A Brief History of Google Search Algorithms

A brief history of Google search algorithms

Confused by algorithms? Who wouldn’t be, considering that Google changes its search algorithms hundreds of times each year. The point of these pesky formulas, however, is not as hard to grasp if you understand why they exist in the first place.

Google bases its search results on PageRank, its original algorithm dating back to the 1990s. PageRank was created to establish a hierarchy that would rank websites in search engine results according to importance and popularity. Generally, it does so by taking into account both the quantity and quality of links to a given page. Your website may not have received thousands of visitors, but if it’s the only online source of expert information on a given topic, it could still rank higher than a spammy page that has been viewed more times.

Many other factors determine the ranking of search results on Google. Take a look at the top three  and what they mean for marketers:

4 Social Media Marketing Tips for B2Cs

Social Media Marketing ToolsThink companies are spending a lot on social media now? According to Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business, the social media spending of U.S. firms is expected to rise 150 percent over the next five years. If your reaction is that you couldn’t dedicate more hours to your activities on social networking sites without cloning yourself, take heart. Most marketers could strengthen their social media programs by making better use of tools and techniques already available to them.

3 Ways To Boost Your Performance-based Advertising

How To Improve Your Advertising ROIRemember when purchasers paid marketers regardless of whether they were able to track and measure just how effective their campaigns were? How times have changed. With the introduction of each new measuring device, it seems, comes more pressure for marketers to whip up results. The fact that most Internet ad revenue in the U.S. is now comprised of performance-based advertising only highlights this fact.

To spark some ideas, check out three key ways to do so:

Using Customer Experience to Drive Social Media Engagement

Find out what people are saying about your brand

Online reviews are among the best forms of advertising. It should be no surprise, then, that customers tend to trust each other for brand recommendations. And more of them are turning to social media to spread the word about product experiences good and bad.

MarketingProfs reported that 93 percent of consumers who write product reviews are inspired by a positive experience with a brand — while 71 percent do so after a negative experience. And reviews are just the tip of the iceberg in terms of how customers convey their experiences through social media.

Find the conversations
Pay attention to what people are saying about your brand on social media. The reputation that others are spreading can have a huge effect on a brand’s image. When a customer uses YouTube to demonstrate your software, or posts photos of your new makeup line on Pinterest, they’re generating interest through likes and comments.

That customer-driven buzz often expands over time, as links are shared with friends and make their way to new communities with new fan bases. When customers are driving interest, it can take time to generate results, requiring patience and follow-through on the part of marketers.

Why Use Affiliate Management for Pay-Per-Call

PayPerCall_Affiliate_Management_PrestigeMarketing

Setting Up Your Pay-Per-Call Marketing

If you are preparing or have a budget for Pay-Per-Call marketing, this means you are taking investment into marketing strategy seriously. You have come to see that Pay-Per-Call is a great way to get people genuinely interested in your products or services to contact you. It’s a form of marketing that stirs action, and hopefully leads to conversion. Now, when it comes to running Pay-Per-Call, you can go directly to a network that already has an extensive range of affiliate partnerships. Partnering with another company to work as your Affiliate Manager is adding another step in the process and another point of payment.

What’s the Difference Between Affiliate Management and a Network?

A network offers you exposure and volume, for sure, and that’s what you want. However, while quantity is definitely a goal, so is quality. It is important that the calls that come in from your Pay-Per-Call campaigns and your marketing output elicits valuable responses, rather than mass response. With a high volume of calls, you may be paying for incoming calls that do not yield a high conversion rate. The priority of a network is to bring in the calls for you. The core difference between a network and an Affiliate Manager is that an Affiliate Manager prioritizes quality calls. A network fulfills call traffic, while an Affiliate Manager strategizes for call success rate.

Why Customer Engagement Is So Important

Why customer engagement is so importantMarketing is consistently becoming more personalized and targeted, focusing on smaller groups of relevant prospects instead of a single, large audience. Marketers need to focus on building closer, emotional connections with their customers to increase satisfaction, retention and revenue.

In the past, companies focused primarily on selling their products to customers without much care for expanding on the relationship and ensuring the target consumers’ preferences are met. A recent study from Marketo revealed that customer engagement is establishing itself as a top priority in digital marketing, according to Forbes. Companies are starting to emphasize the customer life cycle rather than making a one-off sale. Marketers need to provide a unique, personalized experience for customers at each touch point in the sales process. Putting this into practice will require more in-depth content, which will need to be optimized for a user’s device or the particular context of the situation.

Generate More Sales With Call Tracking

Many advertisers base their performance reviews on call tracking systems that provide analytic information about incoming phone calls. There are various ways to implement a call tracking system. Typically, it generates information about incoming calls such as the number, time and geographical location. This drives sales by informing advertisers when and where to reach their most relevant audience.

Generate more sales with call tracking
Effective call tracking can improve sales.

What is Contextual Content Marketing?

Contextual content marketing is one of the biggest trends driving digital marketing in recent years. In fact, content marketing was voted the top marketing activity to drive commercial results in 2015, the Adweek Blog Network noted—outranking big data, marketing automation and social media marketing. Whether you’re hosting a cooking blog or a sample booth at a music festival, your content marketing strategy must contain two essential ingredients: good timing and authenticity.

use contextual marketing to build relationships

Contextual marketing can strengthen brands’ relationships with consumers.