When The CEO Wants To Know About Digital ROI Before Sanctioning The Digital Marketing Budget (With A Focus On SEO, Social Media, Email Marketing & Content)

Author : Bharati Ahuja

Recently many companies though convinced about investing in the online presence are hesitant about sanctioning budgets for SEO, Social Media, Content Writing, Email Marketing and other online presence campaigns. The reason being, the top management need the facts, figures and futuristic growth assurances before sanctioning these budgets.

The earned and owned media help in establishing online reputation and also help in building a brand. Focusing on earned and owned media i.e SEO, Social Media, Content and Email Marketing a business can sow the seeds of web presence which in the long run can help in branching out to the world wide web and gain the targeted traffic to their website and increase the outreach on the social media platform.

In order to achieve this of course a well planned strategy and a holistic approach is needed. Every media has got a different purpose but eventually leads to a common goal i.e quality online presence.

Just as a balanced diet is needed to keep oneself healthy an integrated approach or a healthy marketing mix is essential for an overall web presence which leads to the online growth of the business.

We shall focus on :

· SEO

· Social Media

· Content

· Email Marketing

SEO

SEO is at the root of the earned and owned media campaigns. Only when the website will be indexed and crawled properly and will get correctly correlated to the relevant search queries the targeted traffic from the search engines will be accessed.

• SEO Campaigns work on the On-Page factors, Off-Page Factors and the Technical factors of the website to see that all the pages of the website are getting crawled and indexed regularly. 
• SEO also monitors that the relevance of the search queries for which the website is getting correlated to. 
• Moreover, SEO also checks whether the traffic is coming from the targeted geo locations.
• More pages becoming the landing pages for relevant and targeted search queries is also one of the goals of the SEO Campaigns.
• Increase in non-branded search queries over a period of time is also a positive offshoot of an SEO Campaigns.

SEO ROI can be easily calculated by the data available from Google analytics and from the in-house sales team.

A simplest SEO ROI calculation would be attained by answering these following questions:

How many visits received from search engines?

Let us denote this as – a

How many enquiries received via the website form or calls received from visitors after visiting the site which they found via search engines?

Let us denote this as - b

The no of enquiries thus received got converted to sales?

Let us denote this as – c

The amount of profit from these invoices drawn? 

Let us denote this as – d

The cost of SEO monthly / annually depends on what basis you are calculating ? 

Let us denote this as – e

I suggest the ROI to be calculated half yearly or annually as this gives a clear idea.

Hence , (assuming you keep the period of the calculation the same for all the metrics)

SEO ROI = (d – e) / e * 100

Basically,

ROI = ( Annual Profit from the sales which were achieved via the Enquires from search engines – The annual cost of SEO for the website) divide upon (The annual cost of SEO for the website) multiplied by 100

There can be many permutations and combinations that can be worked out in order to get various performance data as per your requirement. For example if you want to measure the conversion ratio of your sales department keeping in mind the online enquiries received then it can be done as follows:

Conversion Ratio = c/ b * 100

This can become as a KPP (Key Performance Parameter) for your sales team which can be monitored on a periodic basis to have a direction and guidance for chalking out the sales plans for the next period with a targeted approach and also the reasons for the low or high ratio can be discussed and therby helping to find the strengths and weaknesses in the system .

Social Media:

Measuring the ROI for social-media marketing can be a lot more challenging since its results involve such intangibles as engagement, audience reach, and “buzz.”

Social Media may or may not be an engine for direct sales but it surely helps in reaching out to the existing and potential online customers by creating a communication platform where both the parties have a equal chance to voice their say.

Usually people focus on the no. Of likes, followers, +1s and other such quantifiable metrics to calculate the ROI from social media but it does not limit to these metrics only. Social media ROI is much more it is the online reputation and brand awareness that gets generated as a result of the engagement on social media platforms which is the real ROI from social media presence.

Social Media is the platform where the word of mouth goes viral. Hence it reflects not only the plus points of the products and business but also the drawbacks get a chance to get highlighted. The challenge lies in how the criticism is faced and handled to turn the tables in your favour. The social media is a place where you interact with your existing customers and the potential customers in one place which can be tricky but can help sales too as your satisfied customer can be your best evangelist.

Content

Content is at the core of any online marketing activity. As a result the term “Content Marketing” has surfaced as a new wave online. But, we need to understand that “Content Marketing” does not mean marketing the content , but using content to market the product or service which your business offers. Just adding blog posts written by any third party regularly does not achieve the purpose of content marketing.

Regular fresh content can trigger the conversation and engagement on social media as managing social media for business is not like personal social media . Content Marketing adds more footprints on the web for web presence but also becomes the crux of connecting to people on the web which in the long run help share the word of mouth which is the basis on which decisions are taken by online buyers. As in real life we are what are thoughts are and we share our thoughts via discussions, seminars, exhibitions, road shows , etc. on the internet we need to share our thoughts via blogs, social media sites, videos, comments, reviews, etc. And establish the thought leadership.

Email Marketing

In 2011, the Direct Marketing Association estimated that email marketing typically returns £40 for every £1 invested. A number of sources have suggested that this is better than any other platform.

Email is an easy and inexpensive way of establishing early and long-lasting relationships by sending newsletters, promotions, new service announcements or event invitations we can remain connected .

Via email the receivers receive curated content about your company and industry and are kept informed. The recent trend is that people want to be informed about the latest without searching for it and email is the best platform that any business can use for this purpose.

With email, everything can be tracked and you can see who clicked on certain links and much more

Email marketing is 20 times more cost-effective than traditional media it's six to 12 times less expensive to sell to an existing customer than to a new one.

The fact is that just one platform in particular and singularly is not going to reap the desired benefit and the ROI needed. Only when all the above mentioned media are implemented together a certain online reputation can be created.

When your potential customer sees your website ranking for the searches he made on the search engine and then also checks the social media for the buzz and finds the presence of your business and reads what his contacts had to say and also get an email from you in his inbox giving more information it surely going to register in his mind and will surely consider when he takes a decision related to the products and services you have to offer.

An accurate ROI of any one media may not be possible but the real ROI is generated when each of these activities supplement each other and make the web presence of the business stronger and boost the online reputation so that the people can trust you online. Gaining trust online should be the long term goal for any web presence activity. (Read more about the Trust Factor on What Influences The Trust Factor Online ?)



Eventually , If Content Is King Then Context Is Queen And The Trust Factor Is The Royal Crown.

What Influences The Trust Factor Online ?

Author : Bharati Ahuja

Trust is the topmost layer of the semantic web. It is like the cherry on the top of the cake which makes the cake look appealing. People do business with those that they like, know, and trust. If a consumer believes that a specific brand produces quality products or services then such a customer is most likey to become an online brand ambassador.

Trust is the end result of many factors in action. Trust is the emotional and logical aspect of the users decision to refer and recommend the site and content if he has been getting valuable information from the site.

Trust cannot be purchased, it has to be earned over a period of time via continuous and consistent efforts and reliable actions.

Potential online customers critically evaluate a site before finalizing the call to action on the web page.

Some of the factors the online customer may scrutinize and critically evaluate are:

• A good updated and a functional website: A website which is regularly updated with the latest stock and offers is more trusted than the rest. A consistent logo displayed on an overall web presence on across all platforms builds brand value and also helps customers have a better recall value. Being genuine and avoiding any over the top announcements and claims also adds to the trust factor.

• A blog that is regularly updated: A blog is a platform where you can share any news about the industry or about your company. Please do not make your blog a sales platform and avoid spreading sales messages. A blog is a place where you can establish the foundation for your online ‘Thought Leadership’. By offering information and by sharing your knowledge you show that you care and are willing to help your readers / customers / visitors. A person landing on any page of your blog via search engines or social media or via any media should get information about what he was searching for. This encourages repeat visits which lead to recommendations to others. A blog can also become a communication platform via comments.

• Social media activity: Social media is the best platform where your satisfied readers and customers are going to share their experiences. This same platform offers you also the option for sharing the content of your website and blog. Social media is not about likes, followers and the no. of people in your circle but about what people are writing about your business/ blog or products and how it is being further shared. Social Media signals in the long run are the main source which help establish the online reputation of a business.

• Reviews And Ratings: Reviews and Ratings where people have to login to express them have a better trust factor than the ones posted on the site by the website owners on the website. Though there is a lot of spam involved with this and this factor has to be taken with a pinch of salt it adds to the trust factor in a limited way.

• Testimonials: Testimonials from authority people of your industry and from satisfied clients who have a good online reputation does add to the trust factor and influence the user positively.

• Good Search Presence: Search engines are the place where all your potential buyers start from . If you have optimized your blog and website and are found by the searcher for more than 3-4 search queries made by him , it will surely sow the seed of trust in his mind and as he goes further and searches on social media and other platforms and again he finds the same presence it goes on adding up and develops an interest and curiosity to know more about your business and products.

• Secure Payment Gateway: A secure site where the user can share his personal details and credit card details securely without any fear surely again gains more trust.

• Quick response to the inquiry form filled by the user: An online buyer wants quick answers to his queries as he has multiple options available online. If you delay in providing the answers he is surely going to move on to the next option.

• Brand search results: Ranking for relevant search queries surely gets you the targeted traffic but when these potential customers want to know more about your company, they expect you to rank for brand search queries too. If your website does not rank for brand search queries then it has a negative impact on the searcher. Hence, ranking for brand search queries is equally important.

• Contact Page: A detailed contact page which explicitly has the address and contact numbers adds to the trust factor. If you do not share contact nos. and address and only have a form then it may be detrimental to the trust factor. Why should they share their contact information when you cannot share yours? Openness, genuineness and the willingness to offer answers will surely win the trust vote for your online presence. In this case being found on local search results of Google with all the details too helps in winning the trust of the online visitor.

• About us page: Last but not the least, though people are buying the products online they always are curious to know the humans behind the front end and feel confident when the ‘About us’ page has the details of the team offering the facility online. After checking out the products people may also check out the management and other team members online especially when the amounts to be online are substantial.

Just like in real life it takes time before your friends or customers can trust you , online too it takes time to build trust and then retain it. It may range between 2 – 5 years to build the initial trust and then to retain it is a constant exercise and is a continuous effort in proving them that their trust in you is not a wrong decision made by them.

Google Says: Twitter And FaceBook Social Signals Are Not A Part Of The Ranking Algorithm

Author : Bharati Ahuja

Google’s head of search spam, Matt Cutts, released a webmaster video today answering the question, “are Facebook and Twitter signals part of the ranking algorithm?” The short answer was a clear cut "NO".

Continue Reading »

Content Marketing Is A Business Strategy...How To Design A Content Strategy?

Author : Bharati Ahuja

Any business serious about a quality web presence and a wider and priority search presence needs to focus on publishing quality content regularly.

Hence, content is at the core of any online marketing activity. As a result the term “Content Marketing” has surfaced as a new wave online. But, we need to understand that “Content Marketing” does not mean marketing the content , but using content to market the product or service which your business offers.

Just adding blog posts written by any third party regularly does not achieve the purpose of content marketing. One needs to have a content strategy which needs to be implemented, monitored and the outcome measured regularly too.

How To Design A Content Strategy?

• Decide upon the categories of topics which need to be published on the company blog or as guest posts.

• Decide upon the different formats of the content

• Text Content
• Videos
• Audio
• Infographics
• Images or Cartoons

• Have a clear idea about the type of audience.

• Is it the existing buyers you are targeting?
• Is it the potential B2C buyers?
• Is it the potential B2B buyers?

• Have a clear idea about the demographics of the audience.

• The age group of the audience to be targeted.
• The gender if necessary
• The geolocation of the audience so that the right terminology is used which is prevalent in that location. (Local or Global)

•  Decide upon the outreach and distribution channels to be used for sharing and promoting the content.

• Twitter
• FaceBook
• Pinterest
• Linkedin
• Youtube
• Google+

•  Work out a set of norms to engage with the audience on social media platforms when they reply and respond. Company representatives on social media platforms should engage with the audience based on the rules and norms set by the company to avoid wrong messages to reach out online.

• After all this exercise the analysis of the social media metrics will surely give an idea about the direction the content wave is reaching out to. The social media metrics via Google Analytics gives an idea about how the content strategy is getting executed. As social and search are integrated the no. of unique visits to the site via referral social media sites also is a positive indicator about the content strategy and the social media campaign being implemented. As per statistics social drives 25% of inbound traffic!! 

•  Always have an Editorial Calendar which will organise the publishing of content. The headers in the calendar can be as follows:

• Date Created: The date when the content was written and submitted by the author to the team.
• Category: The category of the content. 
• Title: The title of the content.
• Date To be published: The date when it is scheduled to be published.
• Author: The name of the author.
• Editor: The name of the person who edited the post.
• Target Audience: The audience for which the content has to be targeted so that the social media platforms are accordingly selected for its outreach and promotion.
• Outreach Channels: The list of social media platforms on which the blog post has to be shared.
• KPP(Key Performance Parameters): The key parameters which determine the success of the content : for e.g. likes, downloads, retweets, conversions, etc.

Get Found, Get Shared, Get Leads, Convert.

Social and search integration has to start at the site level. The website which is at the nucleus of the whole search and social ecosystem has to be optimized first to be found on the search engines as 80 % of the people start with search engines. An optimized site ensures that your business is found on the search engines when the user is searching for a product or services related to what you have to offer. The social media signals add to the trust factor and build confidence for the brand. Next when the potential buyer contacts you the conversion depends how fast and accurately his queries are answered and whether the impression that he gathered during the search experience matches with the real time experience he has with the sales staff .

Some Important Points To Ponder On About Content Strategy: 

• See that content is created by subject matter experts.
• Every piece of content should add value.
• 73% of B2B content marketers are producing more content than they did one year ago
• We're in the age of data driven marketing
• Content Marketing is a business strategy
• Think about ROO (Return On Objective) when analysing metrics.
• The content should focus on the utility aspect , inspire the reader in some way or empathise with the reader so that the reader is influenced by the content in a positive way to achieve the objective set and achieve the purpose of publishing and promoting the post.
• The main content marketing metrics which measure the success or failure are outreach, engagement and conversion.
• Don’t sell but share knowledge.
• Real influence isn't huge fan & follower counts, it's niche communities that take action.
• Its not quantity of leads, but quality and conversion rates that matter
• Conversions may not be immediate ...28% of invited executives engage in program after 7 months.

Read More on : http://blog.webpro.in/2013/04/some-valuable-content-gems-from-b2b.html

SEO , Social Media And Content Strategy Posts Of 2013 On The WebPro Technologies Blog

• How To Get More Comments On Your Blog Posts
• If Content Is King Then Context Is Queen And The Trust Factor Is The Royal Crown
• Content Marketing Is A Great SEO Strategy But It Is Not The New SEO
• Drawing Professional and Friendship Boundaries At Work
• 5 Most Useful SEO Tools
• The Google Glasses Project - The Future Technology
• The Technical Anatomy, Basics And Beauty Behind A Tweet
• PageRank And A 301 Redirect
• Is WordPress or Blogger better for SEO? Matt Cutts Answers The Question
• Entrepreneurship, The World Wide Web And Women’s Day
• A Short Summary Of What Amit Singhal Spoke At SXSW conference 2013 in Austin
• Google’s Initiative To Help Hacked Sites
• Google: From Google Glasses To The Talking Shoe
• Google Announces The Launch Of Think Insights
• Is Your Blog Content Friendly And Authorship Compliant
• Upcoming Weekend Workshops At AMA To Be Conducted By WebPro Technologies
• Strengthen Your Blog's Rep, Step by Step
• Content Marketing – From Renting An Audience to Earning An Audience
• Some Valuable Content Gems From The B2B Content Conversions Conference April 2013
• The Jeffalytics Google Analytics Periodic Table
• What the Google Glass users see when they look through their Google Glasses ?
• Penguin 2.0 And What Is In Store For SEO In The Next Few Months For Google
• Google I/O 2013 : Just Say “OK Google” To Search Hands Free in Chrome
• Company Logos In Google SERPs using " Organization Mark Up"
• What Is Responsive Web Design And Why We Should Opt For It?
• SEO Is A Necessity, Content Creation Is A Strategy And Social Media Is The Channel
• The Concentric Circles Of Quality Web Presence
• The Digital World Challenge Faced By The Chief Marketing Officers (CMOs) In 2013
• Matt Cutts Answer To : Does using stock photos on your pages have a negative effect on rankings? 
• Advanced SEO Means Adapting To WWW Standards Before Google Integrates Them In Search Algorithms
• The Evolving SEO Mindset In 2013 ( 25 Points)
• Google’s New "In-Depth Articles" Feature For SERPs And How To Optimize Your Site For It
• Google Wants Feedback About Small But High-Quality Websites That Could Do Better In Search Results
• The Android Ladoo Campaign - Lets Make Android Delicious
• Google+ Author Attribution And WordPress Sign-In
• The Indian E-commerce Industry Emerging Trends At a Glance
• SMX East 2013 Insights On Topics Related To Organic Search For SEO 2014
• Content , Branding, Research and Strategy As The Root Of Any Internet Marketing Activity
• Understanding The Purpose Behind Each Google Algorithm Update Is More Crucial For SEO
• We Have Moved To Our New Office (Some Pics.)
• SEO Client Conversations : The CC (Client Conversation) Series
• Matt Cutts Asks For Suggestions To Fine Tune Webmaster Tools Further As 2014 Approaches
• Why Do We Need More Quality Content To Get Correlated To Our Web Presence ?
• The Misuse Of Authorship Markup And Publisher Markup
• SEO 2014 The Year Of Positive SEO And The Survival Of The Fittest

SEO 2014 The Year Of Positive SEO And The Survival Of The Fittest

Author : Bharati Ahuja

The Year 2013 has given the most shaking algo shocks to the SEO industry.... Courtesy Google....

But, despite all the shocks and after-shocks of the Panda and Penguin updates the SEO industry is still positive (at least I am and am not going to say ‘I Quit’ for a long time to come) . SEO is still alive with more energy and synergy with the web and the search engines.

In fact as I had mentioned in one of my blog posts in 2011 Why the changes made by Google meant good news for the SEO industry . This was at a time when the whole SEO industry was against the changes being made especially when Google introduced Encrypted Search and the keyword data got taken away from us. http://www.seocopywriting.com/content-marketing/why-googles-recent-changes-mean-good-news-for-the-seo-industry/

In December 2013 we had mentioned the following points to be focused upon for SEO which will be applicable in 2014 too:-

1. On Page optimization as per the W3C standards
2. Have a web presence on various platforms
3. Update your blog regularly
4. Co relate web presence with fresh content by blogging, commenting, discussing, sharing links on social media from your own site and blog plus from other authority sites of your industry.
5. Have a YouTube video channel and share videos and embed them on site or blog.
6. Google+ as of now may not be the most widely used social media platform but it as major Google products in some way or the other converge on Google+ your Google+ account has the potential of becoming your passport to your online identity hence ignoring this platform or not having a presence on Google+ is like applying for a VISA without a passport .
7. Submit XML sitemaps for site, blog and video XML sitemaps for videos embedded on site or blog.
8. Apply for Twitter Cards and integrate them with your blog once the application is approved by Twitter.
9. Integrate FB Open Graph on blogs.
10. Integrate Authorship Markup on the blog to co relate your content with your online persona which can lead you to be a thought leader of your industry which in the long run can add to the trust factor.
11. Focus on ‘Less Is More’ instead of having 5 posts a week publish 2 posts per week but of relevant in depth information in all forms i.e text, video, infographics, podcast,etc. It’s the quality that counts not the quantity.
12. If you cannot create content regularly then curate content.
13. Use Schemas for addresses, events, people, recipes, books, ebooks,video, etc.
14. Focus on building a community and retaining their trust as your community can play a major role in helping your content go viral.
15. As in real life you are known by the friends you keep , in the online world you are known by the people that follow you and the people that you follow.
16. In the real world you are what your thoughts are and in the online world you are what you publish and share.
17. The above points help you earn links. Let the inbound links get built as a result of quality web presence rather than running after them.
18. All the above points have a direct impact on the off page optimization giving a boost to the search presence .
19. Focus on the technical SEO by working on XML sitemaps, by monitoring Google WMT , canonicalization issues, HTTP headers, rich snippets in search results which are achieved by using schemas and microformats , customized error pages, robots.txt, improving the site speed, etc.
20. Local search is as important as global search hence cannot be ignored.
21. Follow the path of hard work to develop this overall presence gradually rather than following the short cut of buying fake likes , followers and +1s . The short cuts followed today will become a penalty in future once Google upgrades its algorithm for detecting it like the Penguin Update for spammy links which made all the link builders undertake the task of undoing those same links which they ran after once.
22. Go mobile and check the accessibility of your site on hand held devices else develop Mobile Apps. For widely used services of the site.
23. Help Google to give quality search results to the users and Google will help you in return by giving you the search presence you deserve.
24. Focus on the metrics that matter in Google Analytics according to what goals and priorities you have set for yourself to improve search presence.
25.  Do not put all the eggs in one basket. Have a Bing WMT account too and monitor the search presence on Bing too.

All these points are very much applicable in 2014 too. In addition to that what needs to focused on is the approach, strategy and the monitoring of each short term goal to achieve the long term goal of quality and prominent search presence.

Approach, strategy and monitoring has always been a part and parcel of an SEO campaign but in the coming year these need to be given more importance because without a proper strategy and listing out the immediate targets to achieve will only delay the SEO success.

In continuation of the above points we add the following points to be focused in 2014.

26. The approach to SEO should be like the one you have when you plant a tree in your garden. You know that if you nurture it and add the necessary nutrients at the right time regularly the tree will grow and bear fruit one day. Nurture it regularly and wait patiently for the fruit. Similarly, focus on quality web presence and take care of the technical, on-page , off-page SEO and social media and wait for the search presence to improve gradually.

27. Work out immediate goals to be achieved and work out a strategy to achieve them. Ask yourself:

• Where did you start?
• Where have you reached?
• Where you would like to reach?
• How will you reach there?
• Implement the plan.
• Monitor and create a plan
• Implement the updated plan > Repeat

Work this out yourself with your SEO team if you have an in-house SEO team or take active part in the discussions with your SEO if you have outsourced the SEO campaign.

28. Accept the fact that your SEO Agency cannot do much without your involvement and participation. Accept the fact that after all the digital footprints which are being created as a part of the SEO campaign are the company’s digital assets and you need to be aware about them and its high time the company takes ownership about these digital assets.

29. Every site is different and your competitor in real time may not be your online competitor hence evaluate online competition differently from real time competition as the 10 blue links on the search results page are a result of the data in the search engine index and your real time competitor may or may not have the high quality web presence like he has in the real world.

30. If you have an ecommerce site and you want it to grow then, only SEO is not enough . Be aware that the online competition is growing tremendously and your ecommerce site is a full-fledged business and you need to have staff and the expertise to manage online customers and also have a complete integrated marketing mix to promote it and help it get the right WOM online.

31. If your site does not sell anything online then content strategies become more important as only content and the social media presence will help you establish the thought leadership online which in the bargain give the necessary quality signals to the site.

32. Winning the online trust is one of the major goals of any SEO campaign. Trust is the end result of the authority and the thought leadership you establish online. Trust is the emotional and logical aspect of the users decision to refer and recommend the site and content if he has been getting valuable information from the site.

33. The strategy can start from inside out or you can go outside in. That is you establish the goals and then decide what changes need to be made on the site or web presence as your site is at the nucleus of your web presence or you can start working on the site right from scratch and reach the outer circle of search presence. Explained in detail on The Concentric Circles Of Quality Web Presence

34. Do not go for cheap SEO Packages as SEO is not free or cheap. It requires expertise and effort and any company offering services which offer genuine long term, futuristic search presence will charge a reasonable amount.

35. SEO is a necessity, social media is the channel and the content creation strategy determines your online brand identity.

36. Today the challenge for the website owner is how to keep these activities coordinated and connected and make each task benefit from the other and get an overall boost to the online presence by capitalizing on the digital assets created thereby. It becomes more challenging if these tasks are performed by different services providers. http://blog.webpro.in/2013/06/the-digital-world-challenge-faced-by.html

37. SEO is not limited only to the SEO team but each and every team member needs to be aware of how social media , content and SEO are integrated . SEO is not a onetime process, hence SEO has to be an ongoing process and has to be integrated in the whole marketing mix.

38. SEO is less about bots but more about people. Customers will love the company only if the employees love it first. Hence, educating the whole team about SEO should be an on going process and the SEO should include training the client about the new developments as a part of the SEO project.

39. SEO should not only limit itself to perform only repair functions on the site to get into search results but just like a good engineer applies scientific, economic, social, and practical knowledge in order to design, build, and maintain structures, machines, devices, systems, materials and processes. A good SEO needs to apply technical specifications that define and describe aspects of the World Wide Web which directly or indirectly affect the development and administration of web sites and consider include the interoperability, accessibility and usability of web pages and web sites from the WWW perspective. Instead of dissecting the algorithms we need to understand the standard norms of web design and development which will make the web a better place and websites robust technically.

40. The SEO industry is at that point of the graph where it is going to scale new heights and emerge as more meaningful and essential for website owners and search engines as well. Content and quality have always been king since the first web page was published but Google has been successful in penalizing the low quality content and help clear the content clutter and the linked clutter on the web with its algorithmic updates just recently.

As the web evolved the search engines evolved and only when the SEO mindset will also evolve side by side the status and the reputation of the SEO industry will achieve the due respect and importance in the coming years.

Last 3 year-end SEO posts of our blog:

Dec. 2010 : http://blog.webpro.in/2010/12/seo-and-online-presence-in-2011.html

Dec. 2011 : http://blog.webpro.in/2011/12/saying-bye-to-seo-2011-and-very-big-hi.html

Dec. 2012 : http://blog.webpro.in/2012/12/points-to-ponder-on-for-seo-2013.html

Why Do We Need More Quality Content To Get Correlated To Our Web Presence ?

Author : Bharati Ahuja

‘Quality Content ‘ is a term which everyone seems to be focusing on currently for getting a better search presence. SEOs go out of the way to encourage and convince website owners to create a blog and add content and then try to reach out to share that content in order to get more eyeballs to their site. It seems very logical but website owners need to delve deeper to understand the purpose and the logic behind creating and sharing content to get long term quality benefit from this whole process of Content Marketing.

Firstly, the term ‘Content Marketing’ itself is very misleading just as the term ‘link Building’ was misunderstood when Google introduced the ‘PageRank Technology’. Bill Slawski rightly shared on Twitter a few days back...We do not create content to market content but we create content because we want to market the product or service that we are dealing in.

"Content marketing" isn't about marketing your content, but instead about using content to market something!

— Bill Slawski (@bill_slawski) November 20, 2013

Since Content is the medium via which we represent our online persona by expressing our company ideologies, product features, future plans of the company, discuss after sales issues, etc. we need to focus on content.

The Content Marketing Ensemble Of Content Channels And Formats

(Photo credit: AltimeterGroup)



Let us answers a few questions related to Content marketing to understand the true meaning.

• What Is Content Marketing? 
• What Is The Purpose Behind Content Marketing?
• Why Do We Need To Create And Share Quality Content Regularly?
• Does Content Marketing Focus On Selling?

What Is Content Marketing?

Content Marketing refers to creating and publishing of content in various formats and sharing it via various media in order to get more customers and boost sales.

What Is The Purpose Behind Content Marketing?

Though content marketing targets mostly at getting more customers but in the process if managed and executed methodically , meticulously and strategically it helps in brand promotion , communicating with customers and also helps improve goodwill .

Why Do We Need To Create And Share Quality Content Regularly?

Marketing can never be a one time activity. Even the most established business needs to have market presence in some form or another. From the internet perspective there are millions of sites being published on a daily basis and since the potential online customers most of the time reach your site via search engines your online presence faces that much quantum of competition also on a daily basis. As search engines become more and more sophisticated to integrate quality and quantity signals to websites from all over the web in their index the need to keep your web presence updated with more and more relevant information which is informative and knowledgeable becomes increasingly important.

Does Content Marketing Focus On Selling?

The long term objective of any activity related to marketing is to improve sales, increase profits and retain customers . Content Marketing has the potential for achieving all this but when creating content if the focus is only on sales and the content eventually turns out to be in the form of an advertisement then it may not serve the purpose. If the content is informative and offers solutions to the people who have reached the URL of your content via various platforms then it has the potential of reaching out to you, and such a prospect usually requires very less effort to get converted to a buyer (assuming all the content read by him has created a positive image in his mind about the company).



Content Marketing adds more footprints on the web for web presence but also becomes the crux of connecting to people on the web which in the long run help share the word of mouth which is the basis on which decisions are taken by online buyers.

Most of the time people don’t want to listen to what the seller has to say about his product as this is advertising but they want to know what the previous buyers have to say about the product as this becomes the actual feedback about the product or service which has more impact on the decision making process.

As in real life we are what are thoughts are and we share our thoughts via discussions, seminars, exhibitions, road shows , etc. on the internet we need to share our thoughts via blogs, social media sites, videos, comments, reviews, etc. and on the internet majority of the people use search engines to find information hence the search engines have the onus of correlating all these collective signals from the company blogs, social media sites, comments, reviews, etc. and display the search results after calculating the quality parameters to give quality results to its users. The search engines lately have upgraded their algorithms and are constantly upgrading their algorithms to integrate more and more of such signals so it has become mandatory for the website owners to focus on correlating more content to their web presence in very form to have a complete blended search presence.

Hence, the content you create, share or promote gets correlated to your online persona which has the potential of being found by the search engine users whenever they search for information connected to the content your persona is correlated to.

The Concentric Circles Of Quality Web Presence

Today a quality web presence is the lifeline of every organization. In early 2000 anyone who had a website and had submitted them to search engines took pride on being visible in the search results and proudly printed the website URLs on the business cards and letter heads .

A decade down the line the world wide web is a more sophisticated place with the search engines and the search behaviour both having evolved qualitatively.

Today having a web presence does not mean only having a website. One needs to have a correlated quality web presence across the web. In order to achieve that objective a planned approach and a dedicated team is needed. SEOs and digital marketers have been filling the blogosphere with this message but yet when it comes to the website owners there is an aura of confusion and there is a need to understand the connectivity and correlation among all the online platforms – SEO, Social Media, and Regular Content Creation.

All these activities supplement each other and boost the quality search presence in the long run. One cannot focus only on one activity and then immediately jump to another just because it is being declared as the latest trend by some. This is very misleading for website owners.

Blog posts like SEO Is Dead, Content Marketing is the new SEO, Email is Dead, Social Media marketing is the latest online trend, etc. make the website owners especially the SMBs who have limited budgets skip from investing in one activity to another without actually benefitting from any.

Just the other day an SEO client wrote to us an email strictly mentioning that the coming months were the peak season for their business and we should have an aggressive SEO strategy to increase the traffic to the site.

We started working on their site in Dec. 2012 and till date the increase in organic and overall traffic is as follows . As the site deals in seasonal products the period of comparison is very important.

Hence we took to compare the period of Dec. 2012 to April 2013 (After Our SEO Efforts) v/s Dec. 2011 to April 2012 (When the Site was Optimized by some other company)

As you can see that the SEO efforts have succeeded and the traffic has improved and yes the traffic is targeted and also the site is having a good search presence for most of the keywords. The SEO has done his bit. Now the client has to understand to enhance the quality of this search presence there needs to be an additional focus on content marketing, social media presence, take necessary steps as per the analytics reports, work on call to action, try out A/B testing to improve conversions, etc.

But just because you branch out to an additional activity you stop focusing on the previous one is not a viable solution. The saying, “The rolling stone gathers no moss “, proves to be very true here. Hence a coordinated effort to supplement the benefit from each activity is needed.

All these activities are like the concentric circles drawn around the same centre but with different radii.

Usually people start with developing a website and at the most sign up for an SEO contract and then expect for the overall results to accrue but that is like drawing a small circle or drawing just a part of the circle. The search presence or the SEO circle is one of the concentric circles.

The Concentric Circles Of Long Term Quality Web Presence:

1.  The website is at the centre hence each circle originates from there.
2.  SEO via the on-page, off-page and technical factors increases the probability of the website and content to be found by users who are searching for the relevant information. It takes necessary steps to see that the site is being regularly crawled and indexed by the search engines. SEO also keeps track of the algorithmic updates and helps the site to be as per the norms of the search engines.
3.  Regular quality content creation backed by authorship extends the quality aspect of the search presence and makes the SEO of the site worthwhile and helps develop your online brand and helps to build trust and relationships. Quality content further has the potential to generate valuable user generated content which has a multiplier effect on the quality factor.
4. Social Media gives the necessary leverage to the content strategies and helps you to listen to the voice of your potential and existing customers and also helps you to understand your competition better. It helps you to establish the online reputation and gives you an online persona.
5. Google Analytics & Webmaster Tools monitoring gives you the data to measure the ROI. This data helps you to track and monitor the SEO efforts, the social media efforts and also gives you an insight about your website and other crucial metrics to gear the efforts in the right direction.

A website owner can outsource each activity to different service providers or all these can be managed by one company but the correlation between all these activities will determine the actual success. As all these circles have the website as the centre as you draw each circle you go on increasing the circumference of the outreach.

This can be also co related to the structure of an atom where the website is the nucleus and each circle is an orbit which possesses the electrons of influence and outreach.

SEO is a necessity, content marketing is a strategy and social media is the channel.

If just one of the steps mentioned above are executed even with full sincerity, precision and dedication it will yield limited results only. In order to measure the overall ROI first one needs to measure the ROO (Return On Objective) of each outer circle . The objectives achieved with the activities of each circle will determine the total ROI (Return On Investment).

Today the challenge for the website owner is how to keep these activities coordinated and connected and make each task benefit from the other and get an overall boost to the online presence by capitalizing on the digital assets created thereby. It becomes more challenging if these tasks are performed by different services providers.

Content Marketing – From Renting An Audience to Earning An Audience

Author : Bharati Ahuja

The Highlights According To An Econsultancy Survey In October 2012 Are:

• Over 90% of respondents believe that content marketing will become more important over the next 12 months. 
• Nearly three quarters (73%) of digital marketers agree that ‘brands are becoming publishers’. 
• Less than half of companies have dedicated budgets (34%) or individuals dedicated (46%) to content marketing. 
• Increased engagement is the most commonly cited objective for content marketers, with 52% of in-house marketers and 58% of agency marketers listing this as one of their top three business objectives. 

These statistics prove that though the majority believes that Content Creation and its marketing is important but less than 50% of the companies have yet to focus on the same by dedicating an in house team for content marketing or outsourcing it with a decent budget.

Why “ Content Marketing” is gaining the attention of digital marketers and brands?

In the real world you are what your thoughts are and you are known by the company you keep. On the WWW your identity is established by what you share and publish.

Brands need to establish their trust and credibility online to reach out to potential online customers or to retain existing customers . This is not possible by just having an optimized website for search engines .

A good site optimized for search engines may bring targeted visits to the site, but after the visitor comes to your site and gets impressed and is convinced by the content on your site he will go to the social media sites to confirm what others have to say about your products and services to get a reality check.

The content on your website is what you say about your products and services but the content on the social media sites put forward what others have to say and when both these voices are in sync a credibility is established. This may influence the visitor to buy the product online but the whole experience of buying online and getting any after sales assistance if needed establishes the faith in the brand.

When the visitor who becomes your regular customer and keeps getting the immediate quality services and response online spreads the WOM and when this WOM magnifies and multiplies TRUST is established.

More than the affordable price brands need to establish trust online and content marketing is the right platform for putting your best foot forward and for proving the trust worthiness.

Hence Content Marketing helps a brand establish its unique identity, offers a platform to engage with the customers directly, win public trust and can ensure happier clients.

On the web your potential clients or customers can come majorly from the search engines (Organic or Paid presence) and social media platforms.

In order to have a quality presence on search engines or social media sites brands need a well optimized site and a blog which is updated with regular quality and informative content. i.e your blog/site is a container for the content. Both the container and the content need to be impressive in order to convince.

The site (the Container) needs to have a good design appeal and also needs to be user friendly. The content adds the soul hence if the content is just a few paragraphs added just for the sake of adding words its of no use. Every piece of content should reflect the personality of the brand and raise the trust and goodwill factor limits a notch higher.

All this discussion raises the following questions which I am asked repeatedly by clients:

· How to create regular quality content?

Creating quality content regularly is a challenging task and needs a lot of planning and strategy to reap the right return. Depending on the purpose of the online presence the content marketing team needs to decide upon the right type of the content media mix - text, podcasts, videos, infographics, etc. Then the frequency needs to be decided upon i.e you would like to publish content daily or weekly. The content topics need to revolve round the purpose to be achieved online. If the main purpose is to establish a brand then publish blog posts about

• The company happenings 
• achievements 
• faux pas made by your team 
• efforts put in for making a product more innovative 
• a solution achieved for a problem faced 
• the industry ideologies that our company promotes 
• Share the latest news about the products and services we deal in 
• Videos about the new outlets opened or achievements celebrated 
• Discuss customer reactions and review 
• Support a cause , event or promote industry related conferences, seminars and exhibitions 

We all discuss our success but for a change if we discuss some failure and the lessons learnt by that also is something which gets widely read and accepted as it helps others learn from the mistakes made by us.

This way the web presence of your business will become a true reflection of your real time business where there will be no dearth of actual valuable content and this content will be helpful in projecting the true image reflecting the authority, identity and popularity quotient of your business. Every happening, innovation and development in your office or company can become a topic for a blogpost adding valuable content if you think it will help and offer some valuable information your existing customers, potential clients, shareholders or any targeted visitor to your website in some way or the other.

Work hard in the real world to have more satisfied customers and more acheivements in business which helps your business grow and then update and upgrade your virtual business and presence with the real world facts, figures and experiences thereby being in a win-win situation in the virtual world as well as the real world.

The greatest example is Google itself , if we see the Google blog or any other web presence they have – It is always updated with their latest developments and the discussions about what their priniciples and ideologies in practice.

Paid content, like paid links does not have any value, if your business is not living its actual essence in real life. It will soon fizzle out like paid links . But, content generated with a view of updating the existing client with the actual product information or the content which helps the potential client take a decision or the content which makes the shareholder in your business achieve confidence in the company is all content valuable from the user and the search engine perspective.

Genuine, informative and knowledge based content does not only add value to the content aspect of the web presence but also has the potential of getting inbound links in a natural way boosting the web presence multifold .

· What is the ROI of Content Marketing?

“Content Marketing is not a campaign. Instead of buying the media the marketers are owning the media. Instead of renting an audience they are earning an audience and this takes time. In content marketing once you have built your audience you own it and it continues to generate market results. You don’t have to pay rent to the media. The point is that those who embark on content marketing must understand that it is a long term effort requiring significant investment of time and resources before its results can measure up favourably. “



You can start with monitoring visits to your website and to each of your content items. Increases in organic search traffic will signify that your SEO strategies are proving effective and that the keywords you have been targeting in your content creation are starting to raise your website up the search rankings. Another metric of success is increases in the shares of your content which you can monitor by tracking the social media reports.

The metrics that matter in this context are:

•  No. Of Visits 
•  Sources 
•  Landing pages 
•  Time On Site 
•  New v/s Old visits 
•  Facebook likes 
•  Retweets 
•  LinkedIn and other shares 
•  Reblogs 
•  Links back 
•  Comments 
•  Time spent on page 
•  Average page views per visitor (especially if you're effective at internal linking of your posts) 
•  Followers 
•  @mentions 

Content marketing cannot succeed on its own as it is a part of the whole marketing mix. To understand the concept for ROI for Content Marketing we need to understand that the success of content marketing depends on the success of all the other links in the chain of the whole online marketing process.

The quality content published can reach a wider audience and have a long term life if the SEO of the site on which it is published is up to the norms and it is being crawled, indexed and ranked well. Further on it will have a good outreach if it is being shared on relevant social media platforms and the page on which it is published can be shared easily by the incoming visitors,

Hence the brand needs to invest on:

•  Developing a good site with a good CMS and a good visual appeal and user friendliness 
•  SEO 
•  Having a good social media presence and identify the right social media platform for the kind of content it wants to share. 
•  Create and curate good content regularly 

If the person managing the social media engages with the audience and keeps sharing relevant posts from the archives to answer their questions and cater to their curiosity the old published content can also be revived as per relevance.

·Is our SEO taken care of if we focus on content marketing?

SEO and content marketing are two different industries but are like two sides of the same coin. Your SEO may or may not create content for you and at the same time your content creator or writer may or may not optimize your site.

No doubt, every piece of quality content boosts your search presence – provided your site has been optimized wisely for the search engines and the search engines can easily index and extract the right context of the content to make it prominently visible on the search results for their users.

Where there is content there has to be an author. Hence establishing the Authorship Mark up is of utmost important as this gives an identity to the content and also helps in establishing the author as a thought leader.