Future Searches

A Round up of On-page SEO Factors in 2012

2011 has been an eventful year for all online marketers. We have the Panda, freshness update and some fleeting reference of the Vincent update. And if this is not enough and if I am not wholly wrong, we have some strong signals that 2012 will see the death of links as a signal of rankings. However, the changes are not all about off page optimization. There has been a massive change lurking large over on page optimization process as well. On page optimization is no longer confined to keywords stuffing and all that. What is even more interesting is that Google is now scrapping Meta description as well. But onpage optimization is more than keyword research and meta data writing. Here in this article, we will try to explore some other vital aspects of on page SEO that may have direct impact on ranking in the year to come:

Duplicate Content

Sites with faceted navigations often find that a product page can be accessed via almost infinite number of ways. Since these pages are all basically the alternative versions same page, they will lead to the issue of internal duplicate content. To solve this issue, you need to use rel=“canonical” tag. Set a page as a canonical tag and use this code – <a href=http://www.example.com/rel-canonical.html rel=“canonical”> in the header section of all the other pages. It will solve the issue of internal duplicate content.

What is Google Plus?

Digital PR is constantly searching for new and innovative platforms to communicate through. It has been two weeks since Google introduced it’s own social network – a move that has been long anticipated in the media world. Questions about it’s future are rarely asked without comparison to its rival, Facebook.

It has now been trialed and tested with the key features of Google Plus including:

Google+ Hangouts: This allows groups of up to 10 people to video chat simultaneously – challenging Facebook’s new partnership with Skype.

Google+ Circles: Allows you to create groups of friends, making the friend list a lot more organised then that found in Twitter and Facebook.

Google+ Stream: This is the same concept as the Facebook news feed.

Google+ Photos: Essentially the same as Facebook’s photos except for the fact that it has a photo editor. The photo editor is an application that may give it the edge over its competitors.

Google’s Panda Update: Is this going to affect the SEO firms?

Search engine giant Google had launched its new Panda update in February, 2011, and this has stirred a great deal of debate within the search community. A large number of high profile websites across the internet are starting to feel the impact of this change. This particular Panda update is nothing but a slight change to the way in which Google indexes web pages. Google is constantly tweaking and reviewing its algorithm but this particular change has caused some big changes in the way in which websites will be ranked in search engine results. Most website owners implement search engine optimization techniques in order to boost the visibility of the website. Here are some major implications of this Panda update of Google.

Duplicate content

Duplicate content has always remained in Google’s radar. But since the new update has been brought into effect, the need to avoid duplicate and copied content is all the more. Though, it is true that a few copied words here and there won’t affect much but if you have a large e-commerce website that has hundreds of pages, you may find your search engine rankings have suddenly dropped. Do the needful to avoid the duplicates and secure a higher search engine rank. If your website entirely depends on borrowed content, you must be more careful about the uniqueness of the content that you receive from the clients.

What Will Google +1 Mean To Your Search Marketing?

Finding new, innovative ways to pass marketing messages seems to be getting harder to do every day. Even as technology develops, matures and gets fine tuned, one overriding objective remains clear: how can a company get knowledge of its products and services to its most desirable potential customers?

Social ranking schemes have been around for a number of years, usually showing up on either individual blog/web sites, or on some of the larger social community websites like Facebook, Technorati, etc. The format of these ranking systems are called by different names: Like, Thumbs Up/Down, Rate (number of stars or similar countable icons), Rank, etc.

Search giant Google is now experimenting with its own version of a ranking scheme it calls “+1″. Essentially the system places an icon (a miniature web page with colored tabs along its top and a +1 as the page’s content) next to search results. When a participating user performs a search query, all of the individual results on the SERP have this icon next to it.

Yahoo’s Job Cuts, Google’s New Hires

Yahoo Inc said Tuesday it is laying off one percent of its workforce, or some 130 employees, in the latest job cuts. News of Yahoo’s latest layoffs come hours before the Web media company is due to report fourth-quarter financial results after Tuesday’s market close.

“The latest cuts are part of the company’s strategy to position itself for net revenue growth and margin expansion, and Yahoo will continue to hire to support key priorities” Yahoo spokeswoman Dana Lengkeek told Reuters in an email statement.

On Dec 2010, Yahoo said it will cut 4 percent of its workforce, as the struggling Web portal adjusts its operations to revive revenue growth.

Yahoo struggles to compete with Google and Facebook. On the contrary, Google Senior Vice President of Engineering and Research, Alan Eustace announced on the official Google blog that 2011 will be Google’s biggest hiring year ever.

I love Google because of our people. It’s inspiring to be part of the team. And that’s why I am excited about 2011—because it will be our biggest hiring year in company history. We’re looking for top talent—across the board and around the globe—and we’ll hire as many smart, creative people as we can to tackle some of the toughest challenges in computer science: like building a web-based operating system from scratch, instantly searching an index of more than 100 million gigabytes and even developing cars that drive themselves.

Google’s Market Share Has Dropped by 2% in China

Alibaba has leapt ahead of Google in terms of the share of online advertising revenue it earns in China.  According to Analysys International, Alibaba’s Taoboa keyword advertising and development of interactive marketing ad business allows its ad revenue to grow substantially and therefore Alibaba has jumped to No.2 in China Internet ad market. The statistics below shows that Baidu, Alibaba and Google ranked Top 3 in China online ad market in Q3, 2010.

Alibaba was founded in 1999 in Hangzhou, China by 18 founders including Jack Ma. It is the global leader in e-commerce for small businesses and the flagship company of Alibaba Group. The global trade platform is used by millions of buyers and suppliers around the world to do business online. In addition, Alibaba.com offers a transaction-based wholesale platform on the global site (www.aliexpress.com) geared for smaller buyers seeking fast shipment of small quantities of goods. Alibaba.com has offices in more than 60 cities across Greater China, India, Japan, Korea, Europe and the United States.

Great Keyword Research Tools from Google

Choosing or selecting the right keywords for your website is one of the main tasks for any business owner, because the keywords which they choose are those keywords which bring them traffic to their site, conversion or at least a quick glance from a visitor. Selecting right keywords for your business is one of the daunting tasks. There are many tools available online which provides keywords data based on their assumptions.  Although, they may be not accurate at all times, we need to highly rely on them as there is no other option.

There are different ways to find keywords. As there are lots of tools are available online from the giant search engine Google, we don’t have to look at other softwares or tools. Below are some tools available from Google to find the keywords which are beneficial for your business.

1. Keyword tool from Google

This keyword research tool by Google is the best, simple and user friendly. Almost half of the people who are in to SEO use this tool to get effective data. With new interface, categories, ideas for mobiles etc. makes this tool more ravishing. I’d recommend each and everyone to use this tool to extract keywords which are meant for your business.

Faster Web with Google mod_pagespeed Module for Apache

Google, on it’s initiative “Make the web faster”,  introduced a new module for the Apache HTTP Server called mod_pagespeed to speed up the websites and improve search experience of users. The tool works on the server so directly improves the loading time of the webpages.

Last year, Google introduced a tool that gives suggestions to developers to speed up web pages called Page Speed.  Page speed can be helpful tool to monitor the backfalls of your website but it needs a lot of effort to implement necessary suggestions about server configuration, HTML, JavaScript, CSS and images. mod_pagespeed automates many of Page Speed recommedations and delivers automated SEO with minimal developer and webmaster effort.

So today, we’re introducing a module for the Apache HTTP Server called mod_pagespeed to perform many speed optimizations automatically. We’re starting with more than 15 on-the-fly optimizations that address various aspects of web performance, including optimizing caching, minimizing client-server round trips and minimizing payload size. We’ve seen mod_pagespeed reduce page load times by up to 50% (an average across a rough sample of sites we tried) — in other words, essentially speeding up websites by about 2x, and sometimes even faster.

Google Adwords versus Facebook Adds

Facebook is a social addiction. There is no powerful mean at all to connect and share! We are online all time; while working, travelling, resting…even while weeing & pooing. People spend more time at Facebook than they do at Google. Does it make Facebook a better online advertising channel than Google?

The answer is No. Being the most busy website doesn’t make Facebook the best advertising place. It’s all down to the purpose of the visitors. Facebook users are looking to socialize rather than buying a specific product. Advertising a new product on Facebook; similar to Google Adwords placement-targetted ads, can boost awareness; especially for a specific target group however when it comes to purchasing something, Google search comes to our minds.

Google can have less views however people use Google to find what they need. They perform a search about a topic and are willing to click on links during their visits.  Google users are more likely to be close to the sales stage on the marketing funnel and perform an action. Since Google’s core function is search, advertising your products on Google would bring more sales and leads than on Facebook.

Use Social Media to appear in Real-Time Search

Google and Bing revealed their integration to real-time search and social media by announcing their agreements with Twitter during the Web 2.0 Summit on October 21. Google is aiming to give a better real-time search experience by including real-time Twitter updates in their search results hence users will be able to learn what others are saying about what they’ve been searching for under the same roof. Consider you perform a search about “x brand of freezer”. You will not only see relevant search results but also public opinion about your topic that will give you quick and better understanding about your query.

On the other side, Bing didn’t go far beyond than developing a Bing Twitter search facility similar to the other Twitter search engines in the market. Bing’s new Twitter search feature is currently available in Australia, Canada, Great Britain, Indonesia, Ireland, India, Malaysia, New Zealand, Philippines, Singapore, Arabia, South Africa, and the United States. Those guys are aware of the power of real-time web and took their step in to the social media not later that Google.