It is just over a month until the book I am co-authoring with Anne Kennedy “Global Search Engine Marketing: Getting Better International Search Engine Results” is koing to be published. The publisher Que Biz-Tech is has a D-day in this Paperback next month on the 16th of February and it looks as we are going to make it.

It’s like having a baby and I should know I have five :-)

Back in May this year (back then I palyed with the data and had great fun), Majestic created a new index called “Majestic Million” – a list of the top 1 million websites, ordered based on the number of referring IPs – or more precisely the number of referring class c subdomains.

The data is available for analysis for anyone, but the whole list remained proporieto. Today (Christmas eve), however, majestic plans to release the ENTIRE INDEX in Excel and TXT formats. So that will be an Excel file with 1 million records available for anyone to use in any way they wish! And for data nerds like me this is truly a Christmas gift.

The company, which has the largest commercially searchable index of backlinks available anywhere, has been running a series of “Advent Calendar” Videos evetry day during December. Some have had free voucher codes on them, giving some lucky users free upgrades to their system – but the video on Christmas eve reveals a different plan for Christmas day. (Video).

I understand that the files will be available for anyone without the need to register their interest. Indeed – if the data is available under a creative commons license, there would be little point in trying to track who uses the data anyway as everyone is free to do with it what they will.

The data should be released via their blog.

Looks like we are getting there, finally – The book I am co-authoring with Anne Kennedy is on Amazon and the date is set. The book is published by Que Biz-Tech and is called “Global Search Engine Marketing: Getting Better International Search Engine Results“. The description is as follows:

“For companies that operate internationally, English-only, U.S.-centric search programs leave far too many customers behind. Marketing through search engines to non-English-speaking customers outside North America has become essential, but it presents complex and unfamiliar challenges.

Now, for the first time, there’s a complete and practical guide to succeeding with global search marketing. In Global Search Engine Marketing, two leading experts bring together proven solutions to all the issues marketers will encounter – from culture and communication to technology and law. The authors cover all this, and much more:

” Understanding key cultural and behavioral differences, including the surprising local differences in how people search ” Crafting online marketing campaigns that reflect local cultures ” Selecting the right search media in each market – including markets where Google doesn’t dominate ” Achieving higher rankings in search engines around the world ” Organizing effective global pay-per-click search marketing campaigns ” Optimizing online press releases and other content for global search media ” Leveraging non-U.S. social media tools and platforms ” Optimizing mobile sites and apps for worldwide audiences ” Using web analytics to track key performance indicators (KPIs) in multilingual/multicultural campaigns – even if you don’t speak the language”

I recently wrote a post on State of Search about the Integration of Marketing Channels - Here is a shorter version for you to read over.

With the technology changing by the minute, consumers today have a wide range of options when it comes to gaining information and purchasing the products and services that they need. No doubt the Internet is the latest and at present the most popular and convenient medium for marketing, advertising and even purchasing products. From placing an order for food from a restaurant to booking an airline ticket, there are multifarious products and services that are bought online every day. At the same time there are customers who still prefer more conventional methods when it comes to their purchases. They may prefer to call a company or simply visit a brick and mortar store to buy products. To connect with these characteristically ‘offline customers’ a business may have to use channels such as TV, newspapers, Yellow Pages and direct mail for advertising and marketing.

Business organizations need to ensure that their customers enjoy a flexibility to interact with their brands through any channel. Deploying a successful multi channel marketing strategy calls for strategic focus and a commitment to gauge the correct results of value generated.

The efficacy of different marketing channels can be enhanced by unifying customer data collected at every possible interaction with the customers. The business should also ensure that buyer experience is consistent across all channels. It needs to develop a strong understanding of how the customers move through the buying cycle. The business using multiple channels for marketing must also maintain the same customer policies across all channels that cover different customers.

Integrated multi channel marketing is not a mere technological issue. It is a strategic, evolutionary path that businesses, especially the retailers should follow to maintain their competitiveness in the market. By following integrated multi channel marketing approach, businesses can enjoy long terms and cordial bonds with their customers and also enhance their prospects for growth.

Filter Bubble is a concept developed by Internet activist Eli Pariser in his book by the same name. This was used to describe the phenomenon in which websites use algorithms to selectively guess what information a particular user might like to see based on the information pertaining to the user such as location, past click behavior, and search history.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B8ofWFx525s

Facebook displays things you ‘Like’ or prefer to read on friends’ pages, Google personally tailors your search queries, and Yahoo News and Google News customize the news for you.As per Pariser, users are less exposed to conflicting viewpoints and are isolated intellectually in their own information bubble. Pariser related an example in which one user searched Google for “BP” and got investment news about British Petroleum while search by another user revealed Deepwater Horizon oil spill. Interestingly, the two search results pages were strikingly different.

The filter bubble seems to be a comfortable place and by definition, it is populated by the things that compel you the most to click. But it is also a real problem: the set of things that users are likely to click on (sports, music and things that are highly personally relevant) are not the same as the set of things that they need to know.

The rush to build the filter bubble is typically driven by commercial interests. It has become quite evident that the organizations that want lots of people to use their website, must provide web users with personally relevant information, and if they want to reap monetary benefits through ads, they need to provide them with ‘relevant’ ads. This has resulted in a personal information gold rush, in which major companies such as Google, Facebook, Microsoft and Yahoo among others are competing to create the most comprehensive portrait of web users to drive personalized products. There is also an entire “behavior market” opening up in which every action users take online – each mouse click on the Internet, each form entry – can be sold as a commodity.

So what is the Internet actually hiding from its users?

As per Google engineer Jonathan McPhie, it is (obviously) different for every individual – and indeed, even Google does not quite know how it plays out at personal levels. At an aggregate level, they have noticed that people need to click more. But they cannot predict how each web user’s information environment gets changed.

In general, the things that are most likely to get edited out are the things users are least likely to click on. At certain times, this can be a real service – if a user does not read articles about sports, why would a newspaper put a football story on its front page for them? But if the same logic is applied to say, stories about foreign policy, a problem starts to emerge. Some things, like homelessness or genocide, are not quite ‘clickable’ but are highly important – it is these that get missed out due to information bubble.

In one form or another, nearly all major websites use personalization but the one that matters the most is Google. If two people search for the same thing using the exact keywords on Google, they may get very different results. Google tracks individual search history, the kind of computer or mobile device that we use and even the average time gap between our clicks – all such information is used to tailor results.

Even if users are not logged in to Google, there are 57 signals that the site uses to figure out who they are: whether they are on a Mac or PC or iPad, and where they are located while ‘Googling’. And in the near future, it will also be possible to “fingerprint” unique devices, so that sites can tell which individual computer an individual is using. This is why erasing all browser cookies is at best a partial solution—it only partially limits the information available to personalizing algorithms.

What Internet users actually require is for the online brands to take some responsibility for the immense power that they have – the power to decide what we see, what we do not see, what we know and what we do not know. They should make sure that users do have access to public discourse and things that matter to majority. A world based exclusively on the things that we prefer (or ‘Like’ in Facebook terminology) is rather an incomplete world.

Rumor has it that Eli Pariser author of “The Filter Bubble” is speaking at the Reykjavik Internet Marketing Conference 2012 – Other speakers include people from the BBC, Microsoft, former head of SEO for the Chicago Tribune, Yahoo! and more. For more information and to monitor progress go to www.rimc.is/en/.

Here you can see Eli Pariser speak at TED.

The popularity of Internet as a medium of communication and source of information has surged in the recent years and this has also affected the use of digital marketing to woo customers. Businesses today are using a variety of digital distribution channels to reach their customers in a timely, relevant, personal and cost effective manner. Direct emails, Facebook, Twitter, and the apps on smartphone and digital tablets are some of the channels in which brands are effectively connecting with customers.

Study by Yahoo! shows that digital marketing segment drew 15 billion Ducats in half of year in 2011. The global spending on digital advertising amounted to $14.9 billion in the first six months of 2011. This is 23 percent more than what was spent last the same period.

The use of social media has increased for marketing and the reasons are obvious. With more and more people joining the bandwagon on social networking sites everyday, marketers would not like to miss any opportunity to woo them before their competitors do. There were 225 million users of Twitter as per March 2011 reports and the current number of tweets per second is 1200. Facebook remains the most popular social media site with more than 750 million active users. When it comes to blogs on the Internet, 70 of the bloggers organically chirp about brands on their blogs. Naturally, the digital marketers want to advertise on these immensely popular social networking platforms. And now for the facts – the global ad revenues from social networks touched $5.54 billions and this will rise to $10 billion by the year 2013 as per a report on Tech Crunch.

Let us also check some of the digital marketing trends in the world of mobiles and smartphones. As per July 2011 data on Neilsen, more than 40 percent of the adult US mobile phone users specifically use smartphones. The figure is expected to cross the 50 percent mark by the end of year 2011. Businesses do not want to be left behind in the race to connect with their customers through these smartphones. As per a study by eMarketer, the total spending is expected to reach $1.23 billion by the end of year 2011. The year 2010 had witnessed a spending of $743 million and this year’s spending would be a 65 percent increase. The advertising amount typically includes the dollars spent on display ads, search ads and mobile video ads.

Marketing pros and advertisers have been traditionally reluctant to spend large amounts of their budgets on mobile advertising but recent trends indicate that resistance is diminishing. With the number of potential customers accessing the Internet through mobile devices steadily increasing, advertisers have started allocating more funds to mobile ads.

The reason for escalating budgets on advertising is not only due to the huge popularity of digital media. Another reason for which marketers prefer this mode is the ability to measure quick and often real time results of advertising. There are tools that let businesses know how often their ads are being clicked and what exactly attracts the attention of target audience.

Digital advertising indeed rocks – at least that’s what the stats portray!

The BlackBerry messenger crash that lasted for three days attracted a lot criticism on the social media. Sites such as Facebook and Twitter were replete with customer complaints and queries for resolution of the issue.

Millions of BlackBerry users worldwide were left in the dark with prolonged interruptions of their messaging service – the BBM and email capabilities. The problem spread from Europe to Latin America, Africa, Middle East, India and also to North America. The server problems had originated at Research in Motion (RIM)’s UK data center on Monday, October 10.

Research in Motion did release a statement blaming a “core switch failure within RIM’s infrastructure” but said nothing further on the continued problems.

Almost everyone from high-roller business men to celebrities posted their frustrations and made “Dear BlackBerry…” a trending topic on social networking sites, especially Twitter.  In such a scenario one would naturally expect a company of RIM’s stature to react and placate the fuming consumers. This was important as most of them threatened to switch smartphones. The timing could not have been worse as Apple’s iOS5 and iPhone 4S are unveiled in the same week and both got very positive reviews from industry experts. Such developments along with the diminishing sales of BlackBerry phones in the last two months were really bad signs for the once all-mighty RIM.

However, despite the strong criticism, RIM’s Twitter page remained relatively quiet and posted barely two tweets in three days. RIM’s founder – Mike Lazaridis – has recently apologized to the BlackBerry community and posted a video message on Thursday that says, “We know we’ve let many of you down. You expect more from us. I expect more from us”.

The problem has been resolved finally but the apathy with which RIM dealt with the issue did tarnish its reputation. There is one thing that the inclusion of social media on crises management has taught businesses – honesty and speed are the keys to success. There has to be response to every bad or good news that concerns the organization. This is all the more important when the problem has such as huge magnitude. In the case of RIM, the BBM crash impacted the users in five continents.

Probably some people including the executives and managers at RIM thought that the problem was less than what the people were describing on social networking sites. But the fact is that millions of users (both corporate and personal) WERE affected. It was not as trivial as a ‘messenger service’ not working. There were users who could not access the Internet, send or receive emails and access data on their phones. It was good on part of Research in Motion to resolve the issue in 3 days but it was its responsibility to be more proactive in reacting to the posts on social media.

Blackberry failed to deal with their blackout crises because of its inability to understand the potential of social media for a business. The message that finally came from Mike Lazaridis on Twitter was expected a little earlier to say the least.

Better luck next time :-)

For those thinking about joining SEMPO, they are giving those that do access to tools and services worth $2000. SEMPO yearly memberships are as low as $125 but you get some of the best tools of the trade as a bonus.

SEMPO announced today its “Tools of the Trade” Toolkit, an exclusive collection of no-obligation trials and credits from 10 companies designed to boost the efforts of search and digital marketing professionals. Members who join or renew their membership by December 31, 2011, will receive the Toolkit as a benefit of their SEMPO membership.

“The participating companies really stepped up to make this an incredible benefit available for new and existing members,” noted Rob Garner, SEMPO vice president, North American Groups, and vice president of strategy at iCrossing. “The SEMPO Toolkit provides members with hands-on access to a wide variety of useful tools and services at no extra fee or obligation.”

Companies offering unique discounts or products in the Toolkit include:

Bing
Bruce Clay, Inc.
Cannedbanners
Exclusive Concepts
iCrossing
MajesticSEO
Raven
SEOmoz PRO
SpyFu
Wordbank

SEMPO yearly memberships are as low as $125. For complete details on Toolkit items or to join SEMPO, please visit http://sempo.site-ym.com/?page=join.

About Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization (SEMPO)

SEMPO is a global non-profit organization serving the search marketing industry and marketing professionals engaged in it. Its purpose is to provide a foundation for industry growth through building stronger relationships, fostering awareness, providing education, promoting the industry, generating research and creating a better understanding of search and its role in marketing. SEMPO includes thousands of professionals across 50 countries. The organization’s mission is to represent the common interests of companies and consultants worldwide and provide them with a voice in the marketplace. SEMPO’s education and outreach initiatives are funded in part by Google, American Express Open SearchManager, and Baidu, and supported through partnerships with SMX, SES, OMS, MediaPost and GroupM Search. For more information or to join the organization, visit http://www.SEMPO.org.

Just checked a recent survey conducted by Hubspot for over 4000 companies!  The results from a marketing perspective make quite a compelling case that more is better when it comes to creation of content for websites. We know that blogs, landing pages and indexed pages are critical pieces of inbound marketing methodologies and Hubspot data shows that the online pages with more content generated more leads and traffic back in return.

Some interesting revelations of the data include these facts:

• Businesses that blogged 20 or more times in a month got the maximum return in traffic and leads
• Businesses with more than 400 indexed pages generated the most traffic and leads
• Businesses with more than 31 landing pages generated the most leads

The obvious conclusion that ‘more is better’ can cause some organizations to think that they should pad up their websites, start splintering the pages and post small blogs 4 times a day! But this notion should be counter balanced by the brawny inbound theory that content has to be unique and valuable to visitors to be truly effective. The ‘return in traffic and leads’ would only be possible for websites that have content worthy of being read. And what does the ‘splinter strategy’ bring for your website? Only some sparse descriptions, inconclusive arguments and vague lead conversion paths!

So how does a business climb uphill for bigger blog, indexed page and landing page totals while also ascertaining that content is fresh, interesting and adequately productive? Let’s check a few points that can be taken care of:

Write about every angle of your business

The topics that are crucial to your business and industry should be talked about as much as possible. The need for a product/service, its uses and advantages, the tips for selecting a certain product or service, latest news and trends in the industry, posts with encouraging questions and comments make your page interesting and provide informative content fodder to the readers. Even the negative angles of your business offerings make an interesting read for some of the online visitors. But why would you include that in your blog? Obviously, to prove the criticism wrong! So write about the perceptible ‘disadvantages of your products/services’ and then subtly spin the content back in your favor with a conclusion that strongly supports their worth and advantages. You can double your blogging output without being trapped in the ‘writers block’.

And remember – do not go for tricky short cuts in order to beef up your content pool. Use of article spinners and duplicating the content will not help. It might also be tempting to split exiting posts into multiple blogs but all you will get in the end is a poor quality, parched website that does not deliver productive user experience.

Use multiple landing pages to let more customers reach you

You do need to have more landing pages to generate more leads – probably a different one for each set of target audience and more landing pages imply that your business has more to offer. The landing pages look livelier when they have meaningful offers for the page visitors. Here are a few tips that can be used to create and add oomph to landing pages:

• Set the purpose of each landing page before actually developing it. Decide what you want the visitor to do when he/she visits the page
• Send the user to the pages that load quickly – do not use many pop-ups and do not link to pages that were disabled. Do not make your page visitors wait for too long!
• On each landing page, highlight the specific benefits that your products/services offer
• While designing web landing pages, try to enter your prospects’ mind and answer the questions that could be asked by them.

All it takes is to just examine your keywords and adgroups to determine what the user (who uses those search terms) really wants. Then deliver them to the offer page as seamlessly and with as few steps as possible

Sending all the traffic in a campaign to the same landing page is always a big mistake. The keywords that the users employ for a search already describe their aims. Each step in the landing page process can make you lose customers if you do not directly send them to the destination they are searching for. Why bother your customers through a complete website maze when they can take a detour to land on the exact spot?

Get more pages of your website indexed by search engines

Do you have different web pages for all regions, cities, or states that you service or work in? If they are in any way different, shouldn’t they ideally have separate web pages? You do comprehend the significance of product differentiation for marketing success in various areas. A quick audit can help you to discover some opportunities that you may be missing in the online scenario. For increasing your site’s number of indexed pages, take a few minutes to establish an inventory of what you already possess.

To increase the number of your indexed pages, aim for higher PageRanks and for this, have the right blend of features for your SEO. If you can get a little higher PageRank for your most important content, by taking some away from less important content, you might be able to get more of your pages into search engine’s index. The businesses that have a large website, with a lots of sitewide links to “overhead” pages sometimes have a hard time getting their deeper pages indexed. In this scenario, changes to the website structure can make a big difference in how many pages get indexed.

One tactic to increase the number of indexed pages is to bookmark the new pages at social bookmarking sites like Delicious, Reddit and StumpleUpon. As these are frequently updated and search engines are aware of this, they crawl and follow your bookmarks, links, very quickly.

Being a member of online forums, groups and networks can also spread the news of your web pages via links and these in turn attract search engine crawlers.

To sum up, when more traffic and leads are on your mind – get back to the basics. Augment your content, develop more landing pages and get them indexed. More content does work for your website!