position2

position2

Category: Paid Search

  • CES 2015 – What’s in it for Digital Marketers?

    Contact us for integrated digital marketing for a new interconnected world.

    Consumer electronic brands from far corners of the globe came and set shop and people arrived in hordes to see what the tech Gods had in store for them. Now that the show is over, it’s time to reminisce about this Consumer Electronic Show, 2015 held in ‘Sin City’ Las Vegas, Nevada!

    There was a lot of new technology on display and more ways to make our lives simpler and enjoying the finer things in life. But amidst all the hullaballoo of near impossible tech gadget specifications and next generation of bleeding-edge products, we are more interested in the digital marketing aspect of it.

    Digital marketing, all the way…

    It’s a digital world and our lives are getting more interconnected with each passing day. ‘No man is an island’ said a wise man, maybe he was referring to our digital existence, after all! Two of the important themes that stood out in this year’s CES were – Internet of Things and Wearable Technology. Today every device in your house or otherwise does have an electronic chip embedded within it. With due reverence to IBM, it seems that it’s truly the dawn of the ‘Smarter Planet’, and we are all a part of it.

    Wearable technology has got a real shot in the arm with latest watches and health trackers that were launched by the tech giants. The technology is so smart that if you are passing by a McDonalds and you still have time for that important meeting with the boss, then your watch will automatically signal to you that you can afford to have a break and indulge in your favorite Big Mac!

    Now this is of particular interest to digital marketers. A whole new frontier has opened up as far targeted digital marketing is concerned. Your client could be a fast food chain and some person passes by your client’s outlet, then you can afford to flash a discount coupon or two via his connected smart watch. This gives a much better chance of conversions too.

    Tech biggies like Apple and Google are coming up with their own version of the smart, connected home. Your refrigerator could directly order the milk from your grocer when it senses that milk needs to be replenished. Until now digital marketers could only peek into the web browsing habits of their consumers. Going forward, digital marketers will be able to make sense of people’s eating habits, favorite television shows, music genres liked, et al.

    All things will be a part of a grand scheme of network called the Internet of Things and we are just getting a first glimpse of the shape of things to come. This opens the floodgates for more targeted advertising, remarketing and such other stuff. The future is bright and it is quite an exciting time to be a digital marketer. It’s an electrifying world and we all call it home!

    It goes without saying that we are elated about the just concluded CES, 2015.

    Contact us and share your opinion about digital marketing for this new interconnected world.

  • Hreflang Spoken Here

    While there is no place quite like home, there comes a time in a successful website’s life when significant amounts of traffic from foreign-based search engines really start to matter. You are going to want to optimize your website to serve international audiences. Otherwise, people dialing in from abroad won’t find your content either relevant or useful.

    hreflang

    Google uses the rel=”alternate” hreflang=”x” attributes to serve the correct language or regional URL in Search results. Introduced in 2011, the tag signals search engines that users querying in language “x” should be shown a different version of similar content than is shown to someone querying in language “y”. It is particularly useful for content specifically created to serve a local audience.

    Hreflang and Canonicalization

    When web content has more than one possible URLs, canonicalization comes to the search engine’s rescue to avoid  content duplication . Hreflang, on the other hand, shows a search engine a different version of a similar page based on languages or regions shown in the search results.Hreflang helps Google crawlers understand that certain pages, sections, subdomains or country code level domains (cctlds) are targeted for a specific country.

    When and where the tag needs to be implemented

    Google recommends using hreflang when:

    • You keep the main content in a single languageand translate only the template, such as the navigation and footer. Pages that feature user-generated content like a forum that typically does this.
    • Your content has small regional variationswith similar content in a single language. For example, you might have English-language content targeted to the US, GB, and Ireland.
    • Your site content is fully translated. For example, you have both German and English versions of each page.

    The hreflang tag can be placed on hreflang page level, the HTTP header, or the sitemap.

    HTML Link Element

    <link rel=”alternate” hreflang=”es” href=”http://es.mywebiste.com/” />

    HTTP Header

    If you have non-HTML content on your web pages such as a PDF file, you can use rel=”canonical” HTTP headers to indicate the canonical URL for HTML documents.

    Link: <http://es.mywebiste.com/>; rel=”alternate”; hreflang=”es”

    Sitemap

    Instead of using markup, you can submit a language specific version via a sitemap.

    <?xml version=”1.0″ encoding=”UTF-8″?>

    <urlset xmlns=”http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9″

    xmlns:xhtml=”http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml”>

    <url>

    <loc>http://www.mywebiste.com/english/</loc>

    <xhtml:link

    rel=”alternate”

    hreflang=”de”

    href=”http://www.mywebiste.com/deutsch/”

    />

    <xhtml:link

    rel=”alternate”

    hreflang=”de-ch”

    href=”http://www.mywebiste.com/schweiz-deutsch/”

    />

    Each page includes a reference to itself as well as to all the pages that serve as alternates for it.

    Meta Language Tag for Bing and other Search Engines

    Google is the main search engine that uses HREFLANG to set up country targeting. Bing and many other search engines employ the Meta Language Tag. There are two ways to set up the syntax on this tag:

    <meta http-equiv=”content-language” content=”en-us”>

    Or the alternative syntax would be:

    <meta name=”language” content=”English”>

    The first option would be ideal if the website is targeted for both language and country. If you use Hreflang for your website’s overseas targeting, please let us know how it’s working for you.

    Contact us to get your website optimized for international locations now!

  • Twitter Goes All Out to Expand its Ads Program

    The micro-blogging site has been trailing behind the numero uno social networking site, when it comes to number of users as well as earning precious ad revenue. But 2015 seems to the right time for Twitter to close that gap and leapfrog its way to become a leading destination for advertisers to showcase their latest digital promotions.

    Going forward, Twitter will be showing ads on third party sites and apps for all those people who see Tweets all over the web without actually using Twitter. This way Twitter can start making money from non-users as well. At the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, the micro-blogging giant made its intent clear about selling ads within streams of Tweets within other publisher’s websites and apps. Initially Twitter is going to have advertisers like ESPN’s SportsCenter app and Flipboard.

    Twitter has just announced that it is going to expand its ads mainly in the following two ways –

    • The ability to showcase tweets on a site or app that has the option to enable ads
    • Auto-play feature for video that helps Twitter to have ads like Facebook

    Now this is a revolutionary step for the micro-blogging site which is the equivalent of AdSense for social ads. The proposition of ads placed within streams is going to benefit both the publishers and Twitter. The micro-blogging site has made rapid progress with hashtags, Graph Search and video. But this new feature with the ability to profit from showcasing Tweets is something that has got the advertising fraternity quite excited.

    Soon Twitter users would be able to see videos being auto-played in their feeds. These videos will initially only play for 6 seconds with the options of playing the full video upon a click. Users, advertisers and media companies will have the option of uploading video directly on Twitter for user consumption. Every time you view a video you will get a list of videos that are related so that you can consume more than one video at a time.

    The revenue sharing model with the publishers looks quite promising and advertising with Twitter will never be the same again. The video ads on the other hand will help Twitter to gain back precious views from competing services like Facebook and YouTube.

    What do you think of this new ad initiative from Twitter? Contact us now for 360 advertising on social networking sites!

  • Google to Roll Out Viewability Reporting

    At the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, Google announced the roll out of viewability reporting across its ad platforms. They’ve also added over 30 broadcasters, premium publishers, and major brands to Google Partner Select, the premium video service they launched last year. This move will help marketing professionals understand whether consumers are actually watching their online video ads.

    Google will report the percentage of an advertiser’s or publishers’ video ads which were at least 50% in view for at least two seconds in keeping with the Media Ratings Council’s standard. Statistics will be available for campaigns powered via Google’s DoubleClick ad-technology, including the ad exchange. These viewability reports will be available to advertisers and publishers using Google’s DoubleClick reporting tools.

    Allstate, BMW and Netflix are a few of Google Partner Select’s early adopters. During the marketplace’s tests, the video ads had 74 percent completion rates. In the coming months, Google plans to offer its marketers the ability to target viewable impressions in DoubleClick and buy viewable video impressions across the Google Display Network, as well as reports on audibility and the total time their video ads were viewable.

    Video promotion is 6 times more effective than print or online, 67.3% marketers plan on increasing their video budget, and adding videos to landing pages increases conversions by 90%. Interesting video content, appropriate distribution channels and real-time analytics are key to a successful video centric campaign. Talk to our Visibility Accelerators on how to take your video viral.

  • Digital Marketing in 2015 – Concentrate on Data Quality

    As digital marketers we are in the midst of a data deluge that seems to overwhelm us if we are not accustomed to efficiently dealing with it. This makes the quality of data that we collate all the more important. A recent survey by Google has shown that over 56% of its online ads are never seen. Unfortunately digital marketers were never too concerned about data quality. 2015 might just be the right time to delve deeper into data mining.

    Big data has been getting all the right attention but there is an overabundance of it (of course that is where it gets its name from!).  Getting intimidated by big data is clearly not going to help you in any way.  Concentrate on only that portion of big data that makes sense to you. Create personas of your customers using the newfound knowledge. But there are a lot of impediments when it comes to making sense of the data that you collate from various sources.

    Consumers are cagey about their social and mobile data falling into the wrong hands. Digital marketers need to provide compelling reasons for users to part with their valuable data. Providing quality content to your users is one sure shot way of achieving this. While soliciting user information do ensure that you have a mandatory email field and the rest of the fields can be kept to only the bare essentials so that users don’t type in bogus information.

    High quality data today is any digital marketers’ dream come true. It can be used to create highly sophisticated and accurate customer profiles within marketing software that you deploy. Thus, it is imperative that you ensure the databases are built around reliable data as the first step towards creating better marketing campaigns. This is highly useful in executing targeted and personalized messages to customers.

    Remarketing – The Holy Grail

    2015 will see a lot of action on this front. All the tools needed to deploy highly effective digital remarketing already exist. For the uninitiated, remarketing lets you show your ads to people who have previously visited your website or used your mobile app. Dynamic remarketing takes it one notch higher by helping you to advertise only those products or services that users have previously viewed on your website or app. But all this needs the underpinning of quintessential data on consumer browsing habits.

    Some of the obvious benefits of remarketing are –

    • Targeting consumers when they are most likely to buy
    • Catering to a tailored list of consumers like ‘shopping cart abandoners’ that provides you insights on what exactly to advertise and to whom
    • It is possible to create a greater impact with your advertising the second time around

    Now to satiate your quest for remarketing or targeted advertising, you have a range of marketing automation software at your disposal. Take this quiz to find out how effective is you digital marketing strategy and if marketing automation software can actually help you.

    Hope you corral, cull and corroborate high quality data to deploy highly effective digital marketing campaigns in 2015!

    Contact us now for Integrated Digital Marketing campaigns to get the best ROI for your marketing spends!

     

  • Digital Advertising is the Elephant in the Room for Media Companies

    The rise of the World Wide Web that began at the fag end of the twentieth century has since then been dominating people’s attention spans and garnering eye balls unlike anything else the world has ever seen. 2015 will be the year that will see big wars being fought by media behemoths to conquer this space, the last frontier!

    People are getting comfortable with the online media and this has got the advertisers excited. Today brands are devising video advertisements tailor made for the online world rather than taking the ads running on the television and serving it to digital users. The advertisers’ switching to the digital arena is not a question of if but more about when, and 2015 seems to be the right time!

    The total US TV advertising spends rose a mere 2.6% to $11.4 billion for the third quarter. But the US online advertising spends for the same period rose by a staggering 22% to $8.7 billion! Now you don’t need a rocket scientist to see the writing on the wall, for the TV broadcasters!

    If the offline media companies are unable to adapt to the changing dynamics of people’s penchant to view digital content, then they might come up against some harsh realities in the not so distant future.

    The Digital Stomping Ground

    Hulu, the ad-supported online video service offering TV shows and movies and video clips is doing a roaring business. Though initially Hulu did not find much luck with advertisers, it is now a hot favorite among online advertisers! The owners of Hulu – Walt Disney Co., 21st Century Fox Inc., and Comcast Corp. are some of the biggest media companies on earth. Together they agreed to invest at least $750 million into the business venture in 2013, seeing the potential of online video consumption.

    But the billion dollar question to ask here is ‘will that be enough?’. Today it is not a labor intensive or a capital intensive economy but it is a knowledge intensive economy, all the way. All you need to look at, is a three year old photo messaging application developed by guys in their twenties, that is worth a staggering $10 billion dollars today! Yes, we are talking about Snapchat. That is the beauty of the online arena. Start-ups of today can become multi-billion dollar enterprises of tomorrow.

    This has got the media behemoths quite worried. What guarantees do they have that tomorrow some wunderkind will not come up with something that rivals Hulu. Now this would thoroughly challenge the old media barons in this new digital stomping ground that is the World Wide Web. Who knows tomorrow a dark horse from Silicon Valley might just challenge the 800-pound gorilla of the media landscape!

    Do share your thoughts on this issue!

    Contact us now to deploy integrated online advertising campaigns!

  • ‘Jerry and David’s Guide to the World Wide Web’ Shuttered

    Yahoo Directory that began service under the name ‘Jerry and David’s Guide to the World Wide Web’, a brainchild of the co-founders Jerry Yang and David Filo, has finally shut shop. This guide was a directory of websites that were listed under various headings which started way back in 1994. The way the websites were arranged here was in the form of a hierarchy rather than a searchable index of pages, unlike the prevalent norm today. It was an influential directory then, long before search engines were the de facto gateway to the Internet. Back in the day this directory was what people perused before browsing the Internet for information that they wanted.

    But there is no need for such a directory now as search engines can give you information on everything residing on the Internet with the right set of keywords, in a fraction of a second. But still the Yahoo Directory holds an emotional value to some people who want to reminisce of an era when search engines were still part of science fiction.

    yahoo-directory

    Image shows the original Yahoo Directory way back in 1995!

    Unfortunately, the advertisers serving ads on this nearly 20 year old platform will now have to find a new platform to deliver ads. Yahoo has shut down more than 60 services in the last two years and this  is a part of a giant restructuring program at the company. Due to intense competition from the likes of Google, et al, Yahoo has been steadily losing its edge.

    Under the charismatic CEO Marissa Meyer, Yahoo is looking for a mobile product strategy, all the way. All the products that don’t fall in line with this new company goal are ruthlessly terminated. This gives the company more resources to focus on cutting-edge technologies of tomorrow. Thus the Yahoo Directory has got the short end of the stick, in an era where tablets and smart phones rule the roost.

    Today it is unlike 1994 when the Internet was a novelty and a website directory was a beacon of respite for people trying to get aboard this new information super highway a.k.a the Internet! Fast-forward two decades and people clearly have no time for something like Yahoo Directory, when Internet is ubiquitous and inextricably associated with all things business and personal. Today time is a luxury that people just can’t afford to waste perusing a directory of websites on the Internet. Thus was written the epitaph of Yahoo Directory!

    So how do you view this decision of Yahoo to shutter its Directory services! Do let us have your views on it!

    Contact us for your website’s improved visibility on Search Engines now!

  • Separating the Men from the Boys of Digital Marketing

    Separating men from boys of digital marketing

    2014 saw a huge deluge of digital marketers trying to solve business problems and some even offering  quick fix solutions in order to succeed in today’s dog-eat-dog world! We at Position² firmly believe that it is time to separate the men from the boys of the digital world. There needs to be a clarity of purpose in this space since every digital marketing activity is not for everybody.

    Demand creation for firms via paid acquisition, content marketing and supporting marketing operations are some of the mantras that we live by. Digital marketing is a dynamic space. A stand-up comedian once sarcastically commented that in the digital space “tomorrow’s technology has gone obsolete yesterday!” Jokes apart, that is the kind of demanding atmosphere that digital marketers need to work on a daily basis.

    Back to Basics

    Digital marketing is part art and part science. As a digital marketer you need to be able to balance both these aspects with aplomb if your clients are to get the best bang for their buck. Some of the important ways in which we work to deliver stellar results for our clients are –

    • Paid Acquisition – This arena has seen a lot of interest in the recent past and we believe with the right approach businesses can get great ROI. This includes pay per click advertising on search engines, bidding for ads on social networking sites, et al
    • Solving Real Business Problems – It is one thing to take things for granted in the digital world, quite another to deliver consistent results that surpass your client expectations. We at Position² let our actions speak on behalf of us
    • Content Marketing – This is going to be one of the defining factors of digital marketing in 2015 since there is a lot of untapped potential in content marketing that marketers need to harness going forward
    • Demand Creation – Business decision makers sometimes don’t know what they need until they are given the option to simplify or enhance their businesses. That is exactly why we go about doing what we do as far as demand creation is concerned for our B2B clients
    • Customized Solutions – We don’t make your business fit into our digital marketing model. That is not relevant today. We in fact, build a marketing model that is just right for your business. We believe businesses have unique needs and creating bespoke digital marketing solutions that are fully flexible is the only way to go
    • Cutting-edge Technology – Using technology where it is needed but with a human touch. You need to work in consonance with the latest tech developments in the digital world and let technology work for you and not the other way round.

    2015 promises to be a watershed year as far as digital marketing is concerned. The developments in the digital world will have huge implications on how you go about selling your products and services. We at Position² are in for the long run. We want to make a difference to our clients businesses and through their success will our success be ultimately reckoned!

    Do let us know your views on digital marketing in 2015 and beyond!

    Contact us now for integrated digital marketing to make your brand go places!

  • Top 5 SEO Trends for 2015

    2014 has been an eventful year in the online search space with more focus on making search experience user-friendly. Google’s algorithm updates like Google Panda 4.1, Google Penguin, all highlight the same issue. Additionally, new features on Google Webmaster & Google Analytics dashboard have enabled SEOs deliver better web-pages for the users.

    Position2 Shared Top SEO Trends for 2015

    Image Source

    It’s time for marketers to focus on 2015 and look at the techniques that will hold ground and begin showing results in the New Year!

    Top SEO Trends for 2015   

    • Optimizing for Mobile Search
    • Conversational Search
    • On-page Markup
    • Content Strategy
    • Website Architecture
    • Integration with Social Channels

    Mobile Search Optimization

    1 out of every 5 individuals in the world now owns a smartphone. With the rapid growth in the smartphone market, usage of Internet on mobile devices has reached a new high. With this trend in place, digital marketers are now particularly targeting users browsing via mobile devices with renewed interest. All kind of digital assets now need to be optimized for mobile. Google is now updating algorithms that reward sites rendering optimally on the mobile platform with a higher mobile ranking. Your site optimized for mobile combined with a great mobile UX feature will stand out as the winning factor in 2015.

    Position2 - Mobile Search Optimization is the most trending factor in SEO

    Image Source

    Conversational Search

    Hummingbird update stressed on words as part of search queries. Phrases with conversational words are now given priority and web pages that provide a solution to these conversational queries now rank higher rather than pages that just tend to “match” these keywords. Hummingbird makes an effort to understand the real intent of a searcher rather than just the syntax.

    Conversational search queries will continue to gain more importance in 2015 – the reason being these kinds of queries address the “actual” need or the search intent. Keyword & Content strategy in 2015 should be a combination of long-tail and keywords which address Latent Sematic Indexing (LSI).

    On-page Markup:

    Schema markup should serve as a great way to display rich snippets although these may not be the only ranking factor. Schema markup helps improve click-thorugh rates as search results for schema-enabled pages have a higher tendency to boost trust among visitors.

    Content Strategy

    Content still is the “King” of SEO. The only thing that would require a re-alignment is the kind of strategy required towards content generation. Content going forward needs to be a blend of long-tail & conversational keywords. Content generation can be in various forms – websites, blogs, rich-media assets like Press Releases, PDFs, PPTs & Videos. Content syndication in lieu of link building should be the mantra. Association with other sites needs to be carefully evaluated before committing, more so after the announcement of Google Penguin 3.0. Content calendars need to be in place to serve as placeholders for developing fresh on-site content.

    Website Architecture

    Site structure & content placement will have a key role to play. The way websites are built emphasizing user navigation & other usability factors, will be a pivotal factor to rank higher on Search Engines.  Websites need to have a clear navigation, neat URL structure and an organized content architecture. All these aid in improving bounce rates and avg. session duration which are now amongst the varied factors considered for better ranking on Google. Diagnostic tools like Google Webmaster and other online tools like Moz should be of great help to diagnose and repair errors.

    Social Media Integration

    Not to be left behind in the race for SEO, is Social Media. Social posts too now have the power to rank well on Search results. As Matt Cutts says “Facebook and Twitter pages are treated like any other pages in our web index, so if something occurs on Twitter or Facebook and we’re able to crawl it, then we return that in our search results”. Leveraging Google+ & YouTube will go a long way in helping website optimization. Prominence should be given to generate additional content using Blogs, data/product sheets and spread them across the web using social media platforms. Social sharing buttons need to be integrated across websites & blogs for a better experience. Overall focus of marketers should be to give users an enhanced experience on Search – be it via a website, blog, digital asset or social post.

    Contact us now for SEO deployment that delivers real results!

    Have a Great Year ahead & Happy Searching in 2015!

  • Mobile Advertising Set to Dominate

    The stage is set for the explosion of mobile advertising in the year 2015. Finally digital marketers are able to connect all the dots, tie all the loose ends, dot the i’s and cross the t’s. As a digital marketer your digital advertising strategy should be more mobile-centric, in order to reap rich dividends.

    Today’s users don’t need bulky desktops or laptops to enjoy a seamless web experience. As far as mobile form factor is concerned, smartphone and tablet screen size is large, the data speeds are awesome, and prices are affordable. More people today are browsing the Internet on the go. All this makes targeting prospects using mobile devices, lucrative and irresistible.

    The Mobile Paradox

    igital_mobile-ad-spending

    Comparing the above two spending, it is apparent that mobile advertising is still in its infancy. But that doesn’t mean that the mobile Internet users are a minority, anymore. For the first time since Internet was conceptualized, mobile internet users have actually overtaken non-mobile internet users. This gap will only widen in the days and years to come.

    internet_mobile-internet-penetration

    The above charts show a comparison of number of mobile ‘Internet users‘ vs. the total number of ‘Mobile phone users‘. The mobile Internet users’ statistics can no longer be ignored. Digital marketers not having a mobile marketing strategy will feel the heat, come 2015.

     A Peek into the Mobile Internet Paradigm

    Having a mobile-friendly version of all your online assets, be it demos, applications, sales materials, communications, et al is no longer optional. It is critical. People use the Internet for not just checking emails and catching up with friends on social networking sites but also to research about products and services. As a B2B digital marketer, it is high time you realize that your target audience is making influential business decisions while on the move.

    You cannot have a mobile marketing strategy just as an add-on to your overall digital marketing strategy. You need to deliver top-notch mobile experience at all times. Have a mobile-first strategy for marketing, sales, advertising, SEO, CRM and such other things in order to stay ahead of the curve in 2015 and beyond.

    How will the mobile form factor shape your advertising strategy in 2015 and beyond? Do let us know.

    Contact us now for a targeted mobile advertising campaign.