Social Media Optimisation (SMO)

Proof That Fortune 50 Don’t Care About Social Media – Waste of Valuable Time Or Necessary Pain In The B***?

Social Media is fashionable, but is it really that useful? 56% of Fortune 50 companies don’t seem to think so, which makes you wonder whether all this Tweeting and Facebook posting we do is just a waste of time.

Only 44% of these 50 have social media links on their home page, yet surprisingly the Twitter icon is more popular than the Facebook item. Is this because Twitter is newer and cooler? Perhaps further suggesting that this is a fashion thing we have going on here. What makes things even more interesting about these statistics is that only 4% link to a blog! I guess if you are one of the lucky Fortune 50 blogging isn’t really a priority, and Google loving fresh content is the last thing on your mind when you are negotiating multi-million dollar deals. Read more

20/10/2014/by Ash Mehta

What Is The ROI of a Social Media Fan?

This week I am on a bit of a social media tip, trying to uncover if it is all worth it or not. It seems to be quite a general theme at the moment, with a lot of data emerging trying to make head or tail of the impact social media has for a brand and a company’s bottom line. Thing is, much of the data is speculative at best, or survey based; I am yet to see properly measured analytics, i.e. social media activity vs. profit over a specific time frame. Personally I think quantifying social media is pretty much impossible, yet comparing an increase in blogging with leads which converted to sales, for example, is possible. If anybody has data like this to share/link to then please leave a comment.

In the meantime I would like to show you Read more

20/02/2013/by Ash Mehta

Blogging, Internet/Online Marketing, Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), Security & Privacy, Social Media Marketing (SMM), Social Media Optimisation (SMO)

How Much Does Google Know About You

Last week I wrote about the full launch of Google’s Social Search facility and the positives and negatives of ‘results from your social circle’. Not long after publishing that post I was contacted directly by a few of you voicing concerns about just how far Google intends on going in terms of violating a persons right to online privacy. This got me thinking, and it is only really when you take time out to think about Google that you realise they know a hell of a lot about us. Perhaps our online privacy has been completely lost, but in all honesty it’s a little too late for us to bolt the stable door.

On one hand we love the Internet for its freedom, and whether the latest leaked document on U.S. operations by Wikileaks or the exposure of a celebrity involved in a nude act, the fact is Read more

22/10/2011/by Ash Mehta

Internet/Online Marketing, Search Engine Marketing (SEM), Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), Social Media Marketing (SMM), Social Media Optimisation (SMO)

So You Want to Become a Search Engine Marketing Specialist

Lately we have been focussing on a myriad of topics pertaining to SEO. These have included, how to choose an SEO company, how to utilise Facebook and Twitter and SEO mistakes to avoid. So today I thought I should say a few words for those wanting to be on the other side of the fence, those wanting to start a search engine optimisation firm of their own.

Becoming a search engine marketing specialist is no mean feat, there is an ocean of knowledge to attain and the learning curve is endless. But for the purpose of this post let’s just presume you have the credentials in the bag already Read more

08/06/2011/by Ash Mehta

News & Updates, Social Media Optimisation (SMO)

Google +1 (Plus 1)

Finally, as threatened many times, Google have come up with a social aspect to search, albeit a rip-off of the Facebook “Like” button. +1, pronounced plus one, will allow you to effectively “like” search results and adverts by activating the +1 feature and clicking on it each time you feel the urge.

10/04/2011/by Ash Mehta

Blogging, Internet/Online Marketing, Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), Social Media Marketing (SMM), Social Media Optimisation (SMO), Uncategorized

SEO Your Personal Profile – 5 Tips For Optimisation

Your personal profile may end up appearing in a number of places, such as your personal website, trade show/conference info sites, sites where you contribute articles and social platforms like Facebook and Twitter. Quite often people miss a great opportunity to optimise their profile and achieve some extra curricular SEO. Most see the personal profile as a mere source of information rather than Read more

24/02/2011/by Ash Mehta

Why Fan Sites Are The Nuts For Link Juice

Outside of the work you employ a web promotion company to do, you should always be looking to further your SEO campaign where possible, and that means link building at every opportunity. Thing is, as much as people hype up link building as a multi faced, broad activity, once you have blogged, posted in forums, article directories, local business directions and retweeted/Facebooked all these links, what else is there? Fan sites…

Posting on fan forums…

Fan sites are ideal hot spots for leaving links that won’t be torn down by over zealous moderators, why? Because fans love finding new places that house info about their given interest, that is, as long as the links posted look genuine. For example, if you own an online store that sells home improvement products then target DIY Fan sites with gentle posts like “I am using the Bosch ZX45 Sander and it really does the job, this is the one I mean (url)”. Or, if you run a music store Read more

09/02/2011/by Ash Mehta

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), Social Media Marketing (SMM), Social Media Optimisation (SMO)

Google Page 1 Results From People in Your Social Circle

By the end of this month the Google social search mechanism will be completely rolled out. For those of you that don’t know what this is, let me give you the heads up. It has actually been in test phase for quite some time – the last quarter of 2009 I believe. Now, by social search I don’t mean real time results from random people on Twitter, I mean social search as in connecting you to content created by people in your social circle.

What is Your Social Circle?

Your social circle is people you are connected to through Googlemail, Twitter, people you follow in Google reader, Flickr and other social mediums. Google will now display blog posts, profiles, images and other content from members of your social circle when you conduct a search. Be aware though that you may be shown friends of your Twitter friends or slightly random people you wouldn’t expect to pop up – but this is intentional and will also be related to you in some way. The idea is to broaden your social circle and discover other people with stuff to share that you will genuinely be interested in.

To give you an example of how it works; if you were my friend and connected via twitter, gmail, etc. and you typed in ‘Search Engine Optimisation’, you might see the following:

Why Are Google Introducing Social Search?

Well, believe or not we like to follow each other, I don’t mean on Facebook I mean in reading, buying and browsing trends. For example, if I was buying a new mp3 player I would more than likely want to know what the people in my social circle thought about mp3 players and what brand of player people had been purchasing. One of my social circle may have written a “best mp3 players” blog post, and another may have recently purchased and reviewed an mp3 player on Amazon. This would surely help me to buy with more confidence, and with affiliate marketing and fake reviews making it all but impossible to source honest information, this is great news in terms of reliability. In a roundabout way Google social search is putting control back in the hands of the browser, allowing us to trust content again and operate within search boundaries. Or is it? I mean you can hardly trust friends of friends on Twitter or someone you liked on Flikr. I guess what this really means is, we now need to be extra careful who we ‘socially’ connect with.

18/01/2011/by Ash Mehta

Search Engine Marketing (SEM), Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), Social Media Marketing (SMM), Social Media Optimisation (SMO)

Getting Your Head Around SMO, SMM and SEO

Just when you had got your head around the terms SEO, SEM and PPC, those nerds inside the digital superhighway (whoever they are) have come up with two new acronyms for us all to get our heads around. SMM and SMO are the two new kids on the block, and with the importance of Twitter, Facebook, LinkdIn, Hi5 and other social networking platforms rising everyday, we need to be aware of what they mean. Read more

03/11/2010/by Ash Mehta

Internet/Online Marketing, Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), Social Media Marketing (SMM), Social Media Optimisation (SMO)

Facebook Passes Google In Terms of Time Spent Online

When choosing an online marketing service there are a number of user behaviours you need to consider. Traffic and user volume are clearly the key two considerations, but one sorely overlooked aspect of advertising is the amount of time a user spends on a particular platform.

It is natural to gravitate towards advertising on the most popular mediums, Google remaining the most obvious choice. But surely the best places to advertise are the places in which users spend the most time. Think about it like this, the longer or more regularly a user visits a platform the more time they will have to view an advertisement and consider following the link.

With this in mind, Citi analyst Mark Mahaney compiled some very interesting data for August 2010, showing that Facebook has passed Google in terms of time spent online. Mahaney observed:

“Looking at % of Total Time Spent by the top 5 sites in August, Facebook, for the first time took the top spot with 41.1B minutes followed by Google with 39.8B minutes. Yahoo! fell to the 3rd spot with 37.7B minutes. Also, Yahoo!’s share of time spent in Q3 QTD slid to an all-time low of 9.3%. On a separate note, Google’s management noted that its number of global users crossed the 1B mark for the first time”.

Facebook is becoming an increasingly attractive online marketing service – not just a mere community network. Just look at the accompanying visitor statistics below (Source: Hitwise) Read more

21/09/2010/by Ash Mehta