Ananya SEO Services was set up in November 2009 by a small group of IT industry senior executives to provide  professional internet marketing services. Within three years it has acquired and successfully delivered results for clients from India, USA and UK.  Staring with just SEO services,  Ananya’s product offerings rapidly expanded to include PPC advertising management, Social Media Marketing and Web development services.

Ananya SEO Services was set up in November 2009 by Anand Rao, an alumnus of Indian Institute of management, Ahmedabad. With more than two decades of experience in leading IT services companies in India, he realized there was a substantial underserved market in the small businesses and non-profits  sector for   affordable search engine optimization services by a company which is transparent and professional. Small organizations, such as NGOs and serviced apartments operators, do not have any experience in SEO or PPC ads. They are often unable to articulate their goals and expectations from a SEO vendor and find selecting a vendor challenging.
Our  mission is to provide affordable search engine marketing services to small businesses and non-profits , who would find services provided by bigger companies beyond their budget.  We have stuck to our principles of providing transparent and ethical services. We have never guaranteed SEO outcomes despite risk of losing clients.

Ananya is celebrating  its third anniversary with a special deal for customers. Clients who sign up and pay online between today and 30 November for SEO or PPC management  services would get 25% discount on SEO Pricing Plans and PPC Management  Plans.

The case discussed in this article illustrates what could happen when a local (region or subsidiary in a country) of a multi-national company (MNC) feels under-served by its parent’s internet marketing campaign when it sees that  local website is ranked poorly in organic search.

A multi-regional website is one that targets users in various regions (generally different countries). Implementing websites for multiple regions (usually countries) presents several challenges from SEO perspective, chief being duplicate content and showing pages from correct version of website to visitor from a region.
The objective is to have one Web site for U.K. visitors, one site for Indian visitors, and another for U.S. visitors. The intention is to have each Web site ranking in one country, that is India site should be ranked for visitors in India. Given this objective, this is not a duplicate content scenario. The search engines should  permit the intended behavior, since the web master is trying to offer a better experience for users through localization of the versions of the Web site.
The real challenge is a technical issue. Search engines use crawlers or spiders  that index pages and rank websit. This process is prone to error.
There are several options to creating multiple versions of your website from a single root domain controlled by parent company for its subsidiaries in various regions.
URL structures
Subdirectories with geographical TLDs
India website being example .com/in/
France site being example .com /fr/,  and so on

The advantages are that is  easy to set up and we  can use Webmaster Tools for geo-targeting.  The case gets complicated if for example the India site targets India, Bangladesh, Nepal and Sri Lanka.  It is not possible to geo-target multiple countries for same folder.

Subdomains with gTLDs
e.g. : de.site.com, in.site.com, etc
The advantages  of this approach that it is easy to set up, can use Webmaster Tools geo-targeting, each subdomain can be hosted in the target country,.
Geo-targeting in Webmaster Tools does not have the same impact  that using country level TLD, such as site.co.in gives, particularly if the site is hosted in same country.
A local vendor is retained to do SEO for the local version of website of the subsidiary.  The structure of multi-country website is, in normal practice, to set up one sub-domain or sub-folder for each country.

The challenges of SEO of single website version  of  a multi-regional site

–    Duplication of content. Google will rank generally only single page in search results, quite likely from that of parent site – thus frustrating local SEO. Use of  ‘rel=canonical’  does not help since each local unit/region  wants page from local site/sub-folder/sub-domain as case may be,  to rank high in search results
–    IT division of parent company may not trust the local SEO vendor. Hence access to website to modify content may not be given to local unit.
Single Google Analytics account for whole web site would have been set up. To see reports of pages from folder, filter (Advanced Segments)  has to be setup. Unfortunately at this point, there is no facility to create filter for the new seo reports (queries, landing pages from Google Webmaster account)  within Google Analytics.
To ensure the success of SEO campaign for country website, following things must be ensured :
–    Support of CIO of parent company
–    Congruence or agreement on objectives of SEO by local vendor and the country-unit  and parent company.
–    Support of CEO or CIO of the country-unit
SEO Issues
•    Directory submissions : many directories do not accept sub-domains or sub-folder as url to be listed
•    For B2B or technical products such as software, the same product is being offered in all countries and it is difficult to tailor content, beyond local variations in spelling, etc.

Google’s search results have been influenced by social signals to a limited extent  for years . To give a brief history, Google launched Social Search in October 2009 :

Google builds a social circle of your friends using the connections linked from your public Google profile, such as the people you’re following on Twitter or FriendFeed.  Chat buddies and contacts in your groups from Gmail,  some websites from your Google Reader  subscriptions are included in your social circle.

At that time Social Search was segregated from regular listings.  Google would provide  relevant public content from your friends and contacts and highlighted it for you at the bottom of your search results.

This further evolved in February 2011. Google’s social search results were blended into regular results in Febrary 2011 and grew to include not just content created by those you know but also content shared by them through a many social networks.

Notes were  added for links people have shared on Twitter and other sites. Content shared on Twitter, Google Reader, Quora, and other sites you and your contacts have listed in your Google Profiles are used by Google. A new Google Account setting allows you to add social networking accounts to your Google Profile while keeping the connections private.

Google Plus Buttons were launched  in June 2011. Larry Page has announced that 90 million users have signed up to Google Plus since launch : compelling evidence that Google Plus buttons are growing in importance.

What is Search Plus Your World

On 1/10/2012, Google announced roll out of Search Plus Your World,

Three new features have been introduced in social search:

1.    Personal Results, : Google will show  results personalized for yourself, such as Google+ photos and posts—both your own and those shared specifically with you,
2.     Profiles in Search,  auto-complete and results, will suggest profiles of people you’re close to or might be interested in following;
3.    People and Pages,  this will suggest  people profiles and Google+ pages related to a specific topic or area of interest, and you can choose follow them with just a few clicks.

Search plus Your World is available to people who are signed in and searching on https://www.google.com in English. E.g., it has not been rolled out to google.co.in

With Search Plus Your World, by default, there’s a new “Personal Results” view that appears. The view personalizes the listings you get based on both your own behavior and social connections. Now it includes content that’s been shared with you through the Google+ social network :   public Google+ posts, photos or Google Picasa photos  and private or “Limited” Google+ posts, photos or Google Picasa photos shared with you

You’ll be alerted that personalized results are appearing when you see one or both of the indicators :

•    a message that  says that there are “x personal results and xxx other results”
•    new toggle that allows you to switch between personalized and unpersonalized results.

Search Plus Your World doesn’t cover content on Facebook, Twitter, Flick, or other social networks  content might be shared to private audience.

You can opt-out permanently through the Search Settings area on Google. You can also opt-out on a per-search basis using the aforementioned toggle. Click on the globe symbol, and you’ll see unpersonalized results.

Your Search Plus Your World results are hidden behind https:// and no keywords will be linked to your search in any analytics programs.

After the success of Search Plus Your World , Google would surely fine-tune its algorithms to  introduce weighted social search signals into Google’s public web search results.

Google organic search was about finding the relevant results for anybody. Google Search Plus Your World is about finding the best results for you.

SEO in 2012 has become all about creating content that motivates people to share via by links or by circles. The conclusion is that you should put effort in optimizing your Google Plus Page, add Google Plus buttons on your web properties, like a Google +1 button to your WordPress blog posts and pages.

SEO for  Google+ Page

Search Plus Your World  makes it more important to create and focus on optimizing your Google Plus Page

Title or name of your Google+ Page :  use a business name, or keywords  in your Google+ Page’s Name section

Meta Description: You should include your keywords in description, and it may help you rank better in Search Plus Your World.

Photos : here you can add 5 main photos that would whenever someone looks at your Google Plus Page and could show up Search Plus Your World results . You can add keywords in photos.

Recommended Links : add  links that are relevant to business/brand/company, such as your website, Facebook Page, Blog. Use keywords as anchor text.

Introduction :
Describe your services/products. Here is a chance to put in your main keywords subtly.

Link Building

Build links to your Google+ Page with your keyword in your anchor text . Write guest posts with your Google Plus Page link in your author bio with a rel=”publisher” or rel=”author”

Update Frequently
Frequent updates in your Google+ Page (once or twice a week) will indicate that page is active. Fresh content is now part of Google’s algorithm, and so an active Google+ Page will help put it up in Search Plus Your World.

Promote your Google+ Page

Focus on building the number of people who add your Google Plus Page in their  circles.

Google has indicated that gaining +1s can help improve your ranking for those who have directly +1ed your content, as well as for those they are connected to. Should it appear for those who aren’t connected it will show  an overall +1 count for your page. This will help in click throughs.

Google completed its Caffeine web indexing system in 2010, which allows crawling and indexing  the web for fresh content quickly on an enormous scale. Drawing upon the  Caffeine infrastructure, Google has made what it calls a significant improvement to search ranking algorithm.

Google  announced  on 3 November 2011  a new search algorithm change which rewards ‘fresh content’.  Google claims to have rolled out a major  enhancement to its ranking algorithm  designed to yield more up-to-date relevant results for the following types of searches dependent on freshness :
1.    Breaking news or trending topics : when you search for current events like ‘confidence vote in Greece parliament’ you want to see up to the minute news, not a commentary which is days old. With this algorithm change, you should see more high-quality and freshest pages.

2.    recurring events : Events like Olympics, elections to parliament and conferences take place on recurring basis. When you search for ‘election results’, you are really looking for latest update to the elections that just took place, not the results of elections held 10 years ago.

3.    When most up to date content is relevant : information related to products or technology, places, politicians, and the like change frequently. When you search for ‘best compact digital cameras’, obviously you are looking for the latest cameras.
Google maintains that the search algorithm update will impact about 35% of searches.