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What is Branded Traffic?

February 6, 2013May 6, 2018 Prasad Ajinkya3 Comments

Have you ever searched your own name on Google?

Don’t answer that, it’s a trick question! We all have!! In fact, if you have not yet (which I would be surprised to know), you must be doing that by now!

It’s always the little bit of curiosity, perhaps a bit of reflection that drives us to see what gets listed on our own name … on our brand name. We people are brands, and the reason we search our own names is to see what shows up in the search … do our profiles show up or does a different person stealing away your thunder!

Site owners also do this, in fact they have a nice name for traffic which originates from such searches. It’s called Branded Traffic.

Branded Traffic is not only limited to search, a portion of the branded traffic is also the direct traffic viz., the set of people who already know your site URL by-heart (love you folks :-D).

Importance of Branded Traffic

Shakespeare had written in his famed Romeo and Juliet,

What’s in a name?

Well, apparently a lot! Branded Traffic is important for us …

These are the set of users who KNOW your site … who are searching for you. Be nice to them, these are your friends
If you do work on Search Engine Optimization (SEO) strategies, then you will notice that your brand keywords will have awesome Click through rates … eye popping ones. At EduPristine, the CTR of the “pristine” keyword is around 32%, that of “edupristine” is a whopping 70%!!
Google will always give you additional benefit for your branded keywords, so get ready to be ranked on top! In fact the sad state of the Indian SEO industry I see is that most of the sales people get clients using such statements like “

Sir, we will get you on the top of Google Rankings (Meh!!)

If you do have Conversions setup on your site, then you will notice that your brand keywords will perform better as compared to your non-brand keywords!! If this is not the case, then perhaps you should consider taking a serious look at your site’s navigation and information architecture
This traffic is yours for the taking! I cannot stress on how important tracking this metric is … in fact as your site becomes popular you should see an increase in this traffic. It’s the digital version of your brand value.

How do you measure Branded Traffic?

This one is easy-peasy!

In case if you have a Google Analytics (GA) account setup, go to Advanced Segments, and define one segment.

I have set this up in my GA, you can use this segment and customize the keyword field with your brand terms! Get the Custom Segment for your GA profile here. Please keep a note to edit this Advanced Segment after you import this in your account and change the brand keywords!!

Do set up this segment and watch the general metrics for your site. I am sure that for your branded traffic all the metrics would be outperforming the site average!

Doesn’t it feel good to be loved!

Scheming the Schema: An Introduction to Structured Data

January 19, 2013May 6, 2018 Prasad AjinkyaLeave a comment

One of the major traffic sources for personal websites and blogs is Organic Traffic, i.e traffic originating from search engines. People working on the web would quickly realize that search traffic can also be bought through Pay Per Click (PPC) Programs such as Google Adwords and Bing Search Advertising. However, for those of us who do not have Venture Capital funded blogs to run, we still do things the old fashioned way … we write good content.

Content is still King

The good thing with this idea is that search engines such as Google do give more weight to things such as meta descriptions, meta keywords, and other Search Engine Optimization (SEO) wizardry which was erstwhile known to a few. Web applications like Google Webmaster Tools (GWMT) and Bing Webmaster Tools (BWMT) are making it easier for website owners to recognize these things and highlight important data to search engines.

This move gives the power back to the people, instead of focusing on complex discussions such as Information Architecture, Content Taxonomy, Tagging and Keyword Optimization, you just have to worry about one thing, and one thing only. Good quality original content!

How do these search engines make sense out of this content? Well, they look for patterns within the page. In fact, if memory serves me correctly, one of my classmates (who went on to become an ethical hacker) had written a similar piece of code for his final year engineering project. It’s a decade since he wrote the code, we can assume without a shadow of doubt that the search engine algorithms would be a lot smarter now to extract the right content. Smart enough to discern between the signal and the noise.

So how do site owners help search engines find important data?

One method is to use the tools that they provide us – the WMTs. However, each search engine has it’s separate nuance, and hence there was a need felt for a common standard … a standard which we, the content creators can use to signal to the search engines … that hey … this piece right here … yes this bold sentence … is meant to be special. It might mean something special to the person searching for it … it’s a beacon … a beacon of data.

Defining Schemas for better results

This is where structured data comes into picture. In early January of 2011, the major search engines came together and helped define the format of this structured data via schemas. You can see these formats on schema.org. An excerpt from their home page –

Search engines including Bing, Google, Yahoo! and Yandex rely on this markup to improve the display of search results, making it easier for people to find the right web pages.

Many sites are generated from structured data, which is often stored in databases. When this data is formatted into HTML, it becomes very difficult to recover the original structured data. Many applications, especially search engines, can benefit greatly from direct access to this structured data. On-page markup enables search engines to understand the information on web pages and provide richer search results in order to make it easier for users to find relevant information on the web.

What this means for us, is that if we use the mark-up defined for each of the individual schemas in our content, then the search engines will display this data in interesting manners to the people searching for that very piece of information. Wan’t to see an example at work? Here is one

Last week, I instructed my developers at EduPristine to start making use of certain schemas in our mark-up. It’s less than a week, and we can already start seeing them pop-up all over our search engine results.

Why Should You Bother

It does not take a rocket scientist to understand that in the game of organic traffic acquisition, the more interesting and relevant your search engine listing, the higher the chances of getting a click on your listing. Thus, marking of your content is bound to increase your organic Click Through Rates (CTRs). You can get this data in Google Webmaster Tools, better to check your current set of keywords (and their CTRs along with average ranks) and then compare the change when you start including schemas in your content.

If you have not heard about structured data or implemented schema.org before then I can guarantee you an increase in your CTRs and in your organic traffic.

Data Highlighter by Google Webmaster

December 22, 2012May 6, 2018 Prasad Ajinkya4 Comments

If you are a webmaster or own a site, then it is likely that you know about Google Webmaster Tools (WMT). If not, then the first thing you need to do is bookmark my blog! Then head on over to Google Webmasters and register your site the NOW! I cannot stress more on this. Google Webmasters allows the webmaster to slightly influence the method in which the Google bot crawls your website. Why is this important, well you can actually tell Google to crawl certain pages of your website, and ask it to not crawl other non-important pages. Typically, you would do this using Sitemaps (do remind me to write about this sometime later!).

The latest feature roll out by Google WMT is their Data Highlighter feature. You will find this in the Optimization section of Google WMT. At present this nifty feature lets you highlight event based data on your website. So if you are a training institute for financial certifications like us, then you can easily benefit from this feature. All you have to do is create a page set of pages which have this data that you need to highlight.

I created a page set called Batches (which is a set of pages for all our classroom centers in India). Then, the WMT wizard started and asked me to point out specific event meta information which was on those pages. Information such as the name of the event (for us it was events such as CFA Level I, Fin Mod, FRM Part I, etc.), event date and time, venue and address.

Now, the next time when the Google bot crawls this site, it will simply read and store this additional information and display them in the Search Engine Ranking Positions (SERPs).

Here is a really helpful video by the good folks at Google WMT explaining this feature –

SUBTOTAL in Excel

December 7, 2012May 6, 2018 Prasad Ajinkya1 Comment

I generally do not write about Microsoft Excel, for the daily inspiration dose of dashboard heroics I look at Chandoo’s site. However, today I stumbled upon SUBTOTAL and was amazed at what it can do! At work, in Pristine, we run daily numbers of all our online marketing campaigns. Reporting numbers in a template is one thing, and to analyze them is something totally different. As I was sifting through the daily numbers, I realised that for each Excel filter I am running, if there were a summary dashboard, then it will be easier to analyze.

A quick look at the excel that we prepared told me that we had an overall daily summary prepared for Adwords (Clicks, Impressions, CTR, Leads, Landing Page Conversion, Cost, CPC, etc.). Why not have a summary which changes with respect to the filter I chose?

Fortunately we have our own set of Excel heroes within the organization who guided me to the SUBTOTAL formula. And you know what? It’s wowsome!!

As you can see from the animated GIF that I quickly made, that the bottom summary changes depending on the filter conditions that I change. This dashboard is also a good tool to track the campaigns you are running (and if you are properly measuring your data).

OLX is not only Badi Badi Baatein

November 5, 2012May 6, 2018 Prasad AjinkyaLeave a comment

If you have missed out on the Badi Badi Baatein ad which has been running on the television for quite some time now, do check it out. I am embedding the ad below as well (I love the melody and the jingle … not to mention that sometimes I do identify with the procrastination tendencies as well!!)

OLX is the india classifieds of the internet. Where people go to the site for searching good deals, selling their stuff or even offering professional services.

Online Marketplace

The market for local online market places is heating up. The once free model of Craig’s List has suddenly seemed more viable and profitable by a lot of Indian players. However, do not worry, the local marketplace model is not only Badi Badi Baatein … there is huge money in this business.

How does this free model turn profitable?

Well, lead harvesting for one. Providing correct information to the people seeking it for another. Essentially creating a marketplace where otherwise there was only ignorance.

Where else would I go for finding a second hand slightly used Samsung Galaxy SIII for INR 20000?

As I said before there are multiple players in this game … but I feel of the lot, OLX is different.

OLX stands out

With a clean User Interface (UI), simpler forms and very easy user experience, I have found that OLX is the easiest to operate. Yes, I do use the site for promoting my companies offerings in the different targeted cities.

The good part about the OLX site is that when my ad goes beyond the listing due to inactivity, I get reminded via an email … clicking on the email automatically logs me in and lets me edit my listing. This way, I can fine tune my listing and hope to generate more business.

Success is not only defined on how well the website looks … if you have gone through any of the different and varied category/city listings on OLX, you will suddenly see a plethora of different listings … people wanting to purchase something or the other, people offering services … the perfect online souk.

Going ahead

In any market, there initially is a lot of people who are shouting and vending their wares … over a period of time as the market matures, the successful businesses buy out the lesser successful ones and the market quietens down. And from there a clear leader emerges. I won’t be too surprised if OLX is among those leaders of online local marketplaces in the future.

The fact that they have received their Series A funding simply goes to point out that people are willing to put their money where their mouth is and that this business is a profitable one.

Installing WordPress on localhost

September 9, 2012May 6, 2018 Prasad AjinkyaLeave a comment

WordPress is a fantastic Content Management System, it can be a very simple application to learn for newbies, and it can still deliver the high level of customization that pros typically require. The level of help available across the interwebs for this is also high and it has a thriving developer community. I thought that I would add to the helpful howto’s on WordPress so that a complete newbie can install WordPress on his own machine to give it a whirl.

Here’s a step by step guide on how to install WordPress on your machine –

First ensure you have all the right resources (XAMPP) – This is to ensure that you have a webserver with a MySQL server setup on your machine. Download the setup and install it. It will typically create a folder C:\xampp. Within this folder, make a note of the htdocs folder (this becomes your document root for your local web server). To check whether this has been properly done or not, simply open a browser and type in localhost and see whether you get a welcome page or not!
After setting up your own webserver, you need the WordPress scripts. Download and extract this in your htdocs folder (it should default to a wordpress folder)
Now simply type in this URL in your browser (http://localhost/wordpress). If you are setting it up for the first time, then you will be prompted to create a configuration file.
Now remember, for the next step you need to have created the database for WordPress. This is pretty straightforward. Open another link in your browser (http://localhost/phpmyadmin). This will be installed by default if you are using XAMPP. I am creating a database by the name of wp2, here’s how it looks
Now go to the previous browser window and click on the “Create a Configuration File” and proceed to the next step. Enter the following details, (Database – wp2, Username – root, leave the password blank since the default MySQL password for XAMPP is empty! Click on Submit.
All right! You are all set to run the install (a confirmation for this is the Run the Install button!).
The next screen is simple, what do you want to call your site (Site Title – I would always name it test since its on my local machine), username is admin and password also admin. NOTE – On a live webserver, the usernames and passwords will HAVE to be different.
In the end, I always check off the Allow Search Engines to index this site. Its on my local host and I do not want to do unnecessary indexing and pinging to the search engines.
That’s it, now you login with your username and password (in this case it was admin, admin). You should see the Dashboard of WordPress. Congratulations! You have setup WordPress on your localhost successfully!

I hope you found this helpful! In case if you got stuck anywhere in the steps outlined, do let me know, I shall be more than happy to help you out!

Bing eyes Desktop Search Market

May 11, 2012February 4, 2017 Prasad AjinkyaLeave a comment

Microsoft’s search engine is one of the lesser known search engines on the web. With lesser known I mean that its far behind in terms of market share with respect to the market leader – Google.

One thing that seems to be working in their favour though, is the So.cl is doing better than G+. Now, in an attempt to nudge out Google from the King of Search Engines, Microsoft has rolled out a new update with their Windows platform. The Bing Desktop.

Good features, and I do recommend this because I like beautiful wallpapers on my desktop :), is that Bing auto-changes the desktop on my Windows. It’s a simple feature, but its different from what Google Desktop does. The rest of the features are pretty much the same as Google Desktop (including the search bar when you hit Ctrl twice).

Google increased their business by focusing on their main product – Search. I think Microsoft is taking a page from that strategic move … focus on pushing products via their flagship product – Windows.