Web Marketing Strategy Update

On May 3rd, 2012, LinkedIn announced its plans to purchase SlideShare – a website that lets professional users create and host video and PDF presentations online – for a whopping $118.8 million. This high-profile acquisition report caught many by surprise, but LinkedIn’s Chief Executive Jeff Weiner knows exactly what they’re doing. Weiner noted that the presentation-sharing website is a good platform that captures and shares the experiences of professionals that help shape their identity.

Beyond Presentations

More than just that, however, SlideShare is actually bigger than one can imagine. How big, you ask? Just imagine nine million uploads and 29 million unique users each month. Not equally at par with Facebook, but such figures are good enough to make a brand for oneself. Nevertheless, it’s Google-indexed and is frequented by reporters, buyers and senior executives alike. With all these things, it definitely makes sense that Weiner is interested to purchase SlideShare. And if you are a small business owner, don’t you think you should be interested to use SlideShare as well?
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While many of us may sneer at checklists as being condescending and unhelpful (I used to myself), several recent studies have demonstrated how effective they can be at eliminating mistakes and improving efficiency.

In one such study a group of doctors were given checklists to go through before surgery, and asked to check them each time a patient came in. Many found the process degrading as the items on the checklist were so simple and apparently obvious.

But after a few months it was found that this strategy did actually help to significantly reduce the number of errors, and was subsequently taken up by the institutions on a permanent basis.
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Is the internet is poised to offer humanity the most critical element of an advanced society – absolute competition enveloped in absolute transparency, where every product and service is taken as a market driven result? In a market driven economy, it is the individual that determines who receives the accolade and who is cast to the depths of electronic obscurity.

While we are used to thinking of search engines determining which site ranks well and which doesn’t, that view is only completely true over the short term. In reality, the search engines are acutely listening to how customers feel about the website by looking at the bounce rate. A bounce is a visitor who immediately returns to the engine to perform another search. Engines measure the bounce rate of every visit. If the bounce rate of a site is high to begin with it will be very hard to even get it ranked. So clever web masters have devised ways to keep a customer on the site just long enough so that the bounce rates are managed.
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With social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter attracting millions of followers, savvy internet marketers have made them the cornerstone of their marketing efforts.

The power of social media’s reach is immense to say the least, and this makes them a perfect tool for driving traffic to your website. In fact, you don’t need high search engine rankings at all in order to take advantage of social media traffic.

But let’s face it, doesn’t everyone want to rank higher on the search engines? Enter social media once again. In fact, these sites have a direct impact on SEO. Here’s why.

The Search Engines Take Ranking Signals From Social Media

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