1 Oct

Negative Publicity Management

When a bush fire starts, it spreads with devastating speed. It feeds on everything on its path and bludgeons into a nearly unmanageable conflagration until after days of back breaking work, it is finally brought under control.

The destruction it leaves behind is often severe. But when investigations into its cause commence, it is often found that the cause was a tiny spark caused by a seemingly harmless source.

A bush fire is a perfect allegory to a problem that has been plaguing businesses all over the world. It’s called Negative Publicity and it drives firms into having daylight nightmares.

What it is
Negative Publicity is the adverse publicity that a firm may incur due to a particular reason, which may lead to potentially disastrous consequences. It results in the firm’s reputation among its customers and competitors being badly tarnished. Needless to say, it hurts business real bad.

What causes it
Like the tiny spark that can start a bush fire, the causes of negative publicity can be various:

  • Disillusioned (ex) employee
  • Angry customers
  • Misleading interpretations of blogs/forum posts/interview excerpts
  • Mischief mongers spreading unsubstantiated rumors.

While an allegation might be true, more often than not its the unsubstantiated rumors that inflict more damage.

Why it spreads
This is a classic quagmire. A firm spends millions on promoting itself online through endless publicity campaigns. It places advertisements, sponsors discussion boards, forums et al till its name is well known to all those who matter. Then all of a sudden, one stray comment on how the last blog post by the firm’s CEO hurt the sentiment of a potential customer surfaces. Like all things that should not spread, it snowballs and garners attention from everyone who thinks he is somebody. The forums are now pasted with hate mail and the firm loses face overnight. The very tool of publicity, the Internet, has stung back and stung deep.

As Winston Churchill once said :

“A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on.”

That is the problem with Internet. It gets word around faster than anything else. In the good old days of verbal communication, negative publicity was not the worst that could happen. It could be quarantined. With the Internet, the only way that is possible is by plugging out the entire world.

Another important factor is people’s vulnerability.

Eg
: Imagine a firm that sells baby diapers. Its product is popular and soaks up more than half of its customers’ discomforts. Unknown to its customers, it had to let go one of its employees who claimed mistreatment at the hands of the firm’s administration. He was unsuccessful at proving himself but had to be let go because he was now ‘malware’ for the firm.

Jobless and disgruntled, he vows to get back at the firm and starts a rumor about the potential health hazards of its diapers. The rumors claim unhealthy amounts of bleach to be present in the diaper linings. If exposed to frequently, it may result in irreparable skin damage and chemical poisoning in both the baby and its caretaker.

For a scientifically informed and inclined population, such rumors are meaningless. But just how willing the average mother is to let science disprove the rumor, especially when it concerns her baby’s health is well known. Every mother in the country is shocked. The husbands too are alarmed at the dangers their wives and babies will be exposed to. The diaper firm is sued for millions within a week.

Effects

  • Clearly, business does not flourish under negative publicity.
  • Firms may have to call back all their products.
  • Shares of the firm may take a frightening dip.
  • All of the above may even lead to the firm having to shell out millions as compensation, and the venture might even go bust.

How do you counter it?
The golden rule is- Don’t Panic! Here’s what you should do if ever if you have to :

  • Look into the problem

Identify the cause if it’s not obvious. Get experts to verify/debunk any claims/rumors before making a public statement.

  • Work out a plan of counterattack

Get the best minds from within your firm and if need be, hire professionals from outside(say, a professional negative publicity management firm) to come out with convincing statements to counter allegations.

  • Give out concrete proofs of safe-practices

The best way to gain face is to quash unsubstantiated rumors with hard hitting facts. Stage numerous public demonstrations proving your point. Use the power of the Internet to reach out. This might be tricky if you really are the defaulter. In that case, get the best minds to mitigate the damage as best as possible.

  • Follow up progress continually

After the initial storm has subsided, do not let up with re-building your image. Come out with attractive offers, make the customers take a tour of the production plant if relevant, get experts to vouch for your products, the works. Once dented, your image will be vulnerable to attacks for some time to come.

Prevention always works better though

“A stitch in time saves nine”

Of course, your aim should always be to steer clear of such occurrences completely. Dedicate a team to keep a sharp eye on all fronts, including the Internet(blogs, forums, social networks, search engine rankings, websites of competitors etc), for any comments or developments that might turn ugly. Although it can never be all-encompassing, it’s better to be aware of possibilities than being caught unawares.

P.S:
We have been receiving numerous e-mails enquiring if we offer negative publicity management services. We do offer negative publicity management and have been doing so for a number of our clients – please get in touch with us on sales [at] vinove.com for further information.

29 Sep

Target the right link page

Having discussed the overview of link popularity in our last post, we would now delve further into the challenges associated with development of that coveted link. Going by the adage that “a job well begun is half done”, the identification of the potential link page is imperative to the success of any link building campaign. In view of the fact that the identification of the links is the most time consuming and challenging part of the link development process, we would confine the purview of this post to this fundamental part of the Link Building process.

In the present context, link development has become more quality based and quantity of links is no more a determinant. This change is manifested by the higher ranking on SERPs of a lot of websites with fewer links, than those with scores of links. Thus, identification of the appropriate link page for link sourcing assumes further importance.

There are various factors that influence the identification of the potential web page for obtaining the link.

Links can be assessed on the basis of two broad parameters, and the link page should qualify on both these counts. The parameters to consider are:

Relevance

The relevance of the page from where the link is sourced is paramount, and the criteria for qualification are -

  • The page to get the link from should be good for visitors of our site.
  •  

  • The Links should be sourced from sub pages of the sites that have symmetry to the theme of our website. e.g. If a site sells high altitude shoes, then the extreme sports gear shop that could be a potential link partner, should place the link of the high altitude shoes, on the page that features the specialized footwear.

Authority

The next step after identification of the relevance is the authority of the respective website. The authority of the website page is determined by the number of times the pages of the website have been referenced by the search engines. Since such pages are often referenced, they are likely to get maximum traffic and click through as well. To qualify on the standard of authority, the links should -

  • Be from the page that have the most external back links. This would result in more traffic arriving on such page, which would in turn benefit the page for which the link is developed.
  •  

  • Another factor of consequence is to determine if the potential website is worthy of being linked to. This implies that when you link to a website, you are linking to everyone else that the target site links to. This assumes importance in view of the fact that Google does not punish for bad links from sites, but for links to bad sites. This contention is further corroborated by the fact that Google is not just looking at trusted link sources but, also ignoring sites that are getting an influx of unrelated, low authority links.

Adhering to these points while identifying the potential link pages would result in development of the link that has value, and which augments the authority of the website.

Identification of the ideal link page requires skill, objectivity and continuous research. These are traits that most available software are deficient in. The development of links manually, thus assumes greater significance. Link development is an art which requires a combination of SEO knowledge, analysis, and a penchant for deal making. These characteristics make link building a tedious exercise loathed by most webmasters.

Developing links manually delivers maximum benefits. The process would involve manual search, manual emails and manual checking. While this requires extended efforts, the benefits are worth it.

The points detailed in this communication are intended to provide a perspective on the way links pages should be identified. The identification of the link page is a continuous process and requires constant efforts and commitment.

It should be known that there are many resources, and pages where the links could be sourced from, and continuous research would help identify the best links from the best places. The only distinguishing factor is the knowledge of how to look, and how to choose the best pages to get the link from.

The conventional practice of searching for link pages that feature the competitors links is passe. This has become redundant and the present context calls for a smarter search requiring an out of the box approach, which expert agencies are adept at.

However, we hope that the points highlighted in the preceding paragraphs help you with your pursuit of the coveted link.

31 Aug

Link Building: The paradox of Poverty amidst Plenty

An effective landing page is only as good as the visitors that it attracts. Hence, the next logical step after development of an effective landing page is to promote it. This involves attracting qualified visitors to it, by employing various online marketing efforts, viz. PPC or SEO , email marketing. Another frequently employed online marketing tool with the twin benefit of economy and effectiveness is Link Building.

Link building is a practice of getting the other semantically similar websites to feature your link on their websites. Link building constitutes finding viable business partners willing to endorse your site. An authoritative link to your site counts as one vote toward your link popularity.

Other site owners would link to a page, when they consider the content important. Likewise, search engines will consider your content important because human beings, not software programs, link to your site’s content. These factors result in the page attracting classified visitors.

There are various attributes that influence the link building initiative. The irony of link building is that while it may be appear to be an easy exercise (sourcing links from FFA and link a minute sites is easy), the real benefits of link building accrue only when the link is obtained from a quality website that is thematically relevant to the website that the link is requested for. Hence the paradox.

Links, Search Engines and Visitors : The connection

Good thematic links deliver dual benefit. First, they make the website available for the Search Engine crawlers to visit, while at the same time they are instrumental in driving relevant traffic from thematically similar but non competing websites. Links are attributed significant importance in the Organic Search Engine promotion, and are instrumental in achieving high rankings. The number and quality of incoming links is a manifestation of the standing of the website in the respective domain, as well as authenticates its authoritativeness.

The premise that the Search Engines use to value a webpage is that large number of links substantiate authority of the website. This is based on the assumption that if other webmasters decide to link to a particular Web page at their own discretion, it indicates that they find the content of the website relevant, and want their visitors to view the content of the linked site too.

Many sites maintain search engine visibility and the resulting qualified traffic because of successful link development, and not just based on the number of keywords on a page. This can be achieved by effective use of the keywords in the link description. Link anchor text provides a snapshot of the target page to the search engine and highlights its relevance. Hence, irrespective of the words or the type of content that the page contains, a search engine can interpret a great deal about how popular the content is by reviewing the links that surround it.

The Link development Roadmap

Link development is a tedious process and requires careful planning and execution. The process involves identifying the potential link partners, sending them link request with a value proposition and then wait for a response. Link development begins by mapping the websites that may be thematically symmetric to your website. A generally accepted practice is to identify the websites that your competitor has obtained a link from. The same websites could be targeted by you in your link development endeavor.

Another source of obtaining links could also be the popular classified directories. These directories may be paid or free. For obtaining a link from these directories, it should be ensured that the URL is submitted in the appropriate category.

The other source for links could be the medium of online publicity. This entails obtaining links by submitting articles, press releases and content to the respective classified websites. Even appropriate blogs and forums could also be harnessed for link development. Links from such sources further enhance the credibility of the website.

Once the sources of link have been identified, the other factors that need due consideration are the relevance and value of the link obtained. Not all links can be good quality links. However, the evaluation is subjective and can be left to individual discretion. It should be observed that the inherent link benefit, in terms of relevant traffic, derived from a thematic website would be more than, a link sourced from a more popular website, albeit from a different business vertical.

Good content is mandatory for any successful Link Building campaign. It serves as a catalyst for encouraging natural linking to the respective site, which results in natural link development, with quality websites. While some of these links may be logical and sequential; others may be completely subjective. However, the back links will all accumulate to constitute a robust link portfolio.

The Paradox
Link building is characterized by its gradual pace, requiring perseverance and patience. However, the pace of link development is subjective, and the turnaround time for link development is determined by the domain, quantity and the nature of links.

It takes extended efforts to obtain high quality links. While, links may be easy to source, good quality links adhering to the essential link building good practices, take longer to develop. For a link to qualify to be classified as good, it should conform to the following parameters:

The links should not be obtained from FFA sites or Link Farms.
Should be sourced from indexed pages, failing which the benefits would not accrue to the respective website.
The link page should not have the link attribute “rel=nofollow “.
The links should be developed manually.
While the parameters are exhaustive, the aforementioned factors are fundamental to any campaign.

As highlighted earlier, link quality carries more weight than quantity. Hence there should not be an effort to divorce quality for quantity. Quality is a function of the semantic similarity of the target website and the relative importance of the respective webpage.

Further, it needs to be noted that acquiring too many links in a shorter period of time may be detrimental to the link building effort. It is a prudent practice to develop links progressively, and reap the benefits over a period of time.

Out source V/s Develop Links In-house: The Cost Benefit Analysis.
It has been established that developing quality links is a tedious task and requires perseverance. The process of identifying potential partners with detailed research, followed by sending mailer and thereafter waiting for the appropriate response and follow up requires protracted efforts.

Link building also requires constant validation of the obtained links, a pursuit again requiring labor.

In view of its labor intensive nature, it is often preferred by webmasters to outsource the link building to specialized agencies. The inherent advantage that these agencies have is their experience and expertise of managing link building campaigns across diversified verticals. A natural fallout to this is that the agencies often have a database of webmasters in assorted domains, hence reducing the time it would normally take to research for potential partners.

The other factor that needs due consideration is the price that the agency demands for executing the campaign. While there is no benchmark for the prices, it is imperative not to fall for offers that appear to be too good. Offers to sell high quality thematic permanent one way links for US $ 2 per link is not unusual! However the quality and the authenticity of such claims always command a veracity check.

The intent should be ascertain the methodology, competence and the quality of such agencies. A lot of small firms are known to develop links by sending a generic mailer to all and sundry, with out making an effort to establish the relevance of the target website.

We often receive such mailers, and a particularly amusing one was sent to us by a link developer who was requesting us for a link for his website selling sex toys!!

While in a rhetoric context, every enterprise endeavors to gratify its customers, however, expecting them to partner with a firm selling coitus paraphernalia is stretching the relevance too far.

The point of sharing this anecdote is to highlight the fact that link building is a specialized exercise and there should be adequate caution exercised before outsourcing the link building, since the firm would be representing your enterprise. The nature of reporting, client servicing and quality are several other parameters that should also be considered.

Conclusion
Link building is about bringing more pre-qualified traffic to your site, and not manipulating Page Rank. Consequently, link-building campaigns aren’t easy. It takes time to seek out sites, blogs, and directories that are relevant to your business and worthy of being your business partner on the Web.

Hence to derive the true benefits of link building, one initiate it after assessing the requirement, budget and objective, since the benefits of this exercise are far reaching and continuous. The link building plan should be comprehensive and should explore every avenue of link building involving sourcing links from directories, blogs, forums and by link baiting, an exercise that generates the best links.

We would encourage you to share with us your experiences and opinions on the subject of link building.

16 Jun

Social Search Engines

To make any online marketing strategy garner the desired ROI, it is imperative that the right search engines be chosen to get maximum mileage out of the Online Marketing initiatives.

Thus far the obvious choice of most Online Marketers has been the big three Search Engines, viz Google, Yahoo and MSN, besides the smaller regional Search Engines like Looksmart, Altavista etc.

While most of these Search Engines have been successful in delivering relevant results for the searched query, they have lacked in objectivity.

A website can rank well by being Search Engine compliant, however, it may not always be the sought website. Eg. When the keyword oxygen is searched, only one website of the top ten gives relevant result and provides information about the element.

Though the Search Engines were successful in delivering the expected results, however the efficacy of the same appears to be diminishing. The inherent deficiency of the first generation Search Engines has been addressed by the emerging Social Search Engines (SSE).

SSEs like Google or Yahoo, Social Search Engines seek to produce relevant information for end users, but with an element of human mediation. While regular search engines are purely algorithmic, based on link and text-based computations, social search engines attach importance to book marking, tagging, voting, highlighting and other prejudicial indications of relative popularity of content among its consumers.

The Social Search Engine concept gained boom between 2004-2005. Yahoo MyWeb 1.0 (2004), for example, allowed users to save one favorite links and web pages in a searchable and sharable directory. Encouraged by its success, Yahoo introduced MyWeb 2.0 in 2005 that allows the users to form groups and expand their communities by sending invitations to people.

The prominent difference between a social search engine and a regular search engine is the expanse of human opinion that plays a pivotal role in concluding search results. While search engines place more value to the choices of web masters, social search engines organize their choices based on the consumers of the content. It has been established beyond doubt that Content is the King and any website that is content rich will always have loyal patrons who would further act like walking talking billboards of the respective website.

Social search engines also enable web masters to compete better. For example, social search engine Eurekster provides Swikis service that enables empowered websites to control the listings in their search results index to their benefit.
Another advantage that the social Search Engines have over the first generation search engines is that the SSE are specifically more fruitful when finding non-textual content, including photos, videos and music. Google is attempting to address this deficiency by introducing Google Universal Search.

From the marketers view point Social Search Engines offer the advantage of using videos to promote the website, while also leveraging their popularity among the visitors to their advantage.

Human mediated search engines is a rather novel concept that still is exploring its true dimensions. A major limitation that handicaps the actualization of the potential of this concept is its overt dependence on human element. The chief pitfall of human involvement is that it cannot cope up with the rapid pace of Internet propagation. In other words, the social search results cannot be expected to be as comprehensive as the results from regular search engines. Though in terms of delivering dynamic and relevant results.

However, the phenomenon of social search engine holds a lot of promise on the basis of the merit of the concept itself. The phenomenon is anticipated to take off with flying colors in the coming years, probably in conjunction with algorithmic search.

Watch out this space for more on the emerging web 2.0 Search Engines.

9 Jun

SEO v/s PPC

The debate over whether PPC (Pay Per Click) is more effective as an Online Marketing tool or is it SEO (Search Engine Optimization), is almost as old as the evolution of the Search Engines.The role of Online Marketing assumes greater importance in the present context, with incredibly large number of websites, 110 million at last count and growing exponentially. With competition in each industry vertical increasing manifold, the endeavor to capture eyeballs in the most cost effective manner is a challenge forevery online business.Out of the various tools of Online Marketing, the two that conspicuously stand out are the Paid Campaign (Pay Per Click) and organic Search Engine promotions (Search Engine Optimization).In the following table, it is attempted to highlight the individual merits and shortcomings of each of these tools on five parameters.

 

 

PPC

SEO

SEO & PPC combination

1. Turnaround     Time

It delivers prompt results.

Has a longer gestation period

 

PPC gets prompt traffic before the efforts of the SEO begin to show up.

2. Effectiveness     Span

The results stop as soon as the campaign stops.

The results of the campaign are visible over a longer period of time.

The results start as soon as the campaign begins and continue even after the campaign ends.

3. Cost

An expensive lead generating Medium.

More economical lead generator with higher ROI.

The high costs of the PPC are offset by the favorable economics of SEO.

4. Operating     Dynamics

Offers more options for more restricted visibility.

Offers limited options for targeted marketing.

 

Derive combined benefits in the form of wider choice.

5. Supervision

Needs continuous Monitoring.

Mandates periodic monitoring

 

Moderate monitoring is required.

The ideal marketing plan is usually one that is a combination of both the PPC and SEO with the efforts of one complementing the other. The right blend of the two ensures optimal ROI for the marketing spend.To summarize, the decision to opt for PPC or SEO is determined by the specific marketing need of the individual business. It is further a function of the allocated marketing budget, and the respective industry vertical that the business operates in.The appropriate blend of the Online Marketing Tools is recommended to ensure that the website attracts the desired traffic in an effective manner. This becomes critical in view of the new forms of Search Engines that are quintessential of the Web version 2.0. The USP of these new age Search Engines is that these would be human edited and merely bidding for the desired keywords would not get you those elusive rankings.

17 May

The keyword research dilemma

One of the most common pitfalls while doing keyword research is to pick the keywords with the most search count as shown/predicted by various tools including but not limited to Overture, SEO Book and Wordtracker.

Often you would find that even though you achieve a good rank with the ultra-competitive keywords that you chose isn’t yielding the right right benefits.

There could be various reasons:

  • Google’s SERPs change with the datacenter the query is executed on and  also the location from where the search query was fired.
  • With the rise of SEO, people competititors researching for keywords often end  up looking for a keyword more than your target customer!

So – what could be done about it?

One of the first steps that you could do is to tweak your Traffic Analyzer to stop accounting for unwanted traffic. For instance, we have tweaked Google Analytics to exclude local traffic from India to give us a true picture of the outcome of the rankings achieved by our website.

Other steps revolve around choosing the right keywords and strategically planning to optimize your website for them.

I would cover them in my next post - until then, the aforementioned may be useful! 

16 May

Marketing over Internet – The Viability and the Risk

Advent of Internet has literally revolutionized the way business is done in the contemporary world. With millions of users across the globe surfing the World Wide Web for their day-to-day needs, activity and recreation, the potential of Internet as a market can easily be imagined.

The statistics reveal that more than 12 million websites are already over Internet and about one million new websites join in everyday! The figures reflect a stark picture of the extent of cut-throat competition prevailing over the medium. Doing business under the circumstances indeed needs a well-planned marketing strategy or a smart mix of strategies.

Marketing over Internet is a serious business in the present arena. Internet marketing comprises of many sophisticated and promising concepts, including Search Engine Marketing (SEM), Banner Advertising, E-Mail Marketing, Affiliate Marketing and Interactive Advertising. The span of Internet Marketing continues to evolve and expand, as the Internet marketers apply their tact and creativity to fight the ever-growing intense competition.

Of all, Search Engine Marketing is the most happening form of Internet marketing. It focuses on topping the Search Engine Ranking Pages (SERP) by search engines like Google, Yahoo and MSN. The term includes Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising. While SEO focuses on organic or natural search, PPC based links are called sponsored ads. SEO basically involves optimizing a website in all respects, so as to render it most favorable for top ranks as per search engine algorithms. The rest of the Internet marketing concepts are direct marketing strategies that may be easily comprehended by their name itself.

Given the informative and dynamic nature of Internet, Internet marketing provides even a small business entity with a lot of scope to expand its markets beyond its local margins and present itself with much more sophistication for lesser cost. Internet marketing is undoubtedly a considerably cheaper option than employing a sales workforce in an offline business. The highlight benefit of Internet Marketing is that it does not require much of experience to venture into it.

Internet Marketing may seem to be an all profit no loss situation. But, it also has a dark side to it. In the absence of any stringent rules and regulations against objectionable content, as well as, open nature of the medium, each online business entity runs the much dreaded risk of negative publicity. Spreading a bad word about something or someone over Internet is a very easy task that may render all marketing efforts futile.

8 May

SEO Semantic XHTML

We have recently started upgrading the code for our company’s website from XHTML 1.0 Strict to SEO Semantic XHTML 1.0 Strict. The new code would help in the following ways:

  • Reduce the file foot print making the pages lighter and further reducing the load times.
  • Assist search engines in comprehending the right hierarchy in which the content is to be inferred.
  • Reduce the ever-increasing server load and bandwidth consumption.
  • Possibly, improve the search engine rankings.

Those who might be interested can view the new (under development) code at http://www.vinove.com/

Update: We have received several e-mails enquiring if we offer SEM Semantic XHTML Conversion – Yes, we indeed do! If you would like to know more, please get in touch with us now!

9 Apr

Building links with the right mindset

As of today, most of the link building efforts are geared towards enhancing the Google Page Rank to further improve the search engine rankings. This may not be a wise approach considering the rapid changes in the world of search engines.

While acquiring links, it might be a good idea to consider the following:

* Traffic on the website that you wish to get a link from (both quality and quantity).
* How many links are already placed on the page?
* What is the relative position of your link?
* What is the quality of the neighboring links?
* Is the page a content oriented or a link laden page?

If due attention is paid to all/most of the above, not only the links acquired would result in PR enhancement but would also further help generate quality traffic to the website.

As a rule of thumb, if a link is acquired with a mindset of generating traffic rather than increasing the in-bound link number, it is bound to help your website on all facets!

8 Apr

Future of SEO/Internet Marketing

Search engines seem to be either testing or moving towards a social search paradigm. Some of the examples include:

http://www.younanimous.com

http://www.eurekster.com/

Also, Yahoo is testing its social search engine:

http://myweb2.search.yahoo.com/myresults/faq

With numerous businesses relying on search engine rankings primarily, if not exclusively, an important question to ask is: What would be the future of Internet Marketing/SEO?

Some of the rather instant thoughts that come to mind are:

* Internet Marketing would further move towards a paid model with in-organic results over taking the organic ones.
* The search engine rankings would not only be driven by the search engine algorithms.
* The importance of currently existing concepts namely Google PageRank would recede.
* Content would rule: Websites serving quality content would attract repeat quality visitors and higher popularity resulting in even higher traffic.
* Meta search engines that integrate a number of tools like digg, del.icio.us etc. would further gain popularity.

It is now time for companies around the world re-think their long term Internet Marketing strategies and plan accordingly to minimize the “damage” social search engines might cause!

More later!

Best, Smart &
Effective Solutions

Quest for continuous learning, enhancements and establishing long term work relation with our clients has been the mantra of our success.
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