Search Engine as a Powerful Marketing Engine

I was curious the other day to find out my long lost friend from college. It has been years that I lost in touch with her. I tried all means to contact her- through old friends, old phone numbers, old addresses, Emails, Common friends, College scrapbooks, Emails and every other means. I don’t think so!!!! I left the one big sea of information i.e. search engine. Yes and with a very little effort I found her.

Invention of Search Engines had led to a U-turn in the Internet usage. These search engines became synonyms to availability of structured data overthrown in a sea of information overload. This is the most sort after way to search, explore and zero down on required data. This data further can be used for a variety of purposes from gathering information, to researching, to finding consumer patters, to data analysis. There is a google wave which swept the internet and people famously ask “Did you google it” rather than “Did you search it in google”. The widespread usage of search engine has shifted the gears of information extraction to a large extent. Gone are the days where information search was permitted to libraries, schools, colleges or to Educational institutions. Now it is contained in the virtual pages of RSS feeds, Java Scripts, HTML web pages and a host of web applications. This contained information can thus be retrieved for our purpose within a click of a second. These search engines use iterative algorithms to process and produce the search data from millions of records.

Google, Baidu, MSN, Ask, BING, Yahoo, AOL ,Goodsearch and Yandex are the few of the lakhs of search engines available on the internet. Worlds most used search engine Google has taken the lion’s share in the market of search engines. Google’s extensive research and innovative driven searching techniques has made life easier. Search Engines on a bigger picture changed the perspective of information gathering. To make things even better search engines are equipped with:

• Filter bubble which are used in websites to selectively guess data a customer is seeking.
• Search Engines are also designed for making a predictive analysis. Most famously google.
• Search Engines are also provisioned for faith based search where certain data isbarred from search in conventionally religious countries in order to maintain the peace.

Thus to get exposed on a search engine is most sort after task for companies. In order to be the top of the search pages or top of information retrievals some companies exclusively employ social networking services which venture into search engine optimization techniques and tools to synchronize the search with companies/organizational results.Further to this search engines emerged as powerful marketing channel for the companies. Search Engines are used for:

•  Marketing services & products.
• Create awareness of the products/services.
• Helps expose the innovation or the product differentiation.
• Consciously spread socio-economic issues.
• Diffuses common man’s opinions which help organizations get consumer pattern.
• Helps Innovative marketing techniques.

Search Engine popularity gained an international degree of recognition in terms of most searched actors, most searched actress, most searched news etc.On a broader spectrum, I cannot revisit my life back to no-google days or rather no-search engine days. Each one of you reading this can honestly say that our first destination page in our computer would be a search engine homepage.

So on behalf of all the internet users a bow of admiration to the search engine inventors whose brain child is most dear to all of us.

SMO – Mantra to elevate web traffic to new level

SMO or the social media optimization refers to the optimizing a website and its content in terms of social media available. In other words it is the use of social media outlets and communities to generate public awareness about the company, product and the service or it can be of any event.

With increasing usage of internet there has been tremendous increase in the usage of social media by the people. Facebook, Twitter etc have mammoth numbers of visitors and have become good advertising platform for the organization.

Social media is the state of art and innovative process of enhancing the awareness of the brand, the product or the service among the target audience. It is an effective tool to rope in mammoth traffic to the site. It is in fact a social activity that attracts visitors to the website through an elevated search ranking. The site can achieve top ranks in the search engine rankings by maximizing the visitors. Good Social media optimization will drive in mammoth traffic from social media sites and social networks. 

Following are the ways where SMO can boost traffic to the site:

•  Go twitter: Add the tweet button to all your blogs to get feedback and comments. 

• Start a Face book page for the blog: For heavy Face book users this is an icing on the cake and is the    best way to expand the platform. There are chances that people who were not friends in the Face        book may visit the page after liking the blog. This results in increasing of traffic.

• Frequently share the content on Face Book: Regularly sharing of content on the social media will keep the readers glued to the page and inculcate interest in visiting it again and again. 

• Promotion of the blog through third party: Ask other people to promote the blog via social bookmarking sites such as DIGG, Reddit and others. This has to be done occasionally with caution as some sites penalize multiple submissions.

• Implement the social sharing tools on the website: Incorporate social sharing tools like Flare on the website. It allows one to combine sharing options via social media like Twitter, Face book, Email and other social book marking sites into one single tool.

• Eye catchy headlines can do wonders: Writing of alluring and enticing headings is the best way to catch attention of mammoth target audience and such headlines are the ones which people love to share with their near ones and dear ones. Crappy, Nondescript titles may cause damage that is irreparable. 

• Persuasive content: Compelling and persuasive content is vital social media optimization mantra to rope in umpteen number of audience to the site. Eye catchy content inculcates interest in the minds of the readers who share it to others instantly.

• Tagging and book markings: Incorporate content features such as buttons like “add to...” and other book marking sites. Including relevant tags to the pages apart from the home page for the popular social bookmarking sites can bring in more traffic.

• Make the content travel: Allow the content to travel far and wide in the niche area by making some changes in the site like including portable content such as PDFs, video and audio files and submitting to the list of members as well as sites related to your forte. Such things will aid to create back links to the 

Social media optimization involves the use of social book markings, video, blogging, social news etc and rope in mammoth traffic without spending much on search engine promotions.