Panel Discussion

The topic for the Panel Discussion was: Organic v/s Paid Search - Which is more sustainable?

The members in the panel were
• Mr. Arun Rajamani, GM, Sify Technologies Ltd.,
• Mr. Akbar Lalani, Vice President, Decatrend Technologies
• Mr. Kapil Nakra, CEO, OMLogic

The pros and cons of both were discussed. Some of the things that were discussed are
• For branding Organic plays a vital role.
• When it comes to ROI, Paid traffic seems to pay off more.
• Organic Search is not as measurable when compared to Paid Search.
• In Paid Search, you are able to project what the consumer is looking for.
• In the long run, Organic Search gives better result.
• When competition seems to be tough, paid search gives you the needed results immediately.

Paid and Organic Search complement each other.

Website Usability - Improving User Experience

Mr. Vishal Sampat, CEO, Convonix gave a talk on Website Usability.

Vishal started off by talking about Conversions. He said that Motivation and Clarity are foremost when it comes to Usability. You need to express your uniqueness to the visitor within a maximum of 10 seconds before he moves away from your site. The Incentives you offer also matter greatly when it comes to Online Marketing.

When one deals with Conversions, it is important that one needs to define the right Conversion Metric. One also needs to segregate the visitors by Channel in order to get better results. If the lead form or the conversion process is going to be a long one, one also needs to have a Phase
Level Conversion track.

Measuring Conversion:

Some of the ways to measure conversions that were put forth are
• Creating a Channel Map to identify conversions from each marketing channel
• A Channel Map helps you understand motivation of your users
• Best way to determine the nature and magnitude of the customer

It was also said that keywords help identify the stage of the buying cycle that the visitor is in. For example, if the visitor’s search uses generic keywords, he may still be in the ‘interest phase’. If the visitor uses specific product keywords, he may be close to the ‘buying stage’.

Some of the Generic important site elements were put forth as Headlines, The Introduction, The Benefits Statement, Supporting Pictures and Images and Content.

He also pointed out some of the common errors like

• Placing too many fields on landing forms
• Inability to express your value proposition
• Placing primary offer content in side columns of the page
• Concentrating all the sales efforts on one page (especially If the user is at the beginning of the sales cycle)
• Placing images without a caption
On a concluding note, do not make things complicated for the customer. Identify your primary goal. Segregate visitors using channel map. Ask for essential data first.

Brain Storming

Mr. Kiruba conducted Brain Jam. Kiruba is the CEO of Business Blogging Pvt Ltd.
Brain Jam was a session in the afternoon where the participants were asked to talk for a minute and give any ideas they have or tell about how they solved a particular challenge they have had.
Other than ideas, the participants could also put forth any challenges they’d faced and anyone could give an answer if they had a solution. Some of the things that were discussed were (not in order)

• Difference between B2C and B2B
• Canonical URL
• Woopra
• Westorange.com
• Specific geographical ranking of Google
• Code your sites which are optimized for Blind People also
• Spyfew.com

and many more ideas did come up.


Keyword Research by Abdul Khimani

Mr. Abdul Khimani, SEO Project manager with Convonix, handled a session on ‘Keyword Research’.
He defined Keyword Research as the ‘Art of identifying the most optimum performance’ for the market. He elaborated on the types of SEO, viz.

• Primary/Generic Keywords
• Secondary/More Specific Keywords
• Tertiary/Long Tails Keywords

He then moved on to talk about the various Keyword Tools available like in Google, Yahoo, MSN, etc. Google he said was leading with more than 70% using it in the market. Other than the most famous Google Adwords, Google also has other Keyword Tools like, Google Trend Charts, Google insights for search, which is an extension of Google Trend Charts and Keyword Insights.

Keyword Analysis Technique includes researching on existing keyword rankings, keyword search volumes, No of competing web pages and keyword mapping to relevant pages. Google also offers Keyword Effectiveness Index which is Ratio of search volumes to competition.

He concluded saying that Keyword Research is not an exact Science but an iterative process over time.


E- Commerce SEO

We had an online conference with Mr. Sri Nagubandi, Director, SEO, Rosetta.

He started off with the challenges that E-commerce SEO faces today. Some of the challenges were the Platform used, Ugly Codes, Lack of Control and templates that limit Copy.

On the Technical side he said, one needs to have Clean Code. There should be Good Semantic Structure and Natural Language URL’s. To overcome the Onsite challenges, one needs to do get back to the basics. Do the keyword Research! Other than that one needs to work on the Custom Titles, get real content written by people and get back to the H-tags with keywords.

When one comes to the Offline Challenges, you need to have a check on the following
Are your products made to link easily?

• Can people Bookmark, share or mail.
• Do you allow Reviews?
• Do you Twitter your new products?
• Do you ask for Links?

He then told how one needs to adapt SEO according to the Size. If it is a small one with products less than 100, you need to make things simple, use a simple CMS platform, write content daily and build content around your product. You need to ensure that everything is optimised.

If it is a medium sized one, with products between 100 to 1000, you need to focus on the technical. Focus on optimizing the Main Categories and Key Products. Plan for a daily or weekly product optimization and focus on link development. Give prime importance to the SEO landing pages as they are the key to success.

If the products is more than 1000 for a large one, spend time and money on fixing the technical aspects of a platform. You need to have a weekly, monthly on-site optimization plan. You also need to build SEO landing pages and links on a weekly basis. Basically you need to ensure that you make progress every week.

Conclusion

• One size does not fit all!
• Focus on what will make money and drive results
• Have analytics that tracks conversions and reports revenues.
• Accomplish something on a weekly basis
• Don’t forget link development


Web Analytics – What’s Next

Trinadh Rao who is the Country Manager (India) at Web Analytics Association gave a talk on the latest on what’s happening in Web Analytics.

He gave an insight into the Web Analytics Industry and where it is heading right now. The Web Analytics Industry is undergoing change. Initially In India too there has been great change. One Indian Company has been listed in Forrester report on “Web Analytics Professional Service Firms”. Communicate 2, an Indian Company has become a GAAC company. Ms. Rhema from Communicate 2, who is the first GAAC member, was present in the conference.

He said that ‘Change is a Challenge’. We need to know the limitations of technology. One tool/technology cannot give everything about our website visitor information. Every few hours, things keep changing. Hence Testing should be given prime importance. It is also important that you need to work with the actual Usability with the team. And finally, ‘Integration is the KEY!’

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