Social Media - Leading the List of Online Priorities 2010

According a report published by MarketingProfs, Social media is leading the list of Online Marketing and overall interactive strategies of 2010. The report is based on a survey from ISITE Design.

The report says that most companies plan to invest heavily in social media. Nearly 73.5% consider Social Media as part of their online strategy. Among other online priorities, Web analytics scored second with 60.5% of companies planning to give it more priority in the year 2010, closely followed by user experience (59.5%), and rich media (49.5%).

Source: MarketingProfs. Click here to read the complete report.

Google Warns Goojje

Google has warned a Chinese search website to stop using their logo that bears a close resemblance to their own. The home page of the website in question (Goojje) is adorned with a Google-styled logo along with the very familiar paw print logo of Baidu Inc. Goojje provides search and social networking services. Goojje has already stopped using its original URL, www.goojje.com and all the visitors typing in the address are now getting automatically redirected to dierqi.com, though the content appears to be the same.

Social Media Ruling The Trend

Social media is the new buzz in SEO fraternity. Started as a platform to get connected and be social, the media is now extensively used by SEOs and Internet marketers to promote the websites and increase their online visibility.

Today, social media optimisation & marketing has become an integral part of Internet marketing and web promotion strategies.

SMO is also an excellent source to acquire theme based back links for any website. Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin and other social networking sites can bring loads of traffic to your website and are immensely useful resources to spread word of mouth publicity.

Social media is going to rule the Internet marketing industry in 2010 and we, as Internet marketing strategists, need to exploit its potential to extract the maximum benefit for the websites we promote.

Human Emotions and Landing Pages

I just came across a very good article talking about how human emotions motivate the online business. Of course we do not always think or act rationally. Many, if not all, of our decisions depend on our intuitions and emotions. After all we are all humans, aren’t we?

This fact that our actions are based on our fundamental emotional motivations has provided a new area of consideration to us (Internet Marketers) for building and optimising the landing pages. As defined by Direct marketers Bob Hacker and Axel Andersson, several key copywriting concepts that motivate people to act: fear, greed, guilt, exclusivity, anger, salvation, or flattery. Not one of these motivations is rational -- all of them are rooted in our fundamental and unchanging emotional nature.

So the next time you prepare an Internet marketing plan for a website, along with the robots, take human emotions also into consideration.

YouTube URL Shortener - A Welcome Step

YouTube, being one of the most popular video sharing sites getting much exposure in Facebook, Twitter and other social networking sites, its introduction of URL shortener for sharing links is a welcome step in the Internet world.

With YouTube's URL shortener, you are sure that the links you are clicking are actually YouTube links. Another added benefit of this feature is that it saves precious character counts when you are sharing links on sites like Twitter that allow limited character counts.

Do You Really Need SEO for Your Website?

I have often come across clients / companies, who are doubtful or rather a bit scared to implement SEO for their websites. They are concerned about the delayed results achieved by the process. (We SEOs know that search engine optimization is not a rocket science and it takes a lot of efforts and patience to see the sites ranking on top search pages. Don’t we?) But people who are unaware of the potential of SEO are always reluctant to adopt organic SEO for their websites. Rather, they are happy with the instant results obtained through PPC.

PPC is good. In fact, while preparing an integrated Internet marketing strategy for any project / website, I always consider PPC as a major point as it helps your online business going until your SEO gains momentum.

But, one should never ignore the fact that SEO can do wonders for any business. The latest data of Hitwise shows that the share of paid search traffic has declined by 26% in the past year as compared to other traffic sources. But this should not be taken as a drop in paid search traffic. Rather the opposite is true. In fact, organic search traffic has surpassed that of paid search and the slice of paid search share has become smaller.

So, what do you think now? Does your website really need SEO? Would you really like to lose that major chunk of traffic coming through organic search?

Just rethink……

SEO Tip - Deeplinking

Make sure you have links coming in to as many pages as possible. What does it tell a search engine when other web sites are linking to different pages on your site? That you obviously have lots of worthwhile content. What does it tell a search engine that all your links are coming in to the home page? That you have a shallow site of little value, or that your links were generated by automation rather than by the value of your site.

Are You Fulfilling the Purpose of Your Website?

Life has a purpose and so a website has. The purpose of your website depends solely on what you want to achieve through it. Let's examine concepts behind various types of Web sites as you look for the model that fits your organization the best.

• Advertisement
• Prospect Generation
• Direct Sales
• Business-to-Business Sales
• Customer Support
• Education

Whatever be the purpose of your website, it can only be achieved when it reaches to maximum number of prospects. And this can only be achieved when your website ranks well at the top result pages of the Search Engines. Your website must mark its presence in the search results otherwise it is possible that you are offering best of the services and products, but still you can not sell them because there is no web traffic. When your website ranks high on SERPs, it attracts maximum online visitors, thus helping achieve your business / website goals.

To be ahead in the competition of the online world, your websites needs to be search engine friendly and here SEO comes into picture. SEO can make or break the purpose of a website. It’s the job of a good SEO consultant to keep a website ahead of its online competitors thus fulfilling its purpose.

As an SEO consultant, I have worked on number of websites with varied purposes, but the most sites I have come across are sites seeking to generate business and revenue through online world.

You would not like it at all that you lose the major chunk of your business that is sure to come from the Internet. To succeed, a website must be a carefully targeted, wisely-designed, pay-its-own-way tool which adds to the bottom line. In such cases, Internet marketing experts advise to implement SEO strategies so that your website can also rank well at the top Search Engine Result Pages (SERPs). SEO can help you reach to your new prospects and increase revenue from your website through online sector.

Through search engine optimization you are earn big revenues. You can seek advise from an Internet Marketing expert and SEO consultant who can guide you on preparing and implementing an SEO strategy that will work for the Search Engines. He / She can also guide you on other aspects of website designing, usability and accessibility to make your website more Search Engine friendly and usable.

So, to fulfill the purpose of your website, make it Search Engine friendly, implement ethical SEO techniques and see the web traffic flowing to your site.

Class C IP and Its Importance in SEO

IP addresses hold a very important place in the world of SEO and Internet Marketing. It’s a major factor that decides the fate of the ranking of any websites on the top Search Engine results pages (SERPs). Before preparing the SEO strategy of any website, any SEO consultant should also consider the IP address. IP addresses also play a major role in the backlink strategy of websites.

Before discussing Class C IP and its importance in SEO field, let me first describe IP address in brief.

What is an IP Address?

Every machine or computer on the Internet has a unique identifying number which is known as an IP Address. A typical IP address looks like this:

• 216.27.61.137

IP addresses are normally expressed in decimal format as a dotted decimal number (like the one shown above). This is done to make it easier for us (humans) to understand and remember the address. But computers communicate in binary format (0 and 1). Thus the same IP address in binary format would look like:

• 11011000.00011011.00111101.10001001

The four numbers in an IP address are called octets, because they each have eight positions when viewed in binary form. If you add all the positions together, you get 32, which is why IP addresses are considered 32-bit numbers. Since each of the eight positions can have two different states (1 or 0) the total number of possible combinations per octet is 28 or 256. So each octet can contain any value between 0 and 255. Combine the four octets and you get 232 or a possible 4,294,967,296 unique values!

Classes:

Five classes of IP ranges are available: Class A, Class B, Class C, Class D and Class E. Each class allows for a range of valid IP addresses. All IP addresses are broken down into 4 sets of octets that break down into binary to represent the actual IP address.

The octets are used to create classes of IP addresses. The octets are split into two sections: Net and Host. The Net section always contains the first octet. It is used to identify the network that a computer belongs to. Host (sometimes referred to as Node) identifies the actual computer on the network. The Host section always contains the last octet. There are five IP classes plus certain special addresses:

• Class A - IP addresses with a first octet from 1 to 126 are part of class A. The other three octets are used to identify each host.

• Class B - IP addresses with a first octet from 128 to 191 are part of this class B addresses. Class B addresses also include the second octet as part of the Net identifier.

• Class C - Class C addresses are commonly used for small to mid-size businesses. IP addresses with a first octet from 192 to 223 are part of this class. Class C addresses also include the second and third octets as part of the Net identifier. The last octet is used to identify each host.

• Class D – Class D IP is used for multicasts and has a first bit value of 1, second bit value of 1, third bit value of 1 and fourth bit value of 0. The other 28 bits are used to identify the group of computers the multicast message is intended for.

• Class E - Class E is used for experimental purposes only.

Below is a listing of these addresses:

Class Address Range Supports

Class A 1.0.0.1 to 126.255.255.254 Supports 16 million hosts on each of 127 networks.
Class B 128.1.0.1 to 191.255.255.254 Supports 65,000 hosts on each of 16,000 networks.
Class C 192.0.1.1 to 223.255.254.254 Supports 254 hosts on each of 2 million networks.
Class D 224.0.0.0 to 239.255.255.255 Reserved for multicast groups.
Class E 240.0.0.0 to 254.255.255.254 Reserved.

Importance of Class C IP in SEO?

To increase the backlink of websites, in the era of spam, many webmasters started creating multiple website on same server, linking each other thus trying to improve the ranking of the websites on the SRPs.

Search Engines identified this issue and started avoiding links coming from similar IPs. As it is very easy to get different D class IPs on same server, Search Engines also started avoiding Links from same C Class IP. So when Search Engine find that you’ve a link coming from same C Class IP on which your website is located, the backlink will not have any importance.

So for a successful backlinking strategy, it is always advisable to get links from websites on different C class IP. If you source more than one link from same C class IP, you will get benefit of only one link. Please note that you will not get penalized if you’ve link coming from same C class IP, but you’ll not get any advantage either.

So if you are doing the link exchange specially if you don’t have your own server, do check if the person you are linking to has a different C class IP than yours.

Is Your Website Mobile Friendly?

This is a very fast moving world and the technology is evolving every moment. This is a techno era and to keep pace with the ever evolving technology, we need to keep pace with the changing time.

When we create a websites, we do the cross browser compatibility check. But how many of us (please note the %age) really check the mobile friendliness of our site? We are happy, if our site is compatible with multiple browsers. But have you ever thought about those users who access your website from their mobile phones? Today, when the whole world has become mobile and nothing is static, we can not afford to forget the importance of mobile browsing.

One more reason to make your website mobile friendly is that in countries like India, where internet penetration is low, mobile penetration is quite healthy at almost 300 million. Estimates show that the number of web-enabled phones outnumber the number of PC internet users in India.

So as a webmaster, if you want maximum exposure for your website, don’t forget to make your website mobile friendly.