The Concept of Web 2.0 and SEM

Spending budget in SEM is worth so long as it attracts more unique visitors through search engines. Internet advertising in India is fast moving from flashy boxes and sponsored links to the new buzzword: search-engine marketing. In 2005, total online ad expenditures in India exceeded Rs4 billion ($88 million), of which Rs2.36 billion was SEM, out of which Rs720 million was spent by companies in India, and the rest from enterprises abroad.

According to an industry study by the Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI), Industry wide, the biggest SEM spenders are retail companies, followed by technology, travel and the automotive and banking industries, with non-governmental organizations and property markets also advertising.

Why Can’t We Ignore Spending on SEM?

Those who are into online business wanting to increase the web traffic through search engines should keep their eyes opened to study the trends. Otherwise, they’ll be lagging behind.

Furthermore, the old rules of web1.0 SEO hold less importance in the new web 2.0 world. In a fast changing behavior of search engines, the role of SEM consultant/SEO firm should be to keep a good track of the current trends and accordingly suggest the changes required to be implemented to drive more traffic.

Let’s have a look at the following table – I have drawn according to my level of understanding.

Web 1.0 SEO vs Web 2.0 SEO

Page views vs Accessibility

Reciprocal Links vs Bookmarking/del.cio.ous/dig/BLs

Keyword rich contents vs User generated contents/Interactivity

Meta tags vs description and Title/Optional

SE submission vs Optional

Directory submission vs Automatic crawling by spider

HTML optimization vs AJAX optimization

Reliability on Search engine PR vs P2P network

Personal sites vs Wikis/blogs

Double Click vs PPC

Digg is news search engines while delicious is a social book marking site and del.ciou.ous are news sites while techcrati is a search blog search engine

Technocrati

Blog search engines – rivals (Google, Yahoo! Msn!)

As of August 2006, Technorati indexes over 55 million weblogs
Technorati uses and contributes to open source software.

In gist, there are a few steps, such as, social networking, dig & delciou.ous, tagging, links from user generated contents, etc need to be taken. Moreover, we need to adopt search engine marketing mix to drive traffic not only through global search engines (google, msn, yahoo), but also through specialty search engines like it.com.

Get Traffic From Social Bookmarking Sites

Social bookmarking sites have become one of the most ideal spots to find additional traffic for your own site, especially if you provide a lot of interesting and noteworthy content. Submitting to such sites can do a lot to gain more exposure from quite a number of online users who constantly are on the lookout for fresh and interesting content. Here are some tips that may help you more effectively make use of social bookmarking sites as a means to get additional visitors to your own site.

When submitting to a social bookmarking site. Bear in mind that timing may also be critical. Getting into the front page of social bookmarking sites may not be the same as getting into the front page on most search engines. Most of such sites may only give you a span of 24 hours to get to the front page and stay there. In this case, you need to know when you should be submitting in order to get the most benefit of traffic.

The best time to submit your site is after waking hours, when people are already up and about and going online. Since 24 hours may be a slim time span, getting your site in time when most people are already online would allow you to get more traffic than when posting it on dead hours when most people are asleep. The same thing may be applicable when posting on the weekends. Weekdays may be more preferable but you also have to consider the increased number competition for the top page that you may have to contend with when posting on weekdays.

Another good way to get traffic on social bookmarking sites is by submitting to the right category. The more specific the category you submit to, the better. It is better to check out if your site can be submitted to a specific category on several social bookmarking sites instead of being content on submitting them on the General or Miscellaneous categories. Such categories can easily be filled up by other submissions and may decrease your chances of getting noticed.

When posting on social bookmarking sites, it is also important to build up a top profile. Building one would be like building a reputation for your website. If you already have a fairly old site that other users have previously visited and found a number of interesting articles and content, you have better chances of getting noticed easily the second time around than with a new site. Posting links going to other sites that also offer similarly interesting articles would also help a lot as you try to build up a top profile.

Another important means of getting noticed is by cooperating with other social bookmarkers. The network that you create on such sites can easily help you get noticed easily the moment you post new content. Also bear in mind that user votes can also help in getting your submission to the top page. The more votes on your submission, the more likely that other visitors might also be checking you out and therefore increase your chances in getting to the top page of a social bookmarking site.

SEO and Content Optimisation

Organic search engine optimization results are displayed “naturally”. Organic SEO is used to draw traffic by means of complex methods and techniques. The technique or optimization is the process of attaining higher search engine rankings to make it more search engine friendly.

This article will look at organic optimization techniques as an ethical optimization without a paid placement program. This is my favourite way of optimizing the websites.

Once you’ve come up with the keywords for your website, its time to develop the content in which they will be used. Your page should have informative content related to the phrase you optimize it for. Content development may range from adjusting the page titles and meta tags to creating additional sections with new content and reorganizing the whole structure of the site. The way you do it will depend on the requirements of your site and business

Benefits of Optimized Contents

Everlasting Results

Organic SEO keeps your website appearing on the search result pages for a long time because your website gives the search engines exactly what they want — relevancy. Relevancy is something you cannot achieve by “tricks” or by paying for it. You can only be relevant by being relevant, and that means, constantly generating content that people want to find and consume. As long as you ensure relevant content, other websites link to you, and the search engines love your website for that.

Trustworthy

If you are constantly adding organic content to your website, it shows you really care for what you present on your website that shows you take interest in your business and that further shows you are really there to do business and have not just created a website on a whim. Organic content also manifests your deep-rooted knowledge of what you are involved in.

You must create high quality original optimized content for this search engine strategy to really develop and flourish. The greater and more valuable the content, the quicker your rankings and traffic will flourish. By producing real value content in articles, sites and blogs, you are creating real traffic and real links that the search engines knock themselves over for. And they will reward your site with higher rankings and even more traffic.

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