SEO, Social Media & eCommerce Talk @RTMLWise

As I have mentioned in my earlier blog posts , it is no longer enough to pepper your web pages with keywords and then sit back and relax . In fact, SEO has become much more complicated. At the same time, it has also become much simpler ,in the sense that people trying to fool search engines are finding it tougher and therefore your site with relevant content has better chance to get noticed by search engines. But you now need a basket of SEO activities. I have always advocated that your web activities must be geared towards attracting genuine audiences and to achieve this you must have a real product or service to sell. Having said that, your effort should be to spread the word around.

1^st must-do : Create a supporting blog

This is really quite simple and tremendously effective. I was myself surprised by its effectiveness the first time around. In SEO, you have to keep experimenting. Firstly because search engine algorithms keep changing, you also have to keep adjusting to the changes. More importantly, there is no way you can ascertain efficiency of your SEO campaign without testing and trial by fire. Your supporting blog ,by which I mean a blog which points to your main website , can be on any free blog service. Intuitively, I feel that Blogger is the best option: It is free and a part of Google. Google search engine must logically visit its own site more frequently than other blogging sites. But Wordpress is equally effective. In a way, your blog is creating links to your main website which means better search engine ranking. No doubt ,most websites now have a sister blog to complement it. The advantage of having a supporting blog is that you can discuss various aspects of your website in an informal manner. Instead of using your website for feedback and creative critique( negative feedback in blunt words) you can use your blog to do the dirty work. I would really recommend all of you who have a web site to create a blog. I hear so often from my clients “ Why do I need a blog when I have a $5000 website?” . I hope I have made things clear for them.

2^nd must-do : Participate in social networking sites

Another quick way to SEO nirvana is to participate in social networking forums . Not only do you create awareness about you among peers but you get to create links to your site. Those of you who are tech savvy can also try your hands at making widgets which can be placed on social sites. Your participation in forums would ideally send traffic to your blog and also directly to the main website. Once you have some decent traffic , you can make them subscribe to your emails which would add to your SEO effort.

3^rd must-do : Submit content to article directory sites

Submitting content to article directories is a great way to create links to your site. Providing articles on your specific product or service which can be freely downloaded means spreading the word through multiple channels. You must remember that the articles should be unique and not too personal ,otherwise you run the risk of being rejected by article directories. Just have a quick look at the kind of articles being accepted and you will be able to crack the code .Let me tell you that it is not rocket science.

4^th must-do : Use keywords tactically

Coming back to SEO basics , keywords are still keywords. Using them tactically is the primary weapon in your scabbard. Keyword density has been discussed extensively in many forums and I will not go into it. But you always run the chance of being blacklisted by search engines if you stuff keywords without relevance . In fact, it is best to retain the original script without worrying too much about keywords. In the end you can tactically insert keywords and make it look organic.

The trick is to use all your weapons and fire them simultaneously. This would result in a critical mass which would ultimately trigger your search engine ranking. Alone by itself any of these techniques may not yield great results but together they can have a greater impact. The tools I have recommended are free and the technique is rather dummies stuff. But let me assure you that it works. A little bit of attention to details and you can be off to a flying start. Thereafter you must fine tune your strategy and manage the metrics. Remember what I said at the beginning – in SEO the only thing permanent is change and you must adapt to it quickly.

Let me state at the beginning that the number four is not sacrosanct. But these four myths are the most important because they cause a distorted vision of internet marketing as a whole.

The first myth: SEO is all important

There was a time when this was true to a large extent. But those days are long gone when you could insert keywords and meta in your web pages and voila –you get to top the search engine ranking. Those were pre Google days when there were more than ten popular search engines. Those of you from that golden era would remember submitting to all those search engines (Alta vista, Lycos, Northern Light) . I understand that some of the old dinosaurs are still around but their presence is almost negligible. So what challenged the SEO supremacy? The blog. The social networking sites. And YouTube . Together they have made SEO another important tool in internet marketing rather than the only tool. I know for a fact that many internet savvy marketers emphasize networking on the internet to be more effective than SEO. Let’s not forget that our goal is to sell our services and products. If we can do it through other channels, so be it. We should not be obsessed with SEO. That is the short and long of the matter. I am not suggesting that you must ignore SEO. Far from it. SEO is important. But it has lost its numero uno status. Social networking sites can pull in more crowd and customers. They can create better awareness and PR. Groups and niche audiences can be discovered only through social sites. SEO can never equal the power of peer groups. This does not mean that web sites are no longer relevant. They will become repositories of information in future – places where people will look for more data.

Myth number two: Product or service does not matter

Remember the 4 P’s of marketing – Product is considered to be an important factor in selling. After all it is the culmination of our marketing effort. But internet marketers or so called experts seem to ignore this altogether. It is as if there is no product –only marketing. What an irony that we are marketing san products. Even if there is a nebula of a product somewhere in the background, it doesn’t seem to be important. No doubt, the whole lot of us are confused. Let’s get real – we need a quality product to sell. Either our own or an affiliates. Everyone seems to be selling EBooks on the internet. Wonder who buys such crap. And when we don’t sell, we start questioning the entire system. Internet marketing is no different from traditional stuff. You must have a good product to sell.

Myth number three: One landing page is all you need to sell

Landing pages – I can write volumes on this stuff. The internet abounds in this thing as if it were a mantra which would rake in the cash. And the format is same, with hundreds of testimonials. Wonder where they catch the guys to give such fabulous feedback! There is a feeling among most of us that one single landing page will do the trick. No. It won’t. You are wasting your time and money if you take this route. I cannot put it more bluntly. Landing page is a zero sum game. Don’t get into it.

Myth number four: Human interaction is not required for an internet business

Can you believe it? I read through so many sites which promise you that everything will be automated and the money will keep pouring into your bank account. They call it ‘automated income’. While you take a holiday with your boyfriend (or girlfriend ) off the Caribbean coast , your internet business would be furiously raking in the moolah. Whom are you fooling? Only yourself. I agree that many products and services do not need human interaction but no business including an internet one can function on its own. You have to nurture, monitor and manage your online business as much as you would a traditional venture.

You would notice that all these myths are related to one major misunderstanding – that internet is a whole new strange animal which feeds on something totally different than a normal business. If you can come to terms with the fact that internet marketing is no different, you will be driving down the right lane. Only then you will see the light.

After some really hi-fi philosophical thoughts on various online subjects, I thought it wise to land softly on mother earth rather than falling with a thud with a gross reality check. So, what do I have to say about an internet business? Much too much has been said and written on the subject and there is a sneaking suspicion that something is drastically wrong with what many internet gurus have to say.

Myth no 1: You can make millions just by becoming an affiliate

It is stuff like this which makes people wary of the internet. Frankly, such tall claims would be called frauds if they were played out in the real world rather than the virtual. But to my great surprise many of us fall prey to such claims and shell out our hard earned money in the hope that we would become millionaires. Let’s face it. There is no way one can earn millions by investing a couple of hundred bucks. That too in a month! I am not suggesting that you can’t make big money on the internet, In fact , I feel that there is serious money to be made out there . But the ground reality is that you have to work towards it. You must plan and then invest your time, effort and money (in that order) to reap the benefits. Faster you get rid of the ‘get rich quick’ phobia, better it will be for you. Don’t look to make millions – be modest and practical.

Myth no 2: You will start earning fabulous money within a couple of months

Another one of those false promises – one month or even two are simply not enough to create a business, either conventional or online. I know that many of us are desperate to earn and earn fast. Those of us who have lost their jobs and are running out of time for making mortgage payments start clinging to hopeless hopes. When there is nothing happening after that promised month, we get more desperate. This has happened to so many of my friends and business colleagues that I consider it to be the biggest menace- that of a one month time table. It is a pity that rationality totally deserts many of us at a time when we need to be practical. Internet business is like any other business. It has to be nurtured with patience. I would recommend a time frame of six months to even a year before you start getting reasonable returns. But one thing is for sure. The internet can turn out to be a gold mine, if you dig deep enough and for long enough time.

Myth no 3: Internet marketing means easy money

Once again a serious flaw in our thinking. But who can be blamed if we start believing that passive money will flow into our bank account once we shell out a few hundred dollars from our kitty. I am incredulous when I see such bogus claims being made on the internet. The passive money thing is a big fraud. These so called internet gurus have twisted and contorted the meaning of passive money altogether, to the extent that the phrase has lost its mooring. If you want to become an affiliate please do so. If you want to sell your services on the internet, you are welcome. But don’t think you can put it on auto pilot. You have to keep working on your internet business every day – day after day. There is no easy money to be made here.

Myth no 4: Internet means you must be tech savvy

This one is the worst of all myths. I know some brilliant guys who have excelled in their field but are so scared of the internet that they keep away from it all. There is a popular belief that only the geeky types can make it on the internet. But that is not true. Internet is like any other medium. You don’t have to be a Bill gate to use the internet. In fact, if you concentrate on your product or service and leave the tech stuff to others, you are likely to be more successful. It is like building a house. You need not be a civil engineer to construct your house. The same goes for your website. You can hire excellent developers and designers to create your website. It is what you do with the website or what you sell on it, which is important.

People who know how to leverage technology and use it to promote their products and services will eventually succeed in an internet business. Planning and perseverance are factors which will determine how much money you make from an internet business.

Till a couple of years back, Microsoft was the uncrowned king of software. They did not allow even a hint of competition. I know of so many companies which simply went under because of Microsoft onslaught. But things started changing slowly. Linux an open source operating system came into the horizon and spoilt the Microsoft party for internet servers. Many other open source programs became prominent threatening the supremacy of Microsoft. And then Google came along and things changed forever.

The two giants left in the field are Google and Microsoft. Microsoft never believed (till recently) that search engine can become such a big money spinner. Today seventy percent of the search market belongs to Google whereas MSN and live search have hardly a few percentage points. Actually, it is not search which is attractive to Microsoft, it is the advertisement revenue.

Microsoft’s attempt to trying to enter search through Bing is therefore not surprising.   As I wrote in the last post, Bing is supposedly a decision engine and  not a search engine. What is the subtle difference? We will have to wait and watch the actual working of Bing. Frankly, it better be different, whatever name you call it by. Why don’t I say good instead of different? Good can only mean an improvement on Google’s existing search engine. And that’s not good enough. What I would like to see is intelligent extraction of information from search words. Something like the semantic web. I will go as far as to say that Bing has to be dramatically different from Google if Microsoft wants people to Bing instead of Google.

What about Google? Google has actually grown away or shall I say beyond search engine. Given that it is the king of search, its story doesn’t end there. They have slowly moved into the Microsoft stronghold of Office space. Google Docs is only a forerunner of bigger things to come. By offering the entire Office suite online with enhanced features and that too free, Google has insidiously broken into the Microsoft space. Google Docs even goes one better by offering collaborative tools to its users.  This has been a big blow to Microsoft.

Now Google has gone and done it again. It has announced its new project called Wave. What is Wave? I really haven’t used Wave and nor has anyone for that matter. From what I gather it is a email client with IM features. But that not all. It is a rich mixture of collaboration, documentation, and real-time messaging. It has the potential and breadth to encompass the entire Office suite as well as provide collaborative tools which are so popular with Google Docs. With Wave Google is attempting a coup of sorts by overthrowing the supremacy of Office.

Some discussions on the internet have pointed to a resemblance with Outlook. According to the source Google developers dismissed this comparison and called Wave far more complex and wider in breadth.

What does it all mean? What is obvious is that Microsoft is moving rapidly into the search space with Bing whereas Google is trying to overthrow the monopoly of Microsoft in the document space. It looks like both want to look like the other. The primary difference is that Google products are open source and developers can create complex and vibrant software with it. On the other hand Microsoft is proprietary and guards its source code zealously.  This means a dead end for developers. Here again, Microsoft seems to be adapting to the new culture, that of open source and collaboration. But their focus is making money right from the word go whereas Google is a technology company which looks at money as a byproduct of its creativity. In fact, when Google launched its search engine, its founders did not have a monetizing plan.

I am discussing both Bing and Wave in such detail because it means a sea change in the way SEO’s think and do things. As I had mentioned in my earlier post, we may have to relook at our fanatic attraction for keywords. Social media tools would make an entry in a big way and may have a greater impact on search engine ranking. We will have to closely monitor both Bing and wave to take proactive measures. After all we don’t want our efforts at SEO going waste in a few months time.

Google on its part may or may not drastically modify their search engine algorithm. Why fiddle with something which is working so well? But then you can never say. I foresee many more concepts and ideas emerging in the SEO space. These ideas are likely to be so radical that they change the rules of the game altogether. I smell a whiff of artificial intelligence, expert systems, decision support systems and a combination of these to move search into the next higher orbit. I am not even sure if Google will lead the way or some other unknown crusader. But I must confess that these are exciting times for the SEO guys.  Or shall I say dangerous times? 

Isn’t it surprising that just when I was speaking about search engines and how in  future we may see  changes that will make present day search engines   look like teddies in front of them……. and there comes along another search engine –this time from Microsoft . An irony of sorts since Microsoft once upon a time shrugged its massive software shoulders at Google and its effort to popularize its own search engine. But that’s how the cookie crumbles, I suppose.  

Bing seems to be cool just because it is so unMicrosoft. I visited bing.com out of curiosity and because it is my job to dig into such stuff and more because my job depends on it. As an SEO expert, I was more than curious, I will admit. And what do I find? Bing.com has options to connect to Facebook and Twitter! I am duly impressed. Frankly I did not have the patience to go through the video but read the text in detail. And Lo! Once again a déjà vu moment for me. Right here on my blog I discussed the future of SEO and emphasized the need for a holistic approach. My logic was simple –if we only optimize our sites for existing search engines and forget content we would land up in a mess when some new search engine crops up with an altogether different search algorithm.

Now let us ponder on the text provided by bing.com (I am still wondering if it from the same Microsoft?) It seems that the new platform will provide a decision engine which will make our search lives simpler and richer in experience. I suspect this ‘decision engine’ lexicon has been lifted from an artificial intelligence book and based on decision support systems or DSS. Anyway most of us are copying someone else’s ideas all the time so why not Microsoft. The point I want to make here is that Bing is trying to embed intelligence into its search engine. By doing this it will change the rules of SEO. Depending on its success, web masters would have to redesign their websites to meet the new criteria. All those who have grown up on keywords, will have to change. I am simply exhilarated at the prospect and hope Bing succeeds.

 Microsoft is a business entity not a software company. Who said this? Even in Bing they have tried to push in the money angle by providing price predictor and such groovy tools. I don’t have the details yet, but I would advice everyone to keep a close watch on Bing.

Another paradox is buzzing in my mind. What if the SEO needs of Google and Bing are entirely different? How would an SEO expert deal with this kind of a situation? I suppose it all depends on the success of Bing. If it becomes wildly successful we may all be faced with a dilemma – Google or Bing? But to become successful, Bing would need website owners to register on their search engines. Indeed a Catch 22 situation. Microsoft would find it really hard to break into the Google clientele – so much of money is associated with adwords, Pay per click, Adsense and all that .Google search engine is not a search engine- it is an entire ecosystem. It will be interesting to see the victor emerge from this new battle.

Meanwhile my question remains unanswered. What would web masters do now? Create two sister sites, one each for Google and Bing? Or hitch their bandwagon to a single search engine? We will have to wait for more details to emerge from Redmond before we can speak on it further.

What gets me all excited about Bing? It has been a long time since anything from Microsoft has excited me. Bcos Bing is so unMicrosoft like. Bing.com has no reference to Microsoft except at the end of the text when they sign off with ‘Bing Team, Microsoft’. Is Microsoft trying to keep its stodgy image away from its new product? If so why? Maybe there is an attempt to decouple Bing from its other products. I am speculating because all this will impact SEO in a significant way. We may have to build websites which cater to radically different search algorithms. Bing is only the beginning. Search will have more and more intelligence built in. It will be as if we are speaking to human beings not machines. Can we then afford to build websites which speak only to machines? 

This blog post is in continuation of my last . Traditional marketers put a lot of emphasis on pricing, both of products and services. After all nothing comes free of cost and nobody respects free stuff. But conventional thinking was thrown to the winds when Microsoft purchased a little known free email provider Hotmail for a few hundred million dollars. The flood of free sites erupted like a rash all over the internet in the hope that someone will purchase them at astronomical prices. The dotcom boom and bust happened because of this free disease and for quite some time people avoided this free stuff like a scourge. Sun Microsystems went almost bust at the end of dotcom era.

But social media changed this landscape once again. Many new free sites started appearing on the scene. This time Google lapped up many of them for astronomical price with Microsoft joining the band wagon along with giants like Oracle. But there was some method to the madness. Oracle purchased competitors in database space and Microsoft fortified its Office suite. The surprise element was Google. They purchased seemingly unrelated web properties for mind boggling sums. Surprisingly Google did not go down under the weight of these acquisitions- YouTube, MySpace and many more.

The focus of my post is the strategy one must follow to monetize web properties. Is it still a good bet to launch websites in the hope that some big guy will buy it at phenomenal price? I admit that I have not done any in-depth research on the subject, but it seems as if Google and co. have lost the appetite for big acquisitions. Look as Twitter .I would have thought that someone would just swallow the  bird midway through the twittering. But there has not been much excitement on this count. Maybe, the economic slowdown has something to do with it. I feel that there are some other forces at work here. The return on such huge investments made earlier has been unsatisfactory. Thousands of social media sites shot up a couple of years ago and most went down like a sack of potatoes. I am sure many lost their shirt in the process. The viability of new social sites is questionable. If anyone is trying this now, they better be careful.

The other option of paid sites is not an option at all. We, the netizens have become used to free stuff. Our pampered brain is going to reject even a slight hint of payment. Even paid porn sites have lost their steam with YouTube and other free amateur sites taking over the porn space. This goes to show that none of us are prepared to pay for online services. So where do we stand? Is there no way we can make money from websites?

For one, Google has shown the way. With Google Ads we can monetize our sites though the prospect is not very lucrative. Google with its pay per click has led to the death of banner ads which used to be money spinners for some websites. I can think of ecommerce sites like amazon.com and eBay which provide a platform for buying and selling goods and services. These sites survive on commissions paid by sellers. But the problem is that this space is occupied by these giants and it will take some doing to dislodge them.

The only space which really excites me is the Saas or software as a service. Also cloud computing, which to me is hardware as a service. More and more organizations are opting for this model. Instead of paying Microsoft a great deal of money for their software, it is economical to adopt the software as a service model. The advantages are obvious. Cloud computing is a rage among the geeks which means common folk like us will catch up with it in a few months. In cloud computing model businesses can bring servers online as required and retire them when no longer needed.

How to fit in our social media framework to this larger movement is where the money is today. Businesses are adopting Web 2.0 practices which require tools from social media setup. Depersonalizing social networks and adopting them to organizational practices using Saas is something smart guys are already working on. The open source movement is giving impetuous to this approach. I hope readers of my blog would reflect on my observations and come up with their views.  

To make money from social networks may indeed be a possibility if we take the approach which I have suggested. Those who are still hoping to be bought by big guys are driving toward a dead end.  

I want to share some very interesting observations which I have made about marketing on the internet. The first thing which strikes me about internet marketing is its definition. What constitutes internet marketing? Is it SEO?  Is it the Google pay per click, AdWords, AdSense and related stuff? Is it a geek thing which is better left to a web site designer? It is difficult to put your finger on it and say this is it. In fact there is a certain lack of form and body which can be recognized as internet marketing.

What about traditional marketing? Conventional marketers are a totally different species. For them internet marketing is anathema. There seems to be no element of marketing which is recognizable to them – I mean the 4 P’s- Price, Placement, Promotion and Product.

Obviously the twain don’t meet. And the end result which we see is that website designers become de-facto internet marketers. And who are the website designers- erstwhile coders who know nothing about user behavior. What we get is therefore what we deserve – a website which says nothing and an internet marketing campaign which doesn’t go beyond some generally accepted misconceptions. One of the requests I get from my clients is to provide a title on their home page which says “Five great reasons why you must buy XXX “, or “ Twenty secrets of NNNN” as if mentioning numbers is a kind of mantra which will attract clients . Other than this teaser, internet is bereft of ideas . This is an outcome which is neither good for the internet nor for marketing.

The four P’s of marketing

The basic tenets of marketing don’t change whether it is the internet or traditional channel. Product, Price, Promotion and Placement are the 4 P’s on which marketing principles are based. The product is the beginning of all sales. You must ensure that whatever you do is first class. If you try and sell junk on the internet, you will be exposed within no time. The anonymity of the internet cannot save you. Unfortunately, most of us don’t understand this or don’t want to understand it. I am aghast at the hundreds of scams being run on the internet, most of them claiming to make you a millionaire in a few days- come on, does it seem possible? But even smart guys like us fall for it. Maybe greed or get rich quick mentality or whatever. But we fall for it anyway. I would suggest that you look at the product and judge according to its merit. If someone says that he or she became a millionaire selling xyz and is ready to reveal the secret for a few dollars, there is certainly something wrong somewhere. Why would anyone earning millions let you into the secret?  Will you?

The product is the most important aspect of marketing. You must be able to project the positive aspects of your product clearly and objectively. Don’t make tall claims. State the advantages and let your reader evaluate.  Here again, I meet clients who want to make their product look like something which it is not. There are those who want to understate everything lest it seems like a pushy sales guy selling his wares. We need to have a balance. Sparkling copy with some home truth mixed in the right proportion. Still, I keep reminding everyone- your product should be the focus. Rest will follow. Your SEO, your keywords, your copy – everything must speak about your product.

With great web pages optimized to attract the search engines you will climb to number one ranking but if the reader doesn’t get impressed with your product, you will never make a sale. This is the most important lesson of marketing or traditional marketing and remains constant even for the internet. Make no mistake about it.

Another great misfortune which we embrace with open arms is the web designer. We expect him to be some kind of a magician who will open the golden gate and flood you with riches. It is just the opposite. A web designer knows nothing about marketing. It is simply not his job. He has never been trained for selling. To me, a geek is the worst salesman ever. I am sure most of us have made this mistake of handing over our internet marketing to a  web designer.

But what is the alternative. There is no professional course or degree on internet marketing. Then how do we choose a marketer for out internet venture? I yet do not have any answers. Today, as things stand, we must be our own marketers. And not let our web designer  become an internet guru for us.  

Don’t imagine Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde type of split personality. It is not that sinister but then we do have multiple online avatars. Who doesn’t? That’s the beauty of online conversations and lives. The anonymity it offers is of truly stellar value. I have known people who maintain numerous avatars and gain vicarious pleasure from each individual interaction. Maybe not so vicarious – for some it is a business imperative.

Your online persona

The internet is indeed a fascinating world. I can play different roles , each with a distinct individual persona. For example, I have always had a desire to write fiction. But my work is technical which is popularly associated with dull people. Obviously there is a clash of identity. If I were to have a single blog which would deal both in creative fiction and hardcore technology, you can imagine the result – chaos. So what do I do? Simple .I create two different blogs with different personalities, interests, focus groups and so on. I even have different names for each of my avatars. The advantage is obvious. I can simply slip into the role of a creative writer and participate in online communities. At other times I can be a down to earth, technology geek, who is an expert in SEO.  

As I have often emphasized, you must be clear about the message you want to convey. The rest will follow. When I am John Grope, I totally immerse myself in that personality. I create my Facebook account, emails, Twitter and everything else around my message- that of a creative fiction writer.  Here I don’t even know Technocrati.com or Google analytics or whatever.

The next question which is bound to arise is about the extra effort required to manage several avatars online. I accept that it means some more work from your side but the rewards are worth the trouble. My creative writing world is unique and standalone. I can develop any theme I wish to and that’s the best part about it.

I am discussing this issue of assuming different avatars because as a consultant, I come across many people who are unable to reconcile their different roles. Though the solution is obvious it does not strike everyone immediately. Many of us struggle through this split personality by maintaining one multipurpose blog –with obvious results. Years of our work can come to naught if we try and accommodate our different persona in one single blog.

A blog can only be successful if 1.Message is clear 2. The audience is well defined 3.  You have something interesting to say. Having one blog to tell all goes against this altogether. Even the Google ad campaign on your blog can be put out of gear with your topics vacillating from a wildly creative theme to a down to earth discussion on PPC. By the time you realize your mistake the damage is already done.

But the confusion created by a single blog is much worse when you consider you, the blogger. Which audience are you targeting? For example, if you are a part of amateur writers’ forum on Facebook, a portion of your blog would be Greek and Latin to this audience. Any comment posted by you would not merit the same response as would a blogger who is a writer and nothing else.

The conclusion is clear. Assume different avatars for each of your activities. For each of your avatar assume a unique name, which would reflect that persona. Be as wild as you can be. I have seen some very creative and meaningful names adopted by some online avatars. Your online name should evoke a direct, instantaneous and emotional response from readers. Once you have created a name, build a message around it. This message should percolate down to every forum this persona participates in. This would ensure that you maintain the purity of your avatar. This is the only way you can manage your online split personality.

An interesting offshoot of this is the development of microsites. Nowadays many large companies create microsites to deal with one specific part of their activities.  For example, marketing campaign of specific product. Dealing with this issue from their main site would lead to dilution of the marketing effort, in the sense that it would be a part of the large website. By creating microsites, the management of the marketing campaign would be much easier and focused. In effect, a microsite deals with a specific aspect of the company persona.  Similarly other microsites can deal with human resources , supply chain , feedback from customers and so on. All of them can link to the mother site in order to provide a unified online presence.

Maybe none of us will accept this but most of us are lost in the social media jungle. There is so much of information that we are likely to be overwhelmed by it. To make things worse, killer apps are being released which tend to make thing worse. Sometimes I fear that my nerves would snap one fine morning from information overload.

My day typically begins with my inbox. I have five different email id, each for a specific purpose. There is my personal id, official id, social id, download id and misc id. Most of my time is taken up by the official and misc id. From my official id inbox I usually branch out to my Facebook, MySpace and LinkedIn social sites which may take me away to some unknown space in and around the internet. By the time I am done with all the commenting and viewing, the writing on the Facebook wall is clear – I mean clear as mud. Add to it the constant twitter   and I really don’t know how to cope up with all this stuff.

Once upon a time I used to think that RSS feed would unclutter everything. Sad to say that instead of a solution, it has become a problem of sorts. How many feeds can you handle anyway? The problem gets more and more acute when you subscribe to all kinds of feeds. I am that kind of a guy – if I like something I instantaneously subscribe to the RSS feed. The result is that my inbox is full of crap.

Social Median

In my hour of darkness, my prayers seemed to have been answered by this cute little website socailmedian.com.  I would like my readers to try it out. Maybe it can unclutter some of the confusion. I could to an extent segregate my interests and read some interesting stuff without wading through muck and quicksand ( some information just sucks you in and waste your time). It is an online experiment which I subscribe to. Though it has limitations, the potential is apparent. Finding the right information is what the entire thing is all about. Web browsers, killer applications, search engines, knowledge aggregation platforms ( like Wikipedia)  and social media are all driving towards the same destination – providing rich user experience. Social Median is just the tip of the iceberg.

Flock 2.5

This one is another experiment which has lately caught my fancy. I downloaded this version of Flock just yesterday and am still playing around with it. First of all, let me confess that I am an open source buff and enthusiast and anything from the Mozilla guys captures my fancy. Anyway we are moving towards open source, whether Microsoft likes it or not (I am not one of those ‘I hate Bill gates’ variety, though). Coming back to Flock- it is an interesting experiment. I can branch out to all my favorite email providers (Gmail, Yahoo……) as well as reach out to my social sites like Facebook. YouTube and Flickr are just a click away with preview. But as I said earlier, this is only an experiment. I can do the same thing which Flock does by bookmarking all the sites. So nothing earth shattering here. I could log on to my blog from a convenient button placed in left panel. Once again something which can be achieved with a bookmark.

I am discussing this issue from my monetizing angle. How do I fit into the scheme of things? How do I make sense out of the clutter? How do I navigate through the jungle without losing my sense of purpose? Many of us spend an inordinate amount of time on the internet without any specific goal. Twitter has made things much worse. Getting hammered and battered by messages is not my idea of having a good time. But at the same time we just cannot escape from the madness. The search for an ideal solution is on but meanwhile we must differentiate between noise and signal which are emanating from the internet. There is no point following hundreds on Twitter – rather it is pointless. I find it   funny that many of us simply join the bandwagon as if it were a fashion statement. Boasting about your Twittering prowess is somehow associated with having arrived. It is akin to “The Emperor’s New Clothes”.

As things stand today ,we must be clear about the message we want to convey and much more importantly, we must be clear about the message we want to receive. This is the only compass by which we may be able to find our way out the social media  jungle. 

I can hear many of you saying   ” okay,  everything you say looks great   but give me some tips on how to really optimize my site quickly, without waiting for organic growth”. I agree that not all websites should be built with the future in mind. It may even be desirable in some circumstances to break into the first page of a search engine even if it means oblivion in the long run. In this post I am listing some of the time tested methods which I have personally tried and succeeded.

Building links (not the same as Link building)

One of the most beautiful ways to get people to link is through traditional channels. If you ask me, finding a place in Oprah show would probably be the best way to get people to link feverishly to your site. Even if you are not so fortunate, any television show in your neighborhood channel would work fine especially if your website deals with local issues or sells products to the neighboring marketplace. Radio talk shows come second on my list, primarily because radio has become completely localized. When you get linked from these audiences, a stream of traffic is bound to follow. Besides this, search engines pick you up faster.

Publishing articles in article directories                               

I like this method a lot because in the process of submitting to article directories you are likely to build a neat nest of content. There are many more advantages to publishing articles in article directories. When others pick up your articles and publish them on their websites, they automatically link to yours. This therefore acts like a nifty link building exercise. Moreover, search engine spiders often crawl through article directories in search of new content. The likelihood of being picked up by search engines therefore increases.

The only limitation in this approach is that you must have some information to offer which can in turn be converted into articles. If, say, you are selling apples on your website, it would be tough to write articles which would be accepted by article directories. Not that it cannot be done – believe me when I say that smart guys can write on anything let alone apples.

Publish on Wikipedia

Frankly, this one is for the serious guys because, Wikipedia folks don’t easily accept content for publication. Having said that, I have known people who have got themselves into wiki pages by using some really nice gimmicks. Remember that search engines like content from reputed sites and Wikipedia is one of them. You may even attain instant nirvana on search engine ranking via Wikipedia. As a consultant, I get many queries from people asking for advice on the subject. Getting published in Wikipedia seems to a well established market.

Yahoo Directory                   

This may prove to be a great way to get noticed. Getting your link registered with Yahoo directory can lead to direct traffic from it as well as help in getting noticed by search engines as well. Generally, you will find yourself ranked better on Yahoo in case you are on its directory. Possibly, Yahoo search engine has a bias for it which is not surprising.

Send press releases

This can be really helpful in your search engine effort. It has worked wonderfully in several cases and I would recommend this approach without any hesitation. PRWeb is possibly one of the better sites to which you can submit your press releases. Not only is your Press release distributed widely but is quickly picked up by search engines as well. It costs a bit but it is worth every penny you spend on it.  PRNewswire is another PR site. I have not tested it personally but am told that it is also effective. There are many other PR sites to which you can send your press releases. With a bit of research you might hit the jackpot right away with your PR effort.

Promotion on video sites

Probably this is another great way to search engine nirvana. I suppose all of you are aware of the secret: YouTube belongs to Google. Obviously Google search engine spider loves its own kin and crawls through it often. I have come across some people who say they got to the first page of Google by uploading their video on YouTube. I will be writing a post exclusively on YouTube but suffice to say that the title, description of your video should be spot on to get the job done. Some of us are scared about creating videos which is actually quite simple and possibly the easiest step in your quest for a better search engine ranking.