How Well You Understand SEO

Panda and Penguin are no longer animals seen on the alphabet chart by your kids. Panda was released by Google in 2011 which provided guidelines to those who were out there wanting to optimize their websites. Why Panda made a difference was because it started using AI (Artificial Intelligence) to enforce these best practices followed by marketers and SEO consultants.

However, these geeks managed to “trick” the algorithm and were able to survive the “Kung-Fu” Panda attack until recently when Google released the Penguin update in April of this year!!! This update emphasized the importance of originality, quality of content and overall user experience.

Ultimate message to marketers from P&P – “Stop focusing on technology tips and tricks, start focusing on people. If your website appeals to people, it will appeal to Google’s innovative algorithms as well“.

With these updates, the search engines are continuously scanning the interactions on social media to focus on how these conversations influence the views on brands and products and how their respective websites should be ranked. The more the interaction among the trusted members of the community, the better the chances of a good ranking. This means that how well a website is optimized is no longer a deciding factor for your Page Rank, the brand must be a conversationalist, promoted where relevant people and forceful enough to engage them in a discussion. Smarter product owners are already engaging in this new direction enforced by Google and let us see how they are focusing their marketing efforts.

Promote Conversations with Fans on FaceBook Page – 

Just today, I got an invite from my friend – Pranam Ben to “like” his company’s FaceBook Page, and at the very same time, he even sent an invite to “Join” in on a discussion about the company on August 20th. Now, that is what I am trying to focus on with this topic. Just simply announcing what your company is doing isnt going to engage fans in a discussion of any sort, it takes more effort than simply designing a page or a website these days. Active involvement and sharing of relevant brand information which is of interest to the stakeholders(in this case fans) will invite questions & suggestions. Providing more supportive material like product links and relevant documentation will arouse interest and engage them in a dynamic conversation between your brand and your fans.

Tweet Topics Of Interest – 

Let your tweet-feeds be of varying topics of interests and not a one-way tweet about how great “your” brand is. If you find interesting information on other blogs and website, do not think twice before sharing them on your networks. Just keep in mind that your point of interest should not vary, understand your stakeholders and provide information relevant to your brand from multiple sources. This will result in “retweets” and that is what the search engines are on the look-out for.

Pin & Re-Pin on Pinterest –

Pinterest might not suit every business need, but I have to say that it has gained a spot on the Top 5 social networking tools of today. If you market to consumers and have a brand with visual attributes, then Pinterest might just be the right tool for you. All you need is photos, images, infographics and banners of your products, and this allow you to leverage your brand optimization.

Share on Google+

One look at the NewYork Times Google+ profile will tell you how effectively the social media is being used to build the brand. There are lot of views (both positive and negative) on how soon G+ will gain popularity and leave the other social networks behind in the coming days. Yet, many of the marketers are slow to adopt to another one of the social medias and add it to their already lengthy list of PR profiles. But there is a strong feeling that sharing on Google plus will definitely help you improve your brand visibility and search engine optimization.

Share Videos on YouTube –

Adrienne rightly says, “Don’t ever underestimate the power of video marketing” and also illustrate some cool methods and techniques to make your videos more interesting. What better tool than YouTube to promote your videos where you can share information about your brands, speak about their properties, and maybe even demonstrate a working example if it suits the needs. When the content is engaging, people will want to share it and when they do, they add a link to your website. Always remember that Google owns YouTube, if your videos goes viral, Google will immediately take notice and what else needs to be said about it!!!

Forums and Groups Participation –

First you need to check if the forum or group is accessible to the search engines. For example LinkedIn is a “closed” group and hence not indexed, but while some others are public and allows search engine crawls and the conversations with maybe links to your website can help with your optimization and brand promotion. Spend some time to answer to relevant questions and give out links to source of information to help others understand better in a quick manner. Spread the word and be available for participants to engage in discussions.

Over To You

So, instead of asking “how well my website is optimized”, you better start thinking “how well my brands are placed to engage in active discussions”. This will bring you to the top of the list and ranked high among the search engines. A good Google Page Rank speaks for itself. Do you have any other means of marketing that you currently engage in? Do share your thoughts. Thanks for reading.

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