Source: http://cdn.pacific54.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/google-panda-update.jpg

We have many movie buffs amongst our digital marketing industry that must have surely seen Happy Feet (2006) and Kung-Fu Panda (2008). Both have Academy Award nominations and critically acclaimed for outstanding animation. Both feature films were also made to highlight a very necessary aspect of animal conservation to society. Way back then, there was no concept of Google’s Panda and Penguin; today it’s a whole different ballgame. I must say, Google has surely done a wonderful job of scaring many SEOs with the slightest mention of these two beautiful, playful and peaceful species. The Pandas Kung-Fu just keeps getting better with each update and the Penguins Happy Feet are making more and more webmasters sad.

So the first question is “Where is PETA when you need it?” – Google is happily associating web spam, duplicate content, grey-hat link building practices with these animals; completely tarnishing the reputation of Panda Bears and Emperor Penguins in the online world. “Wake up PETA, do something!”

So, is there a way where we can relate these two films with the on-going SEO slaughter that Google is up-to now a days?

The first thing to take note is that the Penguin and Panda updates are not going to stop. What will Matt Cutts tweet about then?

The only thing that can be done here is to adapt; adapt in such ways that it becomes absolutely irrelevant if we were to see Panda 5 or Penguin 3.4 when they release.

Provided below are some ways we can get inspired from Kung-Fu Panda and Happy Feet, to successfully create great SEO campaigns much to Google’s dismay.

1. Be Natural: We have seen off the shelf products that are now looking at natural ingredients to build longer lasting and superior quality products. In the same way one of the crucial ingredients in SEO i.e. Links need to be natural or at least look natural. This is definitely not an impossible task. There are many websites out there that will share a link with you, if you are willing to take that extra effort. Although the process is tedious and sleep-threatening, it will stay eternal for your website. Po in Kung-Fu Panda also uses his natural abilities to defeat the evil Snow Leopard(In our case, Google’s various updates)
   • You need to intelligently identify and search for domains that will benefit you with a link, while at the same time benefit it with something more useful – Great Content
   • Domain relevance as opposed to Domain authority is what I believe will play an important role in today’s changing landscape
   • Many SEO companies initiate link building activities using articles, which well; are not that up to standards. Though it might give you link value for some time, what if Google catches this somewhere down in time. You should use articles, but which help your potential customer rather than only add 0.5 % in SEO value and ensure to publish it on domains that people often go to for advice and information. (Yahoo! Answers is a good place to start.)
2. Role of Happiness in SEO: Marketers try to create an emotional connect with its audience by making their client’s indulge in CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility) activities, PR engagement etc. There are ample case studies to show that this works most of the times (A very good example of this is Coca-Cola’s efforts in bringing about change for better and P & G’s recent “Proud sponsor of Moms” campaign). Mumble the talented emperor penguin in Happy Feet also uses this very powerful USP to attract the world’s attention to stop over-fishing and help in marine life conservation.
   So how do we do this with a website to make Google’s spiders and website visitors happy?
   “ADD A HAPPY FEEL TO THE WEBSITE”
   • Fill Title’s, METAs, Website content to give it a touch of Happiness along with smartly filling it with Keywords
     For Ex. On a product page of Nike Shoes – instead of using the title “Nike Shoes, Buy Nike Shoes at Shoes.com”, use “Nike Shoes for Healthy Living – Buy from Shoes.com”
   • Keep Internal Navigation themed and also smartly linked, so a visitor need not think of “How to get there?” but think of “What else to buy from here?”
   • Content – The core material that is present on a particular page is also of great importance, it basically acts as the soul and driving factor for all the optimization done. Add a pinch of Happiness to your content and you have yourself a customer centric website. – Remember : CONTENT is King, and a HAPPY King means a prosperous Kingdom

Source: http://www.happyfeet.cc/images/home2.jpg

We stay in a continuously evolving internet ecosystem where changes are imminent, Microsoft’s Bing understands this at a very fundamental level, so hypothetically presuming that we see Bing and Baidu for instance overtaking Google in the near future, you build Natural links and create “Happy” optimized websites, you remain protected in the long term and can focus on what you should focus on “Building a great business!!”.

The following presentation will help you use Google Analytics, in your PPC campaign. It details metrics & dimensions that GA provides, which are not available in the Google Adwords interface, and how it can be utilized by a PPC management team.

By linking your Adwords Account to your Google Analytic Account and setting up your dashboard in a way that it displays data in a detailed manner, Google Analytics can be leveraged in an amazing fashion, to increase RoIs for your campaigns.

This is the first in a series of insights that we will share on this platform, so that webmasters can benefit from it.

This was a Google Algorithmic update targeting mainly “over-optimization” and “web spam” – first published on Google webmaster blog and then Webmaster world on 24th April.

Search Engine Watch (24th April) – Danny Sullivan says web-spam encompasses the following:-

• Keyword stuffing – A lot of exact match keywords present with respect to keywords targeted
• Link schemes – Not exactly sure of which types of link schemes, but looking at our affected websites , it is many more blog network, links from completely irrelevant links to clients domain.
• Cloaking, “sneaky” redirects or “doorway” pages – Not that big an issue as it is usually avoided
• Purposeful duplicate content – Similar kind of content everywhere – Focused on killing article marketing websites

3.1 % English queries have been affected as a result of this update.

Google Provides online form to acquire feedback – 24th April

Barry Schwartz confirms internal name given by Google to update is “Penguin” – 27th April

Many blog posts about Penguin update and what all it targets, again all posts very vague in nature.- 27th April – 2nd May

Posts crop up about Penguin recovery – 2nd May

They basically say :

• Remove blog links
• Add more content
• De optimize websites a bit
• Do not perform aggressive exact anchor text matching keywords (i.e. instead of linking to governmentgrants.com using anchor text government grants all the time use “To visit GovernmentGrants.com Click here“)
• Add Social signals – Specifically Google+ and Author markup to Articles posted.
• Perform minor site cleanup
• Avoid irrelevant links
• Focus more on quality CONTENT – Completely avoid article spinning and writing similar stuff again and again

SEOMoz gets on the Penguin bandwagon and creates Whiteboard+ on Penguin with YouMoz post – 8th May

A summary:-

• It’s (weirdly) not focused on improving search quality
• It appears to affect some of the worst spam (but not all) and some very light forms of spam/manipulation (oddly)
• Not tied to on-page or on-site necessarily, though out links may be looked at and several other updates occurred at similar times (making it tough to reverse engineer what might have caused a penalty)
• Appears to affect a disproportionate number of web service industry sites (though that could be correlation, not causation)
• Not yet clear if this a rolling update (though there are signs it may be)
• Left a lot of very strange, “empty” types of results in many of the spamiest verticals/SERPs

Key Takeaways from the general online discussion about Penguin:-

1. Difference between PANDA and PENGUIN
   Panda targeted – Scraper sites, high ad content domains, link farms etc.
   Penguin goes one step further and targets links that are built just for the sake of being built and not giving any user value.
2. Variations of keywords need to be incorporated on websites.
3. Link building – take cautious steps moving on ahead.
4. Blog links are fine as long as the blog is relevant -This needs to be done carefully as blog networks are being hit.

We will attempt to draw more insights into the Google Penguin Update and will regularly share it on this platform, for webmasters benefit.

There have been many questions related to iFrames that have always confused SEOs around the world-

• Should they be incorporated in the website?
• Do they pass any link value?
• Does the search engine spider crawl the links that are present in an iFrame?
• And most important question of all, are they SEO friendly?

Although there were reports which in a way confirmed the crawling capabilities of search engine spiders as far as iFrames are concerned, still I was not convinced and the above stated questions often muddled me. So I decided to conduct a test to once and for all put an end to the agony of all SEOs like me around the world, as far as iFrames are concerned.

Before I started the test it was important that I define my end Goals. So the test was conducted and structured in such a way that it ensured that all aspects related to iFrames are covered. I jotted down the following points which were the basis of the test that was conducted at my end –

• iFrame Content being pulled from the page that belongs to the same domain
• iFrame content being pulled from the page that belongs to a sub domain
• iFrame content being pulled from the page that belongs to a whole other domain
• Google SERP
• Yahoo SERP
• Bing SERP

Test 1 – iFrame pulling content from the same domain

I implemented a simple iFrame on the home page of one of our websites as shown in the snapshot below. The domain is pretty old and gets crawled by Search engine spiders frequently. The traffic is also not that great so a small change at the bottom of the page should not have created much of a problem.

The basic iframe code that was implemented was as follows –

In short, the content “May the search engine crawl the iframe says Convonix” was pulled from the page http://convonix.in/testiframe1.html using an iFrame which was hyperlinked to the page http://convonix.in/testiframe.html which contained the text “Did Convonix not tell you that search engines can crawl iframe”

The main idea of this test was to identify if the search engine spiders are able to crawl and index links via an iFrame and if the link value is passed.
After a couple of days the page did get cached and the following observations were made.

Cached snapshot of the home page –

As you can see from the snapshot above, the iframe content is not visible in the text only version of the cached copy.

The next step was to check if the content, although not visible in the text only version, was it crawled and indexed by search engines? We also checked the cached copy of the two iFrame pages.

The page http://convonix.in/testiframe1.html got cached as can be seen in the snapshot below –

The hyperlinked page http://convonix.in/testiframe.html also got cached as can be seen in the snapshot below –

The final step was to check if the Big G showed the results in SERPs? We checked if the pages did show up in Google SERPs and on searching the text present on one of the iFrame pages, we saw the following search result –

As you can see, the hyperlinked text in the frame did show up in Google SERPs and Google attributed it to the original page and not the Home page where the iFrame was present.

Same was the case with the second page to which the hyperlinked text pointed to –

Now an obvious question that should come to your mind is -

“What about the other big players like Yahoo and Bing?”

Well as the Title would have already suggested, their great spiders (apparently) were not able to crawl the iFrames

As shown in the snapshots below, Yahoo and Bing did not show results for the URLs http://convonix.in/testiframe1.html and http://convonix.in/testiframe.html or for the textual content pieces “May the search engine crawl the iframe says Convonix” or for “Did Convonix not tell you that search engines can crawl iframe”. (I am just showing two images below, one for the URL search and one for the text search as the SERP layouts were more or less the same for both Yahoo and Bing in all the four cases.)

Bing SERP -

Yahoo SERP

Test 2 comprised of an iFrame pulling content from a sub domain and test 3 comprised of an iFrame pulling content from an external domain. The results were exactly the same as above.

So for the final conclusions –

• The iFrame links/content are not visible in the text only version of the cached copy of Google
• The iFrame links/content are crawled by Google Spiders
• Google attributes the content to the original source in the SERPs
• Yahoo and Bing are not able to crawl the iFrame content (as of today)

Now for the ultimate question, is an iFrame SEO friendly? The answer to the question in a way depends on an individual’s requirement. The obvious recommendation here would be to not use an iFrame in case you want to attribute a specific content to a specific page where the content will be visible. However in an unavoidable circumstance where there is an absolute necessity to implement an iFrame, the the best option available from an SEO perspective would be to host the content on the same domain itself rather than hosting it on a sub domain or a cross domain. At least the SEO value will remain within the same domain instead of being passed on to some other domain.

Also the obvious unstated assumption here is that we are primarily targeting Google and not any other search engines.

Hope this post was useful, feel free to post in any comments or feedback that you may have.

What do you get when you cross a professional networking site with a content sharing platform? A good deal is what we say. The latest in social media news is all about the acquisition of SlideShare, a content sharing website, by professional networking giant LinkedIn for an estimated $119 million, to be signed off in a combination of 45% cash and 55% stock. The acquisition is expected to be completed by the second quarter of 2012.

Natural Partners!

The LinkedIn SlideShare acquisition aligns almost perfectly with LinkedIn’s mission of ‘making professionals more productive’. For one, SlideShare is a one-of-its-kind content sharing platform, which boasts of nearly 7.4 million presentations embedded across more than 1.4 million web domains.Presentations are perhaps one of the most important auxiliary functions in any professional setting and use of presentations has often been dubbed as a great way to define and christen one’s professional identity. For a professional networking site like LinkedIn to incorporate such a platform into its seemingly well-groomed product proposition is quite simply an extension of its value proposition to enable professionals to discover a like-minded clout, only this time through dynamic content, and perhaps newer content through people. Like LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner notes, “Presentations are one of the main ways in which professionals capture and share their experiences and knowledge, which in turn helps shape their professional identity.”
Often called the You tube for PowerPoint, SlideShare is a dynamic content sharing platform with a fairly large following to its credit, mainly from professional circles. With 29 million unique visitors reported just last month, SlideShare has gathered a lot of steam since its inception in 2006 as one of the best content (slide show presentations, documents, PDFs, videos and webinars ) sharing platforms out there. Aligning with a professional networking site offers it the thrust to push its product a little bit further, amidst a demographic that almost swears by it.

And LinkedIn, with its 107 million users, is only but happy to accommodate a platform that will enrich its own product offering just a little bit more only to add more value to its users.

Although search engine optimization ergonomics supports a thriving level playing field, some find the need to take down competition instead of making better their own turfs. Whether it is out of insecurity of being put up against big players or merely out of lack of confidence in one’s website capabilities, negative SEO, as much as it is looked down upon, is prevailing blatantly and all anyone can do is to erect a more stronger and competent website immune system that can keep at bay the onslaught of damaging SEO tactics.

For starters, a website should make firm the basics of good search engine optimization: good content, strong website design, attention to website usability and user-experience, and clean link profile. With Google now shunning ‘over-optimized’ and ‘over SEO-ed’ websites, the need of the hour is to deliver ‘value’ to users instead of stirring a vortex over-optimized efforts. Search engines like Google are readying the playing field to those who are actually offering great content, even if it’s sans great SEO techniques. It’s time web publishers looked beyond the cocooned safety of SEO – good and bad – to deliver more than just top results.

Well there are many solutions to it; but the jewel in the crown to keep it cost effective and targeted, is the increasingly popular “Digital Medium”. Digital Marketing is a very popular medium that all businesses alike should look at seriously if you want to truly CONNECT with your customers. A pull marketing technique with limitless possibilities and untapped opportunities in the online space.

To keep things simple and straight we shall only focus on how to carve out a reputation for a brand online. World over the number of internet users are increasing by the minute. Thus comes the need to cater to them and provide them all the information they seek with just a click of a button. Search engines like Google and Bing provide paid advertisements on a massive scale, but those are primarily targeted at directly obtaining a customer irrespective of what brand value do you have. It is but obvious that you cannot pay for such paid ads forever. Instead why not slowly and steadily use these platforms to engage the user with your brand. Social Media tools like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube have changed the way brands engage with their customers and are thus creating that vital link of TRUST with the customer. For many years the plain and simple WORD-OF-MOUTH has worked wonders for brands and their products. Many businesses world over still flourish using this simple technique of marketing. But what if there were a way to incorporate this with the latest technologies and bring this same concept to the virtual world. Here comes the importance of PURE CONTENT and how branding cannot be accomplished online without this. Think of content as the soul of Online Branding. CONTENT in the form of News, HOW-TO’s, Reviews, Online Press Releases, e-books, blogs(like this one), educative and informative articles that actually give control in the hands of the user and provide him with analytical and simple data that no salesman or billboard can ever convey effectively; in the process, provide very useful information to a user looking for that specific information. Again content, standalone will not help you. You need to place that content on a relevant and specific platform for it to do its job. Although you can create content and distribute it to every possible platform that you might be aware of but that would purely be a waste of time and effort. True value is gained when you spend that time and effort in locating specific online platforms that will ensure that your hard work is read by the maximum amount of users looking for information related to that topic.

A simple 4 -5 line comment or a reply on a popular online forum by your brand boosts your brand value tremendously as you are not only giving users highly relevant information but also indirectly conveying the message that “Brand X  is out there to help you”, thus slowly becoming an authority in that niche. My critically harsh in the moment but purely awesome boss Rohan, always has stressed in his exact words “Online Branding is the Next Big Thing”. Thinking of it over time you realize that when you have such a vast untapped market out there why not be a part of it.

The value out of working with valuable content online is sure to reap rich benefits in the long term. This also provides added benefits to your brand. Firstly your brand sentiment in the online space is classified as highly positive thus inculcating the sense of TRUST that was mentioned earlier. With this sense of trust backing your brand you have sold your product or service to a potential customer even before marketing a New Product. A very justified example of this would be Apple Computers. The iPad sold more than 3 million pieces in the first day of launching. This was not done overnight. It was the hard and tireless efforts of an entire organization working over many years to build this trust factor in the thoughts of their potential customers. This process over a gradual period of time snowballs into such a priceless asset that you feel ever confident to dream even bigger and push even farther. And if ever you feel that you are stuck somewhere and need more ideas and strategies to take your brand to new heights online, don’t worry, you have Convonix to help you always.

Muzzammil is a part of the ORM (Online Reputation Management) team at Convonix. As a part of his responsibilities at Convonix, he has advocated the principle of reaching out to the user, and educating them, & this has reaped rich dividends for clients. He is also an avid traveller and has visited every state in India. His interests also include reading magazines and photography.

When we talk about social media marketing the first thing that comes to our mind is probably Facebook or one of the newer channels such as Pinterest or Google Plus. While some may consider email marketing as an outdated concept, its importance definitely cannot be discounted. Research has shown that buying decision is strongly influenced by email campaigns and hence matters greatly to a brand. There are several ways in which you can enhance your email campaign and make it work even better for you:

The first step towards creating effective email campaigns is including social icons in the copy of the mailer. Social media icons will help drive traffic to your various channels as well as enable users to share the content which will enhance the reach.

If you have a strong social presence you should make it a point to tailor your emails around effective social conversations. You can use these mailers to drive people to the original content on your social channels.

The most important point in an email campaign is to be direct. While the social icons may be placed strategically in the mailer, users who are accustomed to reading e-mailers may miss out on them. Be straightforward and ask people to connect or engage.

Brands with influential followers can ask their fans to contribute their opinions and testimonials which can be used to make the email content rich and attractive to prospective fans.

On your social media channels you can include forms in order to get relevant data of those who wish to connect with your brand and are willing to receive emails.

Lastly, remember that while there may be more fun channels like Facebook and YouTube to experiment with, you cannot discount the importance of effective methods like email campaigns.