Bing is getting into the Olympic spirit

Powered by Bing Predicts, the new "Events to Watch" tool will be updated daily and offer a schedule of "must-watch" Olympic moments

School of digital marketing

Bing is getting into the Olympic spirit, bringing the 2016 Rio Olympic Games into its search results and launching its “Events to Watch” feature, recommending must-see Olympic events based on Bing Predicts technology of Digital marketing.

Now, Olympic-related Bing searches will deliver a Rio Games box with tabs to navigate between Sports, Athletes, Schedule, Medals and Daily Predicts.

Bing will also track the number of medals won by each country and update daily its newly launched “Events to Watch,” suggesting the most anticipated 2016 Olympic events.

According to Bing, its “Events to Watch” feature delivers an optimized schedule of “must-watch” Olympic events based on projected upsets, new world records and the likelihood of a close competition — all calculated using Bing Predicts technology.

Source: search engine land

Is SEO the right name/term for what we do??

School of digital marketing

An SEO’s role and job duties have changed significantly since I began working in the field 12 years ago — and I think it’s time that we got a new title. In my view, our current job title does not accurately reflect the role that we now play in digital marketing.

A few years back, we focused on optimizing existing landing page elements (title, meta description, headings, body content updates and so on), building links using link development tactics and conducting website audits to fix technical issues.

We still do these things today, of course — but we also do so much more.

These days, a practitioner of search engine optimization is more of a content experience analyst who focuses on optimizing and deploying content across multiple devices and platforms. It’s all about building high-quality, useful, intent-based content for all stages of the buyer journey so as to be there in a consumer’s moment of need.

Why has our role changed?

In the past, a big part of our job as SEOs was to review a website and make sure there were no technical issues that could prevent the site from being indexed. These issues often presented the biggest hindrance to search engine visibility, so we spent a great deal of time and focus on them.

Though we still conduct technical audits and make recommendations based on our findings, SEOs today spend more time on links/content and less time on technical issues. But why?

There are a few reasons for this shift. First, Google’s crawlers have improved; for example, they’ve become much better at understanding JavaScript, AJAX and other technologies that might once have made it difficult to access your page content.

Other technologies have evolved as well. Many content management systems these days have SEO capabilities built in (or readily available via plugins) that make it easy to incorporate basic SEO elements or fix basic technical issues without hand coding. Additionally, tools like Google Search Console (formerly Webmaster Tools) have grown more sophisticated, and technical issues that might once have taken hours to detect are now easy to see at a glance.

Finally, SEO is becoming more integrated into the website development process. The web developer of the past was only interested in front-end usability and back-end integration, and often knew little to nothing about SEO best practices.

Now, if you look at job ads for webmasters/developers, you’ll see that a basic knowledge of SEO is generally desired (and often required). Slowly but surely, the tech work an SEO used to do to make a website crawler-friendly has been shifting into the purview of the web developer.

But if the web developer is now taking responsibility for much of the tech side of the SEO, what is the SEO of today actually doing?

Through search, new roles have evolved

Talk to anyone who’s been doing SEO for a while, and you’ll note that many of them are wearing multiple hats these days. Most of us have at least a basic proficiency in related areas like content marketing, social media marketing, conversion rate optimization and/or user experience (UX) design. Many of these disciplines are younger than SEO, and some may even have stemmed from it.

In other words, SEO today is a complex role — one that goes far beyond simply ensuring that search engine crawlers can access and parse your website. Doing the job well requires a working knowledge of many different online marketing channels, along with an understanding of how these various channels work together to enhance search engine visibility and create a great user experience.

As stated above, an SEO’s role has largely evolved into that of a content experience analyst, who is basically a professional charged with optimizing a brand’s content across multiple devices, platforms and web properties to attract consumers at all stages of the customer journey.

Final thoughts

In the early days of SEO, there was almost an “us vs. them” relationship between the SEO community and Google, with little or no communication at all from the search giant. Over the years, that changed dramatically. Google has made great strides in transparency and communication with SEOs, helping to legitimize the profession.

Still, Google’s communications seem to have a distinct lack of reference to search engine optimizers. Rarely is “SEO” referred to by Google in outreach; it’s almost always references to “webmasters.” Perhaps this omission is simply a holdover from the “us vs. them” days, but it does speak to the fact that what we do is much broader than just optimizing webpages for search.

If other professionals can change with time and evolve naturally into newer roles as their industry changes, then we can, too. Perhaps it’s time to reevaluate what we call ourselves and determine if SEO is still the right name/term for what we do. What are your thoughts?

Source: search engine land

What is Fetch as Google in Webmaster Tool?

We all use Google Webmaster Tool in digital marketing, but have you ever thought of what is Fetch as Google in this tool and what is the use of it. Its very simple, Fetch as Google tool lets you see a page as Google search engine sees it. particularly used by technical people or you’re troubleshooting a page’s poor performance in search results. For example, if you use rich media files to display content, the page returned by the tool may not contain this content if Google can’t crawl it effectively. You can choose to fetch a page as Google’s regular web crawler sees it or, if you publish mobile content, as our mobile crawlers do.

Source: School of Digital Marketing

A Meta Keyword Tag for News Articles only

No, it’s time for   news_keywords in digital marketing. Google has come up with a new Meta Tag.Basically the new meta tag essentially gives publishers some freedom to be more creative in their headlines and article copy. So this means this Meta tag can be used by news publishers. Below is what it will look like.

meta name=”news_keywords” content=”World Cup, T20, India vs Pakistan”

Content Publishers are limited to 10 news keywords seperated by commas. Google has also made it very clear that using the news_keywords meta tag isn’t a quick path to ranking better in Google News. It’s only one signal, and “high-quality reporting and interesting news content remain the strongest ways to put your newsroom’s work in front of Google News users.”

Read more at : School of Digital Marketing

Few things you need to keep in mind when you want to create high quality content

School of digital  marketing

Search engines aren’t trying to make life harder for website owners. They see search as a product, and as they improve their product, the game changes by default.

To keep up with Google, all search engines have to provide the best possible search results. They’ll continue to refine their ability to find the best, most useful content online in Digital marketing.

That’s why quality content is your best tactic for showing up in SERPs.

Here’s how Google says it in its information on affiliate sites. I’ve highlighted the phrases that stand out to me:

Google believes that pure, or “thin,” affiliate websites do not provide additional value for web users, especially if they are part of a program that distributes its content to several hundred affiliates. These sites generally appear to be cookie-cutter sites or templates with no original content. Because a search results page could return several of these sites, all with the same content, thin affiliates create a frustrating user experience.

Notice that last phrase: “frustrating user experience.” Google wants to be the go-to search engine, the one that understands people’s intentions when they ask a question and gives the quickest (and best) answer.

They don’t want to give an answer that’s frustrating or wastes people’s time.

Low-quality, keyword-loaded content won’t help them achieve their goals. So they’re refining their algorithms to weed out that type of content.

What they want to deliver are Web pages that provide the richest experience for the user. Hence the term “quality content.”

The challenge of creating quality

There are a few things you need to keep in mind when you make it a goal to create quality.

1. Quality is a subjective goal.

Who really knows what it is until you hit it? Is it long, short, funny, serious? It could be any of the above. It could be none of them. So an important part of your content strategy has to be defining this word for your brand.

2. Quality implies trust.

That’s why Google shares stuff that they see other people sharing. They see that as a vote of confidence, a tick mark on the quality scoreboard. So while you’re building the quality of your content, it’s important to put energy into building trust too.

3. Higher quality content may seem to directly conflict with your profit goals.

You can’t use content to promote your products. Yet most businesses don’t want to pay writers to write materials that aren’t promotional. From my perspective, this is one of the biggest challenges for MARKETERS—providing profit-building content to please the C-Suite and readable, useful content for users.

4. Higher quality content requires a bigger investment.

You’ll have to invest in better writers and graphic artists. You may also need programming help to create interactive content.

5. The ROI on quality content may not be immediately evident.

It takes time to build a reputation as the go-to resource. You may have to invest a lot of time and money on the front end, trusting that you’ll reap the rewards down the road. This is another reason you need to have a written content strategy that defines “quality” for your business, outlines the tactics you want to pursue and details your expected outcomes.

6. It’s risky focusing on quality.

Quality content is usually different than anything else out there. You have to be willing to make waves or stand out. Try hard not to simply copy other brands’ strategies, but to come up with something that works for you.

Content Credit:  blog crazyegg.com

2 important free email marketing tools

School of Digital marketing

Choosing the Right Email Service Provider,There are countless email MARKETING in Digital marketing services out there to choose from and plenty of reviews on each. They all have their own benefits and drawbacks depending on your specific needs. ExactTarget, Vertical Response, Marketo, and Silverpop (just to name a few) are all incredibly powerful paid platforms. They come with MARKETING automation tools, customizable email templates, list building features, and more to help you get the most out of your email program, and even marry it with other aspects of your overall marketing strategy.

But that’s a decision you need to come to on your own through trials and discovery calls. If you’re not ready to commit, here are some free email MARKETING SOFTWARE programs and solutions for some of the problems you may still face while using your ESP (and some problems you didn’t even know you had).

If social media is the fun and unpredictable uncle of the MARKETING family, then email is an old, reliable grandparent. Sure, it might not be as cool, but it has been proven effective and addresses a very important need.

No matter what hot, new MARKETING trend surfaces, email continues to be one of the most targeted and valuable channels if you know how to use it. But a lot of email marketers sort of stumble into the field, which makes it crucial to know where to find all the help you need for success.

Interview with Shradha Agarwal on do's and dont's of Digital marketing

Digital marketing in GEN Y ERA interview with Shradha  Agarwal.

School of Digital marketing

• 1 This is the age of inflation. The audience has become increasingly spoilt in terms of choice & the days of easy funding are gone. Would you say tough times are here for marketers?
  Long gone are the days when people used to consider the e-commerce platform for buying things on discounts. Now, they make their purchase decisions online on the basis of convenience, accessibility and market influence.
  So obviously the competition is tough because internet – the domain of cash-rich mega brands – is now seeing a lot of fast-moving, ambitious startups giving neck-to-neck competition to big players. The only difference is in terms of volume driven by insane discounts offered by larger brands. This too will soon change due to the reduction in funding options and the new FDI ruling of not influencing the seller’s price through discounts.
  2    You have worked with an array of brands such as Maruti Suzuki Nexa, HomeShop18, Blackberrys Menswear, Volvo Eicher, PepperTap, etc. across different aspects of digital media. Looking back, what were the key factors that best helped your teams in running successful campaigns?
  IDEA, IDEA and IDEA! That is the key factor that defines the success of any campaign. In Grapes Digital, we believe that there are 4 main ingredients that make a great idea: Product USP& application, contextuality, consumer trends & behavior and technology. A permutation and combination of them actually makes or breaks an idea. Apart from this, content dissemination also plays a key role – because a good idea not distributed well enough is equivalent to a bad idea.
  3 How should a marketer or a digital marketer, in particular, spend his/her working time? Do you find them spending enough time & efforts on gaining the right skill set?
  That’s a very tough question to answer because theoretically speaking, everyone says the digital space is new and one should spend a considerable amount of time learning new methods, technologies and case studies. However, one just doesn’t get the time to delve deep and research about the latest digital marketing trends.
  There’s so much data released by different brands in the form of case studies, white papers, blogs, podcasts and videos (deconstructing successful campaigns) that it’s an absolute goldmine of data for anyone who has the time (and most importantly the will) to consume and understand the information.
  But, such is the pace of work in an agency that we rarely get the time to do any amount of reading. Execution takes up almost all of our time. That’s why the smart thing to do is to read, learn and execute everything simultaneously.
  I tend to read on-the-go and jot down stuff which would come in handy later. During campaign brainstorming sessions, my notes often come to the rescue. For marketers, knowing the latest trends is of critical importance, which is why I make a conscious effort to maintain a reading list that I follow religiously.
  • Content is on the rise and creativity is getting its due. Which roles or career paths have evolved & gained more respect and attention from brands in the past one year?
  Content, craft and creativity are crucial to the success of any marketing campaign. As far as digital marketing is concerned, traditional profiles as used by mainline agencies can no longer accommodate the diversity of roles in a digital agency. ‘Creativity’ is in itself such an open-ended term that we keep coining new terminologies to define the kind of talent we are trying to hire.
  For instance; how would you define a professional who began his career as a blogger (and learnt Search Engine Optimization to promote his blog) and then moved on to copy writing (and mastered the nuances of social media promotions)?
  Moreover, working closely with designers honed his ability to think visually and helping in website development opened his intellect to the fascinating world of HTML. Constant interactions with clients and PR agencies further fueled his appetite to perfect his client servicing skills.
  While in mainline agencies, super-specialization is the key to success; but to succeed in the digital space and that also at an upper -managerial level, the perfect blend of creativity and marketing acumen will really make you stand out.
  He or she can hold the position of a Creative Catalyst in a digital agency. Brands love working with such individuals because they have fought, learnt and survived in the trenches. They can come up with brilliant ideas and turn them into a powerful campaign.
  Such a person is a true ‘Growth Hacker’ who can take a nameless company and turn it into a supernova brand. Further, he or she displays an insatiable appetite for awards which pushes him or her to create award-winning campaigns.
   I would personally define such an individual as a Digital Prophet!
  5 What is it that digital marketers miss out on during campaign planning & execution?
  While in an ideal scenario a well thought-out campaign plan should result in flawless execution, it rarely happens in real life. That’s why the person who’s planning the campaign and the one implementing it, should be on the same page.
  In order to do this, what we need to do is follow the old school process of maintaining worksheets and schedule charts to ensure that the necessary KPIs are being met. In the digital space, especially, numerous little factors decide the success or failure of a campaign. So it is important to invest a lot of time and planning on offline planning as well to ensure online success.
• Source: socialsamosa.com