For the past 4 or 5 months, there much being written on the rise of the number of SPAM sites showing up in Google search results. SPAM sites for the uninitiated - are sites that have no useful content relevant to the search results and may just contain links to advertisements or malware (trojan) websites. In fact there was recent article in New York Times, which showed even how a major retail chain in the US could push up traffic by employing black hat search engine optimisation techniques. What the retail giant did was to buy links on thousands of other websites which had little or no connection to the fashion, retail industry. By having links on other websites pointing to different pages/products in their site, searches for dresses, suitcases, ladies handbags was getting them top listing in Google even beating out websites of product manufacturers which that retail chain was actually selling!

Google was getting a lot of bad publicity in the search industry blogs and forums. Google had declared war on spam sites that were employing banned methods to drive their traffic, and even introduced a chrome browser extension that allows users to block unwanted sites from appearing in their search results. The extension was to helps users spot and block low-quality spam content that they want to avoid. The sites will not show up in search results, though users can see blocked sites at any time and manage them. This data collected from users was one of the dozens of other sources that Google was using to fight spam.

The big change in the Google algorithms that power the website ranking systems came on the 25th of February 2011. This change was supposed to impact almost 11.8 % of the search queries, wherein spam sites, sites with low or no value, sites that have copied content, would be literally pushed out of the ranking system or 'demoted' as some people would like to call it.

Going forward in 2011, this should be an eye-opener for website owners and businesses that don't bother to write original content, but depend on copied content. This important update by Google should warn businesses that need Search optimisation and ranking services about the importance of using 'white-hat' or genuine SEO techniques and ensure that they hire SEO consultants who believe in ethics and good business practises.

This is the second part of our earlier post on Email Marketing and SEO. Read the first part here

So if he is not going to buy, then why bother to target such visitors is what you may ask! The catch lies in the fact that customers never really buy a product unless they believe in the product, brand or company.  One of these factors definitely makes an impact in the buying decision. So if a business does not have a brand name or a 'hot-selling product, then how does he get the prospect to buy from him somewhere down the line.

Business owners can think of generating newsletter content that dishes out relevant articles, whitepapers, technical videos and graphs that can interest a visitor to hit the newsletter signup button. A sample newsletter can be provided as bait, so that he can preview before signing up. Thereafter, the mailer sent out should be a pure information oriented mailer with no straight forward marketing messages. A subtle way to reach out to your prospects would be to maybe include some of your customer case studies with videos, which would put your product/service in front without really making him think that you are hard selling him something. As this strategy evolves over a period of time, and you make efforts to increase your subscriber list, you can also ensure that your content becomes more appealing, powerful and something of immense value to your audience.

The end result is your target audience is a ready and target market where you can roll out your product demos, collect feedback, create subtle marketing campaigns, to this audience which readily believes in the company and its products & services. This audience would like to hear more about your company and its products. And would not hesitate to promote your company with word-of-mouth marketing. All this will ultimately lead to that one thing which every business owner wants – more sales and satisfied customers. So next time if you are planning on a SEO campaign, try not to make it with the intention to generate sales, but to generate long time prospects by having them hooked on to a email campaign, giving away relevant and useful information ultimately having them become paying customers to just prospects.

Email marketing has been around for some time now, and has proved itself beyond doubt, when it comes to building customer relations and generating new leads. Search engine optimisation as we know can generate a targeted audience for your website, who may visit your site, but may just click around and ultimately leave without giving you as much as a chance to know more about  them. If we can combine email marketing with SEO, it can possibly lead to building long-term relations with your visitors who may have come to your website, maybe with no buying decisions, but to identify possible companies from whom they would like to deal with in the future.

Consider this - your prospective target audience surfing the internet, looking for the’ real’ stuff in terms of information, literature, and 'guru' knowledge, at the same time avoiding sites that only have  marketing messages and sales talk. They want to hear from companies who can give them information that is new and 'breaking' in their respective fields. They want companies which can satisfy their quest for knowledge and have the right answers to their questions.

Coming down to ways in which you can attract that audience, your website content can be optimised with keywords and phrases that do not include any 'business-like' keywords like 'buy my product' or 'product available here'. Instead your keywords and phrases can be 'how to use xyz techniques' or 'technical whitepapers for download' etc. The keywords are more aligned towards searches that are targeting people researching information in the specified field, with no current intention to buy.  (To be continued)