wondering how would this help you? If yes, then you’re missing out on the fact that your website visitors come from mobiles, tablets and phablets as well. In order to ensure that these visitors have a wonderful experience of your site you should either make a separate mobile site or responsive site. Doing this will also increase your direct traffic diversity, another significant post-Panda ranking factor. Google itself recommends all of us to go mobile, too.

Stop listening to spammers

“Penguin? We can fix it in as less as $50.” If you really think they can, then only the vultures will fly on your site, only to bid its culmination. Always remember that neither Panda, nor Penguin has a quick fix. They can be fixed, but only gradually and with consistent efforts. Attempt to first fix the things Google finds spammy in your site. It might have problems with some of your links, your content, some of your optimization techniques etc.

Make your site look as natural as it could

Because this is what ultimately Google wants – no spam, no manipulations! And we’re not talking about the facade of your site here, because Google’s artificial intelligence is smart enough to detect your manipulative ways – if not today, might be tomorrow! So, instead of building 1000s of spammy links, focus on quality, hard-earned and, of course, relevant links. Instead of creating unnecessary pages in your site, make sure that the content of your existing pages is wondrous enough to convert visitors into customers. Instead of putting all your eggs in one basket, focus on diversity.

Simply put, don’t waste your life in finding the loopholes in Google’s algorithm; just abide by its guidelines and get the most out of your SEO efforts.

Conclusion

The questions, as well as dissenting comments, are welcome. Share with us how you responded to Panda, Penguin or Google’s manual webspam warning.

Comments

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San Jose, CA, 14 March 2013: ResultFirst, one of the fastest growing companies in the web services segment is in the news yet again. But this time, the news is neither about the company being placed at the top of the industry ranking charts, nor about its expansion to the lesser explored business territories of the world. This time, ResultFirst is creating waves in the online business world with the addition of Online Reputation Management program to its already comprehensive portfolio of services.

At a recently held press meet, the director of the company, Ruchi Pardal, made the formal announcement about the addition and shed some light on what the company hopes to achieve with this new program.

This is what she had to say – “In less than five years, we have transformed from being a small business unit of Tangence Inc. to one of the most sought-after names in the web services segment. Of course, prior to the addition of ORM program, we offered almost every service a business may need to make the most from the web; however, we didn’t have any schematic approach to enhance and restore their online reputation which obviously plays a pivotal role in their success.”

“So, here we are with exactly what was lacking. Our Online Reputation Management program comprises together numerous methodologies and tactics that can restore and enhance the brand image of a business in the online market. Whether an organization is losing business due to negative online reviews or a website broadcasting some misinformation about it is ranking high on web search results, we can now help our client dealing with all such scenarios.”

Though it would be a bit premature to comment on whether the company’s ORM service would follow the success suite of its SEO and SEM services, but at the same time, it would be safe to say that the addition has most certainly broadened the target market for ResultFirst. With two new recently opened regional offices and now this addition, the company is steadily treading on the pathway to expansion.

About

ResultFirst, pioneers of the much coveted Pay for Performance Search Engine Optimization, offers various web marketing services aimed at helping businesses create a predominant presence in their segment by leveraging the web. Now, with Online Reputation Management also on its portfolio of services, the company has carved a unique niche for itself in the web services industry. Headquartered in San Jose California, ResultFirst leverages two execution centers located in India to deliver a rare combination of unmatched value for money and laudable competence.

So how can you make sure that your ecommerce store doesn’t become a needle in the ecommerce-stack and even the ever-evolving search engines embrace it?

How can you improve your ecommerce store’s shopping experience in such a scenario?

Here I’ve discussed three key areas that you must consider – sooner than later.

1. Though Online Shoppers Are Scanners, Content Drives Them Still!

Content, otherwise king, is unfortunately one of the most overlooked things in an ecommerce website. Many estores try to keep things very precise. Giving all the importance to pricing and images results issues like:

• Less content
• No video content
• Content copied from the manufacturer’s site
• A partial amount of same content on many pages

Let’s take them one by one. Less content is the category in which you only provide graphics, title and a mole hill-like description. This is bad for your ecommerce store on two fronts: a) you can’t make your customers stay longer on your page; b) you can’t convince them to buy your products. Adding a video, however, takes care of both these things: According to a report by Tippingpoint Labs, watching a product video can influence the decision of as much as 84% of the buyers, and when engaged with a video, they stay 2 minutes longer at average than they would otherwise.

Adding a product video can help you get more organic traffic, too.

While product videos are great, both for user experience and SEO, they can’t possibly predominate and eclipse the importance of unique, compelling content on each page. As the usability guru, Jakob Nielsen eloquently put it:

“The key downside of e-commerce is that users cannot touch, feel, see, taste, or smell the offerings. Nor do customers benefit from the essential credibility boost of having the purchase in hand before paying the price. That is, there’s no tactile experience. Online shopping is purely an information experience. (Or user experience, as we like to say.) This again places a huge premium on good content. And many sites fail to deliver.”

So to give your customers a wholesome experience, you must strive to:

• Build confidence, trust and credibility through your content,
• Never ever hide your store policies and contact information,
• Make sure that you never misinform or provide incomplete information to your customers,
• Tell them all they would like to know about a product.

Copying the copy of iPhone 5 from Apple’s site, however, is something you don’t want to do to attract your customers. This won’t lead you anywhere and would rather incur the wrath of Google Panda. Google has always been pretty serious about scraped content and also recommends you to avoid “having duplicate or near-duplicate versions of your content across your site”.

SEO Tips to Minimize Content Issues: 

• Use robot.txt to block the duplicate content generating areas like archives
• Use noindex meta tag for the pages that you don’t think should be indexed and provide much value
• Use canonical tag to guide search engines about the pages you want to give importance to.
• Use rel=”next”, rel=”prev” and “view all” attributes to take care of pagination.

2. Enough Is Enough – Evolve Your Store with the Ever-Evolving Search Engines

Rich Snippets Make Shoppers Click

It’s been long since Google announced rich snippets for shopping sites, but not many are able to make the best use of them – some, unfortunately, aren’t using them at all. In shopping sites, rich snippets can be used them for products and their reviews. How to be eligible for rich snippets, you ask? You need to mark up your store’s pages in one of these formats: Microdata (recommended), Microformats or RDFa. Google helps you test them.

Best Practices:

• Make sure you don’t mark up incorrectly or manipulatively.
• Content is vital here as well. It must be original and updated.
• Make the summary of your Web page (in its mark-up) useful for users – and of course relevant to what the page is about.
• Never ever miss out on collecting the reviews of your customers. It’s great for generating unique content and keeps search engines coming back. It also helps you give online shoppers what they want. (More than 60% of online shoppers look for reviews before making a purchase.)

Examples:

3. The Future is Mobile

Mobile is on a bull run and is indisputably the future. And we all have been experiencing it firsthand. The desktop-only days are long gone. Mobile commerce saw an alarming 81% rise in 2012, according to eMarketer. By 2016, mobile devices would account up to 24% of total ecommerce sales, estimates the research.

But how to go about it? Talking about mobile, you can zero in on these mobile design strategies: Responsive design and separate mobile site.

Though not many ecommerce sites seem to be favoring responsive Web design, a burning trend nowadays, the folks at Electric Pulp recently ran a test on O’Neill Clothing, a Magento-based online store, and witnessed a whopping 407.32% increase in its conversions from Android devices and 65.71% from iPhones/iPads. That’s huge, right?

What does Google have to say about responsive design?

“Google recommends webmasters follow the industry best practice of using responsive web design, namely serving the same HTML for all devices and using only CSS media queries to decide the rendering on each device.”

Responsive design, however, is not as good as a separate mobile site for an online store, unless its implementation is carefully done and performance issues are intelligently looked after. And let’s face it: Responsive design might be the Holy Grail for many, but it can’t eclipse the way a separate mobile site deals with the large amount of user interactions that’s inherent to an ecommerce site. Amazon, eBay and Walmart, all use the separate mobile site strategy.

Google understands that responsive design is not the be all and end all:

“If responsive design is not the best option to serve your users, Google supports having your content being served using different HTML. The different HTML can be on the same URL or on different URLs, and Googlebot can handle both setups appropriately if you follow our recommendations.”

Then, of course, there is mobile app strategy that helps you provide even better shopping experience and where you can choose among native, web and hybrid approaches. Mobile apps, especially native ones, are very expensive, so going for one for your ecommerce store makes sense only when you know that you can cover up with a great ROI. Many ecommerce players, including Amazon, eBay and Walmart, are leveraging both mobile app and mobile design strategies.

Mobile SEO Tips:

• First things first, make sure search engines, especially Google, have indexed your separate mobile site and are showing it to mobile searchers in SERPs.
• Redirect mobile users to the mobile version – but at the same time give your users an option to visit your desktop site (preferably in the footer), as Yahoo does in its mobile site.

• Use consistent URLs with m domain. For example, if you are using store-name.com/shoes/puma for your desktop site, use m.store-name.com/shoes/puma or store-name.com/m/shoes/puma.
• Keep in mind that mobile browsers take a second or two in redirecting your customers to your mobile-friendly site. So make sure your site is not too heavy and its loading speed is fast as hell. This won’t only help in SEO but also in increasing your sales. (A WSJ article revealed that Amazon enjoys 1% increase in its sales by reducing every 100 milliseconds from its loading speed.)
• Use rel=”alternate” and rel=”canonical” attributes.

Wrapping Up

It’s time for action, ecommerce ladies and gentlemen. So are you ready to give your customers a better-than-ever shopping experience? Ready to optimize your online store on the three most important fronts: content, search and mobile?

Regardless of whether you need items of daily use such as groceries or need to buy a new property, the internet can most certainly help you meet the need, saving you from all the troubles associated with going the conventional route.

To tap the potential of the online market, the primary requisite for the businesses is to make sure that their websites are ranking on the leading pages of top web search engines such as Google, Yahoo, and the like. This is particularly important as almost every internet user relies on web search engines to find whatever it might be that they are looking for.

For enhancing the rankings of their websites on web search engines, businesses can resort to Search Engine Optimization, a set of methodologies comprising various on-page as well as off-page activities, all aimed at heightening the ranks of websites on Search Engine Result Pages (SERPs). With enhanced rankings, businesses can certainly expect better exposure to their target audiences.

Additionally, the businesses looking to market their solutions can also opt for specialized Search Engine Management Services. Allowing you to place your ads on web search results, this form of business promotion promises great return on your investment. Hence, if you are looking for a solution that promises high ROI and facilitates branding management, SEM is what you need.

With the right blend of SEM and SEO services, you can definitely make your business gain a predominant presence in the online market and expand its horizons. Hence, if you wish for your business to bloom and become an undisputed leader in the segment, you should start looking for the top ranked SEO companies also offering specialized SEM services.

For this, you need the assistance of a company that specializes in Search Engine Optimization. The experts of the company will study your website, select the most competitive keywords for your business, and initiate the optimization process. After your website is optimized for the target keywords, the rankings of your website will begin to rise on web search engines, such as Google, MSN, Yahoo and Bing.

To ensure you opt for the best local SEO service, you need to contact one of the leading Search Engine Optimization companies. If you choose just another SEO company, you would actually risk your web rankings and brand popularity. A novice company may not have the right idea to optimize your keywords and website as such firms may resort to unethical techniques that may get your website penalized by the search engines.

On the other hand, a competent company relying only on white-hat SEO technique will actually promote your website and bringing it to the top of the search charts. After availing the local SEO service, you will notice your website ranking considerably increasing in Google, Yahoo, MSN and Bing SERPs. This will greatly help you in expanding your client base as larger number of target customers will be able to discover and visit your website, explore your offerings, and may even take up your service or buy the products you are offering.

To sum up, local SEO will bring your website and brand to the forefront in your segment!

Why so much fuss?

Google attracts about 90 million unique visitors from all around the world, making it exceptionally important for businesses to have a high rank on the searches pertaining to their industry. Regardless of the segment we talk about, every notable business hopes to achieve better ranks on Google’s search results, and makes a substantial investment to get its website optimized for the search engine by employing a Search Engine Optimization firm.

How is it affecting Online Businesses?

The recent update has taken the online market as well as the SEO industry by storm, as the new update has already started penalizing the websites optimized using spamming or any other black-hat technique used for website optimization. On one hand, the websites optimized using black hat techniques are losing their search rankings; on the other, various website are being banned by the search provider for using unethical search optimization techniques for enhanced search rankings.

What about ethical Optimization?

Much to the delight of the webmasters, the sites optimized using unique and captivating content are being notably rewarded. The websites are not only ranking higher on web searches; the relevance of the traffic received by the websites has also improved. This in turn is resulting in enhanced conversion rate and thus, greater efficiency. Perhaps this explains the sudden rise in the demand of competent search optimizers capable of enhancing website rankings through white-hat techniques.

To encapsulate, it is safe to say that with the Penguin Update in place, even though the axe has fallen heavily on the business websites optimized relying on unethical SEO techniques, the ones optimized through ethical SEO techniques are being finally being rewarded by the search giant.

In the present era, millions of us access the internet through our mobile devices and have the power to access an ever-increasing reservoir of websites. Considering the rate at which people are turning to internet enabled mobile devices, it has becomes extremely important for every webmaster to ensure that their website is mobile-friendly unless they wish to get left behind their competitors.

With the launch of GoMo, Google has once again substantiated its position of the industry leader. GoMo is an aimed at helping businesses “Go Mobile” by providing them with the tools and resources they may need to make their websites mobile-friendly. On the website, webmasters can preview their sites look on a mobile device using the GoMo Meter, and get personalized recommendations for building a more mobile-friendly website for their visitors. Furthermore, the site also offers a list of developers to help companies mobilize their sites, if they do not have an in-house developer.

Considering that most internet users are hooked to their internet enabled mobile devices when they are not using their computer, it is safe to say that this rollout by Google will surely have an impact on the business opting for it as it will enhance the connectivity between their online facts and target customers. Hence, the companies opting to mobilize their website using GoMo are sure to witness a surge in their website traffic as well as their brand image. And with a wider audience to cater, the businesses can certainly expect to see a notable rise in their clientele as well as overall revenue.

To encapsulate, it is safe to say that by using Google’s GoMo to mobilize their websites, businesses can ensure that they are ready to make the most out of the ongoing mobile internet revolution.

Needless to say, patent valuation is not an easy process and the fact whether Microsoft has gained profit from the deal with Facebook is still vague. Brad Smith, who is General Counsel of Microsoft, prepared statement on Monday in Facebook deal, which allows it ‘to recoup over half of our costs while our goals from the AOL auction’. As per the source to Reuters, Facebook was also the participant in the AOL auction. The deal between Facebook and Microsoft are being portrayed as the world’s topmost social company is getting ready for an initial public offering, which can go up to valuation of $100 billion. Also, it comes up as Facebook is fighting legal battle with Yahoo Inc.

Earlier this year, Yahoo fought legally against Facebook, by alleging that Facebook has breached 10 Yahoo patents, including online advertising technology. Facebook fought back with Yahoo in April, with the allegation that Yahoo is breaching 10 Facebook’s patents. In March, Facebook gained 750 patents from International Business Machines Corp. Investment of $240 million in Facebook can be seen in the year 2007. Also, these two companies have instilled various business collaborations over the years. Facebook get search results from Microsoft’s Bing search engine in its social networking service along with video chat technology provided by Skype, which Microsoft gained last year.

As per a recent pre-release document by Google, the SSL system is going to be altered for referrer data; making it extremely important for internet marketers and webmasters to examine and comprehend the new ways Google is going to use for evaluating websites and deciding their search result placements. The change is based on the understanding of the web search leader that, owed to interactive platforms and dynamic content, the Internet has evolved greatly, and hence, needs to be dealt with a different approach.

The change in the pipeline is aimed at making the task of SEO easier while allowing webmasters to make their websites more competitive without having to concentrate on the basics of traffic, back-links and keywords. Additional data entries, more categories and data mining techniques are being added into the new approach to assist with the needs of SEO. The change is combined with extensions that are expected to occur specifically with the information provided by Internet marketers. Google is currently finalizing the best way to modify its algorithm, with extending how data is retrieved being one of the approaches the company is looking into.

If you are marketing online and wish to rise above the competition, then you need to understand the expected changes from Google thoroughly. The search referrer data that was before a part of the basic needs for marketing is expected to extend and change for a more stringent competition. The approach being considered adds into the possible strategies available to build ranking while allowing individuals to have more opportunities for creating and extending their online business.