THE SCIENCE BEHIND SEARCH ENGINES

Dear Readers a very happy New Year to you all.

If in 2016 SEO is still on top of your list then here is an interesting infographic that tells you about the science behind Google and other search engines. It gives you an insight into what the Google, Bing and other search engine algorithms look for in your websites.

Infographic courtesy of University of Alabama at Birmingham Online

How to earn inbound links.

Understanding the distinction between “link earning and link building” is basic for Search Engine Optimisation organizations and for those looking to recruit a SEO services from a third party. We should be more astute in our methodology and more moral with our strategies. “Link earning” is the ideal chance to do as such. With Google’s frequent changes, especially in regard to link building. each SEO organization on the planet ought to start thinking about ‘link earning’.

First of all you need to change the attitudes of the SEO team in your organisation. It will be hard for some who have ‘link building’ at the root of their mindset but it is time to change that. I am not saying that one should completely stop their ‘link building’ exercise but it can always run parallel until ‘link earning’ overtakes it.

This change has to be reflected at all levels withing the organisation. And this change needs to be conveyed to your clients as well.

Marvin Russell of mysiteauditor.com has created this infographic to allow you to visually see the differences between the two.

Driving Traffic To A New Website - PPC vs SEO

The first step you take after making a new website is to drive traffic to the site. As a matter of fact there's no point having a pleasant new site if no one can find it.

While there are numerous approaches to drive traffic, here we are only looking at two of the most prominent strategies using search engines, in particular, Google. These are Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) and Pay Per Click (PPC) or Google Adwords.

SearchEngineLand.com and BestWebDesignSeoCompany.com have created the following infographic which analyses the advantages and disadvantages of each.

 

Take Advantage Of Social Media In Holidays

The holidays are a time of giving, and for small businesses, its the ideal time to let your customers and any individual who has worked with you know the extent to which you admire them.

Express Gratitude

A basic thank you truly can go far. Saying thank you helps fabricate a more individual relationship in the middle of you and your crowd. You can convey an aggregate thank you message emulating an uncommon occasion or advancement, occasionally say on account of your customers so they always remember that they matter, and thank people who have been particularly captivated with your brand to demonstrate that you are positively put resources into building individual connections. Rather than a basic content post, utilize a thank you picture to verify your message gets seen.

Offer an Exclusive Deal

Let your activities express your appreciation by offering coupons and arrangements that are just accessible to the individuals who are joined with you. You can impart the coupon straightforwardly on your online networking profile or have your fans submit their email location to claim an exceptional coupon code. On the off chance that you have a block and mortar store, get imaginative by imparting a picture that has a "code word" in it and have individuals say the code word when they visit you to claim their markdown.

Characterise Your Clients

Solicit your customers to bring photographs from themselves with your item. Take photographs of them while they're in your store or going to an unique occasion. Bring photographs with them. Request that they take a photograph indicating what your administration has accomplished for them. At that point have them impart the photographs and label you in them. Offer these pictures with a message telling these customers and clients the extent to which you admire them and that you are so glad to have the capacity to address their needs with your item or administration.

Give Away a Free Gift

Run a giveaway for a little freebie that you can offer in return for individuals participating in a certain manner. Contemplate what your current objectives are for your online networking crusade and oblige individuals to participate in a manner that will help meet those objectives. In case you're doling out something minimal effort, offer a few chances for individuals to win. On the off chance that you need to offer only one major prize, build your interest necessities as needs be and think of some as kind of little red ribbon so the individuals who captivated still receive something in return.

Why Is Typography A Part of CRO - Conversion Rate Optimisation

When you are thinking of improvements to increase conversion rates, what comes to mind? Testing colors, call-to-action buttons, features, and different components including content, correct? In spite of the fact that those components do influence transformation, shouldn't something be said about other configuration perspectives, for example, typography? 

You must be wondering how can typography influence transformations? Actually, certain font styles  will influence individuals' choices in diverse ways. For instance, on the off chance that you are attempting to get your clients to concur with an entry, they are more inclined to do so in the event that you utilize the font face like Baskerville. 

 On the off chance that you are stressed over coherence, you may not realize that tests show that Tahoma is the most neat at size 10, Courier at 12, and Arial at 14. 

To reveal to you how you can utilize typography to expand your change rate, Neil Patel of QuickSprout.com has done this infographic:    

Courtesy of: Quick Sprout

How to Get More Likes On Facebook

If you are running your company's Facebook page then one of your KPIs is the number of 'Likes' on the page. You spend hours and hours trying to achieve that goal. But do you really know what works and what doesn't?

This very smart infographic from Kissmetrics explains how it can be done.

++ Click Image to Enlarge ++ Source: How to Get More Likes on Facebook – Infographic

For Social Media Jobs Click Here!

A Marketer's Guide to Pinterest

A Marketer's Guide to Pinterest from MDG Advertising on Vimeo.

If you found this video helpful please check my Facebook page for more videos and info like this. Click here.

All eyes are on Pinterest, the social network that lets users collect and share images found on the Web by "pinning" them on virtual pinboards. The images span a variety of categories, from fashion, crafts, cooking, décor, fitness, and more. Users can follow the pinboards of friends and brands for inspiration and "repin" the images onto their own pinboards.

Today, Pinterest is quickly becoming the fastest-growing social media site based on its huge popularity with women, as well as its unlimited potential as a marketing tool for businesses. "Pins" help companies promote their products, develop their brand personalities, drive tremendous referral traffic to their websites, and gain exposure among the Pinterest community.

Now, MDG Advertising has produced an engaging video highlighting the facts, figures, and findings from its popular "Pin It To Win It" infographic.

 The video details the social site's demographics, growth, and potential to drive abundant traffic to company websites. Pinterest is especially popular with the most highly coveted markets—about 60 percent are female and 80 percent are in the 25 to 54 age demographic. Plus, Pinterest drives more referral traffic than Google+, LinkedIn, and YouTube combined.

The video goes on to cover the brands, both large and small, on board the pinboard phenomenon, such as Whole Foods, Etsy, West Elm, and Real Simple. These companies reflect the cooking, décor, and crafts interests that are prevalent among the Pinterest audience. In addition, the video helps marketers navigate Pinterest's features and terminology by demonstrating the "pin," "repinning," and "board." It also shows how companies can leverage Pinterest for maximum response and referral traffic, whether by improving their image quality or promoting more than just a product line.

Want to learn how to leverage the power of Pinterest in your social media strategy? Visit mdgadvertising.com Follow them on Pinterest at pinterest.com/MDGadvertising

Attention digital marketers, we are no longer in control!

Attention digital marketers, we are no longer in control.

Whether they realize the true strength of their power or not, consumers now have the upper hand of the digital marketing experience.

This shift should not be a cause for alarm, but a motivator to evolve your digital marketing programs. Whether the consumer is struggling or thriving in the digital deluge, your marketing needs to respond to a variety of connected scenarios, whether mobile, traditional desktop or, increasingly, in-store.

Focusing marketing messages for specific devices or channels will not be enough to drive sales and engagement with your customer. Broad-stroke segmentation or a single list structure will not be enough to keep your customers interested in buying.

It's no longer about the mere contact ... it's about connection.

Download this e-book to explore each phase of the customer lifecycle and detail programs to reach your customers across channels, devices and levels of engagement. By downloading now, you'll gain instant access to Chapter 1, Acquiring and Welcoming New Subscribers. Then, keep an eye on your inbox for the remaining five chapters over the next few weeks.

Click this link to download your FREE Lifecycle Marketing Guidebook

The Oscar Winning Pizza. Ellen Tells Edgar the Pizza Guy’s Story!

Edgar Martirosyan, who might now be the world’s most famous pizza deliveryman, had no clue he’d be serving Hollywood’s biggest stars Sunday night.

He thought the pies were for a group of writers at the Dolby Theater in Hollywood. When he got there, he was told to wait.

Then Ellen DeGeneres, who hosted the Academy Awards, came backstage and asked him to follow her.

“I didn’t know,” he told CNN’s “Piers Morgan Tonight” on Monday. “I was just shocked. It was a really great moment.”

And there he was, in front of millions of TV viewers, delivering pizzas from his store’s red and yellow boxes to the likes of Brad Pitt and Jared Leto.

After the show, Ellen told her audience about the real-life pizza delivery guy she brought to the Oscars.

Web Exclusive! Ellen Tells Edgar the Pizza Guy’s Story!.

Gmail Unsubscribe Link: Email marketers forced to become relevant

In case you haven’t already seen it, news was announced late last week that Gmail will start adding an unsubscribe link to marketing communications – whether they are legitimate or not. Email marketers will have to make a concerted effort to deliver relevant communications.

Starting from this week, a new, clearly marked “unsubscribe” link will appear at the top of the header field in marketers’ emails. Previously only appearing for a small percentage of users, the feature will now be made available for most promotional messages with unsubscribe options, Google said on Thursday. Email recipients do not need to take action for the links to appear.

The change simply makes it easier to find the “unsubscribe” link. With the new setup, the link appears prominently at the top of the message, alongside the name and email address of the person or company sending it. So what used to be like searching for a needle in a haystack will, for some, become more like an open invitation to say good-bye. By clicking the link, users can opt out of a company’s emails without leaving Gmail.

Whilst this may be seen as great news for those of us on the receiving end of these types of e-missives, the announcement is just one of an ever-growing amount of pressures on email marketers who are already dealing with dwindling engagement rates and increased churn from the 425 million+ Gmail users (last count, June 2012).

Read the full article here>> Gmail Unsubscribe Link: Email marketers forced to become relevant - idio.

Does Facebook Advertising Lead to Fake Likes?

When the popular science video blog Veritasium posted the following video on Facebook 'LIKES' fraud, it got many marketers concerned about just how much ad fraud there is on Facebook. In fact, it has almost 1.5 million views on Facebook already, highlighting the concern that many people have about the legitimacy of Facebook advertising.

The video goes over several cases where they are paying for Facebook ads in order to generate likes but they are finding that the percentage of engagement of those likes is almost nonexistent.

Should the advertising world boycott Israel?

Near silence emerges from the advertising community when questioned about potential boycotts of Israel.

If actress Scarlett Johansson achieved anything by choosing SodaStream over her ambassadorial role with Oxfam, it was to increase global awareness of the Palestinian Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign against Israel.

As BDS co-founder Omar Barghouti told The Guardian at the end of last month: “Oxfam is a human rights organisation. They cannot maintain an ambassador if they are involved in a complicit Israeli company built in a settlement.”

Since then the BDS movement has hit headlines around the world and rattled Israelis fearful of economic isolation. A report in The Economist noted that Norway’s finance ministry has “excluded Africa Israel Investments and its subsidiary, Danya Cebus, from a government pension fund”, while Dutch pension fund PGGM had previously withdrawn tens of millions of dollars worth of investments from five Israeli banks, citing the “banks’ unethical and illegal practices in the West Bank”. All of which followed on from the American Studies Association’s decision to boycott Israeli academic institutions.

To read full article click  here.
Originally published by: Campaign Middle East

6 Steps to Building and Managing A Successful Social Media Marketing Team

6 Steps to Building and Managing  A Successful Social Media  Marketing Team from Awareness, Inc | Creators of the Social Marketing Hub.

So you’ve decided it’s time to get serious about social media, and you’re excited to begin building a strategy and a social
media team. Whether your team is diving in for the first time, or restructuring an existing strategy so that it becomes more
effective, you should aim to answer the following questions for your team.

1. Why are we engaging in social media?
2. Who should be part of our social media team?
3. Where should our team focus our efforts in social media?
4. What social media content should we monitor and create?
5. How should our team produce content?
6. When and how often should we produce content?

This whitepaper aims to help marketing decision makers develop a strategy as it relates to team workflow. It also includes
tips for maintaining and evaluating your strategy.

Click here to read/download the paper courtesy CIOWhitepapers.com

How Can Older Websites Maintain Their Rankings Over Time?

Matt Cutts, Google’s Head of Search Spam, answered a question when someone asked him.

"I have been in business for over 14 years with my domain, and see much newer domains passing me. Any algorithms to protect older domains/sites in business from newer sites with more spam?"

Many owners of older websites are facing this issue.

Matt said that he has heard this before. This can apply to new sites as well when they try to rank above old sites.  The problem is not exclusive to older domains.

Google tries to show the most relevant and latest (recently updated) websites in its search results. If you have had a website for many years then you do need to take another look at it. Over time things change, specially technology, which changes at tremendous rate. New styles, designs and better interfaces have come out to provide a better user experience.

So bring your design up to date.

And what about your content? Most new sites add blogs that provide them with ongoing updates, always leaving them with fresh content. 

Update your content on a regular basis

Matt says that users will not be too happy landing on a site that looks outdated. If a user lands on a site and it looks old and has same old content then there is nor reason for them to come back. This even applies to the old sites that may still be ranking well. Act now to keep them there.

Rankings are not permanent and are constantly changing with the changes in the algorithms but sites with fresh and most relevant  content have a better chance to rank high. Matt says,

“Just because you are a domain that is well established, or has been around for a long time, doesn’t mean that you will automatically keep ranking.”

Click here to watch Matt Cuts' video

Digital Opportunities In Pakistan (emerging markets)

Digital Marketing Scenario – Pakistan

Brand	Facebook Likes	Twitter Followers	Industry	Digital Channels Used
Atif Aslam	8,412,810	215,770	Music	W, FB, T
Rahat Fateh Ali Khan	5,684,129	3,611	Music	W, FB, T
Ali Zafar	2,961,347	346,775	Music	W, FB, T
OLX Pakistan	2,264,554	392	Ecommerce	W, FB, T, M, E
Ufone	2,009,408	42,847	Telco	W, FB, T, M
Nokia Pakistan	1,844,917	24,840	Telco	W, FB, T, M
Samsung Pakistan	1,345,775	12,886	Electronics	W, FB, T, M
Pizza Hut Pakistan	1,300,552	5,470	F&B	W, FB, T, M
Geo News	1,070,618	114,575	Media	W, FB, T, M
Zong	1,036,406	19,983	Telco	W, FB, T, M
KFC Pakistan	860,717	337	F&B	W, FB, T, M(?)
Warid	678,905	68,144	Telco	W, FB, T, M
Mc Donald’s Pakistan	650,144	0	F&B	W, FB, M
Telenor Pakistan	501,894	35,623	Telco	W, FB, T, M

Digital Channels key: W=Website, FB=Facebook, T=Twitter, M=(Mobile) SMS, E=Email

None of the above are using Location Based marketing entailing Bluetooth/Wifi ads. However, some are using QR Codes but they are promoted very vaguely. The outlets have no idea about the relationship of the product display and the use of QR Codes.
NO brand in Pakistan is using AR (Augmented Reality) as yet.

QR Codes / Image recognition.
QR codes can point consumers quickly and easily to a mobile internet site directly from the real world, (e.g. from a product or poster); or from online, (from a PC monitor). This allows brands to add a layer of information on any object, giving consumers
a richer brand experience.

NFC, (Near Field Communication). 
NFC signals the convergence of credit & debit cards, loyalty cards and travel cards all in one place – your mobile phone..! It opens up lots of transaction opportunities via touching your phone, e.g.
• Secure purchases
• Touch and Ride
• News, weather, timetable services (e.g. by touching posters)
• Share information quickly with your friends

Voice Activated Search. 
Voice recognition technology has increased massively. Now we have services that allow you to say the name of a company into your phone and it will show it to you on your phone.
• IPhone 3G S has voice activated cmd
• Microsoft, Google have launched in the US, Yahoo! in the UK

Geovector. 
• Connects people with information about the world around them by directly pointing at things of interest
• While GPS can tell you where you are, GeoVector technology can tell you what it is you are looking at.
• Your cell phone is a mouse with the world as your desktop.
• By pointing your mobile phone you can search the world around you in real time and real space
• In Japan, almost all phones are Geovector enabled
• Lots of location and point based retail and information opportunities

Here's the video for which 8 people were sentenced to jail in the UAE. Quite funny actually!!

How to Optimize Your Marketing in Real Time

How to Optimize Your Marketing in Real Time

Social Media Marketing Myths Your Company Should Overcome | Search Engine Journal

Social Media Marketing Myths Your Company Should Overcome | Search Engine Journal

P@SHA Releases Internet Usage Study | P@SHA

P@SHA Releases Internet Usage Study | P@SHA

SEO Insights: Five Ways to Improve SEO Through Social Media Marketing

SEO Insights: Five Ways to Improve SEO Through Social Media Marketing