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How important is video in digital marketing? Has including video in email become a standard practice?

Brand sites and social media sites are the most popular channels for distributing video content, but just over half of those surveyed were actually using video content within their email campaigns.

Video is a powerful way to move prospective buyers through the conversion funnel. Video within email has a positive impact on campaign performance and email generate a higher click-through rate. Now a  whole new crop of email service providers and technology vendors now offer solutions that give marketers the ability to provide users with a richer experience within the inbox.

To make the most of video within email, marketers must understand the value proposition brought by open standards. Since HTML5 , is built into most modern Web browsers as well as most modern mobile devices, many mail clients (e.g. Hotmail) are actually now capable of displaying video directly in the body of the email when users view that email in an HTML5 compliant Web browser (e.g. IE9+, Chrome3 and Firefox3.5+).

To include video in email, it is necessary to use the HTML5 video tag. While the rate at which your own recipient list will be able to view and play video directly within email will vary,  it is imperative that your email service provider also offers the ability to “fall back” and provide either an animated .GIF/.PNG or a static image to the recipient, depending on the mail client in use.

Solutions from email service providers should be sophisticated enough to automatically know where videos work and provide fall-back support in real time as the message is opened. For example, while an email  with video won’t play in Gmail, it does support animated .GIFs ; whereas in Outlook 2007 or 2010, neither video or animated .GIFs will work, so you need a static image fall-back.

Many best practices remain that should be employed to ensure that video within email carries value for the campaign. Sending videos relevant to your audience should be given, as would indicating the contents of the email- in this case , that there is in fact a video.

Supporting copy should be included, along with some information about what will happen when the video is clicked.

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Social media skills are increasingly important for business. Twitter is an ideal resource for companies, celebrities and anyone who feels a need, to build an online presence and engage with customers or fans.

Being able to provide instant feedback on products or direct complaints to a listening ear is an invaluable service. Simply registering with Twitter isn’t enough. You also need to properly manage your presence, and ensure that you are responding to any tweets directed to your company.

(A) It is possible to see what other people are tweeting without becoming a member. Twitter is free to join. Register at Twitter.com. Choose your Twitter account name carefully – you want customers to be able to find you.

(B) Publicise your Twitter account to attract more followers. Key areas include your website, blog and email signature, but you should also add your Twitter address to your company letterhead, business cards, advertising and any other marketing materials you may produce.

(C) Make the most of your Twitter Feed. Provided that majority of tweets are relevant, consider adding a feed to your blog or home page. If you use WordPress, you can drag a Twitter widget into your blog.

(D) Link your company’s feed using the @ tag. You can also use the @ tag to grab the attention of particular Twitter users.

(E) Squeeze as much information as possible into your tweets. Although URLs will appear shortened, the longer version still uses upto 20  characters of a tweets 140 character limit. A URL shortening service like bit.ly will leave you more characters for your tweet.

(F) Use generic terms that other users may be searching for.

(G) If your company is showing off its wares at an event , use hashtags to attract people who are interested in or visiting that event. A hashtag is a generic search term prefaced with a ‘#’ symbol. Clicking a hashtag within a tweet will call up all tweets that contain it.

(H) Crosslink your website and Twitter feed. Regularly mention  your blog or website, as well as any products of particular interest. However, your followers are likely to drop you if they think you are only interested in marketing.

(I) Tweet regularly. If you want to keep hold of your followers and hopefully attract new ones, you must maintain a strong presence.

(J) Schedule your tweets. Rather than uploading a number of tweets at once, spreading them out will help your company stay at the top of your followers’ feeds for longer.

(K) Engage with your followers. Respond to your followers tweets regularly. If someone complains about your service or products, or asks for help, a response is essential.

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Online marketers are constantly looking for ways to seize more of the large e-commerce pie while boosting ROI. One of the most effective ways to do this is through search marketing.

There are three simple yet often overlooked areas that search marketing professionals can address today to boost their online presence. These areas are account structure, device targeting and continuous testing. While these three categories may seem obvious, they actually tend to represent the most missed opportunities.

Account Structure:Since your account structure is the foundation for everything you manage — keywords, ad copy, device targeting, budgeting and dayparting, for example, it’s important to regularly revisit how it’s set up and managed.The account structure that worked a few months ago may need to be updated to make the most of the latest new features and ad extensions.

Consider Google Sitelinks. As you may know, Sitelinks are an ad extension that’s meant to help users navigate your site. Since Sitelinks are set up and managed at the campaign level; it means all ad groups within a campaign have to share the same Sitelinks. This is a prime example where you may need to consider restructuring your account in order to ensure that your Sitelinks are relevant to the search query.

More specifically, an apparel company using Sitelinks may want to separate the men’s and women’s categories into separate
campaigns to ensure that when someone searches for products for women, they are not shown Sitelinks for menswear.

Along with ad extensions, your account structure can also impact budget, delivery and Quality Score. Since daily budgets are set at the campaign level, it’s a good idea to place branded ad groups into separate campaigns from non-branded ad groups so you have better control over the budget spent on each category. For Quality Score, it’s important to keep a very limited number of keywords in each ad group to ensure relevancy to the ad copy.

While focusing on keyword build-outs and ad copy updates is important, make sure to revisit your account organization on a regular basis to maximize results.

Device Targeting: As mobile searches continue to expand, so do the targeting capabilities available for paid search advertisers. Google recently reported in its retail blog that the last back-to-school season saw a lift of 500 percent in mobile searches for back-to-school items. With growth like this, advertisers need to quickly take advantage of all available targeting capabilities.

Both Google and adCenter allow you to target mobile devices separately from desktop. In Google, device targeting is set at the
campaign level and allows advertisers to drill down to specific operating systems and carriers. Google has reported that advertisers who manage mobile in separate campaigns experience an average increase in clickthrough rate (CTR) of 11.5 percent compared to their mobile and desktop combined campaigns.

Within adCenter, device targeting can be done at the campaign or ad group level. The targeting options include all devices — desktops, laptops, smartphones and other mobile devices with full browsers. Keep in mind that your ad group settings will trump your campaign settings.

By adding this level of targeting, it allows you to monitor performance for mobile separately, manage bids to the specific ROI
of mobile, set separate daily budgets for mobile, and adjust ad copy for the ads you know will be shown on mobile or tablet devices.

Testing: All too often it’s easy to get caught up in the day-to-day management and lose sight of the need to continuously test every aspect of your paid search campaign; from keywords, ad copy and landing pages to bidding and targeting. A good rule to follow is that whenever there is a decision to be made, it presents an opportunity to test.
Like with any experiment, you need to follow these basic guidelines:
1. Select a variable to test (example: headline ad copy).
2. Keep the rest of the ad constant.
3. Determine your key metric. Typically for ad copy, your goal is to improve the CTR. However, you might want to test which ad copy message leads to a better on-site conversion rate or higher AOV. Remember, improving CTR is very beneficial for your Quality Score.
4. Make sure you get enough traffic so your data is statistically significant.
5. Monitor external factors. Your competition’s ad copy will have an impact on the performance of your ad copy, so it’s important to not simply live within your AdWords or adCenter account. Use the Google Ad Preview Tool to get an idea of a searcher’s
experience.

There have been numerous occasions where expectations don’t match results. However, testing provides the answers to your
assumptions of which ad copy will attract more traffic and which landing pages will convert more visitors before your campaign
goes live.

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Mobile payment is simply the capability to pay for a product or service using your mobile phone. Mobile payments can take place over the Web or can be completed in the offline world through contactless payment options such as Near Field Communication (NFC) and Radio Frequency Identification (RFID).

All mobile payments fall into one of two camps, micropayments or macropayments, depending on the size of the transaction and how the payment is processed. As in nonmobile commerce, processing credit card payments (especially macropayments) usually requires that the merchant pay the credit card company a fee for each transaction. Credit card processing thus cuts into the margins of many mobile commerce solutions and must be figured into your business plan.You should also balance the potential revenue from mobile commerce with the credit card processing fees, as well as other hard costs and overhead that will be required to complete the transactions.

Micropayments:

Micropayments are small mobile commerce transactions that can be completed on a phone and, in many cases, billed directly to a user’s mobile phone bill or to a credit card. These payments are useful for low-consideration purchases and the purchase of digital content. The most common types of micropayments are direct-to-carrier billing, subscriptions, and user accounts that are tied to credit cards.

(1)Direct to Carrier Billing:

One common instance of micropayments in the United States and around the world occurs when mobile carriers offer directory service (411) or premium SMS charges and downloadable mobile content such as ringtones or wallpapers. The carrier provides these goods and services, so they can be billed directly to your mobile phone bill.According to Wikipedia, 70% of all digital content in Asia, including traditional Web content, is purchased in this way. This type of mobile payment is ideal for the carriers. It is a simple and viable add-on to any mobile service plan and can be quite profitable. The carriers can bill customers directly instead of processing credit card payments and incurring merchant fees. Because credit card information does not need to be obtained, the processing of a purchase is quick and secure, and usually is completed within 10 seconds on a fast connection.

(2)Subscriptions:

Carriers and other mobile content providers offer subscriptions to SMS updates that are charged to the subscriber’s bill in the same model. These subscriptions can be alerts about news, sports, weather, stocks, horoscopes, and the like, and the subscriber is generally billed for each text individually. These types of subscriptions are ongoing commitments, as with a magazine or a cable TV subscription, and subscribers must cancel or deactivate them if they want to stop incurring charges.

(3)User Accounts tied to Credit Cards:

Other types of micropayments can be completed via accounts where credit card information is stored and validated with a PIN or a password. In the mobile world, the most common company that uses this type of service is iTunes; people download music or videos directly to their iPhones. This format of payment is also quite common in the gaming and adult mobile industries, where users can pay for downloads one at a time.

Macropayments:

Macropayments are used for purchases that cannot be billed as a micropayment. Prepayment, prompted mobile payment, full mobile Web transactions, and full brick-and-mortar transactions with proximity based mobile payment are the four most common types of macropayments.

(1)Repayment:

A variety of different companies have begun to allow their customers to create prepaid accounts that are debited each time charges are incurred and that stop working when the money in the account has been spent. This mobile payment option allows account holders to track their spending and prevent charges for excess use of the service, by avoiding overage charges. Prepayment accounts are most commonly used for mobile phone bills themselves, but can also be used with public transportation and fast food.With this method of payment, users create an account, usually online, and submit an initial payment to start the service. Periodically, users are sent text messages to inform them of their account balance or remind them to add money to their account, otherwise known as “topping-up.” Because accounts have already been created, the customer has the option of repeating the payment amount and billing information of the last transaction, or adding different amounts or billing information to the account.

Restaurants are also beginning to test prepaid accounts, although so far this has mostly focused on the larger fast food chains. This mobile payment model works in exactly the same way as the public transportation scenario, but it can be a bit more complicated to implement. In fast food restaurants, the exchange is simple because food is purchased directly at the register, where the phone can be swiped over an  NFC or RFID sensor and immediately deducted from the prepaid account, just as it would be with a debit card.

In more traditional restaurants, where the waitstaff either takes a credit card to swipe at a processing terminal or processes the card at the table wirelessly, there is the expectation to tip. In this instance, the signal from the NFC or RFID chip owned by the restaurant must prompt a screen that allows the customer to enter a tip. This is a bit more of a hassle, but you can preprogram the system to precalculate common tip percentages for the patron,making the process easier and quicker to complete.

(2)Prompted Mobile Payment:

Prompted payment is much like prepayment, except that the credit card on file is not charged until after the service is rendered. In this payment model, the service provider usually sends the customer an SMS with the total bill and asking permission to charge the credit card on file.Again, some carriers use this to remind their customers to pay their bill on time. In this scenario, the carrier sends a text message to the subscriber at the end of a billing cycle, notifying the customer of the total amount due and allowing him or her to respond with a preset PIN to pay the bill with the credit card information stored in the account. Prompted mobile payment is a great way to streamline bill payment or even charitable contributions because it can provide a cost savings over direct mail and can be used by a variety of different service providers, including home utilities, subscription TV services, and even childcare services.

(3)Full Web Transactions:

As on the traditional Web, entire transactions can be completed on the mobile Web without the need for an account or any kind of prepayment. Customers simply enter their credit card information, just as they would on the traditional Web. This type of mobile commerce is most commonly used by websites that offer some kind of mobile shopping experience.

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If Google’s great innovation was organizing the Web around editorial votes, or links, Yahoo! went in the opposite direction for many years: analyzing the websites themselves and returning search results based around on-page factors. Today, Yahoo! is powered by Bing, and so it puts much more faith in links than it used to. However, Bing’s technology holds onto this page-based legacy in some important ways. Most optimizers appreciate the fact that on-page factors matter to Bing because it makes optimization easier. Google’s system of needing to essentially ask for other websites’ votes is much more difficult than just following best practices when building your site.

Keywords in content: The biggest difference between Bing and Google is their respective emphasis on keywords within the content of the site. I have already discussed the main ways that keywords matter to Google—namely when they appear in anchor text, the meta page title, and the URL. But Google does not care very much about keywords in the content of your site. That’s why, when optimizing for Google, most people just write their keywords whenever they come up naturally in the site’s content. Aiming for a particular “density” of keywords in your overall word count is a relic of the past and can actually have negative effects with Google.

Bing is much more receptive to keywords written within the text of your pages.  Many webmasters report great strides in their Yahoo!/Bing rankings just by using keywords more often. But you might see a bump in your ranking just by leaning a bit more heavily on the keywords you are optimizing for. Playing around with these keywords for maximum effect in this area is a must, especially because Bing is constantly refining its keyword detector. Someday, keywords inside content may matter less than they do. But for now, sprinkle liberally. First-page rankings may blossom.

Meta Page Titles: Another area that Bing seems to care a lot about is the meta page title. You already understand the importance of this bit of code to Google, and it matters at least as much to Bing. Run a search for any popular term on Yahoo! or Bing, and you will notice that most of the first page results will use that exact term in their meta page titles. Google, in contrast, tries to return results whose meta page titles have the same words that the user searched for but not necessarily in the same order. So if you search for best brownie recipe, Google doesn’t differentiate too much between
web pages whose meta page titles are “The Best Darn Brownie Recipe” and “Mom’s Recipe for the Best Brownie Ever” even though neither of those titles contains the exact phrase best brownie recipe. Bing, on the other hand, is more likely to rank a web page at the top if it has that exact phrase in its meta page title.

Meta Description tags: Meta description tags are a factor about which Bing cares a lot more than Google. Meta descriptions are—like meta page titles—text that is written into the code of every web page. They then become the two lines of text that show up underneath the blue underlined heading of every search result. Unlike meta page titles, though, they usually don’t show up anywhere on the web page or browser after you’ve clicked the search result. They exist merely to improve the experience of using the search engine.

Google cares about meta descriptions a small amount. Bing cares about them a good amount more, specifically looking for keywords in the meta description that also appear in the meta page title and on the page itself.

So when you are optimizing for Bing, make sure your page’s meta description includes your keyword at least once and that the same keyword appears in your meta page title.

Headings: Another important on-page factor to Bing is headings. Headings are the text at the top of a page, usually in larger letters, announcing the title or subject of the page. They’re sort of like a meta page title except they’re in the actual content of the page, front and center to visitors. Headings used to provide one of the bases of the early search engines’ algorithms, but as soon as people started manipulating headings so that more traffic would come to their websites from search engines, headings became de-emphasized. Google, for instance, gives headings almost no weight in its algorithm. Bing must not have gotten that memo, though, because it still factors headings into its algorithm quite a bit.

Alt tags: Alt tags are nothing more than little text descriptions of the images on your site. They are a required part of the code because as smart as the search engines are, they are not yet smart enough to look at a picture and identify precisely what it is. If you have ever seen a web page load slowly, you might have noticed a descriptive phrase sitting in the empty box that the picture soon occupies.

Bing shows images in its regular search results as well as, of course, its image search, and relies heavily on the alt tag in its algorithm. Google does the same and also puts a strong emphasis on alt tags. For that reason, I highly recommend that you properly describe all of your images. Searchers click pictures way more than most people realize, and having lots of properly labeled images can bring a ton of traffic to your site.

Outbound links: Outbound links are the opposite of inbound links, or backlinks. Instead of pointing toward your own site, outbound links point out of your site toward other websites. The philosophy behind using outbound linking as a tool for SEO is simple: Acknowledging other authoritative sites is considered good Internet behavior and is the sign of a quality site. Whereas this philosophy is not held by Google in the least, Bing does abide by it.

The practice of liberally linking to other websites is not exactly a crowd favorite among webmasters, who generally want to hold on to visitors at all costs. But many of the same webmasters have found that a few well-targeted links to other sources can help demonstrate mastery of a subject. Also, the Web is very much an open place to explore, and so being too protective of visitors is not a winning strategy. Linking to authoritative sources will not cause a visitor to be lost for life if your site is providing something of genuine value.

Site structure: The final on-page factor that matters to Bing is site structure, or the layout of your pages and the way they are interlinked. This principle is common to all search engines including Google, and if you think about it, how could it not be? A site that is easily crawlable by search engines is usually easily navigated by people as well, and is therefore a good website to present to users in a search. Both Bing and Google favor clean, easy-to-navigate architecture, fast-loading pages, and easy-tofollow links.

Links: Bing actually uses an equation that works like Google’s TrustRank system to determine which sites have earned the credibility of other webmasters. In fact, links are the most important factor in Bing’s algorithm, too, although by not nearly as wide a margin as in Google’s.

Domain age: A final element of SEO that is important to Bing is age. We know by now how important age is to Google, and Bing feels even more strongly about it. Of all the factors that affect a site’s ranking, only links and age cannot be easily controlled by the webmaster, which is why they are so essential to the algorithm.

As with Google, there is no substitute for an old website, and the only way to acquire the credibility that comes with age is to buy an old website, preferably one with lots of inbound links.

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Local businesses need channels and platforms to connect with their future buyers. Let’s take a look at a few of the most popular options for local web marketing on the market today.

Local Search-based Advertising: consumers research products or services online before they make purchasing decisions. Since “search” is users’ primary tool of choice for finding information, local business owners should aim to position themselves within the online channels providing search functionality to end-users.

Google Places and Local.com, for example, both prove to be valuable options in their ability to drive results-so consider starting there if the aim is to increase online visibility and website traffic, as well as foot traffic into a brick-and-mortar
store.

Business owners can enhance their local profiles by upgrading their listings and advertising to audiences on these sites. While Google Places listings are free and payment won’t influence position, Google now offers Adwords Express, a locally targeted advertising program designed specifically for local businesses wanting additional exposure.

Google is clearly the main source of traffic for websites but there are others which can supplement a Web marketing campaign’s traffic acquisition objectives. When a business upgrades its listing on Local.com, for example — which reaches, according to the company’s own count, more than 20 million consumers a month, driven in large part by its distribution network of more than 1,000 partner sites — a business can all but assure itself of greater exposure and do so on a variety of sites.

Local business marketers can accelerate their exposure by further expanding their locally focused ad campaigns beyond vendors such as Google or Local.com. There are many options which deserve consideration including SuperMedia, CitySearch and YellowPages.com. These directory-based advertising platforms offer small businesses a cost-efficient and effective way to position themselves in front of their prospects.

Daily Deal Promotions:Daily deal sites have risen in popularity with the faltering economy and consumers are hopping on board in droves. Groupon has transformed the way local businesses market themselves around the world, harnessing the power of the internet to successfully grow their businesses. Groupon you know these customers are going to come through your door and hopefully find a reason to come back.

Although creating a deal on a site like Groupon exposes a business to a large and new audience, it’s not always a good fit.
If you’re willing to take the risk and have the ability to convert one-time visitors into long-term customers, daily deal vendors including Groupon should be in your local Web marketing mix.

Local joins Social Advertising: As for advertising on social media sites, by now everyone should know that social media provides businesses with an extremely large audience and for many that has been the primary draw towards participation. Aside from setting up multiple social media accounts — such as a Facebook page, Twitter account and a LinkedIn group, businesses should also advertise on these wildly popular Web destinations.

Creating an advertisement on Facebook is straightforward and relatively inexpensive. Businesses can choose their budget as well as define which audience the ad will reach, such as location, age and interests. Twitter too, while still evolving its advertising options, is gradually releasing more “promoted tweets” into the Twitterverse.

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The key to marketing on YouTube is to lead viewers from your video on the YouTube site to your company’s website—where you can then directly sell your products and services.

Include Your URL in the Video: Unfortunately, YouTube doesn’t allow live links from a video to a third-party website. You can, however, include your website address in the body of  the video—and hope that viewers will remember it or write it down for future reference.

It is recommend starting your  video with a blank title screen with the URL prominently displayed. You should also end the video with a similar blank screen with the URL highlighted. Make sure the URL is big and easily readable; high contrast colors, such as white text on a black background (or vice versa), provide the best results.

You should also display your URL onscreen during the main part of your video. Use your video editing program to overlay the URL across the screen. The URL shouldn’t interfere with the main content, of course, but you should be able to do it in a way that isn’t overly intrusive.

Include Your URL in the Accompanying Text: You can’t link live from within a YouTube video. Unfortunately, you also can’t include a link to your website in the description that accompanies the video.  You can, however, include your URL in the text description, but just not as a live link. So when you write the description for your video, make sure you
include your URL or 800-number in the text.

Link from Your Channel Page: While you can’t include a live link in your video or accompanying text, you can
include a direct link to your website in your YouTube channel page. Anyone clicking your user name will see your channel  page, with the link to your website prominently displayed. When a viewer clicks the website link, they’re taken directly to your site—where you can sell them more of what you have to offer.

Close the Sale on Your Website: The URL you point to from your YouTube video should be a dedicated landing
page. That means that you don’t point to a generic page on your site or even to your site’s home page; either approach requires unnecessary work on the part of the customer to place an order. Instead, link to a specific product page on your site, one that includes information only about the product shown in the video.

Why design a special landing page for viewers of your YouTube video? It’s simple: You want to make it as easy as possible for them to give you their money. If you just dump potential customers on your site’s home page, they could get lost. Or they might have trouble finding the product they want and give up. In any instance, you don’t want them randomly browsing your site; you want them immediately responding to your specific offer.

For this reason, your product landing page should have the same look and feel of the video so that viewers sense the underlying connection. It doesn’t hurt to include a screenshot or two from the video or even an embedded version of the video in the case the customer wants to rewatch it. The page should also include more detailed information about the product than was possible in the video, as well as more detailed product photos.

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Online businesses that have been around for a while would already be included in local search engines, since they compile data from aggregators and other online directories. Once a business’s listing is loaded in local search engines,  it must determine how to get the business to rank higher when users search for industry’s keywords.

Optimizing your website for local search engines all basic SEO factors can come into play and can help influence rankings. These factors include having good, specific text in  each page’s title, H1 tags, meta description, page content, IMG ALT attributes and inbound links. But some are specific to local search, such as:

– Companies that have multiple locations, it is not necessary to have a standalone website or subdomain for each outlet. It is better not to, since each business location would produce similar web content. However, it probably would be helpful to create a separate profile web page on the site for each distinct location. Many sites with chain outlets will list all outlets on one page– that is not optimal. It is better to have one page be about one store location and another about a different location so as to leverage all the on-page elements to create a page focused on location.

– Have page title, H1 tags and content include the business name, type of the business and location name example “Ben Tech: consultants, India.” For multiple locations, change the title on each location’s page. Include the neighborhood, street address, area nicknames and other location-distinguishing information.

– Home page and or / contact us page should have the main location’s basic listing information (street, city,state,zip code,phone numbers etc.) displayed somewhere in HTML text. Also basic listing information in hCard microformat, which is a method of encoding address information on web pages. For multiple locations, display the basic information on each location’s profile page.

– Place differentiating information on each store’s pages , including  a map. hours of operation, brand names, product photos, menus, pricing, ratings and similar information.  Also include specifics about the physical location.

– Beware of proximity to the city’s centroid (location that search engine defines as the center of the city). When the company is moved to a new location, take into account where the city’s centroid is located so as to find a place closer to that point. Most map search engines will display businesses located closest to the centroid first for a particular category or keyword search.

– Proximity works the same way for zip codes. If user’s search for businesses closest to the zip code area centroid will likely be displayed first in the list.

– Good user ratings are one of the biggest factors for ranking high in a number of  local search engines, particularly in Google Maps. Google maps has compiled ratings from many other directory sources to get a universal rating for a business.

– Develop external links pointing to your website. The best links to support local search come from other locally and topically oriented anchor text. Example,  “Mumbai rental cars” is better anchor text than “rental cars”.

– If local business has a blog , add a blog map or feedmap to it. This will add a local signal to the blog, as well as bring it to the attention of other bloggers in the same area participating  in feedmaps.

–Community interaction can assist in online promotion.

-local charity races/walks, particularly if they list sponsors or sponsor logos on a page on their site. Inbound links from these sites are very beneificial.

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With Googles’ fresh update, retailers and marketers hoping to boost their natural search rankings in the coming months, this new year could be dubbed the Year of Content. The relationship between original, updated and popular content on an e-commerce site, and potentially higher search rankings for a brand, merchant or product page, is hardly unknown.

In 2012, however, is how Google’s'  latest major update to its search algorithm—those mathematical formulas that carry so much weight in digital marketing—is pushing retailers to offer stronger content on their web sites, update that content more often and encourage those in-bound links that signal page quality to the search engine.

With relatively little original content most retailers are scrambling for more, while those web merchants that have long had staffers producing how-to articles, product demonstrations and the like are working toward improvements.

Another Google update called Panda was designed to punish what Google views as low-quality web sites, which includes those with unoriginal content, such as retail sites that rely on the same manufacturer product descriptions that many other e-retailers display. It also sought to downgrade sites that web users seemed to find of little value.

E-commerce site are likely to be downgraded if it fails to attract links from reputable sites, without paying for them. Paid links are worse than no links at all—if a retailer gets caught by Google.

Retailers used  manufacturer-supplied descriptions on its site instead of original content.  Retailers have worked to improve rankings by hiring  copywriters to write original product descriptions that contain keywords that consumers use when searching for products.  They also removed content that caused pages to load relatively slowly—another negative signal that can depress a site’s position in Google organic search ranking.

But now retailers will have to do even more  than they did to protect themselves from demotions in search rankings under Panda. Fresh is meant to help shoppers find the latest product information— and that points to all kinds of content-related improvements for e-commerce sites.  That includes, for instance, a steady stream of new user reviews on product pages. Merchants should rethink both their own product descriptions and also make sure that user reviews are happening whenever possible, especially when they are good reviews. Retailers should continually update content, starting with best-selling products and pages that already rank high in search results.

Google’s fresh update will kick in around April or May, after Google finishes testing the changes. But retailers need to prepare their content efforts now. By studying what consumers search for, along with comments left by consumers via Facebook, e-mails and even phone calls to sales agents.

That old wisdom of search engine optimization hasn’t changed too much with Fresh, but the update, with its emphasis on new content, drives home how important a social media campaign and retailer-produced blogs are for retailers. engages consumers on  Twitter and Facebook, the search engine update will require even  more posting and communication via those social networks. It also underscores the importance of paying attention to Google+, the search engine’s own social network. A strong social presence, one that demonstrates a loyalty among consumers that can translates into links, is another sign of good content, and therefore another way to earn the good graces of Google.

Retailers are on the right SEO track if they are putting more effort into social media. The ‘freshness algorithm’ is Google’s attempt to continue to provide more relevant, real-time results for search queries, further highlighting the need for marketers to accelerate their focus on integrating SEO and social marketing practices to ensure pertinent, up-todate content is accessible to Google. Retailers can maximize the impact of their content by making sure they have the “social
share” buttons embedded on their sites, enabling consumers to pass on appealing content to friends and other shoppers on social networks, which also encourages links and builds credibility.

Retailers and marketers are increasingly using a variation of this mantra as both social networks and updated content assume more importance within e-commerce: SEO is social media, and vice versa.

Besides participation in social networks, retailers hoping to keep ahead of Google’s changes will want to invest in such marketing services as price optimization—technology that can help a retailer better compete with competitors’ off ers—and display ads based on consumers’ behavior.

Whatever the effects of the algorithm change over the next few months, retailers hoping to keep up or improve their rankings should embrace another concept besides fresh—speed.  That means getting fresh content onto a site quickly.

Like this:

Consumers are buying smartphones at an accelerating pace and using them for more diverse activities, such as consuming media, doing their taxes and shopping. Mobile is revolutionizing the way consumers learn about, choose, and buy products of all types. But with this burgeoning popularity, firms are struggling to keep up, as small screens and limited input options inhibit the design and delivery of excellent mobile experiences.

So what’s the secret to creating and delivering excellent mobile products that consumers will embrace? The answer is consumer convenience. Consumers will embrace new products and services if they are fundamentally more convenient that is to say, if the benefits outweigh the inhibitors to adoption and usage.

In mobile, convenience will come in the form of services that off er immediacy and simplicity through a highly contextual experience.  is means delivering mobile services or content when consumers need it the most, ensuring services are easy to use, and making sure the content is relevant to the individual.

Shoppers’ Mobile Context in Mobile Commerce: context is defined as the sum total of everything your consumer has shared with you to date as well as what he or she is experiencing at the moment of engagement. Context primarily involves the use of information about the consumer, such as location, time of day, or past behavior, to personalize or tailor experiences to minimize steps and manual entries.

Companies will need to anticipate what their customers want to happen when they launch an app or mobile web site, and, to do so, they must consider their consumers’:

Situation: the current location, altitude, environmental conditions, and speed the customer is experiencing. As navigation is three-dimensional and involves direction, these specifics will help create a truly tailored experience. For instance, knowing a customer’s altitude can help identify what floor he’s on in a hotel or mall.

Preferences: the history and personal decisions the customer has shared with you or with his social networks.

Attitudes: the feelings or emotions implied by the customer’s actions and logistics.

For many, the use of context in the delivery of mobile services is not yet in play. Beyond using GPS for location-based  context to help consumers find the nearest “x” (ATM, gas station, store), most simply lack the staff expertise or do not view mobile context strategy as a top priority.

But by integrating location into the research purchase processes, some e-business professionals are making sophisticated use of context. For instance, in retail, companies are pushing alerts and offers based on location through geofencing technologies (that is, to within a specific geographic area). However, few leverage location beyond guiding consumers to their bricks and mortar stores, and even this still poses a challenge.

Richer Information: But over the next several years, contextual information is going to get a lot richer as mobile devices grow in popularity.  is combination means organizations must develop a mobile context strategy if they expect to build consumer loyalty and remain competitive. Building highly contextual experiences will be a journey, as organizations evolve their expertise. This development can be mastered throughout four phases of contextual evolution:

Basics: using location, time of day, and past behavior or preferences when delivering mobile services. But access to this
type of information is straightforward on smartphones (with the user’s permission) and should be the first tool to leverage when moving toward the use of context for improved experiences.

Layering in intelligence: the most sophisticated firms already can determine if a customer is in their store, in a competitor’s store, or at the customer’s home. But reaching this phase requires creating new back-end data and logic, without encroaching on a consumer’s sense of privacy. For example, if a firm offers variable or regional pricing, as a number of retail and grocery chains do, what price does it present to a customer in the store versus a web shopper who may just be considering a purchase?

Breaking PC context: The smartphone is not just a mini-PC; it’s a personal and intimate device that knows unique attributes of its user. And the merger of the physical and information worlds will take one giant step forward here when new sensor technologies are combined with sophisticated display and video elements. In this phase, the phone becomes an opportunity to deliver entirely new innovative services and products that have the potential to generate revenue. For example, sensors and other advancements will detect smells, enabling a grocery store to demonstrate to mobile shoppers that its produce is ripe. While the mobile device can act like a PC, it has the potential to do much more.

Motion as control mechanism:Phones today can already be controlled with motion, like Sony Ericsson’s motion
sensor that lets a user shake the phone to change a music track, or the phone’s screen orientation. So what will be different in three to five years? First, the motion-detecting  sensors will be on a single chip with a common programming layer that will make them easier to use in applications.

Second, digital experiences will move well beyond the current paradigms of web browsing. Online tasks today are broken down into steps laid out in page sequences, menus, and navigation bars. Consumers will still buy airplane tickets or make payments on their phones, but they’ll do so more simply—with tools like voice-based control and authentication. While companies will move at different paces through these phases, depending on business strategy, mobile objectives, industry sector and mobile philosophy, for all e-business professionals it’s time to be proactive. For each of these four phases, there are three highlevel steps to consider: information architecture, designing new services that take advantage of context, and testing the impact of those experiences to improve the customer experience.

It will be important for e-business teams to take a leadership role when enabling these steps, as context will open up new opportunities to influence purchase decisions and increase conversions and drive sales—but only if realtime data is available, content and information are properly tagged, and the proper relationships and road maps are in place with key partners. For example, a retailer must not only know where a competitor’s store is, to identify when a shopper is in the rival’s store, but must designate that retailer as a competitor.