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  • Google Penguin 3.0 – Diagnosis & Recovery Steps

    It has been over a year since Google announced Penguin 2.0 update and we had shared our thoughts on it. Since Penguin 3.0 update was announced by Google on Oct 17, 2014 – it was estimated to affect less than 1% of English queries as Moz pointed out. John Mueller from Google had said that this update could roll out over the next few weeks.

    This update is intended at reducing “web-spam” at a much higher and sophisticated level than Penguin 2.0 update. Let us now try to understand how this update actually works. First & foremost, Penguin 3.0 update is pretty much similar to the preceding updates with the main intention being reducing web-spam by demoting sites with bad link profiles (removing websites from Google Index which have acquired “paid links” over the years). Google experts say this is a refresh. This essentially means the algorithm was re-run to release sites that fixed their issues and to demote sites that had issues that weren’t picked earlier. Site owners & SEO experts may have to be ready to witness fluctuation in traffic and rankings.

    Diagnosis & Recovery Steps for Google Penguin 3.0

    If your website has seen drastic changes in organic traffic and/or keyword ranks over the last few weeks here are a few steps to consider immediately:

    1. Check for sources of links to the site

    Bad or paid links may also be a factor if you are affected by this update. Check for links from paid directories, irrelevant forums and non-industry specific sites

    1. Use Diagnosis tools effectively

    Google Webmaster tools and other tools like Moz come in handy. Conduct detailed tests using these tools and update your website profile. If your site is linked with some shady sites, then usage of Disavow tool can be an added advantage. Disavow tool on Google Webmaster lets you start disassociating from such poor/bad-links.

    1. Disassociate from bad reputation sites

    If your website is associated with sites of bad reputation including paid ones identified by the above mentioned steps, this is the right time to disengage yourself from these associations.

    Having said all of the above, be aware of with whom you are linking to in the future. Share your feedback and comments in the comment section below.

    Contact us to learn more. Have a happy spam free experience on the Net!

  • Ten Ways to Optimize Website Speed

    After quality content, page speed is the most important website feature. But all too often people think that optimizing website speed at the time they create a website or blog is wasted effort. They couldn’t be any more wrong. As the popularity of your website expands, testing for page speed becomes absolutely imperative.

    WHY WEBSITE SPEED?

    In a word, search engine rankings.While optimized website speed is important from a user’s perspective, search engines reward it with higher rankings because speed is critical for robots scanning a website. If a competitor’s website loads faster than yours it will take a better position ahead of you on the  search engine results page. The performance of a website is important, but so too is increasing website load time speed. Regularly monitor your website load time and take necessary measures to increase the site speed.

    Website_Speed

    BEST SEO TIPS TO OPTIMIZE THE WEBSITE SPEED

     

    1. Minimize HTTP Requests

    According to Yahoo, 85% of web page load time is spent downloading the different components of the page (e.g. images, style sheets, and scripts). An HTTP request is multiplied when there are duplicate scripts in the code. Identify and remove these duplicate scripts.

    The quickest way to improve site speed is to simplify your design.

    • Use CSS scripts to combine multiple images
    • Combine background images into a single image
    • Combine multiple style sheets into one
    • Use Script tag on your HTML page
    • Reduce scripts
    1. Optimize Image Size

    Images often contain additional comments and use unnecessary colors. Make images as small as possible so that the browser does not have to resize them.

    Use image editing tools to:

    • Crop your images to the correct size
    • Save in JPEG format
    • Reduce color depth to the lowest acceptable level
    • Remove image comments
    • Specify image dimensions
    1. Minify Resources

    Minification, the process of removing all unnecessary characters from source code without changing its functionality, helps to reduce its size and improve load time.

    Eliminate extra spaces, line breaks, and indentation in your code to keep your pages as lean as possible.

    Minification tools available online include:

    • To minify HTML, PageSpeed Insights Chrome Extension (generates an optimized version of your HTML code)
    • To minify CSS, YUI Compressor
    • To minify JavaScript, JSMin , YUI Compressor
    1. Add CSS at the top and JS at the bottom

    Your pages load faster with style sheet references added to the head of your HTML document because it allows the pages to gradually render the styles. Style sheets also improve page load time.

    Browsers can only download two components per hostname at any given time. Adding your scripts towards the top blocks everything below during the initial page load, and gives the impression of the page loading slower.

    To avoid this situation, place your style sheet at the beginning or <Head>of the HTML document and scripts references at the end, right before closing the <Body> tag.

    1. Caching your web pages

    When you visit a web page for the first time, your browser requests all the web page image files, CSS Scripts and Java files to load from the website’s server, taking up precious page load time.  Caching your website saves these file resources to the browser, and the files can be retrieved from the cached files rather than downloading them again from the network.

    1. Install a cache plugin

    Caching plugins permit you to publish static rather than dynamic HTML files, reducing the time a page takes to load. Additional caching features include minification, caching of feeds, Gzipping, and Content Delivery Network (CDN) support.

    1. Compress and optimize your content

    Compressing your website content will have a huge impact on reducing load times. Large pages with recurring high-quality content are slow to download. The best way to speed up the load time is to zip the pages, called compression. This saves bandwidth as well as the download time it takes to  view your website. It’s biggest impact is on web page load time. Be sure to configure the server to return zipped content.

    You can also compress and optimize your CSS and JavaScript files by combining them and minifying the source code.

    1. Reduce 301 redirects

    Avoiding redirects increases serving speed. Every time a 301 redirect is used, it forces the browser to a new URL which increases page-loading time. The solution? Check for broken links and fix them immediately.

    1. Reduce the number of unnecessary plugins

    A site that needs plugins may slow your web page loading speed.  Too many plugins create safety issues, and often cause crashes.

    Try to measure server performance after disabling the plugins. This way you can identify any plugins that hamper your site speed.

    Web page speed is a metric that should not be ignored if you are concerned about providing  the best user  experience. You can examine and check website speed through free services like Google Site Speed Test and Pingdom.

    1. Avoid text graphics

    Some sites may need formal text to make the web page look attractive. However, text in the form of an image takes up a lot of the web page size and is of no SEO benefit. Don’t use text styles in CSS and keep everything in text format in its place.

    Take Away

    Optimizing your website loading speed is an essential task because search engines reward fast loading websites. Hopefully, these best practices will be of some help. What has or hasn’t worked for you? We would love to know. Contact us now to optimize your website!

  • E-tailers hit Hard by Changing Facebook News Feed Policy

    It’s the sign of the changing times. The digital domain is a dynamic and evolving world where nothing can be taken for granted. We had recently talked about the issue of changing Facebook News Feed Policy under the title – Facebook Starts Monitoring Promotional Pages. Now it looks like the Indian e-tailers who had until now extensively used the Facebook News Feed for promotional purposes are getting the short end of the stick.

    Though India is a developing country, the digital penetration in this part of the world is worth mentioning. Check for the latest Indian Internet users figure here which has already crossed the 250 million mark!  Facebook alone has crossed the 100 million users mark in India! This  burgeoning digital demographics here has given rise to sundry ecommerce players that are mushrooming by the day. For companies that did not have access to deep pockets or cutting-edge expertise in digital marketing, the Facebook News Feed was a fertile ground to sow their advertising seeds. But not anymore!

    Come January and the social networking giant will start monitoring overly promotional posts and desist brands from using it as a purely advertising tool. This has got the Indian ecommerce players quite chagrined. They will now have to shell out more money in order to advertise on the Facebook ad platform. But if you look at it closely, it’s not all gloom and doom!

    Your Efficiency is Your Edge

    This move from Facebook will surely separate the men from the boys of the digital marketing world. Going forward you will have to provide compelling content if you want people to like your brand or company. This will no doubt put a strain on your creative and design teams. But still it is worth the effort. If you can add value to your users on Facebook then definitely you don’t have to worry about this latest development from Facebook. It will be business as usual for you or maybe even better, since going forward Facebook will be looking to separate the contenders from the pretenders. Hence you need to equip yourself with the right set of skills in this digital war zone for more user clicks, impressions and leads.

    If you want to implement Integrated Digital Marketing, look no further and contact us now.

  • Black Friday Holiday Season and much more…| Best of the Week

    This week’s hot news, events and videos from the online marketing and social media world.
    Content marketing efforts
    From the Position² Blog This Week:
    Black Friday Holiday Shopping Season
    The biggest shopping carnival of the year is here. Today online is rightly the biggest stomping ground for deal seekers and bargain hunters. Read this incisive blog to find out how you can benefit from all this bonhomie, as a digital marketer.
    Top Stories this Week: Social Media
    Top Stories this Week: SEO, PPC and Digital Media
    Google tab manager Best of the Week Video
    Watch this video by Rand Fishkin where he talks about how to measure the value of top of the funnel demand generation channels.s
    White Paper: Increase Visibility for Your Content by 4x
    Today’s traditional SEO is inadequate: Ignite your search results by accelerating visibility in more places than ever before.Download this White Paper and learn:

    • SEO, why the way we know it is not enough
    • Introducing and implementing Enterprise Visibility Accelerator (EVA)
    • Using multi-channel tracking tools for effective monitoring
    • How EVA benefits businesses.

    Download the complimentary EVA White Paper now

    		 Know more about Enterprise Visibilty Accelerator(EVA)
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  • Twitter’s new Feature Offers Personalized Ad Targeting

    The micro blogging giant, Twitter on Wednesday announced that it will be collecting the list of applications installed on iOS and Android devices. Twitter clarified that it will not access any data within those applications on all its users’ mobile devices. This feature is designed to deliver tailored content that users might be interested in based on their application library. For those of us skeptical about this feature, Twitter is offering an opt-out option. Additionally, users who have opted out of internet-based ads on their devices will not be subjected to this feature.

    The App Graph, as it is called, collects “who to follow” suggestions for accounts that share similar interests, add interesting Tweets, accounts, or other content to the timeline and more importantly, displaying more relevant promotional content. To help users notify about this feature, a message will be displayed on your mobile device- “to help tailor your experience, Twitter uses the apps on your device”.

    To turn off this feature and remove your data, follow these simple instructions below based on your mobile device OS:

    Using Twitter for Android:

    • Tap the overflow icon
    • Tap Settings.
    • Tap the account you’d like to adjust.
    • Under other, you can adjust the setting to Tailor Twitter based on my apps.

    Using Twitter for iOS:

    • From the me tab, tap the gear icon
    • Tap Settings.
    • Tap the account you’d like to adjust.
    • Under Privacy, you can adjust the setting to Tailor Twitter based on my apps.

    Better Targeted Ads

    It is clear that mobile users are growing at a fast pace. By 2015, out of all the internet users worldwide, more than 52% will be over mobile. In order to optimize your ad budgets, you must target your audience in a personalized way. Like we said in our Black Friday infographic, 1:1 contextual marketing is the way to go and App Graph will help Twitter move in this direction.

    Contact us now to learn more on how to do personalized targeting.

  • Black Friday [Infographic]

    The Thanksgiving feast is over and the turkey, sweet potato and cranberry sauce is long gone. After the feast and celebrations comes America’s busiest shopping day – Black Friday. Sales just under $27 billion in 2005 have skyrocketed to $61.4 billion in 2013.

    Tectonic shifts are happening all around us in the way people are shopping. People’s penchant to shop online via their tablets and smartphones will be fully manifested this holiday shopping season. The biggest shopping extravaganza of the year is underway and the online world is abuzz with staggering deals. Go through this discerning infographic to learn more on how trends have shifted to online shopping via smart phones and tablets.

    Black Friday infographic

  • Black Friday Holiday Shopping Season

    It’s that time of the year when shoppers are thronging retail outlets in the hope of getting a steal of a deal. But as you might have already realized e-commerce today has caught the fancy of shoppers in a big way. If you are a digital marketer, then you must have an ace up your sleeve to leverage this positive customer sentiment. You need to be sure that your message reaches the customers, breaking free from the clutter that is around this time of the year.

    Today, customers are savvy and you need to take cognizance of that while devising your marketing campaign. So what makes you stand out from the crowd, capture mind-share and eventually pull in the customers? Now the million dollar question that you need to address as a digital marketer is “HOW DO I GAIN A HIGHER MIND-SHARE & WALLET-SHARE OF MY CUSTOMERS”?

    The deals that e-commerce players offer is much more profitable for shoppers as compared to the deals offered by offline retailers. During the shopping season around this time of the year, people are naturally hunting for the best deals online. Hence, as a digital marketer, you need to have a well-planned approach to get the best bang for your buck this holiday season.

    Your 3 Point Agenda for a successful Online Venture

    • Pay Attention to Social Networking Sites – The explosion of social networking sites is one of the hallmarks of Web 2.0 technologies. Your customers are everywhere. Learn what they are saying on Facebook, Twitter, et al to dovetail your digital marketing strategy
    • Your Online Review Strategy is critical – People today make shopping decisions based on online reviews. So it pays to have good reviews about your company together with the products and services that you sell. Influence your customers to give their feedback, reviews and product ratings, which will bolster your digital marketing campaign
    • Email Marketing Pays Rich Dividends – Even in this age of the social media explosion, email is an effective way to reach out to people. So make sure you have a flawless email marketing strategy in place. Send mails to people to give them a preview of all that you are going to offer this Thanksgiving holiday shopping season. This will surely give you great ROI

    How Brands are Wooing Consumers this Black Friday

    Legendary PC maker Dell is offering Jaw-dropping discounts. Its door buster sales include:

    • Tablets starting at $99.99, Laptops at $189.99, desktops at $199.99, the Alienware gaming PCs starting at $549.00
    • Special deals on a full range of consumer electronics, including TVs as low as $167.99, monitors starting at $99.99 and Bluetooth speakers starting at $29.99

    ………And a lot more such incredible deals beginning November 27.

    The world’s biggest retailer Wal-Mart is dumping the one day ‘Black Friday’ sales model and instead moving towards an annual holiday shopping season. If you thought that only brick and mortar sales is Wal-Mart’s forte then think again because this beast of Bentonville is going all guns blazing in giving some of the deepest discounts available online!

    The biggest online retailer Amazon will offer new deals every hour. It will offer multiple ‘Lightning Deals’ along with two coveted ‘Deals of the Day’ every day this holiday shopping season. So any brand worth its salt is going to make the most of this season when people are not averse to loosen their purse strings.

    Position² POV

    The Thanksgiving weekend kick-starts the Christmas Shopping party. As a digital marketer, you must realize that it is manna from heaven for bargain hunting customers as there is no better time to shop than this in the entire calendar. But savvy digital marketers are looking beyond this holiday shopping season. It has been proven that the shoppers who buy from you during the holiday season more often than not, are just fickle customers. They might not provide a lot of value to you in future.

    Now, as a digital marketer, you can change this with the right strategy. You need to collect information about these customers and utilize it to derive more lifetime value from them. This deluge of customers to your online websites need not be a onetime affair, but more of a regular occurrence for you.

    We feel that the old retailer’s customer acquisition strategies for minimizing cost per customer acquisition is passé. In this situation, marketing intelligence & analytics, like Position2’s MiDash is the digital marketer’s best friend. It helps them understand in real-time the difference between the cost of acquisition & customer lifetime value for various customer types. Marketers can now identify channels and tailor make strategies on how effectively, they can optimize customer acquisition and retention. After all, a customer 50X more valuable than another, certainly needs a different acquisition strategy and cost.

    Contact us now to retain your customers well beyond this holiday shopping season!

    Happy Holidays!

  • Apple iAd Expands into Programmatic Buying

    The programmatic buying bug has bitten brand Apple too. The iAd mobile advertising platform developed by Apple has finally gone the programmatic way. This platform is one of the biggest mobile ad platforms with tens of thousands of advertisers bidding on the available mobile inventory to promote their brands and businesses alike. So it was only natural that Apple resorted to programmatic buying in order to improve the speed and efficiency of the ad bidding process.

    iAd will now make more than 250,000 apps across its platform in over 100 countries accessible to the DSPs (Demand-side Platforms) and ad tech firms like MediaMath, The Trade Desk, Rubicon Project, GET IT Mobile, Accordant Media, Adelphic and AdRoll. These are just a few of the launch partner names. The network is going to expand rapidly in the days to come.

    Programmatic is the way to go when it comes to ad bidding since it reduces redundancy and improves overall efficacy of the process. Mobile is the dominant platform for advertisers to reach out to the young and aspiring demographics in any country. Apps have a preponderance over other forms of content consumption on the mobile platform. Apple brings with it phenomenal scale, high quality user experience and a unique, rich data set. This has got the advertisers quite excited.

    Key Takeaway for Digital Marketers

    With each passing day, more and more online processes are getting automatized. The ad bidding process if done manually is too cumbersome, especially if you are going to bid for tens of hundreds of ad spots and that too on a regular basis. Programmatic can help you make sense of what actually is offered to you and what are your options regarding the various ad inventories available. To learn more about the advantages of programmatic buying of ad inventory over traditional forms of buying ads, please visit the link here.

    With its move into programmatic buying, Apple has released an updated API for its automated buying platform the iAd Workbench. This new API allows the advertising fraternity to generate campaigns, make updates, access analytics and optimize bids seamlessly via their own systems. Learn more about it now at iAd Workbench API Guide.

    Has this new move from Apple got you all excited? Well, we can’t hide our excitement!

    Contact us now to get started with programmatic buying on the Apple iAd platform.

  • Is Your Website Worth Clicking and much more…| Best of the Week

    This week’s hot news, events and videos from the online marketing and social media world.
    Your Website is Your Digital Persona. Is Yours Worth Clicking?
    From the Position² Blog This Week:
    Your Website is Your Digital Persona. Is Yours Worth Clicking?
    Designing, developing, maintaining, migrating and optimizing your website is no mean feat. In today’s hypercompetitive digital world you need to be a step ahead of your competition at all times. Read this riveting blog to find out how.
    Top Stories this Week: Social Media
    Top Stories this Week: SEO, PPC and Digital Media
    effective email marketing for the holidays Best of the Week Video
    Watch this webinar moderated by Jessica Langensand, Marketing Programs Manager at Marketo to get great tips on how to go about creating an effective email marketing campaign for the holiday season.
    White Paper: Increase Visibility for Your Content by 4x
    Today’s traditional SEO is inadequate: Ignite your search results by accelerating visibility in more places than ever before.Download this White Paper and learn:

    • SEO, why the way we know it is not enough
    • Introducing and implementing Enterprise Visibility Accelerator (EVA)
    • Using multi-channel tracking tools for effective monitoring
    • How EVA benefits businesses.

    Download the complimentary EVA White Paper now

    		 Know more about Enterprise Visibilty Accelerator(EVA)
    If you are reading this blog post via a RSS reader, please click here to subscribe.

  • Your Website is Your Digital Persona. Is Yours Worth Clicking?

    Today having a website is more than just a business imperative. You need to differentiate your website from that of your competitors. Your interface should be user friendly and at the same time it should be easy to maintain and upgrade. Having a robust site is very important since web security is of critical importance if you are really serious about scaling your business. You cannot take risks when it comes to web development. The world is going the digital way and you need to take cognizance of that.

    The first impression that your website gives is critical. It can make or break a deal for your website. So put your best foot forward. Have a website that is visually appealing and informative at the same time. According to statistics most visitors to your site will have decided in the first few seconds whether your website is worth spending time on or they ought to give it a pass.

    We can’t stress enough on how much content rules even in this day and age of gimmicks and smoke and mirrors. You cannot have mediocre content and expect first class results. Give your users first class content and sooner than later you will see how it benefits your website.

    Functionality is a big issue with a lot of websites as webmasters do not think twice about the user experience. A website is a platform where people navigate depending on what they are seeking and if your website has broken links, insufficient information, lack of guidance then people will immediately move away from your site and that does not bode well for you.

    As far as usability is concerned keep your website simple. Have a good layout with links clearly marked with where they are supposed to lead you. See to it that your pages load fast and efficiently. That way navigation is not an issue for your users and you can rest assured that rich dividends will surely follow.

    You cannot have any quick fix solutions just because they are cheaper. When you are in for the long haul it will cost you dearly and we are not talking about the monetary cost here. How much are you willing to pay for a lost client? So you need to be discerning and have a studied approach.

    The recent hacking of the BBC website is a case in point. This shows how serious you need to be when it comes to online security. A website endeavor is not a one-time approach but a continuous process of finding out what works and what does not. You will have some new technology coming up and you need to incorporate that in your site. Only then will you be able to compete in this cut throat world.

    Mobile friendly_website

    Image Source

    Today the Internet is going mobile. Due to faster wireless connectivity and cheaper smart phones and tablets, a revolution is underway in the mobile domain. But not all companies have a website that is optimized for the mobile platform. There is a whole generation of young men and women who have accessed the Internet for the first time on a mobile device. Now that is the generation which is of particular interest to the digital marketers. They drive the bulk of sales for products and services in the cyber space. Google has just come up with an exclusive set of tools to help you make your site mobile-friendly. Your site’s mobile compatibility might even become a deciding factor in ranking your website in the Google search engine results page.

    Position² POV

    Different websites have different requirements and you cannot have a cookie-cutter approach. It is better to build your website from scratch since that way all the things will be personalized to your particular needs. Wherever possible do not make use of plug-ins and such other technologies. Now this might seem costly but then it is worth it when it comes to scaling your business and offering a better experience for your users.

    We have worked extensively with a gamut of industry verticals with respect to Web and Application Services. One of our recent works that is worth mentioning is a complete revamp of the website of a leading global information technology and outsourcing company headquartered in Bangalore. After we extensively worked on their website they got an exceptionally high rating in a record period of time from Acquia’s external scanning system. The site was evaluated with tests created by Drupal experts.

    Another recent example is our work on the website of an emerging enterprise cloud storage solutions provider. Here we helped transform their marketing infrastructure with a transition to Drupal for the website, an upgrade to the WordPress blog. This and a lot of other improvements gave the company a renewed capability to reach new customers and partners.

    You need to design, develop, maintain, migrate and optimize your website. Thus, having the backing of a firm which has extensive experience in all these is half the battle won. But still there is no room for complacency. The world of web technologies is changing at a very fast pace and you need to keep abreast of it at all times.

    Contact us to learn how we can transform your business now!