Online Marketing Blog

Google Sets – Another Useful SEO Tool from Google

George — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 05:37:01 +0000

Google always comes with interesting and useful tools to make the user experience much smoother. Few days before I came across a Google tool, which seems to be very much important for SEO guys. The name of this interesting and simple SEO tool is Google Sets and many of us are not aware of this nice tool. Google sets is another useful and interesting SEO tool which is helpful for keyword research activities. This tool creates set of items from a few examples.

The Google Sets tool bar consists of 5 text boxes into which we need to enter few items from a set of things. After entering the items press any of the two buttons namely Large Set or Small Set (15 items or fewer). After pressing any of the button Google will help us by predicting other items in the set.

For example type Google, Yahoo and Bing in the boxes provided and click any of the button to see the results. Hope it will give you a more clear cut idea.

After clicking on any of the button the following results would be displayed.

Real Time Indexing by Google – Good News for Webmasters

George — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 05:37:51 +0000

Google is in the process of developing a system which helps web publishers to get their content indexed withing seconds of being published. This is yet another breakthrough by Google which is going really aggressive in enhancing its search features. Google hopes to bank on the PubSubHubbub (PuSH) real time syndication protocol for indexing the web.

The advantage of PuSH is that it works on an ATOM format and whenever a new content is published it is notified to a hub. This bub is generally informed to the subscribers of the website. The subscribers instruct the Hub that whenever a new content is published, deliver it to them. So the subscriber don’t need to check with the publisher every time to check for new content, rather they would be informed by the hub itself. In simple words, the publisher adds a new content on his website and tells the hub about the new content. Then it is the duty of the bub to deliver it across all the subscribers and that too in a few seconds.

Google should ask every publisher and website owners to implement this technology and declare which hub they are using for the notification of new content. Google would then subscribe to those PuSH feeds to get the newly published content. With the PuSH system in place, site would not need to wait for week to get their new content or pages visited by Google.

Wordpress has also enabled the PubSubHubbub technology so that all the new blog post gets easily pinged and distributed to the subscribers. More detailed information on PubSubHubbub technology is available here.

Introduction to Affiliate Marketing

George — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 10:32:08 +0000

Affiliate marketing is an effective cont per performance program for selling and earning on the net. The site owners usually display ads and links on their site to generate sales into a client’s site. The site owners are paid on a commission basis depending upon the sale of the product and services.

Mainly Affiliate Marketing consist of three parties namely Merchant, Affiliates and Affiliate Network

The Merchants are those whose products are to be sold via affiliate marketing and they usually provide the terms and conditions, compensation structure etc. The affiliates are the publishers or normal site owners who tries to sell the products and services provided by the merchants. They sign up for the affiliate programs and promote the services and products of the merchants on their sites.

Finally the affiliate network is the platform through which the affiliate transactions are recorded. Affiliate Network is responsible for managing billing, activity tracking etc.

One cannot expect to be rich overnight through affiliate marketing, but needs to take his own time to learn the ropes. But once affiliates are on the right track, there is no stopping them from gaining handsome income through affiliate commissions.

There are many challenges and opportunities which lie ahead in affiliate marketing and needs to be sorted out in the most efficient manner. There are different types of affiliate networks and important affiliate marketing tips which I would be blogging about later.

Basic Difference Between Social Media Optimization and Social Media Marketing

George — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 11:31:03 +0000

Social Media Optimization (SMO) and Social Media Marketing (SMM) are two important that we often hear these days and consider both to be the same. These two terms are the most inevitable parts of an Online Marketing Campaign, but a lot of people consider both to be the same. The fact is that both SMO and SMM are different from each other, even though both use the same platform, i.e Social Media.

Social Media Optimization is generally the optimization of a websites and its pages to make it more friendly for Social Media, where as Social Media marketing includes the major process such as traffic generation, lead generation, revenue generation etc from social media sites. Websites use different social media channels depending upon the nature of its products and services.

Social Media Optimization (SMO) includes activities such as making the website more social media friendly so that visitors find it more easy to share the site or page through social media channels. Consider that you have a unique and interesting product info page on your website. A user coming to that page finds it interesting and wishes to bookmark it. He will first look anywhere on the page to find out whether there is any online bookmarking button. If not, he would have to satisfy with the browser bookmark option. But once he changes his system he would not be able to see the bookmark, and on the other hand if he had bookmarked if online he would have been able to get that bookmark from anywhere on the internet.

So here is when social media optimization comes into play, which helps the visitor for online bookmarking of that page. For that the page needs to have attractive social media buttons which helps to bookmark and share the page online. This would be handy in getting quality backlinks from the bookmark site and also it would help in getting the page across other users.

RSS feeds and subscription options are another way to optimize your website or web page. Those interesting in your site or product updates can subscribe easily via the RSS feeds.

Another way to optimize a site for social media is to run a blog on the website which has interesting and unique postings so that it can be bookmarked and share through the social media sites. Since blogs contain fresh contents, it is always helpful for its SEO activities. The blog content can also be used for social media campaigns which brings an uplift to the overall performance of the site.

Social Media Marketing (SMM) is somewhat different from Social Media Optimization (SMO) and mainly deals with traffic and lead generation with the help of social media sites. Social Media Marketing is actually the continuation of Social Media Optimization. Once the pages are optimized for social media, they are thrown into the social media world to bring more traffic and leads.

Different sites use different social media channels depending upon the nature of the websites and its products. Different sites are suited for different social media audience and hence it has to be marketed accordingly. It can be either promoted through social news sites, social bookmarking sites, social networking sites, social video sites etc. Some examples are Digg, StumbleUpon, Reddit, Twitter, Youtube etc. One has to find the relevant social media audience and promote the site or its pages to get relevant traffic from it.

Hope that you have got an idea about the differences between Social Media Optimization (SMO) and Social Media Marketing (SMM). I have already posted about some of the major social media sites earlier in this blog.

Google Indexes Facebook Pages for Real Time Search Results

George — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 09:35:13 +0000

Google has recently decided to index updates from Facebook pages to enhance its real time search results. The feature is just on a roll out and would be available in all the languages in the coming days. This means that Facebook updates will be shown in Google’s real time search results along with results from other social media sites such as MySpace, Twitter, Google Buzz, FriendFeed, Jaiku, Google Blog etc.

Right now the updates from the Facebook pages are indexed which includes links, status updates, videos and photos. The comments made by the fans are not indexed right now. An organization or company which does not have a Facebook fan page would not get the benefits of this Google real time search update. This would prompt more organizations and brands to go for Facebook pages to get better search engine visibility.

Right now Facebook is granting access to updates from its 3 million pages, which are for politicians, celebrities, brands and local business. This means that the updates from the average Facebook users are not indexed by Google. Facebook is also expecting to drive more users to them by sharing their updates with Google.

I am yet to see the results and hope to get them in the coming days. Hope that this feature has more advantages than disadvantages.

5 Important Forums for SEOs / Webmasters

George — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 00:26:04 +0000

Forums are learning centers for any professional and are usually open discussion platforms where we can discuss anything about our niche. SEO forums are the real coaching centers for SEO professionals where they can discuss and share information which are useful to them. Forums are used as a medium for clearing doubts and learning new tricks of the trade.

Presently there are a large number of SEO forums available, but it is not possible to participate in all of them. People only participate in the most popular forums and depends on several other factors. I have handpicked and listed 5 of the most important SEO forums, which are useful for all SEOs / Webmasters.

1) Search Engine Watch
This is the most popular among the SEO forums with a page rank of 6 and Alexa rank for the overall site with 3,052. It covers a number of different SEO topics and have a large user base, which helps you a lot in open discussions.

2) Webmaster World
The Webmaster World forum with a page rank of 5 is a useful SEO forum where you can discuss SEO topics along with other wide range of topics such as designing, development etc. The forum has an overall Alexa rank of 753.

3) SEO Chat
SEOChat Forum is one of the favorite SEO forum, where I participate on a regular basis. It has a page rank of 5 and Alexa site rank of 2,468. It contain expert SEO professionals who are always willing to participate in the discussions in order to help and clear our doubts.

4) Webpro World
Webpro World is another useful SEO forum which covers a wide topic and have active discussions and experts users. It has a Google page rank of 5 and overall Alexa rank of 8,188

5) High Rankings
Another forum where I spend and discussion topics on SEO is highrankings.com. This forum is an active one with a Google Page rank of 5 and Alexa rank of 12822. Even though its Alexa rank is higher, the forum members are industry specific experts and are very much active.

Get Social Media Stats on Google Analytics

George — Sun, 21 Feb 2010 15:30:00 +0000

While browsing the net for some information, I came across a useful addon and use script which helps to track your social media stats for individual pages. The addons and scripts are easy to use and it just get integrated with your Google Analytics to shown more specific social media traffic stats for your pages.

For this you need to have a Firefox browser and incase you are not having one, you can download it for free.
After downloading the Firefox browser you need to install the Greasemonkey Addon to your browser. You can install it by clicking on the below link.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/748

After installing the Greasemonkey addon, you would be prompted to restart your Firefox browser.
Now you need to install the Social Media Metrics user script for Google Analytics from this page. Click on the install button to install the user script.
Now logon to your Google Analytics and go to the Top Content part in the Content section. Now click on any of your pages displayed there and you would be able to see the additional social media traffic stats on that particular page.

5 Digg Tools That I Cannot Live Without!!

George — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 12:58:48 +0000

Managing and tracking your Digg account and its activities manually is not an easy task, particularly if your are an active Digg and have a strong Digg profile. There are a large number of tools which helps to track and manage your Digg profile and I have also tried a lot of them. But there are 5 top Digg tools which I have found more useful and much easier to use.

1) Friend Statistics
FriendStatistics is an online tool which helps you to get an overall statistics of your Digg activities. It helps you to find out the list of your friends who has been Digging your submissions on a regular basis (last 10 submissions). It also helps you to find users who are not your friend, but Diggs your submission on a regular basis (last 10 submissions). The tool also gives the option to remove deadbeat friends from your list. Dead Beat friends are those who have not dugg any of your last 10 submissions. This tool is best considered for cleaning and maintaing your Digg account.

2) Biggboard Tool
The Biggboard tool is another exiting online Digg tool, which helps to track where your submitted content is going. It helps to know whether it is the the top 10 of a particular category, in top 10 of the hot section of a particular category or if your story is buried or not. It also displays the number of Diggs and comments that your submission has got.

3) Digg Alerter
This is a desktop tool which helps to keep track of your Digg submissions. It updates you every time whenever someone Digg your story and it is just easy to use. You can download this Digg tool from here.

4) Social Blade
Social Blade is another complex online tool to measure your Digg activities. It provides a lot of interesting data such as top users in Digg, top banned users in Digg etc. It also helps you to review your popular stories, the number of Digg it took to pop up, number of Diggs from friends, average Digg per hour etc.

5) Digg This! Firefox browser button
Digg This! is another smart browser button from Firefox, which helps you know whether a page is submitted in Digg along with the number of Diggs. It also helps you to submit if it is not submitted in Digg yet. You can Download this tool from here.

Google Goes More Social with Google Buzz

George — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 15:43:10 +0000

Google has put forward another important step towards being social with Google Buzz. Google has started Buzz to share information such as videos, updates, photos etc. Google is still in the process of rolling out this wonderful feature and all the Google accounts does not enjoy this social media feature for the time being. This feature will be available to all in the coming days.

The Major advantages of Google Buzz is mentioned below.

1) Google Buzz automatically follow people with whom you chat and email using your Gmail account.
2) Google Buzz lets you share your ideas to everyone or just keep it confined to your closest friends only.
3) The comments are directly sent into your Inbox and this makes the flow of conversation easier.
4) It allows viewing image thumbnails with each post and also helps to search for photos from popular sites.
5) Google Buzz also helps to connect with the major social media sites you use and import stuffs from them.
6) It helps you to see the latest post and comments without updating the browser.

Apart from the above mentioned advantages Google Buzz is also available on your phone, so that it makes it easier to see and share updates even if your are not in front of your computer.

The 4 Keyword Match Types in Google Adwords

George — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 16:33:12 +0000

This post is mainly for those who are new to Google Adwords and those who would like to know more about the different search types used in Adwords campaigns. As we all know that Google Adwords is a paid tool is mainly used for running pay per click (PPC) advertising campaign to drive more relevant traffic to a website. Google Adwords are helpful for those who want instant flow of traffic and cannot wait for the site to get organic traffic.

Extensive and clever keyword research is necessary for getting better results from your Adwords campaign. While selecting keywords for your PPC campaign, there are mainly 4 types of keyword categories that you would come upon. These different keyword types are mainly based on the requirement of the site, the keywords competitiveness etc. Here i would like to shed some brief intro on the 4 keyword types that you would be using while managing your Google Adwords campaign.

1) Broad match
Broad match allows to show ads for keywords which have similar phrases and for the relevant variations of keywords. This is the most common and default keyword type that is used in Google Adwords campaign. Consider that you are bidding on a keyword “buy toys”. The ad will show for keywords such as toys, purchase toys, electronics toys etc. In this case your ad would be displayed for a broad range of keywords and there is always chance of irrelevant ads showing up.

2) Phrase match
Phrase match keywords show ads for keywords that contain the phrase that you have mentioned. Phrase match keywords helps in displaying more targeted keywords, but at the same time it is more flexible. As a result it helps you in showing up more relevant keywords and thereby saving your money. For eg. if you keyword is “leather shoes”, Google will show ads for keyword phrases such as “but leather shoes”, “best leather shoes”, “leather shoes for men” and so on.

3) Exact search
Exact search is the most effective of the keyword types and shows ads for only the exact keywords that is mentioned in the Adwords campaign. This is helpful in showing up the most targeted ads and helps in optimizing your Adwords budget to a great extent. For example if you keyword is “buy shoes”, ads would be displayed only for the keyword “buy shoes”

4) Negative Search
Consider that you do not want to show ads for any search that includes a particular term, e.g your keyword is “leather shoes” and you do not want to show ads when someone searches “italian leather shoes”, then you can use the Negative search option.

These four terms are just the basics that you need to know while you start doing Adwords campaign. There are more stuffs that you need to know which I would be covering later.