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337 views68 pages

An Exploratory Study On Search Engine Optimization and Its Imapact On Online Advertising - by Aaditya Khanna

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AadityaKhanna
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© © All Rights Reserved
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AN EXPLORATORY STUDY ON SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION

AND ITS IMAPACT ON ONLINE ADVERTISING

A PROJECT SUBMITTED TO
UNIVERSITY OF MUMBAI FOR PARTIAL COMPLETION OF THE DEGREE OF
BACHELOR OF MANAGEMENT STUDIES
UNDER THE FACULTY OF MANAGEMENT STUDIES IN THE SUBECT OF
MARKETING

BY
AADITYA KHANNA
MARKETING

TYBMS Sec-C
ROLL NO.6815

UNDER THE GUIDANCE OF


DR. RUPAL SHROFF
TCSC
FULL TIME – BATCH 2019 - 2020
Shyamnarayan Thakur Marg, Thakur Village,
Kandivali (East), Mumbai 400101

1|Page
Certificate

This is to certify that Mr. AADITYA KHANNA has worked and duly complete
his Project Work for the degree of Bachelor of Management Studies under
the Faculty of Management Studies in the subject of Marketing and his
project is entitled, “AN EXPLORATORY STUDY ON SEARCH ENGINE
OPTIMIZATION AND ITS IMAPACT ON ONLINE ADVERTISING” under my
supervision.

I further certify that the entire work has been done by the learner under
my guidance and that no part of it has been submitted previously for any
Degree or Diploma of any University.

It is his own work and facts reported by his personal findings and
investigation.

Principal Coordinator Project guide

Dr .C.T Charkrabroty Vivek Wankhade Dr. Rupal Shroff

Internal Examiner External Examiner

Date-

Place-

2|Page
Declaration by Learner

I, the undersigned, Mr. AADITYA KHANNA here by, declare that the work
embodied in this project work titles “AN EXPLORATORY STUDY ON SEO
AND ITS IMAPACT ON ONLINE ADVERTISING”, forms my own contribution
to the research work carried out under the guidance of Dr. Rupal Shroff is a
result of my own research work and has not been submitted previously for
any Degree or Diploma of any University.

Wherever reference has been made to previous work of others, it has been
clearly indicated as such and included in the bibliography.

I, here by further declare that all information of this document has been
obtained and presented in accordance with academic rules and ethical
conduct.

Certified by:

Dr.Rupal Shroff Aaditya Khanna

(SIGNATURE OF GUIDING TEACHER) (NAME & SIGNATURE OF LEARNER)

3|Page
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

To list who all have helped me is difficult because they are so numerous and the
depth is so enormous.

I take the opportunity to thank the University of Mumbai for giving me chance to
do this project

I would like to thank my Principal, Dr. C. T. Chakroborty for providing the


necessary facilities required for completion of this project.

I take this opportunity to thank our coordinator Prof. Vivek Wankhade for his
model support and guidance.

I would also like to express my sincere gratitude towards my project guide Dr.
Rupal Shroff whose guidance and care made the project successful.

I would like to thank my College Library, for having provided various reference
books and magazines related to my project.

Lastly, I would like to thank each and every person who directly or indirectly
helped me in the completion of the project especially my Parents and Peers who
supported me throughout my project.

4|Page
INDEX
CHAPTER NO TITLE OF CHAPATER PAGE NO
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY 06
1 INTRODUCTION TO ONLINE MARKETING 07
1.1 INTERNET 09
1.2 E- COMMERCE 10
1.3 ADVERTISMENT 14
1.4 ONLINE ADEVERTISMENT 19
1.5 SOCIAL MEDIA 22
1.6 KEYWORDS FOR SERACH 28
1.7 SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION 29
1.8 MOBILE SEO 34
2 RESEARCH METHODOLOGY 39
2.1 RESEARCH OBJECTIVES 39
2.2 SCOPE OF THE STUDY 40
2.3 LIMITATION OF THE STUDY 40
2.4 RESEARCH DESIGN 40
2.5 DATA COLLECTION 41
LITERATURE REVIEW 42
3.1 SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION 42
3.2 WORKING OF SEO 43

3.3 BENEFITS OF SEO 45


3.4 TRADITIONAL METHODS 46
3.5 LIMITATIONS OF SEO 46
3.6 INNOVTIONS IN SEO 47
3.7 GOOGLE PAGE RANK 49
3.8 OFF SITE SEO 50
3.9 ON SITE SEO 50
3.10 GOOGLE ANALYTICS 52
4 FINDINGS AND ANALYSIS 53
5 CONCLUSION 61

6 BIBILOGRAPHI 65
7 APPENDIX 67

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EXECUTIVE SUMMARAY
The concept of a search engine has gained huge significance from the beginning of the invention of
the first search engine in 1990s. The search engine is considered to be a basic activity such as email
and other general activities over the internet. The search engines are hence measured to be
concierge for the digital network ecology. At present the recent search engines have a very good
access to the huge information. The first proto of the search engine started in the year 1990 by the
students of McGill of Montreal University have created a script oriented content accumulating
program which is able to download various files of the FTP directory later the same concept with few
more technical; advancements are being done to reach an enormous database with huge index of
web pages by the advent of technology. Google, Yahoo, Msn etc. are few majorly browsed search
engines.

From the above discussion on the background of the search engine optimization, it can be
understood that the search engine optimization has acquired a crucial place in the daily life of the
web users as common as checking their emails. The first proto of the search engine optimization
model was commenced by an experimental study by the students of McGill of Montreal University.
This was later employed in to the World Wide Web services where the web pages are accumulated
and searched as per requirement. Then the advancement of the technology has created an option
for the huge search index for example like Google, yahoo, AOL, MSN, ASK etc. from the below figure
it is evident that, the mostly searched search engine is Google and the remaining are comparatively
less.

Internet audience is on a hike and marketers are concentrated on reaching them through Internet
marketing. Search engines had never been used as intensively as it is today. Being rated high in
Google or other search engine ranking reflects the potentiality of being reached to millions of
customers, hence enhancing the business. Google alone has 694,000 searches conducted every
second and the process which help our website rank higher in the organic (natural) search result is
known as search engine optimization (HUBSPOT, 2012)

Search engine optimization (SEO) is simply the process of obtaining website visitors (or traffic) from
“free” or “organic” search results in search engines like Google or Bing. All major search engines
have primary search results that are ranked based on what the search engine considers most
relevant to users. We call these organic results, because they are free and not driven by paid
advertisements. An SEO factor is something that influences where a website or piece of content will
rank in a given search engine.

Companies try hard to attain higher rankings for their websites because when a site appears at the
beginning of the search results list or top of the page and more frequently, the

greater the likelihood that users will visit the site. The additional interest in website ranking is
attributed to the fact that 75 percent of search engine users never look beyond the first page of
returned results. Search engine optimization is widespread in the world of online advertising; a 2015
survey of 1500 advertisers and agencies revealed that 90% of them engaged in SEO compared to
81% who purchased sponsored links (SEMPO, 2015). Aggregated results from studies provide
evidence that, in the majority of studies, online advertising had a great impact on online and offline
sales.

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CHAPTER 1

INTRODUCTION TO ONLINE
MARKETING
Marketing has changed over the centuries, decades and years. The production centred system
systematically changed into relationship era of today and over the period; the specializations have
emerged such as sales versus marketing and advertising versus retailing. The overall evolution of
marketing has given rise to the concept of business development. Marketing has taken the modern
shape after going through various stages since last the end of 19th century. The Production oriented
practice of marketing prior to the twentieth century was conservative and hidebound by rules-of-
thumb and lack of information. Science & technology developments and specially the development
of information technology have now changed the way people live, the way people do business and
the way people sell and purchase.
Today the trend in business and in government is towards globalization. Globalization is bringing
various industries into one global marketplace. Marketing today is very different what it used to be
few decades ago, and it’s because of the world’s economy and the development of fast and virtually
free knowledge distribution and exchange. Traditional approaches to marketing have limitations as
companies have lesser direct contacts with their customers. Globalization may not occur in a
governmental sense for many years to come. So through the rapid spread of the internet a global
culture has already begun to solidity. In today’s technology dependent world the internet is quickly
becoming the backbone of our life. Thus the new concept of internet marketing has immerged.
There is a prediction that till 2015 40% of the planet will be on internet. Internet marketing is
business imperative because the internet is an irrevocable and unstoppable trend. Because of
internet marketing consumers are becoming more homogeneous and passive.
Internet marketing is a part of e-commerce.The success of any business strongly depends on internet
marketing as well as e-commerce. Business requires both. Internet marketing uses the power of e-
commerce. Ecommerce carries business transactions through various electronic mediums like
internet, mobile, telephone, fax machines, Atm, credit card. Ecommerce looks from the
shopkeeper’s perspective it tries to figure out how customers
will search the product, who will buy it, what features, functionality and prices would customers
accept. Internet marketing ties together the technical and creative aspect of internet.
As early as 1993, it was just a tool used for emailing and data transfer .when internet was introduced
not a single business house recognized the huge potential it had in store as a marketing tool. The
best of the business units has declared it unfit for marketing purposes. Then in 1995 Netscape the

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ISP went public and bought the online world into prominence by exploring its commercial potential.
The wide reach, cost effectiveness, capabilities to measure the spending, and easy accessibility made
internet as the most feasible marketing tool, and the flood gate opened after that.
There are different types of internet marketing methods and channels such as Affiliate Marketing,
pay per click, pay per view, pay per lead, email marketing, viral marketing, interactive advertising,
blog, and article based marketing, performance marketing, social media marketing etc.affiliate
marketing includes banner advertisements. Companies are inventing new techniques to find better
ways to generate revenue and also to establish their brand on the internet.
Internet marketing works in three business models B2B.B2C, P2P. B2B deals with business to
business transaction and revenue is being generated by internet advertising to both.B2C is direct
interaction between company and the consumer.P2P is for distribution of videos and data but due to
copyright problem p2p model has troubles.
World internet population has doubled in last five years. In the year 2012 internet users worldwide
reached 2.27 billion. Exactly twice it was five years ago 1.15 billion. The internet user population has
been swelling rapidly. As the internet population grows, so does the potential size of online services.
Asia not only has the largest internet population but that is also growing the fastest by some margin.
Asia’s internet population is now almost as large as the entire internet population was five years ago.
Companies are increasing online marketing spending. The report by internet and mobile association
of India says internet subscriber base in the country is expected to reach 150 million by the end of
this year. There will be 105 urban users in India while the rural area will contribute 45 million
subscribers.

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1.1 INTERNET
The use of Internet has been booming since its creation. There are millions and millions of
computers linked throughout the world. The basic aspect of the internet still remains to share
and communicate the information from one person to another and one place to other in the
form of email, online chat, VoIP, ecommerce, online gaming, World Wide Web etc. The access to
Internet has wide spread and has penetrated in almost all the societies in the recent years
irrespective of the geographical region or country.

Smartphones today are equipped with the function of using the Internet; this has even made
Internet reach wide and far.

Figure 1 shows the worldwide penetration of the Internet. None of the region in the world is left in
solitude in terms of the use of Internet. Asia, Europe, America have the highest concentration of
Internet users

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1.2 E- COMMERCE

E-commerce is the exchange transactions, which take place over the Internet primarily using
digital technology. These exchange transactions include buying, selling, or trading of goods,
services and information (SCHNIEDER and Cao, 2002). The success of e - commerce these days is
primarily because of the fact that the internet penetration in the world is increasing and the
operating cost for this form of business is much lower than traditional form of selling which helps
decrease product cost. As per data (EMARKETER.COM, 2013) business to consumer (B2C)
ecommerce sales topped $1 trillion for first time in 2012. There are many websites solely
depending on the ecommerce for the sales of their products such as ebay.com, amazon.com
where as there are companies such as Apple, Microsoft, Dell and others who operate their e -
commerce website to maximize their sales.

Fig 2 E-commerce penetration (Morgan Stanley global e-commerce model, 2013)

Figure 2 explains the percentage of people engaged in e commerce activities in different parts of
the world with the estimates of the years to follow. The figure provides a motivating trend in the
E-commerce penetration in most of the economies of the world.

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E- COMMERCE IN INDIA

The e-commerce has transformed the way business is done in India. The Indian e-commerce market
is expected to grow to US$ 200 billion by 2026 from US$ 38.5 billion as of 2017. Much growth of the
industry has been triggered by increasing internet and smartphone penetration. The ongoing digital
transformation in the country is expected to increase India’s total internet user base to 829 million
by 2021 from 560.01 million as of September 2018. India’s internet economy is expected to double
from US$125 billion as of April 2017 to US$ 250 billion by 2020, majorly backed by ecommerce.
India’s E-commerce revenue is expected to jump from US$ 39 billion in 2017 to US$ 120 billion in
2020, growing at an annual rate of 51 per cent, the highest in the world.

Market Size

Propelled by rising smartphone penetration, the launch of 4G networks and increasing consumer
wealth, the Indian e-commerce market is expected to grow to US$ 200 billion by 2026 from US$ 38.5
billion in 2017 Online retail sales in India are expected to grow by 31 per cent to touch US$ 32.70
billion in 2018, led by Flipkart, Amazon India and Paytm Mall.

During 2018, electronics is currently the biggest contributor to online retail sales in India with a share
of 48 per cent, followed closely by apparel at 29 per cent.

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Investments/ Developments

Some of the major developments in the Indian e-commerce sector are as follows:
Flipkart, after getting acquired by Walmart for US$ 16 billion, is expected to launch more offline
retail stores in India to promote private labels in segments such as fashion and electronics. In
September 2018, Flipkart acquired Israel based analytics start-up Upstream Commerce that will help
the firm to price and position its products in an efficient way.
Paytm has launched its bank - Paytm Payment Bank. Paytm bank is India's first bank with zero
charges on online transactions, no minimum balance requirement and free virtual debit card
As of June 2018, Google is also planning to enter into the E-commerce space by November 2018.
India is expected to be its first market.
E-commerce industry in India witnessed 21 private equities and venture capital deals worth US$ 2.1
billion in 2017 and 40 deals worth US$ 1,129 million in the first half of 2018.
Google and Tata Trust have collaborated for the project ‘Internet Saathi’ to improve internet
penetration among rural women in India

Government initiatives

Since 2014, the Government of India has announced various initiatives namely, Digital India, Make in
India, Start-up India, Skill India and Innovation Fund. The timely and effective implementation of
such programs will likely support the e-commerce growth in the country. Some of the major
initiatives taken by the government to promote the e-commerce sector in India are as follows:
In order to increase the participation of foreign players in the e-commerce field, the Indian
Government hiked the limit of foreign direct investment (FDI) in the E-commerce marketplace model
for up to 100 per cent (in B2B models).
In the Union Budget of 2018-19, government has allocated Rs 8,000 crore (US$ 1.24 billion) to
BharatNet Project, to provide broadband services to 150,000 gram panchayats
As of August 2018, the government is working on the second draft of e-commerce policy,
incorporating inputs from various industry stakeholders.

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Achievements

Following are the achievements of the government in the past four years:
 Under the Digital India movement, government launched various initiatives like Udaan, Umang,
Start-up India Portal etc.
 Under the project ‘Internet Saathi’, the government has influenced over 16 million women in
India and reached 166,000 villages
 Udaan, a B2B online trade platform that connect small and medium size manufacturers and
wholesalers with online retailers and also provide them logistics,
 payments and technology support, has sellers in over 80 cities of India and delivers to over 500
cities.
 According to the UN’s eGovernance index, India has jumped 11 positions to 107 in 2016 from
2018 in 2014.
 The government introduced Bharat Interface for Money (BHIM), a simple mobile based platform
for digital payments.

Road Ahead
The e-commerce industry been directly impacting the micro, small & medium enterprises (MSME) in
India by providing means of financing, technology and training and has a favourable cascading effect
on other industries as well. The Indian e-commerce industry has been on an upward growth
trajectory and is expected to surpass the US to become the second largest e-commerce market in
the world by 2034. Technology enabled innovations like digital payments, hyper-local logistics,
analytics driven customer engagement and digital advertisements will likely support the growth in
the sector. The growth in e-commerce sector will also boost employment, increase revenues from
export, increase tax collection by ex-chequers, and provide better products and services to
customers in the long-term.

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1.3 Advertisement

Advertising is many things at same time. It is a communication process a social phenomenon, a mean
to exercise right to choose, a salesmanship in print and many more. Advertising is a big business and
ranks among the top industries of the world along with oil, automobiles, information technology and
agriculture. The growth of the advertising industry is on direct relation with the health of any country
economy. The size of advertising industry is indicator of standard of living of one’s nation.
Egyptians made sales messages and wall posters on papyrus-paper. Paper made from the papyrus
plant by cutting it in strips, was used by ancient Greeks and Romans too.
Commercial messages and political campaign displays have been discovered in the ruins of ancient
Arabia.
Wall or rock painting for commercial advertising is another example of an ancient advertising form,
which is present to this day in many parts of Asia, Africa, and
South America.

The tradition of wall painting can be traced back to Indian rock-art paintings that date back to 4000
BC. The Indian advertising industry has seen a phenomenal growth from a small scaled business to
full fledged industry. Advertising and other forms of promotion have become an integral part of our
society and economic society. Due to the emergence of new technology, availability of new media
and media vehicles and increase in the aspirations of middle class income group the advertising
industry has evolved to greater extent. The race is to attract, create and offer more value and retain
customers. Companies ranging from global players to small local retailers (kirana shops) are
increasingly relying on advertising to help in selling their products and services. India will be they
fastest growing advertising market this calendar with total ad spend rising 15% says Lindsay Pattison,
Global Chief Executive at media buying agency Maxus. Modern advertising is largely a product of
twentieth century. The first ad in any language to be printed on circulated sheet appeared in
Germany news pamphlet in about 1525. The first advertisement in an English newspaper appeared
in 1625. The first ad in America appeared in 1704. Volney B. Palmer was the first advertising agent. J.
Walter Thompson is known as the inventor of modern advertising agency.
The first ad for coffee in 1652 Chocolate in 1657 Tea in 1658

Market Size India’s Advertising industry is expected to grow at a rate of 16.8 per cent year-on-year to
Rs 51,365 crore (US$ 7.61 billion) in 2016#, buoyed by positive industry sentiment and a strong GDP
growth of 7 per cent and above. Asia Pacific is the second largest regional advertising market in the
14 | P a g e
world with projections to maintain this position in the coming years. Advertising spending in the
region reached a total of 158.3 billion U.S. dollars in 2015, and is forecast to increase to about 235.5
billion U.S. dollars by 2020. The growth in the region is mainly driven by China, the world's second
largest ad market, and India, one of the fastest growing advertising markets in Asia.

History of Advertising in India

There has been a long tradition of advertising in India since the first newspapers published in India in
the 19th Century carried advertising. Two British advertising agencies J. Walter Thompson and D. J
Keymer were the ones who laid the foundations of professional adversting in India. The first
advertising agency was established in 1905, B. Datram and Company, followed by The India-
Advertising Company in 1907, the Calcutta Advertising agency in 1909, S.H.Bensen in 1928, J. Walter
Thompson Associates through its Indian associate, Hindustan Thompson Associates in 1929, Lintas
(Lever international Advertising Services) in 1939 and McCann Erikson in 1956. Under the more
socialist political environment of the 1960s and 1970s there was little incentive for companies to
advertise because advertising was not tax deductible. In the 1970s there was a 58% growth in the
number of registered agencies from 106 in 1969 to 168 in 1979, and this included a growth in Indian
agencies. The first advertising appeared on state television

 1986. The Advertising Club of Mumbai celebrated its silver jubilee in March

 1980. With the opening of the economy in the 1980s there was a growth in the number of
alliances with multinational agencies and an expansion in advertising though foreign
network participation in agency ownership was limited. In 1987 Hindustan Thompson was
affiliated to J. Walter Thompson. Lintas, the 2nd ranking agency, held only 4% of its
subsidiary, as did Ogilvie and Mather. Saatchi and Saatchi/Compton had minority interests in
Compton as did Lintas. In 1984 the ratio of advertising expenditure to sales had risen from .
64 in 1976, to .71 in 1980 to .74 in 1984. The largest advertiser throughout the period was
Hindustan Lever which was nearly 10% of the advertising budget of the corporate sector
companies. Pharmaceutical companies were also significant advertisers at this time.

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Some Important Years in Indian
Advertising History

 In 18th century Concrete advertising history begins with classified advertising Ads appear for the
first time in print in Hickey's Bengal Gazette. India's first newspaper (weekly).

 Studios mark the beginning of advertising created in India (as opposed to import from England)
Studios set up for bold type, ornate fonts, and more fancy, larger ads.

 Newspaper studios train the first generation of visualisers & illustrators

 Major advertisers: Retailers like Spencer's, Army & Navy and Whiteaway & Laidlaw

 Marketing promotions: Retailers' catalogues provided early example

 Ads appear in newspapers in the form of lists of the latest merchandise from England

 Patent medicines: The first brand as we know them today were a category of advertisers

 Horlicks becomes the first 'malted milk' to be patented on 5th June 1883 (No. 278967).

 1931- National Advertising Service Pr. Ltd. Bombay set up

 1936- Indian Broadcasting Company becomes All India Radio (AIR) 1978 -First television
commercial seen

 1990-Marks the beginning of new medium Internet

 1991- First India-targeted satellite channel, Zee TV starts broadcast

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Digital Advertising in India

Figure 3 : Advertising in India (medianama 2017)

India's digital advertising market has grown at a fast pace of 33 per cent annually between 2010 and
2015##, while spending as a percentage of total advertising increased to 13 per cent or nearly US$ 1
billion in 2015.

The Internet's share in total advertising revenue is anticipated to grow twofold from eight per cent in
2013 to 16 per cent in 2018. Online advertising, which was estimated at Rs 2,900 crore (US$ 429.9
million) in 2013, could jump threefold to Rs 10,000 crore (US$ 1.48 billion) in five years, increasing at
a compound annual rate of 28 per cent. The advertising industry is projected to be the second
fastest growing advertising market in Asia after China. It is estimated that by 2018, the share of ad
spend in India’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) will be around 0.45 per cent. The advertising industry
is projected to be the second fastest growing advertising market in Asia after China. It is estimated
that by 2018, the share of ad spend in India’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) will be around 0.45 per
cent. In Asia Pacific, the Indian advertising market continues to be buoyant as growth prospects in
the country remain high at +12.0% in 2016 and +13.9% in 2017 (Carat Media's ). The ad market in
India is forecast to increase by 2.84 billion U.S. dollars between 2015 and 2018; this is the fifth
largest ad expenditure growth in the world during this time period. Fast moving consumer goods,
automobile and e-commerce are the most advertised industries in India.

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Figure 4: Digital Ad spending in India

There has been a substantial rise in consumers who feel that relevance with digital ads has increased
for them and these ads are helping them find the right product and aiding their purchase decisions
better. Many see these ads as informative and unlike traditional media such as television; digital
media offers a greater amount of flexibility over viewing or not viewing an ad. It is also observed that
ads on social networking and mobile are seen the most in terms of digital advertising. More people
click on these ads, engage with them and more of such ads have resulted in a purchase. In fact, 86%
of those who have seen an ad on a social networking site have clicked and viewed it while 76% of
those who have seen a mobile ad have clicked and looked for more information.

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1.4 ONLINE ADVERTISING
 Online advertising, also called online marketing or Internet advertising or web advertising, is a
form of marketing and advertising which uses the Internet to deliver promotional marketing
messages to consumers. Consumers view online advertising as an unwanted distraction with few
benefits and have increasingly turned to ad blocking for a variety of reasons. When software is
used to do the purchasing, it is known as programmatic advertising.
 It includes email marketing, search engine marketing (SEM), social media marketing, many types
of display advertising (including web banner advertising), and mobile advertising. Like other
advertising media, online advertising frequently involves both a publisher, who integrates
advertisements into its online content, and an advertiser, who provides the advertisements to be
displayed on the publisher's content. Other potential participants include advertising agencies
who help generate and place the ad copy, an ad server which technologically delivers the ad and
tracks statistics, and advertising affiliates who do independent promotional work for the
advertiser.
 In 2016, Internet advertising revenues in the United States surpassed those of cable television
and broadcast television. In 2017, Internet advertising revenues in the United States totaled
$83.0 billion, a 14% increase over the $72.50 billion in revenues in 2016.
 Many common online advertising practices are controversial and increasingly subject to
regulation. Online ad revenues may not adequately replace other publishers' revenue streams.
Declining ad revenue has led some publishers to place their content behind paywalls.

HISTORY

In early days of the Internet, online advertising was mostly prohibited. For example, two of the
predecessor networks to the Internet, ARPANET and NSFNet, had "acceptable use policies" that
banned network "use for commercial activities by for-profit institutions". The NSFNet began phasing
out its commercial use ban in 1991.

Email

The first widely publicized example of online advertising was conducted via electronic mail. On 3
May 1978, a marketer from DEC (Digital Equipment Corporation), Gary Thuerk, sent an email to most
of the ARPANET's American west coast users, advertising an open house for a new model of a DEC
computer.Despite the prevailing acceptable use policies, electronic mail marketing rapidly expanded
and eventually became known as "spam."

The first known large-scale non-commercial spam message was sent on 18 January 1994 by an
Andrews University system administrator, by cross-posting a religious message to all USENET
newsgroups. In January 1994 Mark Eberra started the first email marketing company for opt in email
list under the domain Insideconnect.com. He also started the Direct Email Marketing Association to
help stop unwanted email and prevent spam.

Four months later, Laurence Canter and Martha Siegel, partners in a law firm, broadly promoted
their legal services in a USENET posting titled "Green Card Lottery – Final One?" Canter and Siegel's
Green Card USENET spam raised the profile of online advertising, stimulating widespread interest in
advertising via both Usenet and traditional email. More recently, spam has evolved into a more

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industrial operation, where spammers use armies of virus-infected computers (botnets) to send
spam remotely.

Display ads

Online banner advertising began in the early 1990s as page owners sought additional revenue
streams to support their content. Commercial online service Prodigy displayed banners at the
bottom of the screen to promote Sears products. The first clickable web ad was sold by Global
Network Navigator in 1993 to a Silicon Valley law firm. In 1994, web banner advertising became
mainstream when HotWired, the online component of Wired Magazine, sold banner ads to AT&T
and other companies. The first AT&T ad on HotWired had a 44% click-through rate, and instead of
directing clickers to AT&T's website, the ad linked to an online tour of seven of the world's most
acclaimed art museums.

Search ads

GoTo.com (renamed Overture in 2001, and acquired by Yahoo! in 2003) created the first search
advertising keyword auction in 1998. Google launched its "AdWords" search advertising program in
2000 and introduced quality-based ranking allocation

in 2002, which sorts search advertisements by a combination of bid price and searchers' likeliness to
click on the ads. More recently, companies have sought to merge their advertising messages into
editorial content or valuable services. Examples include Red Bull's Red Bull Media House streaming
Felix Baumgartner's jump from space online, Coca-Cola's online magazines, and Nike's free
applications for performance tracking. Advertisers are also embracing social media and mobile
advertising; mobile ad spending has grown 90% each year from 2010 to 2013.

1. Display Advertising

Display advertising is a type of online paid advertising, typically using images and text. The most
popular forms of display ads are banners, landing pages (LP’s) and popups. Display ads differ from
other ads because they do not show up in search results.
Most commonly, display ads are found on websites and blogs to redirect user’s attention to the
company’s product. Working together with remarketing, display ads can have great success.
According to Digital Information World, “website visitors who are retargeted with display ads are
70% more likely to convert on your website.”

2. Search Engine Marketing & Optimization (SEM) & (SEO)

SEM and SEO are two types of online advertising that promote content and increase visibility
through searches.

SEM: Instead of paying for the actual ad, advertising pay each time users click on the ad to their
website. Businesses benefit by gaining specific information about their market.

SEO: To gain a higher rank in search engine results, advertisers use various SEO tactics, such as
linking, targeting keywords and meta descriptions and creating highlevel content that other sites will
link to. While SEM is a paid strategy, SEO is organic, making it a sought out type of online advertising.

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Fig 5 Paid or sponsored links appearing for the keywords “online games “

Pay per click (PPC) is the form of advertising that is the most common form of advertising online, in
the process a small advertisements are placed in the search engine results as seen in the above
figure and the advertiser is charged only when someone actually clicks into the advertisement
(LURIE, Ian, 2011)

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1.5 Social Media
There’s no doubt that social media advertising just keeps growing and growing each year. Consider
these numbers: There are 1.65 billion active mobile social accounts globally with 1 million new active
mobile social users added every day. According to the Hootsuite social media advertising statistics,
social media advertising budgets have doubled, worldwide, from $16 billion to $31 billion in the past
2 years alone.

The two types of social media online advertising are organic, an online word-of-mouth technique,
and paid. Placing paid ads, promoted posts or sponsored stories are a popular way to reach more of
the demographic of the company, without paying a bundle. As you can see from the chart below,
Facebook and Twitter are the most popular social media platforms for companies to reach potential
new customers with LinkedIn a popular avenue for B2B sales.

Figure 6 : How marketers use social media (2014)

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Native Advertising
Have you ever noticed those sponsored ads at the bottom of blog or FB posts? They can be “other
recommended readings” or “other people liked” with suggested examples for users to click on. This
is native advertising.

Pay Per Click (PPC)

Pay per click (PPC) ads explain their concept right in the name. These are ads that advertisers only
pay for when a user clicks on them, which contributes to the strength of PPC as a tool. If the ad was
seen by 100 people and only 1 person clicked the ad, the cost of the ad revolves solely around the 1
who clicked. PPC ads are usually text, with a small image if at all. Keep in mind that 64.6% of people
click on Google ads when they are looking to buy an item online.

Remarketing

Remarketing (or retargeting) is a type of online advertising that does exactly what it says it does. This
cookie-based technology literally followers the user around the internet, in order to remarket
him/her again. Statistics show that only 2% of web traffic converts on the first visit, which means
98% of users leave without converting right away. These users are targeted once they leave the
website by then seeing subtle hints (ads), reminding them about their previous interest. Here’s how
the code works:

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Model of Remarketing.
Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing is promoting a company’s product while earning a commission for each sale that
was made. It’s essentially a 3-party advertising agreement between the advertiser, publisher and
consumer. It’s widely adopted with bloggers who have large numbers of followers and are looking
to gain passive income.

Video Ads

Video ads are growing in popularity, especially with the younger generation of consumers. BI
Intelligence reported that digital video will reach nearly $5 billion in ad revenue and with the
highest average click-through rate, 1.84%, of any digital format (2016). And the stats don’t lie. 55%
of consumers view videos in their entirety while 43% want to see more video content from
markets.

Figure 8 : Total Ad viewership on youtube

With YouTube being the number one platform for videos, they have already implemented video ad
strategies for their users. Using the PPC method, businesses only pay when someone engages with
an ad. targeting, analytics and customization, businesses are flocking to the video ad genre. HubSpot
reports that 48% of marketers plan to add YouTube to their content strategy in the next year.

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CHALLENGES
1. Rapid Growth

The digital landscape just keeps growing

If you look at the web alone, the number of websites is proliferating at a rapid rate. Trying to decide
where to advertise can require extensive research and hours of work. You have to find new sites,
evaluate them, and develop strategies for them.

The Internet is no longer the only digital game in town. We’re seeing the growth of personal devices like
home assistants, smart watches, smart glasses, and even virtual reality. Figuring out all the new avenues
for advertising and how to make the most of them can take up extensive time and resources.

Using a solution like Perion’s Undertone can help you overcome this challenge. Undertone helps brands
get their ads on the right websites and platforms to reach their target audience, and it ensures that ads
are optimized by device and browser. It can take the burden off brands to do all that research by placing
the ads for them, helping them save time and money and getting them a higher return on their
investment.

2. Ad Blockers

Ad blockers are costing advertisers billions of dollars The software makes it so that many ads do not
even appear on the screen, which means that brands never have the chance to make their case, virtually
speaking.What do you do when you can’t even get a viewing for your ads?

Brands are finding success getting around ad blockers with native advertising. Because native ads are
designed to look like the editorial content on a site, they are less likely to trigger ad blocking software. At
the same time, native ads are also more likely to engage users who have a reflex to avoid ads.

3. Reduced Exposure

Social media was a gift to businesses. It allowed them to reach millions of potential customers for FREE.

Not so much anymore.The social giants have gotten savvier about what they are doing for businesses on
their sites. They’ve stopped giving away the milk for free.

Brands can’t even expect their posts to be seen by the people that follow their page. Facebook has
locked down the reach of the posts unless brands pay to promote them. And, sure, brands have other
social networks they can use to reach audiences, but no other network has the same audience or the
same potential for engagement. Brands will have to pay more to get their content seen, and they will
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have to be smarter about how they use social media. A solution like Perion’s MakeMeReach helps
brands improve targeting and get more from their posts. Good social media marketing is also a
necessity.

Increasing Costs

Brands are expected to increase their digital ad spend this year. Part of the reason is that they are
putting more money in more places, but part of the reason is that the cost of ads is going up

Webmasters know what they have. They know how much their traffic is worth. They know how valuable
their social media influence is. Smaller brands looking to make a splash will have to get major capital. Or
so it seems.The solution here is to find smarter ways to spend your money, not just to throw more
money at the problem. Undertone helps brands do this by getting placements for ads that make the
most impact. When ads are put in front of the right users at the right time and in the right place, the ads
are more likely to get the conversions desired. The advertising budget goes farther, resulting in greater
profits

Elusive Audiences

Today’s consumers are more stretched than ever.

They don’t have as much disposable income as the generation before them, yet they work more than
ever and have more demands on their time. The Internet is a 24/7 assault on their senses and is trying to
grab their limited attention in every direction it can.

Most people don’t have the time to read an online article, let alone watch a brand’s video ad. Brands are
fighting to capture their audience’s attention, as well as to engage them

Segmentation has helped brands reach more of their audience. Instead of creating ads for the general
audience, which is quite large, brands are focusing on creating ads for smaller segments of that
audience. The ads are tweaked according to the specific needs of the individuals based on the research
that the brand uncovers

Greater targeting options from publishers also help (Facebook leads here), as do the use of intent-based
signals (Google leads here). Brands are better able to learn what their audiences want or need, and they
are better able to target their ads so that they appear only to the people who are going to be most
interested in what’s being sold.

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SEARCH ENGINE

Finding a relevant material in the web could be a hectic task in the absence of the search engines. Search
engines are the websites, which help users find the appropriate information they are looking for by
narrowing the results from the list of numerous information present in the web. After that the user
decides whether to follow the link presented in the first page or to continue the search in the upcoming
pages. (LEVENE, Mark, 2010) There are many search engines in the market, but among all Google
(www.google.com) tops the war with the other two main competitors yahoo (www.yahoo.com) and
Microsoft`s Bing (www.bing.com).The market share for the top search engines are provided in the chart
below.

Fig 9 Global market share of search engine (Search Engine Market Share, 2012)

As someone tries to search something using the search engine, even before completing the search
phrase, the search engines send out bots or spiders that survey the web pages found in the Internet and
build their database. The bots then retrieve the information in the Web Pages according to the repeated
keywords contained in the search phrase and index them in the search page (VIEIRA, Karen F., 2008).

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1.6 KEYWORD FOR SEARCH

The process of typing something into the search box and retrieving the awaited results takes a fraction
of a second if proper keywords are used. Keywords are very essential for any search to give relevant
results. Key words are the words that are typed in the search engines and that match the words in
our documents/Webpages. Generally those keywords are favoured by search engines that are used
as headlines and that are capitalized (LEVENE, Mark, 2010). They can be the sum of our own
webpage. If these words are typed in the search box.

the results appear for instance in Google as shown in figure 4 below.

Fig 10 Search results for keyword “Apple”

Long tailed keywords are also very essential when it comes to finding a specific search material in the
Internet. Long tailed keywords are the type of keyword phrase that have at least two or as many as
five words in the phrase. The keywords in the long tailed keywords are highly specific and generate
less traffic for the website, but tend to draw more quality traffic, which leads a customer to make a
transaction after finding a correct link in their search (ODOM, Sean, 2011). This is why long tailed
keywords are essential. For instance if a person sells shirts, he may want his website to be listed for
the keyword “shirt store”, but there could be many other competitor websites and the chances of
getting potential customers could be reduced. On the other hand if a person could specify what kind

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of shirt he sells with a long tailed keyword such as “fashionable full sleeved summer shirt”, the hits he
would get for this keyword could be reduced but the customers who specify these search details can
end up buying the product as we contain their desired product.

1.7 SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMISATION


Search engine optimization (SEO) is a broad topic, which includes search engine marketing (SEM).
SEM is the phenomenon, which includes all marketing techniques for search and visibility in the
Internet. Being visible in the Internet especially in the search engines is extremely important from a
business point of view. SEM affects both the organic and paid search results; they appear on
different parts of the webpage. Paid results for a particular keyword such as “online games” appear
in the topmost part of the webpage whereas the organic or natural search results start appearing
after the paid advertisements. The figure below shows the paid and the organic search results in a
search engine.

Fig 11 Paid and Organic search results for keyword “online games”

Search engine optimization (SEO) refers to a technique that helps website rank higher in organic or
“natural” search results, thus making website more visible to people who are looking for product or
service via search engines (HUBSPOT, 2012). Most of the people concentrate on the first page during
their search for a result. There are a few people who literally jump to the next page of the search;
therefore being visible in the first page and towards the top adds traffic and potential customers to the
business. A properly Search Engine Optimized (SEO) website is a critical component of any Internet
business. A website optimized for search engines will rank high, which brings it to the first page of a
potential customer’s search results (Search Engine Optimization (SEO) – Marketing Services , 2013)

The following figure shows the percentage of people actually visiting only the first result and the first
page of a search engine and the rest moving on to the next pages.

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HISTORY

Webmasters and content providers began optimizing websites for search engines in the mid-1990s, as
the first search engines were cataloguing the early Web. Initially, all webmasters only needed to submit
the address of a page, or URL, to the various engines which would send a "spider" to "crawl" that page,
extract links to other pages from it, and return information found on the page to be indexed. The
process involves a search engine spider downloading a page and storing it on the search engine's own
server. A second program, known as an indexer, extracts information about the page, such as the words
it contains, where they are located, and any weight for specific words, as well as all links the page
contains. All of this information is then placed into a scheduler for crawling at a later date.

Website owners recognized the value of a high ranking and visibility in search engine results, creating an
opportunity for both white hat and black hat SEO practitioners. According to industry analyst Danny
Sullivan, the phrase "search engine optimization" probably came into use in 1997. Sullivan credits Bruce
Clay as one of the first people to popularize the term. On May 2, 2007, Jason Gambert attempted to
trademark the term SEO by convincing the Trademark Office in Arizona that SEO is a "process" involving
manipulation of keywords and not a "marketing service."

Early versions of search algorithms relied on webmaster-provided information such as the keyword meta
tag or index files in engines like ALIWEB. Meta tags provide a guide to each page's content. Using
metadata to index pages was found to be less than reliable, however, because the webmaster's choice
of keywords in the meta tag could potentially be an inaccurate representation of the site's actual
content. Inaccurate, incomplete, and inconsistent data in meta tags could and did cause pages to rank
for irrelevant searches. Web content providers also manipulated some attributes within the HTML
source of a page in an attempt to rank well in search engines. By 1997, search engine designers
recognized that webmasters were making efforts to rank well in their search engine, and that some
webmasters were even manipulating their rankings in search results by stuffing pages with excessive or

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irrelevant keywords. Early search engines, such as AltaVista and Infoseek, adjusted their algorithms to
prevent webmasters from manipulating rankings.

By relying so much on factors such as keyword density which were exclusively within a webmaster's
control, early search engines suffered from abuse and ranking manipulation. To provide better results to
their users, search engines had to adapt to ensure their results pages showed the most relevant search
results, rather than unrelated pages stuffed with numerous keywords by unscrupulous webmasters. This
meant moving away from heavy reliance on term density to a more holistic process for scoring semantic
signals. Since the success and popularity of a search engine is determined by its ability to produce the
most relevant results to any given search, poor quality or irrelevant search results could lead users to
find other search sources. Search engines responded by developing more complex ranking algorithms,
taking into account additional factors that were more difficult for webmasters to manipulate. In 2005, an
annual conference, AIR Web, Adversarial Information Retrieval on the Web was created to bring
together practitioners and researchers concerned with search engine optimization and related topics.

Companies that employ overly aggressive techniques can get their client websites banned from the
search results. In 2005, the Wall Street Journal reported on a company, Traffic Power, which allegedly
used high-risk techniques and failed to disclose those risks to its clients. Wired magazine reported that
the same company sued blogger and SEO Aaron Wall for writing about the ban. Google's Matt Cutts later
confirmed that Google did in fact ban Traffic Power and some of its clients.

Some search engines have also reached out to the SEO industry, and are frequent sponsors and guests at
SEO conferences, web chats, and seminars. Major search engines provide information and guidelines to
help with website optimization. Google has a Sitemaps program to help webmasters learn if Google is
having any problems indexing their website and also provides data on Google traffic to the website. Bing
Webmaster Tools provides a way for webmasters to submit a sitemap and web feeds, allows users to
determine the "crawl rate", and track the web pages’ index status.

RELATION WITH GOOGLE


In 1998, two graduate students at Stanford University, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, developed "Backrub",
a search engine that relied on a mathematical algorithm to rate the prominence of web pages. The
number calculated by the algorithm, PageRank, is a function of the quantity and strength of inbound
links. PageRank estimates the likelihood that a given page will be reached by a web user who randomly
surfs the web, and follows links from one page to another. In effect, this means that some links are
stronger than others, as a higher PageRank page is more likely to be reached by the random web surfer.

age and Brin founded Google in 1998. Google attracted a loyal following among the growing number of
Internet users, who liked its simple design. Off-page factors (such as PageRank and hyperlink analysis)
were considered as well as on-page factors (such as keyword frequency, meta tags, headings, links and
site structure) to enable Google to avoid the kind of manipulation seen in search engines that only
considered on-page factors for their rankings. Although PageRank was more difficult to game,
webmasters had already developed link building tools and schemes to influence the Inktomi search
engine, and these methods proved similarly applicable to gaming PageRank. Many sites focused on
exchanging, buying, and selling links, often on a massive scale. Some of these schemes, or link farms,
involved the creation of thousands of sites for the sole purpose of link spamming.

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By 2004, search engines had incorporated a wide range of undisclosed factors in their ranking algorithms
to reduce the impact of link manipulation. In June 2007, The New York Times' Saul Hansell stated Google
ranks sites using more than 200 different signals. The leading search engines, Google, Bing, and Yahoo,
do not disclose the algorithms they use to rank pages. Some SEO practitioners have studied different
approaches to search engine optimization, and have shared their personal opinions. Patents related to
search engines can provide information to better understand search engines. In 2005, Google began
personalizing search results for each user. Depending on their history of previous searches, Google
crafted results for logged in users.

In 2007, Google announced a campaign against paid links that transfer PageRank. On June 15, 2009,
Google disclosed that they had taken measures to mitigate the effects of PageRank sculpting by use of
the nofollow attribute on links. Matt Cutts, a well-known software engineer at Google, announced that
Google Bot would no longer treat nofollowed links in the same way, to prevent SEO service providers
from using nofollow for PageRank sculpting. As a result of this change the usage of nofollow led to
evaporation of PageRank. In order to avoid the above, SEO engineers developed alternative techniques
that replace nofollowed tags with obfuscated Javascript and thus permit PageRank sculpting.
Additionally several solutions have been suggested that include the usage of iframes, Flash and
Javascript. In December 2009, Google announced it would be using the web search history of all its users
in order to populate search results. On June 8, 2010 a new web indexing system called Google Caffeine
was announced. Designed to allow users to find news results, forum posts and other content much
sooner after publishing than before, Google caffeine was a change to the way Google updated its index
in order to make things show up quicker on Google than before. According to Carrie Grimes, the
software engineer who announced Caffeine for Google, "Caffeine provides 50 percent fresher results for
web searches than our last index..." Google Instant, real-time-search, was introduced in late 2010 in an
attempt to make search results more timely and relevant. Historically site administrators have spent
months or even years optimizing a website to increase search rankings. With the growth in popularity of
social media sites and blogs the leading engines made changes to their algorithms to allow fresh content
to rank quickly within the search results.

In February 2011, Google announced the Panda update, which penalizes websites containing content
duplicated from other websites and sources. Historically websites have copied content from one another
and benefited in search engine rankings by engaging in this practice. However Google implemented a
new system which punishes sites whose content is not unique. The 2012 Google Penguin attempted to
penalize websites that used manipulative techniques to improve their rankings on the search
engine.Although Google Penguin has been presented as an algorithm aimed at fighting web spam, it
really focuses on spammy links by gauging the quality of the sites the links are coming from. The 2013
Google Hummingbird update featured an algorithm change designed to improve Google's natural
language processing and semantic understanding of web pages. Hummingbird's language processing
system falls under the newly recognised term of 'Conversational Search' where the system pays more
attention to each word in the query in order to better match the pages to the meaning of the query
rather than a few words. With regards to the changes made to search engine optimization, for content
publishers and writers, Hummingbird is intended to resolve issues by getting rid of irrelevant content
and spam, allowing Google to produce high-quality content and rely on them to be 'trusted' authors.

TATICS AND METHODS

SEO techniques are classified into two broad categories:

 White Hat SEO - Techniques that search engines recommend as part of a good design.

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 Black Hat SEO - Techniques that search engines do not approve and attempt to minimize the
effect of. These techniques are also known as spamdexing.

White Hat SEO

An SEO tactic is considered as White Hat if it has the following features:


It conforms to the search engine's guidelines. It does not involve in any deception.It ensures that the
content a search engine indexes, and subsequently ranks, is the same content a user will see

 It ensures that a web page content should have been created for the users and not just for the
search engines.
 It ensures good quality of the web pages.
 It ensures availability of useful content on the web pages.
 Always follow a White Hat SEO tactic and do not try to fool your site visitors.
 Be honest and you will definitely get something more

Black Hat or Spamdexing

An SEO tactic, is considered as Black Hat or Spamdexing if it has the following features:

 Attempting ranking improvements that are disapproved by the search engines and/or involve
deception.
 Redirecting users from a page that is built for search engines to one that is more human friendly.
 Redirecting users to a page that was different from the page the search engine ranked.
 Serving one version of a page to search engine spiders/bots and another version to human
visitors. This is called Cloaking SEO tactic.
 Using hidden or invisible text or with the page background color, using a tiny font size or hiding
them within the HTML code such as "no frame" sections.
 Repeating keywords in the metatags, and using keywords that are unrelated to the website
content. This is called metatag stuffing.
 Calculated placement of keywords within a page to raise the keyword count, variety, and density
of the page. This is called keyword stuffing.
 Creating low-quality web pages that contain very little content but are instead stuffed with very
similar keywords and phrases. These pages are called Doorway or Gateway Pages.
 Mirror websites by hosting multiple websites - all with conceptually similar content but using
different URLs.

Creating a rogue copy of a popular website which shows contents similar to the original to a web
crawler, but redirects web surfers to unrelated or malicious websites. This is called page hijacking.

Always stay away from any of the above Black Hat tactics to improve the rank of your site. Search
engines are smart enough to identify all the above properties of your site and ultimately you are not
going to get anything.

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1.8 MOBILE SEO
Millions of users these days access the web using smartphones running on Android, iOS, or Windows.
Hence, it has become imperative that websites adapt themselves to this changing environment and
make suitable changes in their website design to attract more viewership.

The desktop version of a site might be difficult to view and use on a mobile device. The version that is
not mobile-friendly requires the user to pinch or zoom in order to read the content. Users find this a
frustrating experience and are likely to abandon the site. In contrast, a mobile-friendly version is
readable and immediately usable.

A recent Google update makes it mandatory that a website should be mobile-friendly to be effective on
Mobile Search Engines. Note that a website that is not mobile-friendly will not have any impact on
regular search engines either.

In this chapter, we will see how to make a website mobile-friendly in order to ensure the visitors who
access the website from mobile devices have an optimized experience.

What is Mobile SEO?

 Mobile Search Engine Optimization is the process of designing a website to make it suitable for
viewing on mobile devices of different screen sizes having low bandwidth. Apart from
 following all the SEO rules which are applicable to a desktop website, we need to take additional
care while designing a website for mobile devices. A website is mobile friendly if it has the
following attributes −
 A good mobile website has a responsive design which performs well on desktops as well as
mobile devices. It not only reduces the maintenance of the website but also makes the content
consistent for the search engines.
 The contents of a good mobile website are easy to read on a mobile device without having to
zoom the screen. It has appropriate fonts, colors, and layouts.
 It is easy to navigate through a good mobile website on a small screen. It provides links and
buttons that can be easily maneuvered using a finger.
 A good mobile website is lightweight such that it takes less bandwidth and time to load on
mobile networks.
 The Home Page of a mobile website plays the most important role in connecting users to the
content they are looking for. Therefore, good mobile websites make sure the most important
links are displayed on the Home Page so that they get enough visibility.
 The ranking of a website depends heavily on how user friendly it is. You can follow the guidelines
given below to design a great mobile-friendly website.

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Optimize Your Site for Mobile

If your site is already optimized for search engines, then it should not be too difficult to optimize it for
mobile devices. First, let us understand what it takes to go mobile. We can categorize the steps into
three broad categories −

 Step 1 − Select a Mobile Configuration


 Step 2 − Inform Search Engines
 Step 3 − Avoid Common Mistakes

Select a Mobile Configuration

There are three different mobile configurations that you can choose from −

 Step 1 − Responsive Web Design


 Step 2 − Dynamic Serving
 Step 3 − Separate URLs

Each has its own advantages and disadvantages. Google recommends responsive design, however it
supports all three configurations. The following table shows how the mobile configuration affects your
URL and HTML code −

Mobile Configuration URL HTML


Responsive Web Stays the same
Design Stays the same
Dynamic Serving Stays the same Different HTMLs
Separate URLs Different URLs Different HTMLs

Responsive Web Design


 Google recommends responsive web design because it is the simplest mobile configuration and
very easy to implement. It serves the same HTML code on the same URL, however it adjusts the
display based on the screen size of the mobile device.

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Dynamic Serving
 Dynamic serving is a type of mobile configuration where the URL of your website remains
unchanged, but it serves different HTML content when accessed from a mobile device.

Figure 12: Dynamic difference between mobile and destop.

When your content is dynamically served from the server, make sure you inform Google that the
content it is crawling may look different on mobile devices. A major drawback of this approach is that
you will have to do additional processing on your content at the server level before severing it to the
user. This approach puts unnecessary load on your server and makes it slow.

Separate URLs

When you maintain two different URLs — one for mobile users and another for desktop users – make
sure you inform Google explicitly when to serve which version. Google does not recommend separate
URLs because it can detect automatically that your mobile pages are different from your desktop pages.

This approach is not practical when you have a big website because maintaining two versions of the
same website will require double the effort and money. At the same time, you cannot avoid various
discrepancies in your content while maintaining two versions.

From the viewpoint of SEO, each URL performs separately. Hence your desktop ranking will never be
added to the mobile ranking and they will always be assumed as separate websites. We don’t
recommend maintaining different URLs for mobile and desktop versions if you want to draw the benefits
of SEO.

Inform Search Engines


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Make sure Google and other search engines understand your mobile configuration. Most important of
all, Google must understand your page so that it can rank your website properly. How you inform Google
depends on which mobile configuration — responsive web design, dynamic serving, or separate URLs —
you have opted for.

In case your site has a responsive design, Google’s algorithms can understand it automatically without
you having to inform Google. When you have a responsive design, just make sure you have the following
meta-tag in your webpage header −

<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0">

The viewport decides how your webpage will be displayed on a device. A site with responsive design
varies its size based on the size of the device screen. Declare a viewport so that your webpage displays
correctly on any device.

If your website is dynamically served, make sure you allow Google detect your configuration using the
Vary HTTP header −

Vary: User-Agent

The Vary header is important to tell the search engines that different content will be served on desktops
and mobile devices. This header is really important when your content is served by any cache system like
a Content Delivery Network and those systems will make use of this header while serving content on
different devices.

In case you maintain separate URLs, e.g., example.com and m.example.com, then you can inform Google
by adding a special link rel=alternate tag in your desktop version and vice versa as follows.

Desktop page should have following in its header:

<link rel="alternate" media="only screen and (max-width: 640px)"

href="http://m.example.com" >

Mobile page should have following in its header:

<link rel="canonical" href="http://www.example.com" >

Avoid Common Mistakes

In order to optimize your website for mobile devices, make sure you avoid committing the following
mistakes −

Slow Mobile Pages − Mobile networks are slower as compared to wired Internet networks, so it is
important to pay attention to how fast your mobile pages load. It is a critical Google ranking factor. Use a
mobile SEO tool to find out your mobile page speed. Google provides a number of good tools that you
can use. Browse the following link −https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/mobile-friendly/

Don't Block CSS and JavaScript − Google recommends to use inline CSS and Javascripts for mobile
friendly websites so that they can be downloaded along with the content. So if you don’t have much CSS,
then try to adjust it within the tag itself; but if you are using a lot of CSS in separate files, then try to
include it at the bottom which will stop blocking the other content being downloaded. The same rule
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applies to Javascript, which can be kept inside the page itself or included at the bottom of the page. If
you can avoid including the file at the top of the page, then make use of async attribute while including
them.

<script async type="text/javascript" src="jquery.js"></script>

 Mobile Redirects − Since mobile networks are normally slow, too many redirects can hurt your page
speed. If you are maintaining multiple URLs, make sure all your links point to the relevant pages. In
case you maintain multiple URLs and you recognize a user is visiting a desktop page from a mobile
device and you have an equivalent mobile page at a different URL, then redirect the user to that URL
instead of displaying a 404 error.

 Heavy Images − Heavy images increase the load time, however we cannot completely get rid of them
since they are useful and effective. Therefore you should maintain a good balance between text and
heavy images. Use a good tool to optimize your images and save them at low resolution to avoid
heavy downloads.

Avoid plug-ins and pop-ups − Plug-ins like Flash and Java may not be available on user’s mobile device.
Always ensure you don’t have any unplayable content on your mobile page. Avoid using pop-ups on
mobile pages because it becomes quite clumsy to close these pop-ups on a mobile device.

While creating a mobile page, always keep in mind that the user has limited space to work on. So, you
need to be as concise as possible while creating titles, URLs, and meta-descriptions – of course without
compromising the essence or quality of information.

Useful Tools

 Here is a list of some useful tools that you can use to find out how mobile friendly your site is −
 Google Webmaster Tools − Use the available Google tools and techniques to understand what
should be used and what should be avoided while designing desktop as well as mobile websites.
 Mobile Emulator − It lets you see how your site appears on a wide variety of mobile devices.
 Moz Local − Use this tool to ensure that your local SEO is in order.
 Responsive Web Design Testing Tool − Use this tool to see how your responsive site looks like on a
variety of mobile devices with different standard screen sizes.
 Screaming Frog − This is a useful tool that allows you to analyze your site and double-check all the
redirects.
 User Agent Switcher − This is a Firefox add-on that you can use to find out how your site looks like
when accessed from a different user agent.

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CHAPTER 2

RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

Research is simply the process of asking questions and answering them by survey or experiment in an
organized way. It is also a procedure of systematic collection, analysis and interpretation of data to
answer a certain question or solve a problem. (NYANJUI, PJ, 2013)

The research in the topic “Search Engine Optimization and Its Implications in Internet Marketing” tries to
analyse whether Search engine optimization for a particular website can be helpful to rank it higher in
the search engine rankings and enhance the marketing goals and maximise sales.

2.1 RESEARCH OBJECTIVES


 To study if search engine optimization an effective tool for Internet marketing

 To study the role of SEO

 Is it relevant for online/small and medium enterprises to perform search engine


optimization?

 To study the effectiveness of SEO to get ranked in Google search

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2.2 SCOPE OF STUDY

The scope if this study is little limited as it was conducted amongst a certain age group and number of
people only. It is limited to 50 people.

2.3 LIMITATION OF STUDY

This study subject to constraint of timee

1. This study subject to constraint of resources.

2. This study based on primary and secondary data so the quality of finding depends upon the
accuracy of information collect through questionnaire and on the information collected from relevant
published source.

3. Simple mathematical calculation is used for analysis and interpretation of data.

4. This study is subjected to geographical barrier as data could only be collected from a particular
region.

5. This study subject to constraint of sample size.

2.4 RESEARCH DESIGN

Descriptive research is used to describe characteristics of a population or phenomenon being studied.


Descriptive research is also known as Statistical Research. The main goal of this type of research is to
describe the data and characteristics about what is being studied. The idea behind this type of research
is to study frequencies, averages, and other statistical calculations. Although this research is highly
accurate, it does not gather the causes behind a situation. Descriptive research is mainly done when a
researcher wants to gain a better understanding of a topic.

This is a descriptive research as it will clarify the doubts about SEO. It would give us a clear picture on the
effectiveness and reliability of SEO and also its implication on online advertising.

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2.5 DATA COLLECTION

This study was conducted via asking questions with the help of questionnaire.

Participants were recruited through random sampling method.

Both primary data and secondary information was used. Primary data is also called as raw data, and is
collected at source. Secondary data refers to data which is collected by someone who is someone other
than the user. Primary data was collected in the form of survey and secondary information was collected
via previously published research papers, blogs and also the websites of organizations involved.

Sample Size

A sample size of 50 people of selected for this survey. The sample size was selected to be this number so
that it is neither too high nor too low.

Sampling Unit

Respondents belonged to the age group between 15 years to 35 years to understand awareness and
thoughts on the SEO and its implication on online advertising. The sampling unit was further divided into
four categories of area of their focus – SEO, web development, content writing , others.

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CHAPTER 3

LITERATURE REVIEW

3.1 SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMISATION


(SEO)
(From the study of SEO basic by Bivings Group, June, 18, 2008)

The term SEO is a short form of ‘Search Engine Optimization’. Generally the optimization process meant
for highlighting in the search results carried by the abusers in the search engines such as Google,
Overture of Yahoo etc. the web pages of these websites are rated upon the top ranks.

From the above it can be concluded that, the search engine optimization, in short SEo is a method which
will be able to create the appropriate search results available for the users.

(Telnic Limited. 2009)

The Search Engine Optimization is considered to be an effective method which is intended to improve
the eminence and degree of the user traffic for the particular website or the domain through the innate
searching options. This is referred as a natural form of searching. This may be again categorized in to
algorithmic and organic. More the searching of that particular website or domain, higher is the ranking
given to it by the SEO. The high rates of ranking are further preserved by a periodical updation of the
contents and in particular axioms that will improve the traffic. The search engine optimization is a huge
industry in coordination with numerous professionals and groups that attempt to accumulate the
comprehensible information and the system to assess the significance of a particular keyword optimal
for the search inquiry. Some of the basic activities of SEO are crawling, indexing, processing, calculating
relevancy, and retrieving. (Shari Thurow, 2003)

From the view of the above discussion, it can be understood that the search engine optimization is a
form of process that will improve the eminence and degree of the user traffic for a specific website of
the organization for business purpose. The working of the search engine optimization is based on the
search engine algorithm. The search engine will provide natural means of probing capacity which can be
of two forms namely algorithmic and organic searching processes. Generally a ranking is given to the
website that will formalize high rate when it is probed for maximum time and is ranked in the first 10

searches. As it is observed that many of the users will invariantly click on the first set of listing in the
search engine, it is very necessary for the business websites to face a hectic rivalry.

(By Vertexera Inc)

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The search engine optimization is considered to be a process that is intended to improve the visibility of
the particular website. This increased by selecting particular axiom or a phrase related to it. The search
engine optimization transacts with the data and design related issues which are necessary to solve the
issue with ranking or rating of a site. The task of search engine optimization is not confined to a single
attempt as it hinders testing through trace and slip technique, updating on a regular basis, enhancing the
performance level periodically so that the rank of the site is preserved. For this purpose, the companies
generally contract out this task to the companies or individuals that are experts in this field. It is
estimated that an approximation of about 500 billion articles are rendered in the Search engine. Hence a
particular website of a company may intend to face a lot of rivalry to gain a top rating.

The need for the optimization has risen with effective rate of marketing and client drawing capability
which is made possible through the optimization of the websites of the company. (g., Rita Vine)

From the above it can be concluded that, the search engine optimization is a method of augmenting the
visibility of the websites of the business. The search engine optimization will employ a specific axiom or
key constraints for the particular websites so that, when the abuser types that specific phrase will list
out the website of the business. So trafficking will mainly depend on the efficiency of the phrases that
are coated by the website. And for this purpose, updating of the content on the site is very important.
The companies generally lease out to other associations for updating.

3.2 WORKING OF SEO


(Scott Willoughby, 2009)

The working of the search engine is very crucial to understand the concept in depth. The search engines
generally optimize a particular webpage whose key phrase or constraint which is very small and unique
is coined once after the optimization form is submitted then based on the amount of the frequency of
the searching it is ranked as first few search results. Hence this will improve the traffic when a search for
a particular phrase is carried out by the client. Periodical updation of the content is carried out by the
search engines so as to support the sites at the similar rating.

The search engines can be classified in to two different forms namely human power-driven and the
other is crawler supported engine. Hence the working is done at a step by step process in the row as
detection of appropriate key phrases, evaluating the intensity of competition, optimization of the page,
and building of the links of the web pages, acquiescence, investigating and modification and reporting.

Crawler supported Engine: this type of a search engine is intended to send a spider to follow various
sites and the findings of the spider are added to the indexes of the search engine. The updation of the
websites is done once in every return of the spider as it brings the latest information by searching.
Hence when the search is commenced in this engine, the total index is searched for the matches with
the searched phrase. Example for the Crawler type of a search engine is Google. The index is a form of
bulky catalogue that stores a copy of each web page that the spider uncovers and revise the index.

Human driven search engines: this type of search engine will need a small depiction of the article such as
name of the author or the name of the particular company that will be matched with the directory of the
engine. This type of the search engine will not differ the rating of a particular site either by updation of
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the new pages but instead add the new stuff so that each page can be searchable. The example for this
type of a search engine is Look Smart.

Hybrid Search engine: At present various search engines use both the above techniques for optimization
of content of web pages in to the index which are referred as ‘hybrid search engines’. An example for
this type of search engine is MSN and Yahoo.

From the above discussion it can be concluded that, the working of the search engine optimization very
crucial before start optimizing a site. This will continue in a particular flow of process such as detection
of appropriate key phrases, evaluating the intensity of competition, optimization of the page, and
building of the links of the web pages, acquiescence, investigating and modification and reporting. The
search engines can be of various categories such as crawler supported, human power driven and hybrid
search engines. Each will confine a separate system of searching process. In the crawler system, a spider
is sent to follow various sites and the resultant findings of the spider are added to the indexes of the
search engine done after giving a single phrase in the search engine options. The process in the human
driven will need a small description or the name of the author of the writings so that search will be
commenced. The hybrid form of the search engine will depict both the initial systems of searching
processes so that maximum search capability is provided in this form.

The ranking or rating of the websites will be given to the webpage’s of the crawler type of a search
engine depending on the degree of significance. The significance of a matching of the phrase with the
defined key words is done by employing the algorithm that will differ with each type of a search engine
however the functioning of the algorithms is similar such as:

Key constraints tracing: the headlines, title tags or the opening two snippets are checked by the search
engines to trace the atmost matching phrase with the content.

Key constraint frequency: the frequency of a particular constraint is checked by the search engine such
that the frequency of the word will predict the accuracy of the site.

Spam prevention: the spam formation for example like assessing of click through and scrutiny of the link
etc is not restricted by the search engine optimization.

From the view of the author above, it is evident that the crawler system of the search engine
optimization will predict the rating of a particular site based on the no. of times the index phrase on the
particular site is searched. The rating will depend on the significance of the phrase coined by the
website. An algorithm will decide the search ability of the site that has various functions such as key
constraint tracing, key constraint frequency checking and spam prevention.

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3.3 BENEFITS OF SEO
(Andrew B. King, July 2008)

The Search engine Optimization has gained a lot of boom with the growing technological impedition and
with the increased abusers of internet have further increased the importance. The Search engine
optimization has various benefits for a business as follows:

The axioms or the key constraints highlighted will promote superiorly among the audience both
regionally as well as globally. This will be very beneficial for the companies that work overseas.

The search engine will augment the degree of traffic for the website of the particular business when
operated with significant and most relevant axioms and key words. The SEO will intend to convert the
traffic of searchers in to potential clients and hence it is considered as the best way to increase the
business.

The visibility aspect of the website of the company will commence after the optimization process. Hence
the unique services and products of the particular business company is perceptible by the users. (Brad
Callen)

The search engine optimization is observed to be most functional and beneficial when compared to any
other type of conventional marketing

The search engine optimization is effective to increase huge earnings on returns on Investment when
compared to all other marketing forms. This will improve the sales and profits of the company.

The ranking provided by the SEO will help to stay the companies’ website for reference for a very long
time and is a very cheaper approach compared to other methods.

The target clients can be approached through a search engine optimization. This will increase the search
ability and traffic depending on the company’s strategies.

It will be a very cost effective that need very few amount of capital for the industries to optimize and
draw traffic.

From the above discussion it can be understood that, the search engine optimization will provide lethal
advantages to the businesses such as controlling the traffic volume, increased sales and revenues, high
profits, more benefited way of advertising of the services and products of a company, cost effective, high
range of visibility, global and local visibility, lesser capital for investment etc.

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3.4 TRADITIONAL METHODS
(Telnic Limited. 2009)

The traditional approach has various defects to have deficiency in the customary configuration that
mainly concentrate on the data presentation techniques that may draw higher traffic but are least
bothered about the type of information in that article. Hence the SEO is been applying complex
algorithms that are able to estimate the level of consistence from the view of onlooker.

From the above it is evident that the traditional approaches have the above discussed two forms such as
crawler and human driven form of searching options. Earlier to this searching engine option, the web
pages were submitted to many of the directories that will have a copy of the same article in each search
engine.

3.5 LIMITATIONS OF SEO


(Kody Rylas, Dave Young )

The Search engine Optimization has various issues and limitations. Few of these are discussed as follows:

1. Limitation regarding idioms and key constraints: for a particular site under the search engine
optimization, the main limitation is faced ion the form of non adequacy with the particular axioms and
key constraints merged for the particular website. This will be a major drawback that may reduce the
traffic of the humane to that particular site. This is occurred due to confusion for picking appropriate
axiom.

2. Limitation for competing: the competition in increase when two different websites coats for the
same axiom or key constraints. In this situation, the websites shall be faced to withstand to reach a
particular rank.

3. Limitation of sub pages: the sub pages of the websites also shall maintain the axioms and key
constraints which shall be in a position to update each time to stay updated so as to hike the rating and
increase the traffic. [Scott Willoughby, 2009]

4. Linguality: Most of the traditional Search Engine optimizers work on a particular language
medium which may be limiting the search to a particular geography.

5. Limitation of crawl ability: the crawling nature will be limited when passing through millions and
millions of web pages and hence speed of the search will be affected.

6. Limitation of duplication: the duplication of a similar web page is occurred in the search engine
when a particular page is submitted with the similar content various times.

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Once the optimization of the websites takes place the above mentioned limitations may occur. This type
of limitations can be effectively reduced by various innovative techniques few of which are discussed
here.

From the above discussion it can be concluded that, the search engine optimization holds various
limitations that will reduce the efficiency of the business. Few of the limitations are inconsistent phrases
and key constraints, limitation due to high competition level, limitation of the sub pages, Linguality
problem, limitation of crawl ability, concern of the duplication of the web pages in the index of the
search engine.

3.6 INNOVATIONS IN SEO


(David Wallace, (September 2003)

The Search engine optimization is considered to be the traditional method in the present age. The
innovative technique implemented by the Pay per Click method or PPC method. has predicted that as
the search engine optimization method has various issues to get identified or ranked this will be an
optimistic and innovative approach. As the SEO will confide with the difficulty in the coining of specific
idioms or keywords which is very much significant with the current commerce may end up with the
client trafficking concern. If the search words are not appropriate these websites are not listed.

From the above it can be concluded that in order to overcome the limitations of the traditional search
engine optimization, various innovations are being emerged with the advancement in the technology in
the recent times. The author has explained the difficulty in coining the phrases or axioms which are
exact matches with the services or product of the website of the company as this may reduce the traffic
of the clients diverted if they are listed appropriately. Hence the innovation stood from overcoming this
issue.

PPC, Pay per Click:

(Veri Sign, June 2007)

The innovation of the pay per click concept can be understood from its name assigned that a certain
price is allocated at each click for a particular phrase or a keyword in those sites. The prices of the
particular click may heavily vary from $ .10 to about $50. This price is generally specified by the
willingness of the promoter. Various sites such as Google Ad words and Overture etc are some of the
examples of this kind. This type of a service will hold the benefits of hectic marketing opportunity and
higher traffic for a particular site and keyword. The benefits for a particular PPC are that these sites will
circulate the paid listings to its affiliate sites. For example when a particular site marked one of the top 3
ranks in Overture; it will be automatically listed in its affiliate sites such as HotBot, Lycos, Yahoo, iWon,
Alta Vista, Info space etc along few more minor S E and meta creepers. The extensibility nature of these
sites is a major benefit which will overcome the limitations due to traffic. (Manoj Kotak)

From the above discussion on the innovation techniques in the search engine optimization, it can be
concluded that the concept of pay per click is regarded as an optimistic approach that has been drawn to
over come the problem with the traffic of the clients to a particular site instantaneously. The concept of
pay per click, as the name implies, will charge price for every single click made by the user. The charged
intended to pay by the particular site will depend on the agreement and willingness of the promoter.
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Generally at present various websites are paying from $ .10 to about $50 per click. Google Ad words and
Overture is an example of this approach. HotBot, Lycos, Yahoo, iWon, Alta Vista, Info space etc are
various trivial search engines that will have circulated list of the top rated websites from the main search
engine. This is concerned to be a major success factor of pay per click.

(W.D. Okla. May 27, 2003)

The other type of latest innovations are being designed so as to decrease a particular limitation of the
traditional search engine optimization for example like, the limit for the duplication that was observed
due to the reasons for submission of similar content several

times in to a larger index of the search engine crawler is reduced by a process that will effectively filter
the duplicate internet pages from the search index from the penalty on the content. This will protect the
original copy of that page and filters the reaming duplicates. This type of a service is observed in the
Google search engine where filtering done by the Bot which have separate Google duplication policy.

From the above description of the innovative approach of Google, it can be understood that the major
limit of the traditional search engine is the concern about the duplication that arises due to the
submission of the same article numerous times. This concern is overcome by employing the penalty for
the duplicates and deleting them by keeping a single original copy of it. As this may delete many pages,
the crawling through million counts of websites will speed up.

(Sergey Brin and Lawrence Page)

The latest innovations of the search engine optimization are the introduction of effective tools such as
backline tracker, Website Location Tool, Free Search For Your Website, Meta Tag Generator, Search
Engine Position Analyzer, Google Ad Sense Tool, Keyword Suggestion Tool, Back link Tracker Tool, Google
Ad Sense Graphs, Free Web Counter Google, Google Page Rank Tool, All Datacenters Watch Tool, and
Keyword Ranking Monitor. All theses tools are advanced and will provide effective searching capability
for the user.

From the above, it can be concluded that, the limitations of the traditional search engine are overcome
by employing innovative tools such as Website Location Tool, Free Search For Your Website, Meta Tag
Generator, Search Engine Position Analyzer, Google Ad Sense Tool, Keyword Suggestion Tool etc that not
only increases the speed and accuracy but also will help to draw high traffic.

(Click cart pro) it has proposed the high definition Search engine optimization on the XMOD that is able
to morph the URLs generated by default Search Engine Optimization technique in to superiorly
distinctive custom search engine URLs.

In conclusion, the concept of XMOD when employed in the traditional or conventional Search engine will
transform the general URLs to superiorly distincted custom search engine URLs which will be useful for
the business purpose.

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Benefits of the innovations for the businesses:

The benefits of the latest innovations over the traditional search engine optimization are as follows:

 The innovation has optimistically reduced the process of duplication of the original content of
the web pages
 Increased the speed of the searching capability of the crawler
 The scalability nature has augmented
 Improved efficacy and traffic for the business
 High ratings are possible

From the above it can be concluded that, the benefits of the new innovations on the traditional search
engine for the business purpose is to increase the traffic, reduce duplication, augment the speed of
searching, scalability, improved efficacy etc.

Benefits of Pay per click process: (Tutorials 26 Pay Per Click (PPC) 101)

 As the name implies it will provide price for every click on a particular website of the company.
 The concept of Pay per click technique will be able to control the quantity of the traffic.
 It will increase the exposure globally when compared to traditional process.
 Other than the traditional approach of organic searching function, the process is able to control
the content of the description that will divert the user in the website.
 Most beneficial technique compared to the traditional approach
 It is considered to be a source for the instantaneous traffic and creation of leads.
 Track ability is the major benefit for the business purpose

Consistency of the advertisements of the Pay per click while it may disappear for a free search.

From the above the benefits of the innovative approach of pay per click for the business better control
over the human traffic, instantaneous traffic generation, high rate of exposure both globally and locally,
very beneficial as it is resulted as the best internet marketing concept, trackability nature will also help
the website to track the user moves.

3.7 GOOGLE PAGE RANK


(SOBEK, Markus, 2002)

Search engines have developed several ways to rank the pages; most common form of ranking a page is
the availability of the search phrase or the keywords that are typed in the search box. For better search
results and to make the search engines resistant against automatically generated webpages, link
popularity was also started to use. According to this concept; the number of inbound links for a
document measures its general importance. Therefore a webpage is considered to be more important if
many other webpages link to it

3.8 OFF SITE SEO


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(HUBSPOT, 2012)

Offsite SEO is executed with building relationships with other websites with the creation of attractive
contents or reaching out to the people who run the websites. This process is also known as link building.

As we know that Internet is an interlinking network of pages and the websites, interlinking or back
linking from different websites to our pages would definitely help in improving the ranks in the search
engines. Back linking in the major publications or educational websites could be more powerful than the
normal links (HUBSPOT, 2012). There are various forms of back linking. Some of the general ways of back
linking are explained in section.

3.9 ON SITE SEO


(CARREL, Jacqui, 2012)

Unlike the offsite SEO as described earlier on site SEO is carried out within the website in terms of
contents and Meta tags. On site SEO is more about having the best keywords for each page and making
the page contents relevant to those keywords. This process of optimization is fully under our control and
if done correctly it will change the way that search engines see our websites. It can either hurt or help
our search engine results page SERPs

There are different aspects of onsite SEO which are explained in section 3.9.1 to 3.9.3

3.9.1 CONTENT

Content is the king to any website. Contents in the websites should be such that the audience of the
website will find it valuable and engaging. Apart from the contents in each page, which has to be,
relevant to the keywords the way pages are formatted also matters the most. Every page in the website
should have something for the user to stick on to the page either by including bold headlines or some
phrases which grabs the user’s attention. Including some pictures in the Webpages also helps draw users
attention, fonts size, background color are also important from the user point of view. (HUBSPOT, 2012)
(CARREL, Jacqui, 2012)

3.9.2 KEYWORDS PLACEMENT

(FLEISCHNER, Michael H., 2011)

One should focus on the number of the keywords that are placed in the web pages.

Some people believe that overdosing of the keywords could result in attaining good SERP, which is not
true. Overdoing of the keywords on the pages could actually get penalized by Google; therefore the
amount of the keywords on a page has to be critically examined. The number or the frequency of using
the keywords in a page is known as the keyword density. Generally the gurus suggest the keyword
density to be around 2 to 3 percentages.

According to (FLEISCHNER, Michael H., 2011) he describes the following use of the key words to attain
maximum profitability for the website.

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Placing the keywords in the title tag, description tag, keyword tag and the alt tag. Placing the keywords
in an <h1>, <h2>, and/or <h3> tag.

Placing the keywords in the first 25 words of the page. Placing the keywords in the last 25 words of the
page. Using bold keywords at least once in the webpage.

3.9.3 SITEMAPS

(FLEISCHNER, Michael H., 2011)

Sitemaps is referred to the page in the website that contains all the information about the website. It
provides access to all other pages in the website. According to. There are generally two purposes of the
sitemaps

Makes it easy for visitors to find contents in the site Enables search engines spider the websites quicker.

Mostly the sitemaps are created in HTML or XML, which is an easy task for most of the people using an
HTML editor. The sitemap has to have a single page which links the other most important pages in the
website. This site map has to be updated regularly, which allows the contents to be updated.

3.10 GOOGLE ANALYTICS


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(Google Analytics, 2013)

Google Analytics is a service offered by Google that generates detailed statistics about a website’s traffic
and traffic sources and measures conversions and sales. Google analytics can be used to see where
particularly a click for a website has come from, for instance whether it is from the search engines, or
from the social media such as Facebook, tweeter, from referrals, e -mail marketing and so on.

All these statistics are then saved in the form of a data and then can be analyzed and interpreted later
on. Using these data from the Google analytics one can easily make decisions such as the
increment/decrement in the traffic, support decision making, and to figure out how a particular search
word or a phrase has implications in the traffic generated.

Fig 13 Statistics on a website according to the types of visits (Google Analytics, 2013)

Chapter 4

FINDINGS & ANALYSIS


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Survey was done to analyze if the results obtained from the survey correspond with the theory as
explained in the literature review. The data obtained would be valuable and would help in gaining
discrete results after analyzing the demographics. The questionnaires were also sent to the experts in
SEO. Questionnaires were sent to people via social media, emails and other forms. There were 50
people who answered the survey and the analysis of survey results is done as under.

Area of interest

What is the area of your Area of focus?

26%

SEO Web Development Content writing Others

People were asked to include their area of focus or their interests and the result is seen in the

pie chart below 26% of people had their interest in search engine optimization, 18% of people´s

area of focus was seen to be web development where as others, 52% of people were engaged

in something different or had expertise in something else.

Opinion of participants in the effectiveness of online advertising for cost


saving.

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Is Online advertising a cost saving strategy for new and medium
size enterprises?

16%

8%

Yes No Cant say

76%

Similarly another research question was to know if online marketing really helps in cost saving for
new and medium sized enterprise.The results from the participants showed that that 76 % of people
believe that online marketing really helps in cost saving for new and medium sized enterprises
whereas only 8 % of the total respondents thought that it wasn’t the case.

Use of search engine prior to making any purchases.

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How often do you use Search engine prior to making any purchase?

4%

16%

32%

Always Frequently Rarely Never

To find out the purchasing behaviour of the individuals question was asked if they actually use
search engines such as Google, Bing and so on to find out something they are looking for and to
analyse the product beforehand. The result of the question showed that 32 % of people always
used search engines prior to making any purchase and 48 % of them frequently used search
engines. It was only almost 4% of them who never used any kind of search engines to find any
information on the product or to find the product to be purchased beforehand.

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Frequency of moving to the next pages of search engines.

How often do you move to the next pages of Search engine


results after the seeing the result in the first page?

13%

33%

Always Sometimes Never

After finding out the use of search engines prior to making any purchases people were asked if
they jump to the next page of the search engines after viewing the results in the first page.17 % of
people answered that they actually moved on to the next page whereas there were many people
i.e. 54% of them who sometimes moved on to the next page and 33% never moved on to the next
page after seeing the results on the first page. This suggests that being visible in the first page in
the search engine is important to find the targeted customers so they don’t move to the next
page.

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Keywords used in the search engines

WHAT KIND OF KEYWORDS DO YOU USE WHEN SEARCHING FOR


SOMETHING IN A SEARCH ENGINE?

Doesn't matter

Short
keywords

Long
keywords

Most commonly used keywords

Next question was to know what kind of keywords people actually use to find out the things
they were looking for in the search engines.30 % of people used short keywords for their
search whereas the same number of people used the most common keywords, only a few of
them were actually going for long tailed keywords this means the results people were getting
out of the search pages were the general ones and not concentrated on a fixed thing. There
are a lot of pages, which use the same keywords to be visible in the search engine. On top of
that there are the paid search results that appear above the organic search results. Therefore
being well known in the Internet is of utmost importance if the listing in the search engine
has to be in the first page to find out potential customers.

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Social media marketing as an important tool for online/small business.

DO YOU THINK ONLINE/SMALL BUSINESS CAN BENEFIT FROM


SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING

Can't say

No

Yes

The participants were asked if social media marketing helps online/small business to gain
popularity and to increase the sales and the positive result of almost 82% respondents suggests
that social media marketing really helps in small and online businesses, whereas 6% said no.

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SEO for Internet marketing

Do you think SEO can lead to a proper Internet marketing?

7%

Yes No

It was essential to find the responses from the participants to the question whether
search engine optimization can lead to a proper Internet marketing or not. The response
of 46 people 93 % of them, with a positive answer showed that it is a very essential tool
for Internet marketing.

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Benefits of Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)

WHAT DO YOU THINK CAN BE THE BEST OUTCOME FOR SEO?

improve social media activity

Ranked
high on
the search
engine

All the above

Increase
traffic to
your
website

In the final question of the survey, the participants were asked if there are any other
benefits of search engine optimization.48% of the total respondents thought that search
engine optimization had the following benefits:

- Ranked high in search


engines
- Increase the number of
potential customer
- Increases traffic to the
website
- Improve social media activity

People also thought the individual importance of the above-mentioned points as the
benefits of SEO.

This response from the people shows that the importance of search engine optimization is
just not limited in a certain caption.

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CONCLUSIONS

SEO contribute in increasing the opportunity to observe online advertisement by customers when
they search engines like Google, MSN, Altavista etc for information about product or services.
This could be extremely important especially in a country like India which has second highest
number of internet users. Singh et al. (2011) mentioned more than 90% people select the product
from first page only and out of that 90% more than 80% select the product or services from first
three or four. Based on this fact, this research aims to explore the impact of SEO on online
advertisement. Companies who are using the SEO for the purpose of online advertisement are
getting more new customer than the companies using the other methods.

The main goal of this paper was to determine if the rules/techniques of search engine
optimization as described by the gurus really works in order to make a newly formed
website/internet business visible in the search listings.

To come to the conclusion detailed statistics from Google analytics for the website along the survey
results from people were used. Getting ranked in the first page of search results in Google or other
search engines in the organic listing means that there would be more and more people to visit the
website. This creates the potentiality or will actually help in the marketing of the product that is
being intended to sell in the website.

This research reflects that search engine optimization has a huge implication in Internet
marketing.

The following were the research questions which were intended to be answered by the end of this
thesis /research

Is search engine optimization an effective tool for Internet marketing?

Is search engine optimization effective to get listed /ranked in Google search? Is it relevant for

online/small and medium enterprises to perform search engine optimization?

With all the explanations and the relevant case study presented above, the research questions were
answered. Search engine optimization has proven to be an effective tool for internet marketing in a
form that it comes along with the improvement of the search listing in the search results, hence

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making it more visible in the search engines, and the higher the visibility the greater is the
marketing.

Search engine optimization is a very effective tool to get listed/ranked in Google search and in other
search engines as well. The research and the data from Google analytics showed that during the
initial months when optimization was not done it wasn’t listed in the search results whereas after a
couple of months of optimization there has been significant improvement in the listing in the
Google search.

Online /small and medium enterprises can get a lot from search engine optimization as has the
developers/entrepreneurs in plagiarism avenger done. The product, a content monitoring plugin
which was created had a huge potential. With the mixture of SEO of the website which led to its
visibility in the web pages the company had made profits selling the entire website along with the
copyright of the content monitoring plugin that was developed.

The data were collected from the students of Thakur college of science and commerce. The
questionnaires were also sent to the experts in SEO of the company. The research would be much
more applicable if results from many other experts were also collected.

Since we have countless number of factors that affect SEO, it's very essential for companies to
choose the appropriate tools to be used. For example, the company must choose carefully the
web site's title, meta description, headings, and page content that search engines can recognize
better than others.

SEO can be beneficial by giving an advantage to high quality sites; such improvement in the quality
of search results will attract more consumers. SEO is an important tool to increase a site's visibility
for advertisers who can afford to pay more. Consequently, the main value of SEO is to avoid the
potentially hefty payments for sponsored clicks.

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SUGGESTIONS
There are various other tips related to SEO. We have not categorized them into any special category
and hence, putting these in miscellaneous category.

To-Do List

 There are various other tips which can help you to optimize your website for many search
engines.

 Create logs of pages and each page should however contain a minimum of about 200 visible
words of text to maximize relevance with Google.

 Create a Sitemap, Help, FAQ, About Us, Link to Us, Copyright, Disclaimer, Privacy Policy
pages on mandatory basis.

 Create a homepage link to each and every webpage and provide easy navigation through all
the pages.

 Pay attention to your dynamic page URLs. Google can crawl and index dynamic pages as long
as you don't have more than 2 parameters in the URL.

 Check your complete site for broken links. Broken links will reduce your other pages rank as
well.

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Don't

 Don't keep hidden text on your webpages.

 Don't create alternate image spamming by putting wrong keywords.


 Don't use meta tags stuffing.

 Don't use frames and flash on your site.

 Don't exchange your links with black listed sites.

 Don't try to fool your site visitors by using misspelled keyword.

 Don't send spam emails to thousands of email IDs.

 Don't use too much graphics on your site. Don't create too many doorway

pages.

 Don't try to create duplicate content of pages.

 Don't submit your website many times in a single search engine. Don't use sub-directory

depth more than 1-2.

 Don't create too many dynamic pages. Try to convert them into static pages. Don't bloat
your pages with code.

 Don't nest your pages.

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CHAPTER 9

APPENDIX

The set of questionnaire addressed to the people to gather relevant demographics.

Questionnaire

1) What is the area of your focus/expertise?

1. Search Engine Optimization


2. Web development
3. Content writing
4. Others

2) Do you think online marketing is a cost saving strategy for new and medium sized
enterprises?

1. Yes
2. No
3. Can’t say

3) How often do you use search engines prior to making any purchases?

1.Always
2.Frequently
3.Rarely
4.Never

4) How often do you move to the next pages of search engine results after seeing the
results in the first page?

1. Always
2. Sometimes
3. Never

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5) What kind of keywords do you use when searching for something in a search engine?

1. Short keywords

2. Long keywords

3. Most commonly used keywords

4. Doesn’t matter

6) Do you think online /small businesses can be benefited from social media
marketing (Facebook, twitter, YouTube etc.)?

1. yes
2. No
3. can’t say

7) Do you think Search Engine Optimization can lead to a proper Internet marketing?

1. Yes

2. No

8) What do you think can be the best outcomes of search engine optimization?

1. Ranked high in the search engines


2. Increase traffic to your website
3. Improve social media activity
4. Increase the number of potential customers
5. All of the above

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