1. The SEO value of directories

Directories have always been a tested method to acquire inbound links to websites. Google’s index now filters inbound links that ignore links from directories. Though, this is limited to the listing of the inbound link in search results, it has not undermined the SEO value of directories.

Search engines consider every inbound link as a vote cast in favour of the website. The number of inbound links is how the popularity of a website is measured. Of even greater importance is the quality and relevance of the inbound link. If an inbound link is from a website that has a high Google Page Rank, its value will be much greater than a link from a website that has a low Google Page Rank.

It is desirable to secure inbound links from associations and government bodies in your industry. It is also desirable to be linked to related websites in your industry. This puts your website in the right neighbourhood and your website gets associated with the industry.

Directories – both general and niche – are a neutral source of inbound links. It is important to select directories with a high page rank and submit your website to the relevant category. The image below shows the sub-categories under the Internet Marketing section of the Yahoo! Directory.

2. Importance of Titles

The image below shows a typical directory listing in the Yahoo! Directory

The title of a listing is the link pointing to the website. The text present in the title (also called the linking text or anchor text) is the text with which search engines will associate your website. Having your most important keyword present in the Title improves the relevance of your website for that keyword. If your company is an established brand in your industry, you may want your brand name to appear in the Title.

3. Importance of Descriptions

The description is a short sentence about your website that is present below the Title. The proximity of keywords to the linking text plays a major role in SEO. It is important to have the most important keywords present in the description text.

4. Facts and Guidelines about directory submissions

a. Very few people actually refer to directories while searching for something. Their relevance is limited to their SEO value. As such, very few people are likely to see your listing in a directory and you are unlikely to get direct traffic from directories.

b. Neither the Title nor the Description is visible on YOUR website. The Titles and Descriptions are listed in the directory and the Title links back to your website.

c. Different directories have different limits for the length of the Title and Description. It is important to have a few options where the character limits vary before commencing your directory submissions.

d. When you have a presence in many directories with your most important keyword in your Title, there is a good chance that your website will begin to rank high in search results for the keyword.

e. Unlike the content in your website, variations of keywords do not work in the linking text or Title. It is important to have the exact keyword that you wish to rank for, in the Title of the directory listing.

f. Relevant keywords with the highest search volume should be selected for inclusion in the Title and Description.

5. One scenario explained

Contributed by Tushar Prabhu

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Author and technologist Nicholas Carr says, “Twitter is the telegraph system of Web 2.0.” The New York Times has mentioned that Twitter is one of the fastest-growing phenomena on the Internet. Only a few brands skimmed off profits from Twitter and others just tweeted about some direct marketing stuff. However, there are numerous ways you can leverage Twitter for your business and improve your bottom line. Here is the one-stop Twitter guide for business.

Get started

1. Create a Twitter account

2. Make sure, that you have selected a unique vanity URL for your Twitter account

3.  Upload an image and customize your profile image using this tool: http://walterhiggins.net/projects/twixenate.html

4. Include a link to your corporate website

5. Promote your Twitter presence on your corporate website, client emails, etc.

SEO juice – Recently, Google started indexing tweets; these tips could help you optimize your Twitter account.

6. Include your brand name as the title of your profile

7. Use the Google keywords tool and shortlist important keywords relevant to your products

8. Include those keywords in your bio

9. Use keywords in the first 30 characters of your tweets in order to be optimized by Google

10. Get re-tweeted and increase backlinks for your content

A “following” strategy – This will help you to connect with your target audience.

11. Identify your target audience based on their interests

12. Use hashtags “#” (Hashtags are a community-driven convention to add additional context and metadata to your tweets) to search for your target audience using this tool: http://wefollow.com/

13. Use more directories for search such as: http://www.twellow.com/, http://justtweetit.com/ etc.

14. Follow the influencers in your industry using this tool: http://www.twitalyzer.com/

Identify local Twitter users, or tweeple – If you are a company that serves only a particular location, networking with local tweeple will add more value to your business.

15. Follow influencers in your location using this tool: http://twitterholic.com/. This tool lists all the influencers on Twitter, based on the number of followers and location.

16. Enter keywords relevant to your product and use the “near this place” option in Twitter’s advanced search to identify tweeple who are interested in your product

17. Search for tweeple near your location using this tool: http://www.tweepz.com/

18. Network with local tweeple by searching for them with hashtags, using this tool: http://localtweeps.com/

How to make your tweets effective

19. If you prefer Web tweeting, use this tool: http://twitzap.com/ for advanced features

20. Download Tweetdeck for more power tweeting from your desktop

21. You can add additional Twitter accounts in Tweetdeck and control them using a single application

22. Schedule important tweets in advance using this tool: http://www.tweetlater.com/

23. Use: http://cotweet.com/ for collaborative tweeting

What to tweet on – Starting and joining the right conversation(s) will give you more exposure.

24. Post tweets based on the interests of your followers

25. Search for topics relevant to your product(s) and talk to influencers

26. Use hashtags to power the conversation

27. Post tweets about useful links and articles

28. Use: http://happn.in/ to talk about the trends in your locality.

Twit research – Twitter is a good source for market data as prospective customers are present there.

29. Finalize the sample size of the search.

30. List hashtags relevant to your research objective

31. Get secondary data for your research based on hashtags by using this tool: http://twubs.com/

32. Analyze hashtags  relevant to your research using this tool: http://www.trendrr.com/

Get feedback –As Twitter is a real-time medium, organizations use Twitter to get direct feedback from customers.

33. Get feedback from customers and other tweeple by replying and directly messaging them

34. Use hashtags to organize the feedback

35. Get feedback from local tweeple using this tool: http://nearbytweets.com/

36. Use: http://twtpoll.com/ to conduct a simple survey in Twitter to get real-time feedback

37. Post new product screenshots in http://twitpic.com/ and get instant feedback from your followers

Twit hiring – If you are looking to hire people for your organization, Twitter is another source to find the right talent.

38. Search for job seekers near your location using advanced search features in Twitter public search

39. Use hashtags in your tweets to reach active job seekers

40. Post tweets to announce benefits such as perks, allowances, etc. for the job(s) you offer

41. Use: http://twitpic.com/ to share corporate events to show job seekers your organization’s work culture

42. You can also use Twitter to conduct background checks on employees by using the Twitter advanced public search.

Tweetup – “Is an organized or impromptu gathering of people that use Twitter.” Tweetup is an excellent platform to promote products among local Tweeple.

43. Search for a Tweetup near your location using: http://nearbytweets.com/

44. Organize a Tweetup in your locality using  this tool: http://www.twtvite.com/

45. Pitch for influencers in your location by attending Tweetups.

46. Give away promo codes to attendees in the Tweetup to spread your product virally.

Follow your competition – This can give you insights on what your competitors are working on.

47. Follow your competitors on Twitter.

48. Use Twitter public search to get more insights on competitors’ activities

49. Analyze their Twitter account and follower patterns using: http://tweetstats.com/

50.  Compare your network statistics with competitors using: http://twitter-friends.com/

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In today’s internet-dominated world, search engine marketing has become an essential part of every business. Organizations aspire to attract as much visibility online as possible. Search is by far the most used function on the internet and it is natural that search engine optimization should be indispensible to marketers, to increase visibility online.

Creating a website alone is no longer enough; it needs monitoring and nurturing. It is also important to sustain growth through continuous search engine optimization and result tracking. One of the things that play a role in a site’s performance is its domain name.

The domain name is an important part of the website. It plays a vital role in the discovery and recall of a website. Using the name of a business as the domain name is a common practice. Always, customers identify a website by the business name. Using your company name is the best way to create easy recall of the site. However, you should consider other parameters. In a nutshell, the domain name should be short, catchy, interesting, easy to remember and spell, and as dissimilar to a competitor’s domain name as possible.

Here are some tips on choosing a domain name:

1. Get the top keywords

The first thing to do while deciding the domain name for your website is to pick top keywords that directly relate to your website, its content or your business offering. Once this list is ready, try using the top keywords in the domain name. Using the keywords in the domain name will improve your the chances of the website ranking high in search results for these keywords.

2. Choose the right Top-Level Domain (TLD)

Do not choose a “.com” Top-Level Domain (TLD) just because it is common practice. Choose one that is most relevant to your business. If you are a commercial business, “.com” is the most widely accepted and credible TLD. If your website is a public service or information website, you may want to consider a “.org” domain. If yours is a government operation, consider  “.gov”, and if you are a university, or a deemed university, “.edu” would be the right TLD for you. Your market can also determine your TLD. If your business offering is essentially local, you may consider a country-specific TLD, such as “.us, .uk, .in, etc.”

3. A unique domain name

It is a mistake to use a domain name similar to a popular site. If your target audience confuses your website for some other website, it is will not help your brand. Never choose domains that are simply the plural, hyphenated or misspelled versions of an existing, established domain name.

4. Easy to type and remember

An easy to spell, short and easy to remember name will deliver the best marketing value through easy recall. Simple domain names are easy to recognize and help in building a website’s brand.

5. Keep it short

Short names are easy to type and remember. They also allow for more characters in the URL, so, more of your URL will display in search results. They also fit better on business cards and other offline media.

6. Have a unique identity

Be sure you are not infringing on anyone’s copyright with your site’s name. Visit copyright.gov and search before you buy a domain.

7. Avoid hyphens and numbers

Both hyphens and numbers make it hard to remember or type the domain name. Try not to use spelled-out or roman numerals in domains, as both can be confusing and mistaken for the other.

8. Relate to your brand

Using a unique domain name is a great way to build additional value with your domain name. A “Brand” is much more than just a combination of keywords. A person should easily relate your domain name to the category in which you operate. The brand name should be unique and memorable on the one hand, and should describe the function and core offering of the site on the other.

9. Use an Ajax domain selection tool

Using Ajax domain selection tools such as Domjax makes it easy to check availability of domain names. You can choose an available domain and then register the domain through a registrar.

Contributed by Sandhya Katiyar

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A significant portion of the process of managing PPC campaigns is keyword bid management. The sheer volumes of keywords, its interaction with each other and the highly competitive search engine bid environment makes it a challenge worth automating!

The Position2 AutoBid Engine can predict keyword positions for each bid and provide recommendations to maximize the revenue. This short article covers the overall framework of our engine.

Most companies start off its bid management with a heuristic rule based bidding model. The next level is adding statistical and probabilistic analysis to the historical  information. The biggest challenges in this are:

1. Identifying variables to model and how each of these variable have a effect on other models? This include – Conversion rates, click through rates (CTR), Click/CPC history, average position & discounting.
2. How to model variable for keywords which do not have sufficient data ? Long tail keywords may have very few impression let alone clicks and conversions.
3. How relevant is historical data ? The speed at which the internal marketing focus, competition, consumer preference & search engine algorithms change, makes it difficult to work on very old data.

Even after modeling each keyword, the choice of taking a risk of one keyword against another always remains. Should all keywords be treated at par or should you risk a higher bid for a keyword which is at its tipping point? With constraints such as budget limitation, what is an optimal solution to maximize revenue?

Once these engineering challenges are solved, the question that persists is the value of simple bid management or using manual intervention to improve quality score by improving ad-copy and landing pages.

Our AutoBid Engine automates the tedious process of bid-management and frees up our analysts to focus on improving the quality of keywords, adcopy and landing pages. It goes beyond rules-based bidding and employs ROI portfolio optimization techniques to maximize profit and volume over user defined criteria.  We will be opening it for customers as part of our newly launched product offering.

Here is another article that you might find interesting -  http://searchenginewatch.com/3626132

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The March 26th edition of The New York Times carried a story about Twitter and how celebrities have turned to ghost writers to put out the 140 character text messages. The article cited examples, and quoted celebrities and consultants (i.e., ghost Twitterers) who explain and defend the “ghosts” in Twitter as acceptable. Basketball star, Shaq and cycling great, Armstrong, were the standouts in their opinion that it is pitiful if someone, even a busy celebrity, couldn’t regularly string together 140 characters conveying their own thoughts and opinions to their fans and followers.

So, what should we make of this? Does it even matter?

It definitely matters. In this age of information overload when messages are being created, re-transmitted, amplified and often spun out of control, full disclosure about the true source of messages from influential role models and decision makers is very important. Decisions to agree, endorse, or re-transmit (ReTweeting)—or not—any original message are predicated on knowing the true source of that original message. That’s why we have elaborate conventions for written and verbal forms of communications: attributing, quoting, citing, official spokespersons, declared official biographers, and speechwriters to name a few. Once we know the true origins of a message we apply our own filter and a different standard in judging what to make of the message.

So, we’re comfortable with President Obama’s declared use of a social media team that also Twitters for him, or Guy Kawaski’s hand-off to his Twitter team. It’s like all the other help that people at the top of their respective ‘games’ use to get and stay there: image consultants, speech writers, fitness trainers, or mental sports coaches. The critical delineation is that all these consultants, are generally just that—consultants—providers of input for the final product that their clients absorb but then personally deliver.

Obviously, we all sit up and pay very different attention when The President himself hosts a session with the press corps, though we’ll also listen with interest when it’s his White House Spokesperson delivering a message.

The NY Times article and its examples just indisputably demonstrate that people are using firms to manage their personality and image. But it’s some of the holier than thou opinions about keeping social media “pure and personal” that are naive. And the strong, implicit stance The NY Times takes by stuffing its article with examples of ghost-writing may belie their irritation about Twitter emerging as yet another distracting digital medium stealing precious time and mind share–putting them, even if only temporarily, in the slow lane for real time news sharing and engagement.

However, for marketers, microblogging presents a good opportunity to leverage services like Twitter in an up-front manner as many already do: a real-time, hip way to engage with your fans, followers and prospects.

Marketing on Twitter and some other social media is inherently risky today if marketers seek traditional “control” over messaging. But bold, innovative brands like Skittles are doing it. Their willingness to expose themselves online and take the good with the bad is actually pure, more authentic, and even “human”–part of being mature, secure, learning adults is to become comfortable with mixed messages of praise and criticism directed at us. The same holds true for a brand’s online persona.

So, as marketers, we should quickly leverage the phenomenon that is Twitter, get clients’ messages out there in an open and transparent manner, build momentum, and see where it takes us. Twitter is a very effective way of engaging with people who are undoubtedly opinion leaders and often the early adopters every new product or service craves. As a general practice it’s best to make clear the original source of messaging. It’s easier to sort through any downstream negative spin or malicious messaging and create an effective Social Media Marketing led brand defence, or reputation monitoring.

A sign of the maturing of Twitter and its readiness for planned marketing campaigns is the very agenda based, business-like turn it is taking. The same maturation process that led email, blogging, or mobile/cell phone messaging, and the Web, in general, to become rich media for marketers is happening with Twitter. As the targets of marketers, we didn’t turn away from email—we just constructed mechanisms to filter what we choose to receive.

Our desire to invoke filters for Twitter isn’t strong just yet. Twitter is a growing phenomenon, and it’s going to be cool for some time to come. The majority of Twitter users love it, and stories of Twitter junkies are growing. The proof is in the pudding—Twitter has grown 1300+% from Feb 2008!

While it’s still cool and hip, marketers need to quickly warm up to Twitter, hatch a ghost or self-generated Twittering plan, and grow that plan till Twitter and micro-blogging become deeply entrenched mainstream marketing media. Rest assured some new digital product or service will come along to serve those with a strong need for exclusively personal, “pure” communication–maybe those folks should just pick up the phone!

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Outsell, a market research firm released the article below. From what I’ve seen the media spend number make sense. It shows that there is a continuing shift to online media:
Spending on total US advertising and marketing will grow 3.9% in 2008 to reach $412.4 billion, with the advertising portion reaching $249.1 billion, according to the third annual ad spending report by Outsell, Inc., which said growth has declined from 2007’s 5.8%.

The report covers five key media types: online, print, events, TV/radio and others. Outsell surveyed 1,088 US advertisers on their spending plans for the year.

Among the significant findings:

• Companies are spending 61.8% of their online ad/marketing budgets – $65.1 billion – on their own sites, siphoning dollars away from other options. As a result, publishers are beginning to offer their own advertising/marketing services to recapture lost revenue.
• The fastest-growing of all ad types is online, which is expected to grow 12.3% in 2008 to $105.3 billion (or $40.2 billion excluding advertisers’ spending on their own sites). As a result, online spending now exceeds TV/radio/movies for the first time ($98.5 billion).
• Advertisers’ spending on traditional media remains significant – with print capturing 35.5% of spending ($147.0 billion) and events at 12.5% of the total ($51.7 billion). 54% of advertisers spread budgets across three or more media types.
• Out of 26 methods measured for effectiveness, advertisers rate their websites as the best for lead generation (75% effective), followed by exhibitions (66%), custom print publications (65%), direct mail marketing (64%), and trade magazines (64%).
• Asked what metrics they would track if they could track only three, advertisers point most frequently to cost per sale (46%), cost per lead (37%), and cost per click (32%).

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