SEO Kolkata - Experienced SEO Consultant India, Kolkata

Well no posts for 6 months but finally here I am writing a post and this is purely motivated by Google rolling out 40 changes in the month of February. It is definitely not possible to talk about all the 40 changes here but let's just look at few changes that are definitely going to grab the attention for all SEO consultants and professionals.

a)More accurate detection of official pages - Google announces that they have made adjustments which would help them identify official pages more accurately and many pages which were earlier mis-identified as official will no-longer be. - It would be fun to see if some of the actual official pages gets victimized by these adjustments and lose their official status in Google's eye.

b)“Site:” query update [launch codename “Semicolon”, project codename “Dice”] : This change improves the ranking for queries using the “site:” operator by increasing the diversity of results.

c)"International launch of shopping rich snippets." - This would be critical for SEO consultants working on e-commerce websites. This will help the users to easily identify which sites have the products they need, highlighting product prices, availability, ratings and review counts. This was earlier available in US , Japan and Germany - but now available globally.

d)Improved snippets for video channels - This could mean higher CTR on video listings in organic results, if the snippets are well optimized for users.

e)Improvements to ranking for local search results. - This improvement improves the triggering of Local Universal results by relying more on the ranking of our main search results as a signal.

The biggest of them all..

f)Link evaluation - Google mentions that they have changed the way the evaluate links and specifically they have "turned off" a method of link analysis that they used for several years. Typical to Google, they do not go any further into the explanation and leaves SEO professionals like us guess what could be that factor. Are they going to turn off the Page Rank factor, which has been the root of link based algorithm ( and one of the oldest link evaluation factors) and has been gamed in in-numerous ways by SEOs ? Keep guessing!!

Labels: Google, link, Updates

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The day Google launched the Plus One ( +1) buttons, I was having a meeting with our SEO team at [x]cube and I said Plus One is definitely going to be a factor in search results very soon. Whether you are a blog or a website, there needs to be a way for you to integrate Plus One button and entice your users to plus one for you. I had similar discussion with few of my other SEO friends too and not many of them agreed to the fact. One of the few reasons I received against the point was that it is too obvious, this could not be applicable for all types of sites because corporate websites are not likely to get Plus Ones compared to blogs and that Google would probably not like to get into another controversy of pushing their own product based on their search dominance.

While most of the reasons look good, the reason I believed in Plus One being eventually used as a search signal are:

1. The way search technology has been improving the only way to stay abreast for Google is to involve human intelligence and Plus One buttons are an excellent way of crowd sourcing human intelligence to judge the quality of search results and websites.


2. Facebook has already married Bing and is not likely to share any data with Google


3. Google is done courting Twitter and now they don’t have access to the hose. Even when they had it, they didn’t seem to be going much beyond displaying real time results for certain results and displaying pictures of friends who have tweeted them


4. Plus Ones can easily be tracked back to a user’s Google profile which contains a lot of personalized data. While collecting Personally Identifiable Information (PII) is not something that Google or for that matter, any company would not admit to, Plus One actually provides the scope for the same and it is indeed a treasure trove for any search engine to serve personalized results and also to leverage the social connections of the users ( crowd sourced human intelligence from people with a strong understanding of the user’s personal taste)

Now, why am I saying this again today? It seems Google actually admitted to be using Plus Ones as a signal for ranking websites in their search results in one of their meeting with Forbes, which was also published as an article titled Stick Google Plus Buttons on your Pages or Your Search Traffic Dies ( yes, I borrowed the title) on 18th August, 2011, but quickly canned by Forbes before it could garner more attention from the not-so-friendly Facebook or the Justice Department. The story was not only removed from Forbes website but was also removed from Google's cache. However, before they could do all that a copy of the same was saved by the Raven Tools SEO Blog. In case these gets removed, I have got a screen shot of the same too :)



Related Posts:
a)Google Plus One Likely to Effect Search Results

b)Exploring Google Plus Tips and Tricks

Labels: algorithm, Google, Google Plus, Plus One

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SES San Francsico starts today and I will be attending all the three days. If you are interested in a live coverage follow me on twitter @rishi3211us .

Will probably be doing some detailed post on the blog later but nothing beats live tweets :)

A special note of thanks to my employer PurpleTalk and [x]cubeLABS

If you are attending SES San Francisco, feel free to say Hello..

Labels: SEO conference, SES, SES San Francisco

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Though SEO is a very serious aspect of any business’s marketing strategy, we SEOs are mostly nice people with a good sense of humor. In our day to day job we have such a wide variety of experience and some of them are so funny it would bring a smile to the most boring person, besides there is no dearth of naysayers for SEO, who also add to some really funny comments and situations.

I was reading a few of the SEO jokes available on the web and found most of them are basically lawyer jokes replaced with SEO, so I decided to put together a collection of all the SEO Jokes, that actually relate more to SEO rather than being derivatives of lawyer jokes.

You know you are an SEO when:
Your first answer to any general question directed at you is "Google it
You repeat words every few seconds in the conversation.

What's an seo expert?
it's someone who speaks about an algorithm he doesn't know, guaranties a result he can't foresee,asks you a hell of a money while making you work on your website more than he does...

Why seo's prefer democracy to dictatorship?
because they love user generated content.

Why do seo's prefer to date smart, funny girls or guys, better than beautiful ones?
because they know search engines are blind and content is king.

What do blackhat SEO’s eat on Thanksgiving?
A: Keyword stuffing

What did the SEO do on his honeymoon?
A: He put a “nofollow” outside the door.

The company search Optimization officer died – The Company CEO said, “It took seven stone masons 3 months to carve all the headstones. Traffic to the grave site has been excellent”.

Why do they bury SEOs 20 feet under?
Because deep down, they’re really good people.

It is the trade of SEOs to question everything, yield nothing, and to talk by the hour. –Thomas Jefferson

Old SEOs never die, they just lose their rankings.

Why should SEOs wear lots of sunscreen when vacationing at a beach resort?
Because they’re used to doing all of their lying indoors.

What’s likely to get your ship sunk by pirates?
Canonical issues.

What have pig's & SEO's got in common?
SPAM.

What does an SEO have for breakfast?
Spam and JAVA

SPAM = Sites Positioned Above Mine

Hey, this site is now ranking nr. 1 in Google!
Reply: Ok, and what if you turn your personalized search off?

What do you call a man with six fingers on one hand?
Supplemental index.

What’s the difference between a seo consultant and a used car salesman?
A – The used car salesman knows when he is lying

What do you call Zelda in lingerie?
Link bait.

A SEO couple had twins.
For the first time they were happy with duplicate content.

What's likely to get your ship sunk by pirates?
Canonical issues.

What does a chiropractor fix?
Back links.

What do you call a dating service that only collects a fee when two people hit it off?
Pay per click.

What do you call it when the prey hunts the hunter?
A trackback.

What’s the difference between an accountant and a SEO?
Accountants know they’re boring.

Why seo's never play golf?
they fear the sandbox.

Why seo's always live in a good suburb?
to avoid a bad neighbourhood.

What should you understand if an seo expert asks you for a date?
that he needs a backlink.

Why seo's are always excited to take the elevator down a building?
because they like to see (9...8...7..6..5.4.3..2..1)

Two SEOs watching a girl with big boobs on trampoline?
1st: I hate it?
2nd: What, the trampoline? 1st: No the bounce rate.

As mentioned in the beginning of the post, these are SEO jokes collected from across the web and are not really my own content. I couldn't credit a source here as most of them are overlapping and there is no definitive source of origin.

Labels: fun, humor, marketing jokes, search engine jokes, SEO Jokes

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In this blog though I have written on a wide variety of SEO topics including a bunch of link building techniques and tips I have rarely talked about Page Rank. Unlike many others, I have never been obsessed with PR as a SEO and have always treated is more as an indicator of my page’s link strength and nothing more than that. However, this post is triggered by the recent Google Page Rank update that happened yesterday.

Every SEO consultant would vouch for the fact that it is impossible to get good rankings for any competitive keyword till you have developed a solid army of link. So when search rankings are so dependent on links why do we still say Content is King?

Well the fact remains that an able King never has trouble in putting together an army and the case is no different in the world of SEO. Good content automatically generates link ( and if you fret about PR, you will get PR too ).

For one of our company websites we have been working incessantly to improve the search rankings and while we have been building links through various techniques we have always been heavily content centric.

Just 12 days back we launched a viral content. In 12 days , the content got 277 Facebook Likes, 365 Tweets, 3277 Stumbles and 435 Google Plus Ones and a good number of links too. Result : with the recent PR update, the content page now has a PR of 5 – the highest on the website, even more than the home page.

So are you still sticking to the old scale link building or would you rather depend on your king ( content) to build his army of link ?

Related Posts :
Effective Link Building in 2010

How to build Free back links

How to build back links with Google

Labels: content, link building, Page Rank, Page rank update

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Google + seems to be the talk of the hour and unlike other Google products this one seems to have a relatively higher learning curve for most users. While the platform is opening up slowly to the general audience, we need to keep in mind that right now most of the people in there are web savvy, early adopters. If a portion of them find the learning curve to be steep, how is it going to work with the regular people?

Having said that, there are few key elements in Google + that would probably comfort the users and encourage them to explore the platform further, the first being ; a Facebook like Time line. Yes, we are now all used to Facebook and Google + has an absolutely similar looking wall where you share your status and get updates from people in your circle – so a first time user doesn’t really feel out of place.

There is no doubt about the fact that Google+ is probably “the most “ feature rich social platform at this point and it brings together the awesomeness of all the leading platforms that people are used to working with. However, probably as a result of putting too many of this good stuff together at one place, it is often a little confusing for new users.

I have been playing around on Google + for a day now and based on some of the posts I read and some shared by people on the platform here are some Google + tips that new users can find handy.

Circles :
An easy way to group your contacts. You can have a friend circle, a professional/office circle, a circle of acquaintances and more. There are some predefined ones, but you can create your own as well.

Fun With Deleting Circle:
Create a circle and then try deleting it. You will see a funny animation showing the circle roll off your screen.

Chat :
Google+ integrates the Google Chat but you need to enable it for the first time by clicking on the link to the left : “Chat with people on Google+”

The Chat feature is integrated and if you are chatting on Google Talk on your mobile and jump on to Google + , you will find the entire conversation there .


Privacy :
The more active you are on Google+ the more emails you tend to get. To control when you get an email and when you don’t, click on the Gear icon on the top right of the screen beside your name and go to Google + Settings. All the notification options are nicely laid out there for you to choose which ones you want to activate/deactivate.

Unlike Facbook, Google + offers great control over what you want to shareand with whom you would like to share stuff on your timeline. You can share your status messages with only specific circles, with specific users only or you can make it public. While making a post on Google+, you get an option to select your sharing settings.

Photos:

I love the way they display Photos in Google + .
You can also edit your photos right there. Go to the Photo Page > Actions> Edit Photo. You will get a bunch of filters that you can apply on the photos. You also have the options to rotate the photos.

Messaging :

How do I disable Resharing of my Google + Post
- If you’re sharing a post with a small circle of people, you can prevent resharing. Click the arrow at the top-right of the post and choose “Disable reshare.”

- If you type + or @, it shares the post directly with them, just like if you added their name in the sharing targets. You can also do this in a comment, to pull someone else into the conversation.

- Want to see who can see a post? Next to the dateline at the top of a post, you’ll see something like “Public” or “Limited.” “Limited” is a link — click on it to see who has access.

- At the top right of each post, there’s a little circle-and-triangle menu. For your own posts, this menu lets you edit or delete the post, or disable commenting or resharing. For other people’s posts, it lets you link to the post, mute it, block the person completely, or report abuse.

How to send a DM in Google+
- If you want to send a private message to someone, just create a normal post and share it only with them. It’s that easy to have a one-to-one conversation!

How to Format text in Google+
(*)bold(*)
(_)italics(_)
(-)strike-through(-)

Keyboard Shortcuts for Google+
j: In the stream, you can click ‘j’ to navigate down to the next item
k: Navigate up.
@ or +: mention someone in a post
q: While on the Home tab, press twice the q letter on the keyboard to search and add people to your chat list.
Tab: Scrolls through comments/users on a post
Enter – Hitting Enter when focused on a Post opens up the comment box.
Tab+Enter: Post comment

How to send Google + Invites
Double Click on a user in Circles to open the invite option

Also, if you have the gmail address for an user, you can write a post and share it with just that person. This will send an invite to join Gooigle+ to that person.

Notifications:
In Google + the notification alert is similar to Facebook with a small squareshowing the number of notification on top right, beside your profile. When you have any unseen notification it goes bright red. The cool part is you can click that red box to see the notification and take action ( post a comment, add an user etc) right from the drop down, without having to move to any other page.

Sparks:
This is where you can search cool content ( most likely determined by the number of +1s it gets) relevant to your interests. You can also save your interests for easy future access.

Hangouts:
This is probably the coolest feature in Google+, where you get to do group video chat. Unfortunately , I haven’t had a chance to test this one yet.

Labels: Circles, Google Plus, Google+, Hangouts, tips

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Small businesses on the Internet are increasingly resorting to Google Adwords and with Google’s effort to rope in more and more businesses to try the service with all the free Adwords coupons and assistance, there is every reason for the businesses to try this amazing advertising service.

Given Google’s simple and intuitive interface a person with half decent knowledge of Internet can set up and run an Adwords campaign and apparently there is no reason for a business to hire an Adwords consultant or specialist . So why do you still need an Adwords specialist?

Recently I have been working with a client in Hyderabad helping them with Internet marketing for some of their projects and one of their projects was an e-commerce website, currently selling products only in Hyderabad and projected for nation-wide growth in near future. They were running a very small Adwords campaign at their end and was seeing decent results however, they wanted me to do an audit of their account and do any necessary change required to improve the performance.

The top level figures for the account were ok but nothing great. They were particularly struggling with an extremely low CTR ( 0.07%) while still paying a CPC of around Rs.16-Rs.20.

After studying the account and the website I noticed the following:

a)There is no conversion tracking in place. The way their website was set up it wasn’t easy to set up the conversion tracking.

b)There were dual objective for the campaign : to sell a specific product each day and also to get user registration, however, the way the website was set up it was predominantly focusing on selling the product of the day than getting user registration, which is a more profitable objective for the campaign.

c)The campaign was running on both search and display network and Display was literally cleaning the campaign in terms of extreme low CTR.

d)The campaign structure was missing a proper planning.

e)There were adgroups with mixed keywords like restaurants in Hyderabad and consultancies in Hyderabad.

f)Some of the keywords were too broad for a small budget campaign. There were keywords like sale, deal coupon etc.

g)Also noticed they were missing on certain opportunities in terms of keywords.

h)All visitors were sent to the home page of the site ( which featured the deal of the day) irrespective of the keyword or ad copy they clicked

Whether its SEO or Adwords consulting my approach has always been to provide a more holistic solution and after some discussion with the client I felt that it is not just the Adwords account but for the campaign to be successful we need to work on the website as well.

So here is a small account of what we did.

a)The campaign was completely restructured. Keeping the limited budget in mind, we set up basically four campaigns Generic (covering generic keywords), City (covering Hyderbad specific keywords), Category (covering broad product categories), and Daily (keyword specific to the product of the day)

b)A thorough analysis of the existing campaign was done to identify performing keywords and keyword research was done to find more potent keywords

c)Some of the existing ad copies were modified and a few new ad copies were written with suitable landing pages

d)Display network was switched off

e)Targeting was set to Hyderabad and 40Km around the city

f)A new landing page was designed with the objective to drive registrations with very clear call to action. The landing page had a sole objective and there was no chance for the user to be confused.

g)The website structure was slightly modified to ensure all conversions could be tracked.

So did it make any difference to DealDrums Adwords campaign ?

CTR increased by 31 times to 2.17% and CPC came down by Rs.5.95, which effectively means at a budget of INR 10000, earlier they could get 622 clicks, which has now increased to 989 clicks ( an increase by 59%). They did not have conversion data earlier on Adwords so it was difficult to map the progress, but from the number of overall signups they were seeing on a monthly basis they were not close to the present numbers. A conversion rate of 31.32% is definitely something that any business would love to have.

There are still a few variations of the landing page that needs to be tested and can be further optimized to increase the conversion. This is in progress. However, going by the figures and the clear increase in performance it shows how an experienced Adwords consultant can drastically improve your campaign performance.

Adwords campaign set up being so easy, it often doesn’t occur to the beginners that there could be so many nuances to it and there could be so many different factors that play a role in the success of a campaign. Adwords is an extremely powerful tool and to make best use of it, it is of extreme importance that you have complete knowledge of all the tools, features and functionalities that Google provides and also have a proper understanding of how Adwords work. There is no harm trying to learn or taking a DYI approach, however if Internet marketing is not your domain of expertise, it is always wise to take help of an Adwords consultant while doing it for the first time. In all likeliness he will pay off for his fees in terms of the savings/increased number of clicks and conversions you receive from Adwords with his expertise.

p.s. This post has been edited to remove some of the specifics of the campaign on client request for competitive intelligence reasons.

Labels: Adwords, case study, Consultant, DealDrums

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Google is adding its own version of “Like” button with the launch of +1 ( Plus One) in an attempt to make search more social. Now Google will allow users to vote Plus One for search results as well as on Search ads. Users will get to see both the total number of Plus One votes along with names and contacts of their contacts who have shown their preference.

While it looks primarily like Google’s attempt to replicate Facebook’s “Like” what does it mean for search marketers ? A Plus One vote is a clear indication of human preference and there can be no better judge of a webpage’s quality than a real human user. Google is definitely going to use this as a signal in its algorithm. In fact, this time Matt Cutts himself clearly admits to this , “"When someone recommends something, that's a pretty good indicator of quality," said Matt Cutts. "We are strongly looking at using this in our rankings."

Similarly, on the Adwords front, we already know that high quality score would mean lower CPC and better exposure and this is going to get a shot in the arm with implementation of this Plus One feature. Ads that get a Plus One would likely have a higher quality score, resulting in better performance for the advertiser. This has been further confirmed with the statement by ads group product manager Christian Oestlien, "We will provide reporting in AdWords for plus-ones” "Our belief is that advertisers will see increased performance from ads with personalized annotations."

Inbound links have been one of the strongest signals for organic ranking for a long time now and now as Google has started to become more social , incorporating personalized search results, real time twitter results etc, Plus One is definitely going to be a big step ahead in that direction and can prove to be a key player in determining relevance for algorithmic search results.

Also, looking at it from Google’s perspective, introducing Plus One has multiple benefits. Besides getting a new powerful signal to tidy up the search results, Plus One can actually give Google a second chance to penetrate the social web. When the user tries to hit Plus One for the first time, they would be invited to create a Google profile and adjust the privacy settings. Also, Google would offer publishers the option to embed Plus One buttons to their content pages, so users can vote on content on other websites beyond search results pages and most webmasters would be more than eager to implement this as they realize that Plus One votes can help them get better with organic search results. A positive aspect of this for webmasters would be that to get this Plus One embed code, they would need to login to the Google Webmasters Tools. So the ones who have not yet registered with Webmaster tools would probably have one more reason to do it now.

Everything said and done, it would be fun to see how BlackHats and spammers use the Plus One votes to their advantage. Though Google has been doing a fair job at fighting them, there has been one too many cases where BlackHats and spammers have gamed the Google results and introducing such a simple, manual signal to influence the search results might throw a new challenge for the Google anti-spam team.

Labels: +1, Adwords Quality Score, Google, Plus One, Quality Score, SEO

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