We tend to change the way of our living, which is actually impacted by the presence of others on your friend list or the people ...]]> Social Media is not just a channel for connecting with people anymore. As we have seen Social Media has impacted our lifestyle extensively, and it’s not only when we are on our profiles of the desired Social Media platform, but in our real life too.

We tend to change the way of our living, which is actually impacted by the presence of others on your friend list or the people you follow. Twitter has impacted through microblogging; it is surprising how just a 160 character tweet can make such an impression that people get inspired, motivated, feel the need of transformation and so much more. You can imagine when 160 characters can make such an impact what would hundreds of images and apps and videos along with catchy text would do.

Facebook has turned out to be the platform which has changed the way people shop now. Ecommerce is nothing new to us, but the impact of Social Media on ecommerce is something which is surprising when it comes to numbers about the impact.

As per a survey conducted by Jana (a company that takes surveys and can send airtime to 3.48 billion people around 102 countries in return of the survey) about the impact of Social Media on their shopping habits proved that in majority of the countries a great role is played by the Social Media. The survey presented various channels like Articles (Printed or online), Blogs, Review Websites, Social Media and the Company Website as options to choose from , and the one that received the majority of votes was for Social Media.

If anyone wants to gather information about the product they want to purchase, Social Media is the channel they like to look for the insights of the product, either through the company page on Facebook, Twitter or to see what their connections or peers are talking about the product.

Isn’t that really convenient that if you are looking for a true insight, all you have to do is update a status asking reviews about a product and you get it all from your own peers. Brands too enjoy this channel for connecting with their consumers, and they always tend to make their presence as appealing as possible. Brands also try to keep an eye on what people are talking about them, and they are always keen to address every question and concern that presented.

The numbers are surprising in the survey, but this was anticipated by the Social Media and digital marketing experts. Social Media has impacted our lives in a lot of ways, so shopping was not going to be any different.

 Now, there are other factors affecting too, as Panda concentrates ...]]> As Matt Cutts announced at the SMX west conference, held at San Jose Convention Center on this Monday, March 11, a new Panda update is about to be released on March 15 or by 18. Panda algorithm by Google has its concentration on providing rich user experience through relevant and quality content pages on higher results of a Google search.

 Now, there are other factors affecting too, as Panda concentrates on the content and on-page SEO, Google also has Penguin. Penguin penalizes Black hat SEO techniques like keyword stuffing, cloaking, link exchange schemes and duplicate content. It also states that anchor texts or links to your website which are placed on another website, should be there by free will of the website owner and not manipulatively or commercially placed. Just like wordpress.com’ information hub WPMU.org was penalized because as every wordpress install, this also stated on the footer the theme type being used and the provider of the theme, for example you see on the bottom of a website “powered by wordpress”.

Google’s last panda update affected 1.2% of search engine queries in English, like every time there are losers and winners after every update. If someone loses a high ranking obviously some other website catches the spot. The websites majorly affected were hubpages.com, mahalo.com and suite101.com.

In the beginning losers list was topped by Ezinearticles.com, as they have a similar and low quality content stuffed up in the form of submitted articles. Whereas SEO master website seomoz.org claims that their organic search result traffic has increased by 49% since the first update was released in February 2011.

What would be exactly in the upcoming update is anyone’s guess, as it is yet to be released, but for all we know from the past updates, that the motto of Google remains the same, that is to remove spam off the web. If you don’t have your website’s unnatural links or anchor texts on other websites, and you keep low quality content off your websites, you have nothing to worry about, just keep up the good work.

Advertisement ratio on your website is a factor which can affect you, as the anti-spam team of Google is against ads all over your website. Keep an optimum number of advertisements, use Adsense, and follow Google’s guidelines of best practices for ad placements.

It is also said that a new generation penguin would also be coming by the end of this year, it is guessed that it is going to be the much awaited merchant quality algorithm, but guesses don’t work when it is about what’s going on inside the mind of distinguished engineer from Google.

What will come in these updates is not in our hands, but the thing we should do is, follow the basic principles of quality content, relevant information, White hat SEO practices and the most important point of enhancing user experience of our websites.