‘META DESCRIPTION’ tag lost its shine after the emergence of off-page factors (like link popularity) for rankings in SERPS. In fact it lost its purpose to a great extent when Google started using contextual content from within the page as the description of the URL in its SERPS.

However in an interesting turn of events, ‘META DESCRIPTION’ is back in business!

Most search engines, including Google are now using the ‘META DESCRIPTION’ content as the description of the URL in their SERPS. The page ’TITLE’ is now being shown as the listing title with ‘META DESCRIPTION’ as the description of the URL. If you compare it with Google AdWords, you can consider the ‘TITLE’ as the Headline and ‘META DESCRIPTION’ as the Description. Therefore, you must use it to outline your strength, your unique selling proposition and if possible your offer.

Loren Baker of Search Engine Journal mentioned cited this interesting Meta Description used by NextStudent.com in his article,

Looking for federal or private student loans for School? Get up to 40k Fast: Call 877-680-9879. Student loan consolidation? Call 800-299-4639. NextStudent- College Funding Made Simple.

You can also include your phone number (as cited in the above advertisement - description) for the prospect who is in a hurry! May be you will end up prospecting without having the visitor hit your website! In fact, with the latest version of IE and the FireFox plugins, the phone numbers listed in this description become hot-links, which a visitor can simply click and get connected on a voice call through Skype. And you can close a sale!

And yes, many SEO specialists believe that higher CTR on your SERPS listing (due to improved ‘TITLE’ and ‘META DESCRIPTION’) can help you further improve your rankings.

BTW, I forgot to mention that some expert copywriters may like to even put in their headlines and teasers to pre-sell the product / services!

Lisa Ditlefsen says:

Basically if you think about it the meta description tag is your FREE ad! If you have experience in running a pay per click campaign I’m sure you have put a lot of thought into what the PPC ad says. The ad is what distinguish you from all the other PPC ads right? So why should it be any different in the organic SERPs? The title tag is your free headline and the meta description tag is your FREE ad, this is where you have a chance to ad hook someone in. How many times have you searched for something, got to the results and been put off by the description, it can’t possibly be what you were looking for!!?

May be people do not give so much importance to this FREE ad, because it is FREE! It is never late. Give proper attention to your website ‘META DESCRIPTION’ tags and turn your organic traffic to a highly targeted FREE traffic.

The bids on AdWords are soaring to new heights everyday. Some advertisers are even shelling out up to $10 per click. So, naturally the question arises - Is this complete madness or is there any logic behind such aggressive advertising?

To me, it does make some sense to bid aggressively if you have the right strategy in place. And if you are bidding for the right keyword. It does not make sense to bid for “web design” if you offer web design service in Texas! In that case your keyword should be “web design texas”.

Considering, you have done enough research, let us consider two scenarios:

1) Every client you acquire, on an average spends $15000 with you in a year. In this case, you do not mind spending 10% of the revenue as customer acquisition cost. Therefore you can comfortably bid $10 per click (provided you have a site which can convert 1 out of 150 visitors). Thus, looking at a lifetime value of a customer makes it a good investment.

2) If you have mastered the art of persuasion (or have hired a master of persuasion), and have come up with a website with converts well (visitor > customer conversion), every visitor you are driving to your website is equivalent to revenue . So go ahead, rock the boat and bid out all your competitors. You will get more customers and will also have lower customer acquisition cost. What more do you want?

So, expensive keywords bidding do work, if they are backed with high lifetime customer value and/or higher conversion on the website. And yes, those Internet marketing experts are not insane! In fact most of them are very smart.

So bid smartly!

And, if you need help, contact our SEO team. Reach them at info@submit2please.com!

Attractive designs do get attention. It can also get good visitor-customer conversion if some best-practices are followed. But the question is - how can attractive designs get traffic to your website?

They can! or,
They can at least help your site in getting good traffic.

Here is a simple technique posted by Daniel on his blog.

• Design an attractive web site. Or get it designed through one of the many web design agencies around. Make sure that the site is coded in XHMTL/CSS2.
• Now, submit these websites to several CSS galleries which has sprung all over the Internet. If your design is decent enough, you will surely get accepted. However, if your design is outstanding, you may get featured sending in hundreds of visitors!
• Now, design enthusiasts may not be your target audience (BTW, if they are, then you have struck a goldmine). Still, you get multiple listings and they link to your website, which ultimately helps you in getting better link-popularity and therefore higher rankings in search engines. In my opinion, you should not miss any opportunity to improve your link-popularity.
• Here are some links to the “List of CSS galleries”

• http://www.themoleskin.com/archives/the-definitive-css-galleries-list/
• http://www.virtualhosting.com/blog/2008/inspiration-overload-100-css-galleries-you-need-to-check-out/
• http://css-tricks.com/examples/WebsiteGalleryRoundup/
• http://www.nuff-respec.com/technology/css-gallery-roundup
• http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2006/12/21/creme-de-la-creme-of-css-list-of-css-galleries/

Now, if it looks like a daunting task (frankly speaking, it is!), do not give up.

Indus Net Technologies has a special service to help you focus on your core business and take care of different kind of manual submission (including CSS gallery submission) for a small fees. It is called Submit2Please.

Contact one of our sales representative / your account manager at Indus Net Technologies to get started. Or drop us a line at info@submit2please.com

Indus Net Technologies will be exhibiting its capabilities at Internet World 2008, Earl’s Court, London between 29th April and 2nd May.

See how:

• We can take your website to the next level and make it a lead generation machine for your business.
• If you are an Internet service company (web design, web development, Internet marketing), we can reduce your cost of production and help you take up business that you are unable to address due to your overflowing order book!

Do drop in for a chat!

And let us know in advance, so that we can send you a FREE invitation card.

See you there!

PS: You might not know us from our title brand. So if you are dealing with any of our group brands, the invitation stands for you - Design2Please, Script2Please, Submit2Please, Host2Please, EasySiteEdit, TemplateKingdom, Hire-A-Designer, ClickWorkForce!

Yahoo announced that they are opening up their search results for third party data integration. This will allow third party to contribute to Yahoo search experience and make it more useful for their users. It will be interesting to see how other webmasters use this open search platform to gain popularity by sharing data with Yahoo, while still retaining their competitive edge, by virtue of their database, in their respective area. We can expect to experience a long-tail of innovation in days to come. This will help webmasters, visitors and Yahoo! A perfect win-win-win situation.

On the other hand, Google already have a open platform called Google Co-op, where anyone can create custom search engine. As per Google Co-op,

“Google Co-op is a platform that enables you to customize the web search experience for users of both Google and your own website.”

Google also offer Google Subscribed Links which in their own language they define as:

“Subscribed Links let you create custom search results that users can add to their Google search pages. You can display links to your services for your customers, provide news and status information updated in near-real-time, answer questions, calculate useful quantities, and more”

The challenge

However, both the services that Google offers, has a great deal of focus on promoting Google, Google Search & Google Subscribed Links. Again, they are not directly making any change in the Google Search (at least it has not be publicly explained how it will effect user experience of a normal search).

Therefore, Google Search or Yahoo Search cannot be termed as true “user contributed” or “Web2.0″ as described by Tom O’Reilly. People won’t contribute unless they see that their contribution is making a positive impact in the search pattern and it is visible. In the current state both Subscribed Link and Yahoo Open Search will only help if a user wants to use the enhanced engine. Most Internet users will never switch these engines. Even if they are told the benefit of the plug-ins, how are they supposed to select the ones which will help them from a collection of thousands of user contributed plug-in channels? And what happens when new plug-ins come out?

Suggested solution

If search engines want to go the Web2.0 way with user contribution enhancing the overall experience and defining the way search engines display results, they need to bring user contributions to the mainstream. I feel that themed searches are the way to go. Google / Yahoo shall classify a particular user contributed plug-in into a theme. When a visitor wants to search for a business, he may choose a “Finding a business” theme. On a contrary when a visitor wants to learn about the subject he may chose the “Tutorial” theme.

Let us see an example.

We search for a very competitive keyword - “web design”. This is the result we get.

If you see, there are three different intents that the search result satisfies. A person might be searching “web design” because he:

• Want to find a web design company (blue marker)
• Want to learn web design (red marker)
• Get web design resources (green marker)

All three intents are very different. Most people do not type-in their intent in the search box to make it a specific search, because they are not specialists in using search engines. Therefore, a search engine should suggest a possible intent and display results only related to the given theme. The theme model can best work when they are formed based on a collection of user generated plug-ins. Thus user generated content can find its way to the end user in an organized way.

It goes without saying that pulling in the user generated content directly into the main search result has its challenge of weeding out spam. But this seems to be the most logical way as of now. 

Dot com boom is back and this time it is dot 2.0 boom!

VentureOne released its official 2nd Quarter liquidity data and facts are undeniable that venture capital funding has reached its peak since 2001. The important thing to notice is that the amount of money getting invested is lesser this time as investors tread cautiously and the blind gold rush has not started yet.

I have compiled my own charts from the data and presented it below, basically I have compared the aggregate of money raised in Q1 and Q2 by Software and Information Services company through 2000 to 2007.

Did anyone notice that software companies are raising significantly lesser amout of money than information services in comparison to 2000?

Recently, we have been discussing about an opportunity to work for a client on an interesting Internet Marketing project. The company currently has five different brands offering different of services. They also have a corporate website which is very new! Now they wish to merge all their brands together to make the composite corporate website so that they get a “big company” look.

I have been discussing with my team to understand the pros and cons of this “merger of sites” from Internet Marketing perspective. This is what we have as of now. Feel free to contribute to the list:

Pros:

1) Critical Mass: A new destination site quickly provides broad, market-spanning coverage that exudes an increased sense of scope and can make your competitors’ sites look ineffectual in comparison.

2) Access: Niche-specific content is represented, but customers have the opportunity to graze content where markets overlap.

3) No More Brand Silos: Corralling content under a broader brand elevates it to a level where more customers can congregate.

Cons:

1) Brand Subordination & Confusion: Sites pulled together under one site may suffer brand dilution. It may also confuse the visitor as to the core service which the company provides.

2) More Work: The new gateway site will be a hungry beast, requiring the constant feeding of new daily content unique to the site.

3) Loss of SEO Advantage: Initially the website will not have a good organic ranking in search engine. We can try to retain current user base and hits as much as possible using permanent redirects and forwarding. This can also be compensated by proper pay-per-click management initially and then toning it down if required.

Today, Internet marketing fundamentally works on three principles -

1. PULL prospects (Targeting people with the NEED for the product)

2. Converting NEED to WANT

3. CLOSE the sale

Search engines are the best place to get the “pull prospects” that NEED the product or service you sell. The reason that they have been searching for your keyword related to your product and the reason they clicked their way to your website clearly signifies an “expression of interest”.

The major focus of all webmasters (smart ones) is on the “targeted visitors” of “qualified prospects”. Ten visitors who NEED widgets are far more valuable than 1000 visitors who might be surfing at 3 am just to kill time! It is a great innovation on part of pay-per-click (PPC) search engines that they bridge the gap between buyers and providers.

If I step into a buyer shoe, I know that if I go to a PPC engine, I will get active companies (instead of information sites), they will have well designed sites and will be responsive! Many search engines who are not PPC are including results of well established PPC engines giving a wider reach to the advertiser.

With the increasing influence of pay-per-click search engines, “targeted and qualified visitors” are becoming a commodity which a webmaster can buy off the shelf to give a head-start to his business within few minutes.

So, as the PULL process becomes a commodity, the emphasis is surely shifting towards conversion and closing.

The conversion process will primarily need a persuasive copy (styles may differ greatly) which will convert the NEED into the WANT for the product. The person who has been searching for the given product on internet has landed on your page.

Now think – 

• Does he emotionally WANT to buy the product?
• Is there enough reasons and emotions for him to commit to the product purchase? Are you giving him these reasons as a provider of the product?
• Is he convinced that the given product and the provider behind the product (you) will solve the problem at hand?
• Is he comfortable doing business with the provider?
• Does he trust you to deliver the solution?
• Is this NEED on the top of his priority list?

This is the reason, even when a person NEEDS a given product; he looks around till he WANTS to buy the same. This happens when the mental-blocks are cleared and the buyer is at peace.

So, considering the above situation, the two most important upcoming service areas will be:

1. Persuasive copy writing (conversion)

2. Improving uninterrupted closure (online + offline)

Indus Net Technologies is working tirelessly to bring up “Persuasive copy writing” service with its content development team, also branded as content2please.com. It is expected to be launched sometime in July 2007.

So keep tuned in!

Last week, during an informal discussion with one of my prospective client, an interesting question came up. To put it word-to-word, it was:

How do we do branding on internet? Is it true that Internet is a global media which brings businesses at the same level playing field? If yes, then it should not cost “a lot” to build a brand online? How much will you charge me for my online branding efforts?

My answer was:

You are right. It does not cost an-arm-and-a-leg to create a brand on internet. If-

• you are innovative in designing your offering,
• present the offering in an easy-to-understand way,
• spread your message in a viral way,

Innovation makes you stand out
Most of the companies try to simply put the same “old offering” in a new bottle without any adding any value or adapting it to a particular niche market. This makes the product or service a “me too” type. The consumer do not need to really “remember” such a offering, as they can get it anywhere.

Communication is the key!
In my opinion, communicating the product/service benefits or not doing so, determines the success of any marketing campaign. Effective communication of the “very basic facts” can make you look much better than your competition.

For example if the packaging on a loaf says - “Our breads are made in the best automated plants and are never touched by hands from start till end” - it does not mean that the other bakeries in town make breads with hand!

However it will communicate to the consumer that one brand of bread is better than the other one, even if the process of making them is the same.

Customers are the best viral marketers!
Deliver the best to your customers and let them know that you will be extremely happy if they can recommend you to their friends as a token of appriciation. Your customers can be your brand ambassadoors. They can spread messages in minutes. However it is important that they spread the right “unique selling proposition” that you have associated with your product / service. On internet it is very easy to spread the word, as everyone is virtually connected and an email is more than enough to recommend a given business.

So, if you are keeping up your “brand promise” to your customers, you can be rest assured that you are gaining a solid brand image in the given “niche market” for the “niche innovative product/service” that you are offering.

I call it Internet branding on a shoe-string budget!

Spending millions of dollars on advertising and not meeting your “brand promise” is a waste of money - something that caused the infamous dot com bust!

Abhishek