SourceSquare | Search Marketing Company

What is SERP (Search Engine Result Page)?

Kelvin Lee — Mon, 10 May 2010 10:41:07 +0000

SERP (Search Engine Result Page) refers to the page that display the result of the search query. More related, more useful and more trustworthy indexed web pages will appear higher in the SERP, thus the term SERP Ranking.

Components

Sponsored Listing - listing of Pay-per-click ads. Usually lies in the top and right hand side of the SERP (the area highlighted as yellow).
Search Result area - largest section in the SERP, display the search result according to the search term user entered (highlighted in blue).
Assistive information area - areas that do not get as much attention, e.g. top, footer, or small / narrow areas in between Sponsored Listings and Search Result area of the SERP. It is very common to include Search Term suggestion or Related sites in other categories, etc, to assist users to further refine their search query to improve the relevance of the search results.

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What Is PageRank (PR#)?

Kelvin Lee — Mon, 03 May 2010 08:23:49 +0000

PageRank is a propriety algorithm developed by Google to determine the usefulness of an individual web page. Ranking scores from 0-9, where 0 being the lowest and 9 being the highest rank.

Characteristics / Implications

PageRank and relevance of these links are to the topical theme the targeted page is about. The algorithm of PageRank is constantly changing.

Background Information

Before Google was created, Yahoo and other search engines index web pages manually -- i.e. if you have a website and if you wish your website to be listed in Yahoo, you will have to submit the web address (URL) to Yahoo, and Yahoo will send someone to take a look at your web page and manually abstract crucial information from your site and list them on their search engine database. In the later years Yahoo and many other major search engines implemented a paid advertisement scheme that lists sponsored listings higher in the search results.

These strategies Yahoo and other major search engines back then adopted, however rendered the search results in a way that favor the commercial results instead of informational result, thus largely lowered the usefulness of the search results. Larry Page, founder of Google, hence developed the PageRank mechanism to determine a page's usefulness and created Google base on such mechanism.

Search Engine Marketing Value

In this digital world flooded with information, there are all kinds of alternative content regarding a single subject, though only the useful ones will be considered worth and legit to quote and reference (linked). This is also why PageRank has such a tremendous success helping Google to filter out less useful pages from their search result. It is very likely that all major search engines will adopt similar algorithm in ranking their search results, thus it is very important to rank good under Google's rules to maximize the sustainability and ROI of the Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Search Engine Marketing (SEM) effort.

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SEOMoz Ranking Factors 2009

Kelvin Lee — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 09:58:02 +0000

SEOMoz, industry leading SEO company releases a list of factors that contribute most ranking a website on major search engines every year. SEOMoz Ranking Factors was compiled through interviewing with around 100 industry leader and experts with a hundred identified SEO factors and have them rate and comment on these factors. They have recently released SEOMoz Ranking Factors 2009, with some of the highlights below:

Top 5 Ranking Factors:

Keyword Focused Anchor Text from External Links

External Link Popularity (quantity/quality of external links)

Diversity of Link Sources (links from many unique root domains)

Keyword Use Anywhere in the Title Tag

Trustworthiness of the Domain Based on Link Distance from Trusted

Top 5 Negative Ranking Factors:

Cloaking with Malicious/Manipulative Intent

Link Acquisition from Known Link Brokers/Sellers

Links from the Page to Web Spam Sites/Pages

Cloaking by User Agent

Frequent Server Downtime & Site Inaccessibility

Top 5 Most Contentious Factors:

Cloaking by Cookie Detection 16.3% strong contention

Cloaking by JavaScript/Rich Media Support Detection 15.4% moderate contention

Hiding Text with same/similar colored text/background 15.3% moderate contention

Cloaking by IP Address 15.3% moderate contention

Cloaking by User Agent

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More Social Media Facts - Media Convergence 2009

Kelvin Lee — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 09:53:21 +0000

Xplane, a famous information design company, joined force with Economist Magazine to have created this insightful and remarkable video for The Third Annual Media Convergence Forum with latest statistics on various area of media and technology convergence, and audience behavior in this digital world. Naked facts of Media Convergence in 2009... and 25 yrs from now on. You have to see it and you have to believe it, and you may find your next online marketing / search engine marketing strategy in it :)

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How Does Facebook's Twitter-like @ Mentions Help To Boost Exposure?

Kelvin Lee — Sat, 19 Sep 2009 07:07:44 +0000

Reported by Mashable, "@Mention Facebook’s most Twitter-like feature yet – the ability to include other users in messages using the “@” symbol – is now live". This is a new feature that tweeples are very familiar with, however definitely something new for facebook only users. There have been enough buzz in the sphere about this exciting new feature among the Facebook users. I can assure you though it is far more exciting for marketers around the world.

What is @Mention?

Originally from Twitter, @Mention is a special phrase that you can insert a link to the a user in the format of "@Username" anywhere in your update. This feature gets extended a little futher in Facebook. Not only that you can @mention people, you can even @mention events and pages that you joined or are invited. I'm not going to go through how to use this new featuer here, however If you are interested you can take a look at a complete walkthrough here.

What is the catch for Social Media Marketing?

If you have tested this function, you should be well aware that will have to be in someway related to what or who you are going to mentio. You have to be a member of the fan page / a guest of an event / or a friend of ther person you are going to mention. Also, you can't @Mention while commenting other's status updates. With these in mind, it is not hard to imagine that Facebook users will be more proactive to join events and fan pages, and connect to people just to make it easier to mention them. Certainly it is still too early to even estimate how far it would boost user to linking themselves to these entities, however marketers and promoters are definitely some of the few most beneficial parties among all the Facebook users as it will be much easier to get people to participate in events or get linked to. It will also be much easier to get exposures too from all mentions when Facebook users start to adopt the habbit creating more new updates than commenting under other's.

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Is Your Website Ready For PPC?

Kelvin Lee — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 16:29:06 +0000

So your business has been doing pretty good. You think it is time to start getting some global attention. You heard that many business succeeded marketing their business online, so you thought it'd be a good idea to buy some Pay-Per-Click (PPC) ads from Google and Yahoo.

Few weeks later you look at the invoice from Google thanking you for your $2,000. You are very excited that the ad campaign has gone so well "successful" that you must have created quite some attention for all these clicks the campaign generated. You are expecting a dozen of enquiry emails or orders sitting in your inbox. You ask your assistant if there is any message for you, "No!" she replied. You start to wonder... is there something wrong with this whole PPC Ad Campaign idea? The fact is, your website may not be ready for PPC.

Traffic = Opportunities ≠ Conversions (Literally)

Neglect the fact that there could be tons more SEM factors that could contribute to the scenario, a lot of times website owners simply have an impression that TRAFFIC = OPPORTUNITIES. They may have got this part right, however it is not necessary true that OPPORTUNITIES = CONVERSIONS. Imagine: There is this buyer who is interested in doing business with you. You have decided to fly him in, thought that it would be easier to get him to do business with you in person. So there he is, flew in business class with free accommodation, standing right at the door of your office, zero hassel. What do you think that would happen if you just leave him there at the door? Do you expect that he will check out your products and look around how your business operates on his own? He may just leave if he is not seeing any receiption in 5 mins. Worse, he may pay a visit to your competitor instead.

Conversions = Traffic x Actions (Literally)

It's just the same when you do PPC campaign. You pay for their every visit. You need take action to make them to do what you want them to as soon as they have got to your website. If you can't manage to do that, luckily they may spend some time looking for answer from some of your other pages, however many times they will just leave your site without saying goodbye. A "successful" visit is called "conversion" for a reason.

Quick Fix: A Loud And Clear Call-To-Action

If you want your PPC campaign to actually achieve something, you have to have at least a specific call-to-action on the page your PPC ad links to (we call it Landing Page). You may want visitors to sign up with their email address, to browse your catalogue, etc. It does matter what you want them to do, but you have to show them exaclty how they are gonna do it. You have to tell them that you want them to sign up with the email address explicitly, and you will have to show them where and why they are doing it. You need a loud and clear Call-To-Action. Without a proper call-to-action, you are putting your ad investment at risk, jeopardising the entire PPC Campaign. Of course, implementing a Call-To-Action won't boost your business double fold, however it should give your PPC campaign and precious investment a pretty good start. If this whole story sounds familiar to you, design and implement a Call-To-Action today! You may be surprised what a simple big red SIGN UP button can do ;)

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"What The F**K Is Social Media" Marketing?

Kelvin Lee — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 06:35:11 +0000

I was just chatting with a friend who works for marketing in a large multi-national recruitment network. Apparently her boss (or her boss's boss...) have been hearing enough buzz about social media marketing (or Twitter?) that her companies wants her to help sourcing a sound social media marketing solution. Although that's pretty much happening in every company which takes Marketing seriously, still got me thinking if there is an easier way to explain what social media marketing is all about. So I started a little searching of my own too, and that's how in got into this brilliant presentation "What the F**K is Social Media: One Year Later".

Developed by Espresso, this presentation is packed with LOADS of stunning figures, quotes, and facts about social media:

"Marketers don't understand channels where you have to talk and listen at the same time... The marketing industry's idea of a two-way communication is to put an 800 number or a web address in an ad or take orders."

"People in charge of talking are in the mareting department. The people in charge of listening are in the research or service or sales department. They hardly ever talk to each other, let alone have full-duplex conversations with customers."

They also highlighted what Social Media Marketing should focus on and what it can do:

Public relations
Customer service
Loyalty-building
Collaboration
Networking
Thought-leadership
Customer aquisition

What the F**K is Social Media: One Year Later

View more documents from Marta Kagan.

All right, I've got to admit that this is certainly not the most appropriate presentation for business use, however I do admire all the facts and accents on the importance of doing social media marketing right. Social Media tools like Facebook could grow as big as the "4th most populated country/community in the world" after all, simply no company can afford to get it wrong.

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Twitter Job Search: CareerTimes Make Job Seeking Available on Twitter in Hong Kong

Kelvin Lee — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 04:19:36 +0000

CareerTimes, one of the largest web recruitment networks in Hong Kong recently announced that they are on Twitter and will be feeding Job Opening Tweets for global talents. They are the first Hong Kong recruitment networks that make job seeking available on Twitter.

Most of you must be in a way familiar with web recruitment services like CareerTimes, either as a job seeker or as an employer. Careertimes is now offering a series of twitter accounts that provides categorized job openings feeding to your twitter.

For Job seeking Tweeples

Traditionally you can only use some hard-to-configure "alert agents" provided by individual recruitment network to keep yourself up-to-date to the HR market. This old fashion way will only provide you discrete, scattered, narrow-minded and out-dated job openings. With twitter job feeds, structured search can now be created freely through your favorite twitter clients e.g. Seesmic Desktop, Tweetdeck, to name a few.

For Employers And HR Tweeples

I am not sure if anyone would do this, but if you are dedicated enough, you may find it remarkably resourceful and targeted to add those who follow particular CareerTimes's Twitter account. One good thing about these followers is that you can push the information of your openings to targeted potential candidates even with the absence of recruitment agents. You can even interact with them and profile them better before meeting them! It may come to a point that eventually change the entire recruitment process when it becomes more popular looking for jobs or candidates on twitter in the future.

For Entrepreneurs And Marketing Tweeples

Twitter feeds are organized in a timely manner. These data, if analyzed properly, can benefit a lot of different sectors (e.g. finance, HR, etc etc) from job seeking census to finding the trend of new product/technology.

If you go one step further, you may notice that those who follow specific CareerTimes Twitter could be the targeted leads of your business. An @IT_JobsinHK follower may be particular interested in open source products (geeky nature :P), OR a @Career_Times follower who have "Web Design" in their profile may be very interest in your Web Hosting service, and could eventually be a huge lead if he is employed by a webdesign company to manage web projcets in the future.

These are just extremely shortlisted of what these twitter services can benefit you. Go to CareerTimes to find out what other areas they are twittering on!

Have you ever succeeded in job seeking or recruitment with Twitter? What's your success story?

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Will Seesmic Desktop Over Take Tweetdeck With Latest Facebook "Add Comment" API Feature?

Kelvin Lee — Mon, 25 May 2009 03:51:26 +0000

It has always been a tough fight between Seesmic's Desktop and Tweetdeck in the past few weeks, and they both seem to entertain the groups of people alright with their niches. This scenario however, is going to change overnite when Facebook released their Facebook Open Stream API.

Seesmic is one of the first companies that integrated Facebook Open Stream API in their Desktop application. At first it offers nothing more than what Tweetdeck does with their own Tweetdeck Facebook App, giving users access to posting and reading status updates from within the Twitter clients. Arguements and comparisons betweet the two have been all over the Internet for quite sometime already and they both seem to have equal share of supporters, however the blanace is going to change.

Seesmic released Seesmic Desktop v0.2.1

Few days ago Seesmic released Seesmic Desktop v0.2.1. This latest version has added "add comment" support allowing users to post and view all comment threads of the Facebook status updates. I personally find this EXTREMELY useful as half of my social media activities are on facebook and half are on Twitter, and sadly enough 95% of my Facebook contacts don't use Twitter and vice versa due to cultural differences (Twitter just doesn't get as popular in Asia countries for some reasons). I have been trying this new feature and it definitely saves up a lot of my time from logging into Facebook just to comment on some status updates from friends. This new feature gives me all the reasons I need to choose Seesmic Desktop over Tweetdeck, and I'm pretty sure a lot of users will feel the same.

I have always thought that Facebook and Twitter are competing each other on the same ground (at least part of the the market share is the same). I guess it really does better good to keep your enemies closer sometimes? :P

What is your choice between Seesmic Desktop over Tweetdeck? Are you using other choice of client that can share with us?

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Blog Site Is Finally Online, What's Next?

Kelvin Lee — Wed, 20 May 2009 19:01:30 +0000

This website has been particularly hard to setup. Not that because of it is technically difficulties involved. Different than the websites I have setup for other businesses, lots of entrepreneurship, business planning and market analysis have been involved this time. What is my niche among all other excellent SEO blogs like the great SEOmoz and SearchEngineWatch, or even the indivdual site like Grayfox's? For now I'm not too sure, however I know that I will have you all to walk me through in the years ahead :)

So now what? Other than I should really start SEO the site (Yes! It has not be SEO at all as you all may have noticed from that little PageRank button on your Google Toolbar, though the platform for SEO Wordpress is very ready) while waiting for the Sandbox effect to go away. I do have a few thoughts in mind that I eager to get my hands on--Glossary Project and Public Site Review Series top my list. I'm counting on these projects to give me more new SEO tips and tricks and SEO 101 to share with you guys stuff along the way! So keep in touch, stay tune, Subscribe My RSS and Do Follow Me on Twitter!

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