The Periodic Table Of SEO Ranking Factors

SEO — search engine optimization — is one of the most important marketing activities available to companies and publishers, but it’s too often considered some murky “dark art” or a sinful practice that should be avoided. It’s not. To help clear away some of the mystery and fear for those new to SEO, and provide a “reset” for those who are experienced, we’ve created “The Periodic Table Of SEO Ranking Factors.”

Clicking on the image above will take you to where we’ve permanently housed the table, along with information on how to download it for yourself. We’ve also created a new Search Engine Land Guide To SEO, based on the table and explaining what it means in more depth.
As for this introduction to the table that you’re now reading, it’s meant to explain more about the “why have a table” rather than the “what does it the table mean.”

SEO: It’s A Good Thing!

As a reminder, SEO is not a crime, a harmful act nor something that only “bad” people do, despite what you may have seen on The Good Wife. It is, in fact, a helpful activity that even the search engines, including Google, recommend.
If you want to understand more about some of the myths of SEO being “bad,” I’d recommend the further reading below. Seriously, take some time to educate yourself:

• Thoughts On Web Developers, SEO & Reputation Problems

SEO’s Fundamental Factors

SEO can be confusing to both new people and experienced folks alike. For new people, it can seem like rocket science, because you might get overwhelmed with all the details and miss the relatively easy general principles. For experienced people, chasing down which particular hot new SEO “tree” to climb can blind you to the overall forest that you should be considering.
The Periodic Table Of SEO is designed to visually present the major factors, the biggest and most important things that can help you in gaining traffic from search engines. It’s focused on traffic from web search results, though down the line, we might produce similar ones for more focused search engines such as video or local. By the way, the Local Search Ranking Factors survey from David Mihm has just been updated.

There are the “On The Page” factors, the things that a publisher can control directly. “Off The Page” factors, which are things you can influence indirectly about how others can help, or harm, your chances of search engine visibility. “Violations” are the things you should avoid, sometimes common mistakes that developers or others might not even realize shouldn’t be done. And “Blocked” covers a new class of not-violations but still things that can be harmful.

Focus On Most Important Factors

Within each of these major groups are individual factors. There could be many more individual factors than we show. However, we’ve made a deliberate decision to show only those we think are most important, most consistently seen used by search engines, or verified by SEO data or commonly accepted and easily implementable.
For example, in HTML factors, we recommend paying attention to:

• Title Tags
• Description Tags
• Header Tags

We don’t try to get into whether a word you hope to be found for comes first or last in the HTML title tag. Or whether an H1 header tag carries more weight than an H2 header tag. We don’t suggest that you need to use bold text.
We avoid all that, because we feel it goes too much into unnecessary and possibly confusing depth for many people. Instead, if you know that your pages should have good, unique titles, that they should have structure that can be reflected by header tags, and that you should use the easily implemented description tag, you’ve probably covered 90% of the most important HTML-related factors.
In addition, some of the factors we list are more general goals to reach rather than specific factors that can be implemented. For example, our social factors include attaining a good social reputations and good social shares. A good social reputation on Facebook? Or Twitter? And social shares on both, or only one — and what about Google +1?
All of the above. Rather than getting lost on if Facebook or Twitter is better, or has more SEO juice, we want you to understand that social activity is increasingly having an influence on search rankings. So you want a good social reputation in a variety of networks. You want to be shared on a variety of networks. Those are among the most important general social goals you can go after.

An Overview Teaching Guide

If you want a deep-dive into those types of specifics, SEOmoz does a biannual survey of search engine ranking factors you should certainly read (it’s due to be updated very shortly). Our ranking factors table isn’t a replacement for that or others. Instead, we view it as a complementary guide.
In particular, I personally hope that it’s the type of thing that anyone versed in SEO can use to help someone else get up to speed on the fundamental building blocks. Have you done Cr, research into keywords? Here are some tools to help. Or that As — site speed — is important factor.
The factors are weighted on a scale of one to three, with three being deemed more important, though anything listed is deemed a fundamental. Not everyone may agree with how we’ve scaled things, but it’s a start. And everything’s relative. No single factor guarantees success, but having several of them increases the odds.

Blast From The Past

From a nostalgia perspective, I started writing about SEO over 15 years ago, with my first article going up in April 1996. It had an SEO ranking factor chart as part of it, which looked like this:

This grew rapidly by the following year, to cover issues such as whether frames posed a barrier to being crawled. Here’s only part of the successor to my original chart, from November 1997:

Here’s a version from July 2001, which makes me smile as I remember that for a short period of time, how a site performed in Direct Hit’s clickthrough measurements could have a ranking impact:

I stopped maintaining this type of chart in 2003. In part, it was because a lot of the major “signals” or factors used by the different search engines were becoming more and more the same. The world also became fixated just on Google, which in term was largely driven by rewarding those with the best links.
I found it nice to come back years later and think afresh about how I’d organize the factors. It was fun to put back on my graphics reporter hat, which I haven’t worn since I used to do infographics work in my pre-search engine life.
Of course, I’m not an artist. Turning the periodic table into a great visual concept was the work of the good folks over at Column Five Media, which has a wonderful portfolio of infographics. It was a pleasure to work with them. Special thanks to Jason Lankow and Josh Ritchie.
Also thanks to our technical director Michelle Robbins, who did a ton of last minute work to get the chart ready to go online here.
If you enjoy the chart, find it useful — please, reward our Cq with some Ln, Lt and especially Lq. Also appreciated is any Ss. Give us some Ce, too. Comments are more than welcome. And the best with your SEO!



Reference :- http://searchengineland.com/


EBriks Infotech :- SEO Company India    SMO Company India     PPC Company India

Address            :- E-171,Sec-63,Noida(U.P)India-201301

Disavowing Links? Google Says Use a Machete, Not a Scalpel

When it comes to Google’s Disavow Tool, there was plenty of speculation and testing as to what approach to take. Should webmasters disavow everything and start clean? Disavow in small batches to see what would happen? Or just lump a large group of possible suspect links and disavow anything and everything that could possibly be an issue and wash their hands of a good portion of their backinks?
Well, according to Google's Distinguished Engineer Matt Cutts, which was shared by John Mueller, a Webmaster Trends Analyst at Google, webmasters should be tackling URLs for the disavow tool with a machete instead of a scalpel.

Hmm. One common issue we see with disavow requests is people going through with a fine-toothed comb when they really need to do something more like a machete on the bad backlinks. For example, often it would help to use the "domain:" operator to disavow all bad backlinks from an entire domain rather than trying to use a scalpel to pick out the individual bad links. That’s one reason why we sometimes see it take a while to clean up those old, not-very-good links.

With this confirmation from Cutts, it goes a long way in giving webmasters some guidance when it comes to how best to use the disavow tool in order to get a healthy backlink profile.
While the machete approach might seem extreme to some people, the fact that doing it with a scalpel-like approach can lead to a longer time frame to clean up a site might make it more appealing, and less scary, to webmasters.


 Reference :- http://searchenginewatch.com


EBriks Infotech :- SEO Company India SMO Company India  PPC Company India

Address              :- E-171,Sec-63,Noida(U.P)India-201301

Google Analytics Streamlines Goals

If you're a website owner who tracks visitors' actions using Google Analytics, you're likely using goals. Goals in Google Analytics are ways of tracking if a visitor performed an action that likely affects your bottom line.
Goals are often defined as a specific URL. If a visitor reaches that URL – typically a thank you page after submitting some sort of online form – then the goal is "converted."
Since website goals don't change that often, most site owners don't go into the admin area of their site's Google Analytics profile to redefine them. But the next time you do, you'll be in for a whole new experience.
Last week, the Google Analytics team announced a new, more streamlined way to measure your goals. From the visual layout of the interface, to setting up new goals and all the way through to reporting, working with your analytics goals has changed.

Setting up Goals in Google Analytics

Some visuals have been added to the new goal set-up procedure. The options haven't changed, only the presentation has.

The new visuals make it easier to go through the process step-by-step.
One new element to the setup process, however, is the use of goal templates. Just as the name suggests, you can use goal templates to make it easier for you to find and set goals that meet your organization's business objectives.
If you have selected an industry category for your organization in the your site's property settings, Google Analytics will suggest templates based on that industry. Google's goal templates are tailored to meet the needs of businesses within those industry categories.
Goal templates can be customized, but try to pigeon-hole into one of several template categories, depending on the industry you have selected.

Goal Verification - Making Sure it Works

The Google Analytics team has now included a feature called Goal Verification. This feature will allow you to test your goal set up, based on the previous 7 days' worth of data. This is significant because goals are measured starting from the time you define them. If you make a mistake defining a goal and someone converts what you wanted to measure, in the past you would have missed out.
Starting with this new feature, you'll be able to test your goal setup looking back over the prior seven days' worth of data. If you know a goal was converted, but the verification doesn't show any, you'll know you have to redefine your goal.
A similar feature has been available for quite some time for testing advanced segments. Now this preview will be available for newly created goals.

New Goal Reporting

The Analytics team also added new features to the Goals Overview report. You can now see how different goals relate to each other.
Similar to how you can overlay data sets using two different advanced segments in a graph, you can now overlay two goal completions on the same graph. This will allow you to better visualize potential correlations between goals or simply visualize each goals' performance over time.

The Goal Overview Report isn't the only report that's changed. The Multi-Channel Funnel reports have as well.
Multi-Channel Funnel Reports show a visitor's multiple visits through until conversion. Now they include off-site interactions a visitor may have had with your organization before completing an online goal. That, of course, depends on any external factors you may have to help collect those data.
As usual, the feature is just starting to roll out. If you don't see the changes yet, keep looking over the next few weeks. You will soon. When you see the changes appear, let us know what you think in the comments.


Reference :- http://searchenginewatch.com


EBriks Infotech :- SEO Company India SMO Company India  PPC Company India

Address :-              E-171,Sec-63,Noida(U.P)India-201301

Google's Matt Cutts Issues New Warning on Advertorials & Paid Content

Advertorials have been popping up on websites with much greater frequency over the past year or two. Advertorials are essentially paid "content", whether articles or reviews, disguised to appear that they are simple editorials by someone who has used the product or service in question, and is writing about it without ulterior motives.
Google’s main issue with advertorials are the fact that the majority of these advertorials are not disclosed by the writers or webmasters, or if it is disclosed, it is done in such a small and unobtrusive way, that the majority of readers wouldn’t realize it is a paid promotion of some sort. They are pay for play types of content which has the unfortunate effect of misleading those who read it.
The issue became much better known in February, after a UK flower site, Interflora, embarked on a huge advertorial campaign with links that passed PageRank. While in that case, they were marked as advertorial content, the links to Interflora with keyword rich links to give them the maximum benefit of those links for search engine rankings. And when it came to light, Interflora was subsequently penalized, along with some of the newspaper sites who published those advertorials with straight links.
Even with the Interflora penalty, more webmasters have been utilizing advertorials and other types of paid promotional content for search engine ranking benefits, so Google's Distinguished Engineer Matt Cutts is bringing the issue up and alerting webmasters to what they need to know, so they can properly disclose advertorials without being penalized.
What are the guidelines webmasters need to know for advertorials and native advertising?
"There’s two fold things you should think about," Cutts said in a new video. "The first is on the search engine side of things. Search engine wise you should make sure that if links are paid, that is, if money changed hands in order for a link to be placed on a website, that it should not flow PageRank; in essence, it shouldn’t affect search engine rankings. That’s no different than the guidance we’ve had for many years and years and years.
"Likewise, if you are doing disclosure, you need to make sure that it’s clear to people," he said. "So a good rule of thumb is there should be clear and conspicuous disclosure. It shouldn’t be the case where people have to dig around buried in small print or have to click and look around a long time to find out, ‘Oh, this content that I am reading was actually paid.’"
The big thing Google wants webmasters to do is to ensure that if those advertorials are paid for, that you use a rel="no follow" so that those links don't pass PageRank, just as you would for any paid links on your site. Advertorials shouldn't affect search engine rankings in any way.
Secondly, ensure that promotional content is clearly disclosed, and not hidden away in tiny text that no one would ever notice.
While this isn’t a new policy by Google, Cutts noted that many webmasters aren’t doing it correctly – or more likely, hoping to get away with it. He also alludes to the Interflora advertorial penalty in the UK, that saw the advertorials with keyword rich backlinks.
He also mentions that the same thing applies to Google News, and they also blogged about it recently. Google News will remove paid content, but can also remove the entire publication from Google News as well.


Reference :- http://searchenginewatch.com

                                                                    


EBriks Infotech :- SEO Company India SMO Company India  PPC Company India

Address :-               E-171,Sec-63,Noida(U.P) India-201301 

Get Email Alerts for New Backlinks with Open Site Explorer

Recently SEOmoz added a new function to their Open Site Explorer called Just-Discovered Links. Instead of having to wait for new index updates and comparing your CSVs, you can simply monitor the new links tab. Unfortunately SEOmoz doesn’t have RSS support for Just-Discovered links. And checking for page updates every day is probably not the best use of your time.
In this YouMoz I'll demonstrate a quick and easy way to monitor new backlinks to websites. I've set this up for my own site, but also my competitors. It shouldn't take you more than 30-45 minutes to set up, and it will save you a lot of time.
What we will be doing is creating an RSS feed for that page and then sending an email for every new feed item. Don't worry, we will use free tools to accomplice this. No programming knowledge needed.

Step 1) Get the URL

Personally, I would like to be know every external new link to a website (root domain). For that, use the URL below. Replace www.example.com with the domain of your choosing.
http://www.opensiteexplorer.org/just-discovered?page=1&site=www.example.com&sort=crawled&filter=&source=external&target=domain&group=1
Of course you can change this to fit your needs.

Step 2) Creating an RSS feed

To get around not having an RSS feed, I use a service called Page2RSS. You simply enter a page URL and this website does all the magic for you. It’s free and doesn’t require an account. It’s not perfect; there are no instant updates and sometimes feed entries are blank. Still, it works just fine for this particular job. With this feed I use another free service to email every new feed item.
Now, the most important part is being notified of new links. For this, we will use IFTTT.

Step 3) Setting up email alerts

IFTT (if this then that) is a online service that lets you create triggers. For example, you can ask to be sent an email if it’s going to rain tomorrow. Or tweet ‘Happy New Year’ at New Year's (more ideas). You can also ask it to send you an email each time a RSS feed is updated. This is what we are going to use.

Here is the recipe that I use.

For feed URL enter the RSS feed you created in step two. Instead of an email you can also use other channels as well, like Twitter. You can then adjust the email to your needs. Make sure to enter the name of the website you are monitoring in the subject. This makes for easy filtering in your email service later.


This is a quick workaround until SEOmoz adds RSS support. Hopefully, they’ll even add email alerts!


Reference :- http://www.seomoz.org/ugc/get-email-alerts-for-new-backlinks-with-open-site-explorer

EBriks Infotech :- SEO Company India SMO Company India PPC Company India

Building a Freelance Link Building Team

Need help link building, but can’t afford to hire an agency or a full-time employee? There are some great resources out there that can connect you with qualified freelancers to help you meet your goals. The trick is knowing what to look for in freelance SEO help. Unfortunately, there are a large number of "SEOs" that deliver low-quality and/or out-of-date strategies that will not help your site, and at the worst could actively hurt your site’s rankings. In this post, I am going to describe some best practices for finding quality freelance help for link building through oDesk.
oDesk is a service that connects companies or individuals with contractors in a variety of marketing mediums, one of which is SEO. Through oDesk you are able to post a job description, hire help, manage the time they work and pay your freelancers. I am not a representative of oDesk or affiliated with them in any way; I have simply used it successfully over the last two years to help me build my start-up marketing agency.

Set Your Budget and Goals

The first step is to set your budget and goals for the project. If you are a small agency hopefully you would have planned this out during the pitch for a new client and if you are an in-house team you will need to get buy-off from internal stake holders. Either way, having a budget of $200 per month vs. $1000 per month will dramatically affect how you divide the hours spent on various projects and how much you are willing to pay each freelancer.
During this process you will also want to determine what type of link building you will need for the project. The reason this is important is because different link building techniques require different levels of competency and capability. So, some link building techniques will cost more than others based on the skill level of the freelancers that will be hired for the work.
For this post, here is the list of link building techniques that we will be finding help for:

• Guest Blogging
  • Writer, Researcher and Project Manager
• Local and Business Directory Submissions
• Blog commenting

Map Out the Desired Freelancer Qualities

This is where you are able to build in a lot of budgetary efficiencies. I would highly recommend hiring several freelancers in order to complete all of the necessary work.
For example, I would hire 2-4 people to cover-off on my Guest Blogging line item. I would look for 1-3 writers and then I would find someone else that will act as a project manager (oversee writers, find the posting opportunities, reach out to the potential blogs, etc.). These skill sets require different types of people. A decent writer with experience in the niche you need content for can generally be found for $20-$50/hour. A good researcher and project manager can often be found for $15-$25/hour. However, when hiring the project manager you really want to do your homework on them (A Skype interview is recommended) to make sure you find someone capable.
Then for directory submissions and blog commenting you can look for freelancers that charge lower hourly rates. This is fairly simple work; it is just time consuming. I would look for a freelancer at a rate of $5-$15/hour. Sometimes you can find a contractor from India or the Philippines that can perform this work successfully or you can find an entry level North American SEO at an affordable rate. I would always recommend native English speakers first if you can afford it.

Post a Job

Once you have your budget set and list of link building needs, then you are ready to go! After you create a profile on oDesk.com you can navigate to the “Post a Job” section. Be as detailed as possible in this section and make a case to the potential freelancers for why they would want to work on your project.

Suggestion
I have noticed that it is very helpful to ask for some type of action from the applicant. There is potential to get a large volume of low-quality applicants, but if you ask them to do something when applying it is easy to sift through the applicants to see who took the time to tailor their application to your job posting.
You will begin to receive applications pretty quickly, so once you have had a chance to look through them it is time to follow-up with the applicants. Before hiring someone it is good to message them with a secondary question or task to gauge their capabilities and response time. You want to find a freelancer that will respond to your emails and work requests the same day you send them, so the application process is the best way to see who is quick and who is not.
*Note: You are able to counter-offer the hourly rate the applicant has provided. I have noticed that most are willing to come down a little bit from their initial offer. And, if they aren’t it was at least worth a shot.

*This is the screenshot from an old job posting for a copywriter, so you can see the large volume of applicants. Please disregard the date since they applied. I filled this position within a week of posting the job!

Set Strict Goals

Now that you have hired your team of freelancers you are ready to go! It is crucial to the success of the project that you provide straightforward and attainable goals for your freelancers. Tell them exactly what you want. When dealing with freelancers you want to spell out your requirements as plainly as possible so that all parties involved know what to expect.

Managing Workflow

oDesk offers a simple to use interface that tracks all hired freelancers and the number of hours they have worked on a given project. oDesk also takes periodic screen grabs of your freelancers computer screen, so you can see exactly what they were doing. It is a very transparent process.
If oDesk and Excel are not detailed enough for the link building work you require, then you can easily have your freelancers work in project management systems such as Buzzstream or TeamBox.

Regular Reporting

As a part of your goal setting, make sure to establish guidelines for the frequency and type of reports that you would like to receive. For link building I prefer monthly reports showcasing the links that have been prospected. However, for large volume projects you may need more frequent reports or you can ask freelancers to track progress in Google Docs, so the progress is shown in real-time. This reporting can also be leveraged for the reporting that you provide to your client or boss.

Build Those Links!

And now you can rinse and repeat. This process is easy to scale up or down depending upon your link building needs at any given moment. You are able to find freelancers that will work a few hours a month all the way up to nearly full-time employees. Utilizing oDesk for finding talented freelancers has allowed me to offer large agency quality work out of our boutique agency. Good luck with your next link building project!


Reference :- http://www.seomoz.org/ugc/building-a-freelance-link-building-team

EBriks Infotech :- SEO Company India PPC Company India SMO Company India 

Google Alerts VS Mention VS Talkwalker

This is a detailed comparison of Google Alerts vs. Talkwalker vs. Mention. The analyses was performed on three key points:

1. Amount of Alerts Delivered
2. Quality of the Alerts
3. Speed of Delivery

This is probably the most detailed comparison of Google Alerts vs. Mention written to date. Read the conclusion at the end of article to see which service I picked as the winner and why.

Total amount of delivered alerts:

Talkwalker pulled in the biggest amount of alerts: 391.
Second place goes to Mention.net which delivered 249 alerts, but if I would have included Twitter and Facebook results that amount would be close to 600.
Least and last was Google Alerts which pulled a total of 126 alerts. The only instance when Google was able to beat both Talkwalker and Mention.net is when it came to keyword number 6. This keyword was somewhat related to the recent "Boston marathon incident". It's as if Google Alerts was better suited to deliver alerts that come from News Sources.

Quality of the alerts:

Google Alerts:

Quality sites: 82 out of 89 were high quality
Source of alerts: Almost all of the alerts came exclusively from news sites
Conclusion: 92% of alerts came from quality sites, but almost all of them were news site, which means that important places like blogs, forums and personal pages were ignored.
I would occasionally come across a few blogs, but it didn't alert me of any forums (except for hybrids like "topix") and it completely ignored places like Yahoo answers, Twitter and Facebook, which is surprising, but for some reason there were no notifications of Google+ articles either. In this regard I would say the quality of the alerts was pretty high, but only because Google Alerts delivered results from a News sites. At times Google Alerts would notify me of the same exact URL 3 times in a span of 2 days, but this wasn't the norm so it's not a big issue.

Mention.net:

Quality sites: 133 out of 158 sites were high quality
Source of alerts: About 40% sites/blogs, 40% news sites and 20% forums
Conclusion: 87% of alerts came from quality sites
On several occasions I saw mention deliver results which did not contain the keywords entered into the alerts. It seems as if the keyword was dynamically generated and must have been present when mention initially crawled the site. The result is pages that have nothing to do with your alert.
Also mention returned pages which had my alert keyword inside their navigation. The keyword would be in either "tag cloud", "recent post" etc. but not within the body of the article which means that the actual page on which I landed was unrelated to my alert. I'm sure with some minor tweaking the Mention team could fix this. On the other hand mention.net did not notify me of web sites that had my keywords in the comment section, which would indicate that they have a feature in place that eliminates these alerts (unlike talkwalker).

Talkwalker:

Quality sites: 44 out of 121 were high quality
Source of alerts: Mostly blogs and strange wikis, with about 20% news sites
Conclusion: 36% of alerts came from quality sites. Extremely low quality results for three out of five keywords. In addition it failed to find high quality web sites that other services were able to find. All in all, only one out of three alerts came from quality sites.
Talkwalker's quality is hard to categorize because keyword number 5 and 6 produced spotless results. Almost all results were delivered on time and quality was good (almost all were news sites).
Unfortunately for keywords, 1,2,3 and 4 the results were as follows:
After reviewing the initial five results returned by Talkwalker I started getting worried about the safety of my computer. Many of the results were spam pages and at one point my browser (Opera) crashed because of some unknown Java script. A large chunk of the results were returned because people left spam comments containing my keywords, ironically it was spam comments on spam affiliate "blogs". From the looks of it they were blog networks. On the other hand it did manage to capture a few good results which other resources were not able to catch. But those results are definitely not worth the sheer amount of low quality pages that Talkwalker sends your way.
For this experiment I was using their free version, so I'm not sure if there is a way to filter sites in the paid interface.

Speed of the alerts delivery:

IMPORTANT: I wasn't using any quality filters when performing the test. All keywords are raw and each service was supposed to deliver the same quality keywords ("anything goes" in this case).

Mention.net:

Alerted on the same day: 130 out of 158
Delivered alerts on the next day: 21 out of 158
Delivered alerts late (over 1 day): 7 out of 158
Conclusion: Roughly 82% of alerts were delivered on the same day the text appeared on the net.

Talkwalker:

Alerted on the same day: 94 out of 121
Delivered alerts on the next day: 14 out of 121
Delivered alerts late (over 1 day): 13 out of 121
Conclusion: Where Talkwalker lacks in quality it makes up in speed of delivery. With 77% of alerts being delivered on the same day your keyword was published.

Google Alerts:

Alerted on the same day: 51 out of 89
Delivered alerts on the next day: 25 out of 89
Delivered alerts late (over 1 day): 13 out of 89
Conclusion: Google alerts is the slowest of the 3 services. Only 57% of the alerts are delivered the same day your keyword appears on the internet.
For some keywords Google Alerts would be remarkably fast, delivering the results on the same day as the keyword is mentioned. While in other instances there would be a week and a half delay.

How the experiment was performed

The experiment spanned across three days: 15th, 16th and 17th of April 2013. I used a total of six keywords to perform this experiment. I did NOT include any filters, so in Google Alerts I would select "Everything" and in Mention I would not apply any filters. The only type of filtration used was to take out two websites that continuously pump out articles which trigger alerts, so as to avoid clutter I have blocked them out. All three services offer an option where you can exclude certain web sites. All keywords were in quotes when I put them in Google Alerts and Talkwalker, I wasn't able to do that in Mention since it throws an error when it sees quotes.
How I did it: On the 18th of April I analyzed a maximum of 180 alerts per service. I would analyze 30 sites, per keyword per given date. For example for keyword A in Mention.net I would look at the 30 results delivered during the 15th, 16th and 17th. That means I looked at 30 results per day. Since there is six keywords that makes a maximum of 180 alerts per service (in this case Mention, Talkwalker and Google alerts). Most of the time it would be less because Google Alerts would deliver below 30 results per given keyword.
I looked at the type of results each service returned. Were they duplicate results? Where they coming from quality sources or doorway pages, MFA (Made for Adsense sites) and RSS aggregators? How quickly did the service deliver the results. For example if I opened the alerts delivered on the 15th and found out that a news article it had sent me to was published on the 12th, I would mark it as having arrived three days late.
I wish I could reveal the actual keywords used, but a signed NDA is... well a signed NDA. I sent my keywords to the SEOmoz editors and also offered to login to my Google Alerts, Mention and Talkwalker accounts to verify the data. The keywords are related to telemarketers and unsolicited phone calls in general.

Conclusion:

None of the services had a flawless performance, but in my view Mention.net came out on top.
It delivered less results than Talkwalker, but majority of Talkwalker results were from low quality properties.
In terms of quality Mention.net had a lower percentage of high quality sites than Google Alerts, but almost all of the Google Alerts come from News sites, which means that it often ignored forums, personal pages and blogs.
As for the speed of delivery Mention.net was the fastest. Mention.net also has a nice feature where it give you a preview of the results on the right part of the screen. The only drawback is that if the web-site contains malicious code it will also come through Mention.net interface, I wish they would have just taken screenshots of the web-site, this way I can see if I want to visit it or not, oftentimes spam pages are easily to identify just by looking at them. To make things worse Mention doesn't show you the full URL (which can oftentimes also tell you if a web-site is spammy or not), you are literally forced to click on a result to find out what it is. Talkwalker on the other hand will show you the URL of the page that contains your result.
I think it's best to use a combination of Google Alerts and Mention, I would also include Boardreader into the mix which is an excellent tool for monitoring forums. You can subscribe to a keyword alert inside boardreader via a RSS feed and then plug-it into your RSS reader along with Google Alerts RSS feeds to have an even more complete list of results.


Reference :- http://www.seomoz.org/ugc/google-alerts-vs-mention-vs-talkwalker


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10 Lessons from a 100k Pageview Post

This kind of thing might happen to Rand all the time, but it’s not often that a digital marketing company based in Leeds gets 100,000+ people reading anything it does (at least on its own site). That’s what unexpectedly happened to us on www.branded3.com a few weeks ago – what essentially started as a rant from some guy having a bad day blew up and now has 1,184 votes on Hacker News (and incoming links from some of the biggest sites in the world).
I think it’s likely I’ll never replicate this, and I didn’t intend this either – so I’ll not preach: “this is how you get 100,000 page views.” Everyone else is just as qualified as I am to write a post that’s read all around the world, and that’s exactly what I want to happen. I’d like to tell you what I’m taking away from this, and how I’ll use it when I’m creating content for my clients in the future.

Commonly known as sharking. Google it.

1. [citation needed]...but not always.

Google only wants you to list the links that are most relevant to and most important to your content – Eric Enge likened this to a research paper around a month ago on Search Engine Watch. The difference between your content and a research paper, though, is that your content doesn’t get discredited if there is nobody to link to that backs up the point you’re trying to make.
In a Webmaster Help Video earlier in the year, Google Engineer Matt Cutts said don’t link out to low quality sites – this is pretty much the equivalent of quoting from Wikipedia in an essay. You don’t have to get peer approved before people will read your post, though, so if there’s nobody to link to that’s talking about whatever you are then that could actually be a good thing. If someone else is covering the same subject as you there’s no real reason why you should get all the links, so you should definitely write about things that no one else is covering if you can.
NB: Not having anyone to back up your point doesn’t excuse you from not having a point in the first place.

2. Content needs to solve people’s problems…or highlight them.

I had a problem with Path and as of the time I started writing the post, nobody had solved it, though a few people had tweeted about experiencing similar problems. I tweeted @path at roughly 7am and the first person to reply was someone else who was (very) actively looking for an answer to the same problem. I embedded Design33’s tweet in the post and linked to him; let my cohort know; and instantly a problem shared is a problem…erm, doubled.
Whether your content is solving someone’s problem, or you’re just empathising with them; if you know where to find them…let them know it’s there and get your influencers on board.

3. Find out what people are looking for.

The principles behind content marketing are gaining real traction in the SEO community, and more and more companies are getting on board with long-term content strategies. There’s plenty to say about planning your content out for months in advance, but as Simon points out in this fantastic YouMoz post from last year, it’s not all about Google Keyword Tool anymore. There are some great tools out there to find hot topics (Bottlenose is particularly useful), but the best way to find what your audience is looking for is by using the same tools as they are.
Wil Reynolds is a great advocate of using Google Complete to find content topics (check out Wil’s LinkLove 2013 presentation, around slide 90) – start typing questions, don’t press enter; just note down what people are actually searching for. Search Twitter and find out not only what problems need solving, but who it is that actually has that problem (see point two)! Google Keyword Tool shouldn’t be your first stop when you’re looking for fires to put out, and if it’s monthly search volume you’re looking at, chances are someone faster has created content solving the same issue weeks ago.

4. Find your forum.

…by which I don’t literally mean a forum, since as an industry we’ve pretty much ruined that for everyone – all I’m saying is that you just need to find the right soapbox to spread your message.
In the comment string on our site this guy called me out for posting this on a company blog. At the time I hadn’t really questioned where else I could actually write this up, so Luca made me think. If I had put this on my own blog nobody would have read it…I would have just been complaining without any real platform to build on (might as well have just put it on Facebook or Twitter).
One of our clients is a cloud storage company who obviously have a vested interest in online security, and do write about issues such as this from time to time. They’d never approve something like this for their blog (more in point six) so I would have had to dry it right out…or put it on another site on their behalf.
Hammering this article to fit brand guidelines would have dulled its impact so much, and for a company to write about real life issues like this they really would have had to find a real life case…otherwise they’re just tipping off the media. It would never have worked.
If you’re going to be controversial, find a site that’s fine with that to host your content – that goes for the content you’re putting out on behalf of your clients too. We’ve had plenty of content turned down by webmasters for being too much for their blogs, and you’ve got to respect that. Guest blogging is like the name implies, and you’ve got to make sure you don’t leave a mess in someone else’s house.

5. Write for your audience…

Something everyone is taught in English class from a relatively early age is how to write for an audience. Even if you came into SEO from something else – a computer science degree, MA in marketing; whatever – you still have those classes to fall back on, and they’ll give you a pretty solid foundation in content marketing. In this industry everything comes from experience – if you covered search engine optimisation in your degree I’m sure you found half the things you knew were obsolete by the time you’d graduated…and post-Penguin the other half will get you penalised too.
I found when I moved from in-house to agency side search engine marketing, most of the things I’d been doing for the last year were considered pretty spammy. If you’re writing to put content on websites that nobody reads, like article marketing websites, then you’re not writing for an audience…and that shows in the work you put out.
You don’t have to be a journalist to create great content. If you’re solving problems imagine you’ve got that problem yourself and then just write for you…

6. …don’t write for your client.

If you think you’ve found a hot topic and your client isn’t happy with being associated with it, there’s probably a case for not pushing that. Controversial content gets links, but there’s a certain amount of press that comes with those links.
I don’t have a PR agency, so TechCrunch pointing out that it was probably my fault isn’t a disaster from my point of view. If your client makes a mistake then it might be. In the case of my blog post it wasn’t long before the media-at-large didn’t care anymore (TechCrunch may have even been the start of that) and the chances are pretty good that nobody will remember a guy getting mad at his phone in a few weeks – if a tech company posted a rant about Path it would probably be called a smear campaign.
…and I won’t lie – when the VP of Marketing called me I was more than a little worried.

7. Your content has to be worthy of links to get any…

This is my very first YouMoz post, and there’s a good reason for that – up until now I’ve not really had anything to say that I think might help the community, so I’ve stuck to my blog, Twitter and getting all up in other people’s business when I get the chance.
If you’ve got an opportunity to write for a great site – or to work with a well-known journalist, or whatever – giving them a few hundred words of nothing content will a) not generate much in the way in traffic, b) not generate any leads, and c) make that great site think twice about having you back.

8. …and so does your site.

Which leads me on to number eight: the whole point of placing links as part of a content marketing strategy (or at least it probably should be the main point) is for people to click through to your site. Make sure your users are arriving on a page they want to see.
When St. Louis-based developer David Lynch submitted the post to Hacker News our entire site went down almost immediately (at 17:25, which our Development team were definitely not happy about). It’s a pretty extreme example, but if your site doesn’t present people with the screen they were expecting to see they’re probably going to leave straight away.
This applies not only in a technical SEO sense (see Aleyda Solis’ wonderful resources on mobile SEO and which versions of a page you should be serving to which people for a start), but also in something as intrinsic as the services you’re providing.
Going back to point four (Find your forum): the company I work for not only has a burgeoning social team, but an entire blog dedicated to social media – the perfect place to host an article about a social network, in my opinion.
Make sure your link is pointing to the kind of page your audience wants to find.

9. Be funny, or insightful. Probably not both.

The links generated by my post contain so much more useful information and insight than my content does. Like I said, I’m not pretending to be a journalist uncovering a story. I just presented a real life experience in a humorous way…because it was pretty funny. How do you explain what you do to your partner’s grandparents? I go with “I work with computers”. Imagine trying to explain a social network to two different pairs of 80 year-olds before 6:30 in the morning? You’ve got to laugh, as the expression goes.
Your multi-national debt management firm probably can’t be funny in its content (very happy for people to prove me wrong here). Companies like this have guidelines to uphold and the chances are they’re much more interested in their brand guidelines than the links you’re working so hard to get for them. Make sure you take tone of voice into account and if your content doesn’t work in their speak, see point six. You’re writing the wrong thing.

Your post definitely needs a Wonka meme.

10. Don’t do it for the links.

Writing my blog post, I had absolutely no intention of getting a single link. In all honestly I didn’t fully expect the guys at Path to see it – I just wanted to vent and if possible, make my colleagues laugh. In a very helpful post on Quick Sprout last October KISSmetrics’ Neil Patel wrote that he never manually built a link – he just kept writing. We’re not KISSmetrics, but our blog has been covering as many of the happenings in the digital marketing world as we can possibly manage for more than half a decade – and mostly we just do it because we want to.
Posting a piece of content on your blog every few weeks or months and expecting it to get picked up isn’t going to happen; and it’s definitely not content marketing – it’s just content. No matter how good your stuff is, don’t be disheartened if you don’t get any traction with a blog post…or a hundred blog posts.
What I do think is important is that you look at every piece of content you write and think about how to make it better this time. You don’t need to over-analyse every post before it goes live – I would guess you’ve got targets and deadlines to make after all – just think about how to improve on what you’ve got so your next article will make outreach easier, or will help more people out; and if your last piece performed well, how are you going to beat it? Even if you know you won’t.


Reference :- http://www.seomoz.org/ugc/10-lessons-from-a-100k-pageview-post


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Tips for Brand Social Media Marketing Success with Agencies & Consultants

Planning and executing a successful social media marketing strategy sometimes requires that brands look outside their own companies for assistance. Businesses may partner with consultants or agencies to tap into the expertise, skills and resources they can offer, to help with strategy and tactical execution of the plan.
However, things can go wrong in social and when they do, the fallout can be massive and instantaneous. I wrote about a few examples of epic social fails recently and sometimes, brands find themselves having to defend their image over the damaging actions of an external resource. Tsk, tsk, people say. They should have handled their social media in-house and this never would have happened. This was certainly the case with Celeb Boutique, who publicly laid the blame for their insensitive #Aurora tweet at the feet of their PR agency.
Not so fast, though. Social media fails originate in-house and from external partners alike. Internal processes and failures can cripple your social strategy as surely as external resources.
Working with an agency, consultant or other resource can help your brand execute a successful social media strategy while still reducing the risk of a slip up. In fact, a solid resource will help you scale your social efforts, tap into new markets, perfect your messaging and take your social strategy places you hadn’t even expected. Sounds good, doesn’t it? Before I jump into tips to ensure your agency or consultant relationship works to your maximum benefit, let’s look at a couple of reasons social may fail when working with an external partner:

• Slow response times. Social fans – especially those on Twitter and Facebook – expect a quick response, especially when they’re voicing a complaint. In fact, 42% expect a brand response in 60 minutes or less. The need for approval of messaging can slow down response times substantially and hamper conversation.
• Inaccurate or uninformed responses to questions/comments. The people creating your social content need to know your business and understand your audience inside and out.
• Inconsistent or infrequent community management. If your content is being broadcast but interactions are not monitored often, you’re missing a huge opportunity to connect and may be doing more to harm relationships than build them.
• Inappropriate messaging. This may range from irrelevant to entirely inappropriate, but if the message is off, your company isn’t being well represented on the social stage.
• Lack of consistency in situation management, brand voice or content. Regardless of who is involved in your social strategy, to your customers, your online presence should be unified and consistent.

Understanding your own social pain points and where things may break down across your social strategy enables you to plan accordingly. The first step is finding an external resource with the skills, experience and knowledge to help you elevate your company’s social presence. With PR agencies, SEOs, social specialists, digital marketers and more, what are you looking for in an agency?
Ask the following questions (at the very minimum) to help discern whether the agency is a good fit for your social needs:

1. How will you collaborate with our internal team (and any other external resources) to make sure our efforts are coordinated across SEO, print, paid search and other marketing/advertising activities?
2. Do you understand our business goals and what tools/processes will you use to help us achieve them?
3. Can you share examples of successful social campaigns you’ve managed for other clients?
4. How will we communicate throughout the relationship and which types of situations will be brought to our attention immediately?
5. Which members of your team will be involved in each facet of our social strategy?

That’s an incredibly basic overview, but you need to make sure the external partner understands what makes your business unique and that they will be able to convey that through social media, in tandem with your other marketing efforts. Once you’ve chosen an agency:
Establish their role… and yours.
How will information flow between the agency and your company? It is critical to understand how this will work for both parties. Weekly meetings and reporting are great, but what happens when a customer needs an answer to a question after hours? How should the agency ask for information they need to complete content and social amplification tasks in a way that best enables you to respond quickly with what they need? Is the agency expected to provide customer service, or should they refer certain types of inquiries in-house?
Brands and agencies work together in different ways; your agreement may have them acting in a consultative role only. Or, they may assist in content creation, amplification and measurement. They may even handle your entire social strategy, start to finish. Establish who is responsible for which area to prevent misunderstandings or lost opportunities.
Tips for Working with a Social Media Marketing Agency:
You’ve hired an agency, you’ve established roles and you have a social content plan in place that aligns with your business goals. Now, make the most of your agency relationship by:

• Setting clear goals and expectations.
• Getting any budget concerns out of the way. Deliverables, timeline, responsibilities and obligations must be clear to prevent issues down the road.
• Being available when they have questions or need information.
• Providing training as to your brand voice, core messaging, and existing resources.
• Keeping your agency in the loop as products or services change, other types of campaigns launch, etc. They can’t answer questions or hold your brand’s end of an intelligent social conversation if they don’t know what’s happening inside the company.
• Being open to change driven by logic and substantiated by research. This may mean increasing/decreasing a social ad budget, focusing more resources on one social network than another, or any other of the myriad of situations that can crop up in the constantly evolving social space.
• Establishing a social protocol that establishes messages your external partner can share and which situations require in-house approval or involvement before proceeding.
• Staying involved throughout the working relationship. Would you give someone your television budget and let them run with it? Social media is incredibly public and you absolutely need to stay involved in how your brand’s presence is managed.

Careful planning and diligent management are key to the success of your social media marketing efforts when partnering with an agency or consultant. Can you think of other tips to help brands work more effectively with external resources? Please share yours in the comments!


Reference :- http://www.toprankblog.com/2013/05/social-strategy-with-agency/

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Google Local More Important Than Ever

I may have missed it in the recent run through of my RSS for this week, but it seems no one is talking about the new Google Local results for nearly any search with a city included. When doing a search for a city plus keyword, you will see above the natural rankings a very large map followed by 3 very large links to the top Google Local results. It is so big that even on my large flat screens I rarely see more than two organic listings above the fold (or without scrolling down). I have always been a big proponent of geo-targeted organic optimization as well as local engine optimization, as it brings unbelievable conversion rates from a relatively low amount of traffic, but now with this change the importance of being listed in the local engines is more important than ever for any company providing services or products tied to a geographic location.

Google's Results for "Minneapolis Pizza"

Personally, and as a company, we have been reaping the rewards of geo search results as it is often very easy to rank for and brings high quality, targeted visitors. However, my number 3 organic ranking may not be bringing as much business as before. Recently MSN did a new eye tracking test that argued that the top 5 is the new top 10 - in other words, if you are not in the top 5, you are not getting nearly the amount of traffic as those coveted 5 spots. I would argue that for local and geo-targeted organic results, the top 2 is the the new top ten.
Google is obviously pushing the use of Google Local, as I found they often push the sponsored listings to the right for these searches. This could reduce their clickthroughs, which are tied to direct revenue for Google. They must know what I have been assuming for the last two years, which is that local and geo search are going to play a big part in the future of search. With all the new smart phones and cell phones that have search integrated into them, more and more people will be using these features to find local companies and information. Laptops have replaced desktops, and I believe soon PDA phones will replace laptops as far as usage. I already use Google search on my Treo every day for finding local companies or services, as well as getting reviews on products as I am in the store ready to buy. Google wouldn't make such a drastic change to their results page if it wasn't thought out and expected to bring a better user experience and bottom line.
There is still huge opportunity for companies to list their businesses and reap some quick rewards. In my test searches I made this week, I found several mortgage words tied to cities that had the second and third result scraped from another Yellow Page engine. If you're a mortgage company in that city, you better believe Google will replace one of those borrowed listings for your company. I saw another mortgage keyword owned by the same company with two urls and two different addresses in the same city. You know they are loving life right now, but you could probably take one of their rankings. You have to sign up under the city where your address is; they send you a physical card with a code on it to confirm. *Hint if you are in a small town that gets no searches but near a big town that gets all the action, go get a P.O. box in that city. This method makes sense for service companies, though--not retailers.
Get it while the gettin's good; I would recommend getting in all of the big three's local indexes:

• http://local.google.com 
• Yahoo Local Sign Up 
• Live Local (login to find sign up page)
• Another great site is True Local 

Just as an old domain will serve you well in today's organic search world, an old listing in Google Local may treat you right in a year or two as more and more people use it.

Reference :- http://www.seomoz.org/ugc/google-local-more-important-than-ever


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How to Use Article Marketing the Right Way

Most people reading this might be thinking that article marketing worked great a few years ago, but as Google has improved its algorithm, the effectiveness has decreased somewhat. This post is designed to show that although some types of article marketing have been devalued, it still works very well if you are creative.
There are a number of different ways to tackle this issue--not all methods are suitable for all sites, and some can do more harm than good. One point you should bear in mind for relatively new sites is that you need to write two different articles if you intend to publish them on your site as well as third party sites. Google won't necessarily understand you were the author, especially if your site doesn't have much trust.
The first and most controversial method is to write an article and submit it to as many (50+) sites as possible across the web. Although this is a very good way to get a few low quality, anchor text-rich links on the cheap, it's not recommended for sites that are less than a year or two old or have less than a few thousand high quality links.
Probably the most popular method amongst marketers on a budget is to submit manually to the top 5 article directories. Search Google for the term article directory to find out which are most trusted, don't rely on somebody else's recommendations. This is a good method for relatively new sites as you won't build links too quickly and the links you do get will, on average, be more trusted.
When you submit an article to a directory you are normally giving other site owners permission to re-publish the article on their website, as long as the bio (and link) remains in place. The better your article is, the more likely it will be picked up by a good quality site. Remember, it's also very likely to be listed on a few scraper or MFA sites as well.
My favorite method is to contact individual site owners and offer to write a unique article for their site and maybe pay them to publish it. This works very well if your client has an affiliate program, as the site can publish your article and earn commission from people who read it and click on your link. Hopefully your affiliate links are search engine friendly; otherwise, this doesn't help in terms of link building. Remember that most webmasters are crying out for unique and well-written content, so if you are offering to write free of charge they will normally be very happy and won't charge you.
For one of my clients (for the sake of this example I will call them a car insurance company), we contacted a good number of sites and wrote "Guide to Car Insurance" articles related to their niche. Each site published the article free of charge and included an affiliate link at the bottom. As an extension of this, we created PDF copies of the articles branded with the name of each site and a shortened affiliate link for them to use in offline promotion. Some businesses didn't really do much promotion, but certain car dealerships handed out the car insurance guides with new cars and generated good commissions.
One of the key ways to get your content on as many great sites as possible is to make it accessible. Explain on your site that you write articles free of charge. List PDF files and even zipped archives of some articles for mass distribution so people can easily add them to their sites.
Another key issue is promotion. If you write a great article and it's published on a third party site, don't just sit back & start promoting. Submit it to Digg and Netscape with a cool title, Stumble it, add it to your Squidoo or Work.com pages, and even encourage a few bloggers to link to it. Always try to promote your content, even if it's not on your website.
What are your favorite methods of article marketing?


Reference :- http://www.seomoz.org/ugc/how-to-use-article-marketing-the-right-way

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What Should I Look for in a SEO Agency?

Choosing to use the services of a reputable SEO agency can be one of the best marketing decisions you can ever make for your business. Ranking highly in search engines means you have a much wider pool of prospects that are interested in buying products and services just like yours. But with so many agencies out there offering to boost your search engine position, how do you know which one to choose?
Let’s take a look at what you should be looking for.
Flexible services 
Some SEO companies will want to tie you into a binding contract, and you might have no promise of any results. When this is the case, avoid using that agency. Any reputable practitioner will be confident of their results and won’t need to force you into signing anything that you might not want to.
A good track record 
Always ask to see examples of how they’ve helped other sites to rank. A professional SEO company will have plenty of success stories under its belt that it will be happy to share. Another good indicator is how highly the agency’s site ranks for keywords in its field. If the agency can’t do it for its own site, it’s unlikely that it will be able to do it for yours.
A dedication to white-hat tactics 
White-hat SEO tactics are all about using processes and practices that are approved by big players such as Google. Underhand methods might get you a high ranking in the short-term but, in the end, you will be penalized. This could end up having a massive impact on your business, especially if you already have a stream of customers who find you online. Speak to prospective agencies about how they’ll optimize your site and what their tactics include.
A point of contact for queries
It’s always good to know that should you have any problems or questions, you have a dedicated point of contact that will be happy to help you. Before agreeing to anything, check out how the agency works in this respect. Ideally, you should be able to speak to someone who can give you a detailed response via e-mail or telephone within a reasonable timeframe.
No big promises!
If an agency makes a big promise such as page one rankings within a week, alarm bells should start ringing. SEO is a complex and unpredictable field, and commitments like this will usually be broken or achieved using black-hat practices. A reputable company will assess your site and your keywords, and give you realistic goals and timescales. Though it can be tempting to go with the company who promises you the world, it could be a big mistake in the grand scheme of things.
Finding a good SEO practitioner doesn’t have to be difficult, but it’s well worth keeping these points in mind. By doing your research before making an informed decision, you’ll be best placed for reaping the rewards of effective search engine optimization.
Are you considering using an SEO agency? What factors are you taking into account?


Reference :- http://www.sitepronews.com/2013/05/08/what-should-i-look-for-in-a-seo-agency/

EBriks Infotech :- SEO Company India, SMO Company India

70% of Customers Pay Under $1,000 for SEO Per Month [Local SEO Survey]

SEO isn't the big money maker many people believe, with many SEOs serving a small number of clients and earning smaller revenue. Bright Local has done a refresh of their 2011 Local SEO Industry Survey and there are some surprising results.
The last few years, we have seen the rise (and collapse) of some very large SEO companies, yet the vast majority of SEO companies are working either solo or with five or fewer other SEOs. A startling 82 percent of respondents have 1-5 SEOs in the company, with 36 percent being single SEOs.

Bright Local also discovered that 70 percent of customers were paying under $1,000 per month for SEO services, while the most SEOs handle between 6-10 customers. Even if those SEOs were at the max end of 10 customers, that means most SEOs are only bringing in a maximum of $5,000 to $10,000 per month from customers, with another 25 percent bringing in between $2,500 to $5,000. That is not a lot of revenue from clients, particularly if those SEOs have overhead such as office space or employees.
SEOs seem to approach the verticals they service in a few different ways. The vast majority provide SEO across a wide variety of industries, and you can probably assume that at least some of those SEOs are sticking with the “only one client per vertical” to prevent any issues of competition and favoritism for the same keyword areas. Another 14 percent focus on a single vertical, preferring to become an expert in one area rather than be a jack of all trades.
Where have SEOs been finding customers recently? More than 90 percent of respondents stated that word of mouth was their number one effective way of finding new customers, while SEO itself was effective for 46 percent of respondents. It was surprising to see outbound calls at 18 percent, while the usual suspects such as LinkedIn, meetups and local business groups contributed another fair amount.
And if they are finding the majority of new customers via word of mouth, how are SEOs doing contacting leads? Thirty-two percent are not contacting leads at all, but that is down from over 45 percent in the previous year.
More SEO competition and lower budgets from many businesses is likely contributing to this shift. A startling 11 percent contact over 50 leads each month. However, SEOs are reporting an average of 42 percent conversion rate, which is very high.

As for what time of work customers are looking for, not surprisingly, on-site SEO is at the top of the list, with 91 percent. But second on the list? Very surprisingly it is Google+ optimization, for local SEO. And not far behind that is the old standard content creation and optimization.
As for whether SEOs believe social media is an effective marketing channel for local, 55 percent of SEOs feel it works for some businesses, 25 percent think it is very powerful, and less than 10 percent each feel it is over-hyped or are undecided. A great metric to include on this would be to differentiate the type of local businesses.
You can view the entire BrightLocal Local SEO Industry Survey 2013 here.


Reference :- http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2266225/70-of-Customers-Pay-Under-1000-for-SEO-Per-Month-Local-SEO-Survey 

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Tips For Creating Effective Online Marketing Strategy For Tourism Industry

 In quite short history, social media has infuriated many sectors and tourism industry is greatly influenced by social media campaigns. Read on the article to know about some of the useful tips which you can use to create a strong online marketing strategy for your tourism business.

EBRIKS INFOTECH   SEO INDIA   share with you  About   Tips For Creating Effective Online Marketing Strategy For Tourism Industry . The Internet has transited the way people are interacting with commerce- a trend which is most noticeable in the tourism industry. Rather than personally going to travel agents offices, consumers are showing more interest towards self-researching online for planning a trip.  This digital shift has an impeccable effect on tourism marketing strategy. With more and more people are resorting to internet to book a trip for them, the competition in the online world has become stiff. So, how can you successfully market your travel business in the digital world and can stay ahead of your competitors? If this question is troubling you then here are some quick tips to help you in creating a more viable and strong online marketing strategy for tourism business- 

Do a good planning of your paid search budget on the basis of consumer trends- Many companies plan their paid search budget for the entire year at one go. However, travel and destination marketing is entirely a different breed. As the busiest season is being summer, therefore, you should pave more focus on this time.

Create good relationships- Consumers crave for a tour agent which they can trust completely when it comes about travelling. Therefore, you should not focus your travel marketing strategy solely on the sales only but work diligently in building a long term relationship with customers. Tap their interest and engage them through email campaigns or by using different social media platforms and do not afraid from asking feedback.

Support reviews on website- Presently, consumers are showing more inclination towards reviews, especially those which can help in planning their tour. Offer reviews on your website and bolster your customers to post their travel reviews.

Feature coupons, contests on your site: It has been proved that many social network users followed particular travel brands because of their lucrative discounts and coupons. It’s a well tested tip for travel marketers to expand their customer base by offering season discounts and coupons.

Learn to use video- Reading about travel places is one thing but viewing video can infuse life to your business thought. Youtube offers plethora of useful tools that can do wonders by making your video more popular among masses. Start a Youtube channel for your travel business and encourage your employees to film snippets of their personal tours. Run a competition and award the best video.

Encourage content sharing by satisfied customer- 'One happy client is equal to thousands new clients'. Today's online business follows this success mantra. Satisfied travellers love sharing their experience and are more keen in showing off their photos. Blend this love of sharing into your travel strategy by allocating a suitable place on your website for these customers to leave their happy travel memories. Not only will this help in building your brand image but it will also inspire future customers.

Blogging- Start a blog of your company and include unbiased opinions, detailed information and photo galleries. It is a great way to do organic optimization and also promote your brand value.

Focus on mobile marketing- Make mobile phone an imperative part of your online marketing strategy. While, there is a rise in the uptake of smart phones, one thing which can be guaranteed is that every mobile device will be having SMS capability. So, make use of this feature in disseminating information about your travel plans. You can send messages to people, which can be in the form of basic message or media-rich content including videos.

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