Search has become integrated into the fabric of our society. With more than 197.9 billion searches performed worldwide each year since April 2014, more or less 6.6 billion web searches will be performed every day.  That means on an average about 7,500 searches are performed every single second of a day. Moreover; users have grown to wait for that the responses to their search queries will be returned in less than one second. 

If you have ever come across, the various “SEO is dead”,  that claims to make the rounds play periodically in the digital marketing world, rest assured — SEO is both alive and well — and has not as many feared and been killed by social media marketing as a driver of web traffic.  However, in November 2014, Twitter announced that by renewing its focus on SEO, it has increased the numbers of visitors coming to the site tenfold — from 7.5 million to 76 million visitors in a month. 

The demand for search continues to be high; because of the people can now obtain in mere seconds information that 20 years ago would have required planning a trip to the nearest library, the usage of card catalog and the Dewey Decimal system and a physical search through halls of printed volumes — a process that could easily have consumed two hours or more. Through the new channel of search, people can now conduct many of their favorite searches, shopping, banking and personal transactions online—somewhat the things have changed the way our global population lives, interacts, and connects to each other. 

The dramatic shift in behavior represents what the investors are likely to label a disruptive event – an event that has changed something in a fundamental way. Search Engines have been always the center of this disruptive event, and having businesses on website con-tent appears highly in the search engines when people try to look for the service, product or for any resource that business provides is critical to its survival. This is the situation for every business now and then; as most of the paths to success, obtaining such prime search results in real estate is not a simple matter. However, this is how the search engine optimization works in promoting your business.

The Mission of SEO

Web searches are free to use and yet very informative; as there are many available search engines to find what they are seeking, so the burden is on the search engines to develop a related, fast and fresh search experience. Most of the part search engines achieve this by being professed as having the most relevant results and delivering them the fastest, the users will search thinking that they will get them to what they are looking in for and want it in the least amount of time.

As a result, search engines invest an incredible amount of energy, time and capital in improving their significance. Thus, this includes performing wide studies of user responses to their searches, comparing their search results against those of other search engines, and conducting eye-tracking through a click- rate studies and constructing PR and other marketing campaigns.

How will SEO help businesses to Grow?

The recent survey says that the digital market and marketing through search engines is adequately grown as never compared.  The basic marketing strategy is always helpful for many businesses to grow, but is it that enough or do they still need to spend more time on marketing strategy is the big question in many organizations, companies or businesses.

Here is the answer— you can generate good revenue primarily with the help of Search engines through paid advertising; though the majority of this revenue will come from pay-per-use or cost-per-click models, in which the advertisers pay only for users who click on their ads. As we know that the search engines’ success depends on the relevance of their search results, manipulations in search engine rankings result in non-relevant results, and these type of results are generally referred to as spam, and should be dealt very seriously. Each major search engine employs a team who focuses solely on the result or eliminating the spam from their search results; this is generally referred as “web spam” teams. However, this matters to SEO professionals as they use more tactics to promote the products or service, and they should not land the spam by the search engines, as this would carry more risk of incurring penalties for the websites they work on.  

The Human Goals of Searching

When we need some sort of information, or to know something it all depends on upon your search. The basic goal of any human search is to obtain the information relevant to a specific set of keywords or phrases you enter into the search field; which is also known as a query. A searcher may invent the query as a question, but the majority of searches are performed by simply entering word combinations, and leaving the search engines to do their work of determining the “objective.” One  of the  most  important essentials to build an SEO strategy for a website is developing a thorough understanding of your targeted audience, and  how they use  combined words and  concepts to obtain information  about the  services or products you  provide. Once you know how an average searcher or more specifically your target market utilizes query-based search engines, you can more efficiently reach or retain those users.

Search engine usage has increased over the years; however, the major principle of conducting a search remains largely unchanged. Let us understand the following steps most of the search engine consists:

1. Understand the user experience and the need for information, what they are looking in for, on the specific website, or for any navigational search; they might want to buy something, or it may be about the transactional query also; or about any course relates thing – as in informational query.
2. Most of the users formulate their need by using a string of words or phrases comprising the query. The need and the use of the search may use for longer queries to generate more specific results more quickly.
3. Users execute the query, check the results and if they seek additional information, they will try a refined query again.

When this process results in the acceptable completion of a task, you can create a positive experience for the user by the search engine, and the site providing the information or the result.

We learn more on Digital Marketing strategies and how to determine Searchers Intent and the challenges for Search Marketers and Search Engines in our next blog.

When your customers value your business propositions, what should be the next is the question to be asked to every business entrepreneur today.  As per the recent survey, 80% of you do, but only 8% of your customers actually come back to you and agree that you provide superior value.

Now it’s not going to help you out as it is a sad state of affairs, for you and for your customers too. It’s self-evident that great customer satisfaction drives customers loyalty as well a wish to repeat your business levels to more or to next stage; this will, in turn, help you to grow fast and more generously with expected revenues.  Best example:  When you follow up on your sales leads and identified by your loyalty surveys that your revenue increases of more than you expected.

Since we know that everyone today is more cautious about keeping their date safe, collecting it, or using it to improve and maintain their customer relationship for as long as they can. But, back then there are still constraints on server and storage capacity, which leads to lack of high-scale software tools, limited companies’ ability to understand their customers.

Today, all that has changed, using the resources are available in the cloud, but how far, as you know that virtually unlimited amounts of cheap storage, complicated analytics, and gadget learning, to name a few is possible now to gain of detailed and actionable insights as never before; and you can truly know our customers.

Take an example: A famous sports franchise captures every interaction the championship team has with its fans from the website to online merchandising to mark on social feeds and grabs more attention towards its brands.

If you want to implement such advanced techniques to your business growth then there are tools available in the market such as Dynamics Online, Dynamics Marketing, Microsoft Office 365 and Power BI for Data Visualization.

Many businesses do not use application analytics for improving their customer relationships. According to Forrester, it’s more likely to use analytics first and foremost to monitor and improve the performance of your applications.  That’s a good thing to do- but if performance is all you need to monitor, as you are leaving your money on the table; make sure that your priorities in digital marketing must include by improving your customer engagement, your customers wants, which makes you too easy the work and measure convenience, personalization and trust.  

Successful companies including your competitors are increasingly aware that they are all inevitably becoming software and analytics companies.  All the data is in use or the data they collect from their customers can be analyzed to maximize your relationship and of course your profits. That means that software which is not ready must become a core competency for your company.

MARC ANDREESSEN famously remarked as venture capitalist a few years ago marked — Software, is “eating the world.”

The value proposition of Cloud computing — the delivery model for digitalization and innovation has evolved from cost reduction and scalability to mobility and cognitive computing.  However, the other benefit is a path to improve customer loyalty using cognitive services through a cloud to create personalized promotions and interactive customer support.

This thinking has extended the idea of a cloud assessment beyond traditional and advanced IT analytics that aimed to improve the customer experience and expectations. The purpose of this customer-centric approach is not which cloud is the best fit for any application; instead, it should, which cloud is the most innovative in adding to hosting services.

The cloud suitability assessment in traditional approach is to evaluate the IT systems using prearranged criteria and to identify the best suitable cloud hosting environment. By implementing such environment you can evaluate cost reduction, agility, scalability, and flexibility. However, such assessments often result in creating a hybrid cloud (private and public) for enterprise-level customers.

While based on every organization’s IT need and policies, it is crucial to tailor assessment criteria which are typically included on latency (performance), accessibility, hardware dependency, data security/privacy and demand certainty. Thus, the end result is to migrate your application to the cloud, but that is not enough to be competitive in many markets today.

However, these assessments are like foundations to new analysis which aims to transform traditional IT systems into cloud-based systems to enhance the customer based services. 

This new cloud assessment requires added evaluation criteria’s, such as cross-platform compatibility, integration involvedness, open technologies, and cognitive computing applicabilitys. These criteria’s can overlap with architectural design principles, and enable innovative services through IT systems running in the cloud.

Here are some questions that may help you to make out any gaps and achieve your innovative goals that go beyond legacy cloud migration.

• Is the cloud environment hypervisor sceptic to application portability?
• Is the cloud environment able to exchange in that it uses open technologies as OpenStack, Cloud Foundry or Spark?
• Will cognitive computing help you learn imperceptible patterns and enhance your services?
• Can the application architecture be converted into microservices with REST APIs; so each service can be separately updated as well as scale out on demand?
• Can APIs for multiple applications and services be centrally managed in the cloud?

This comprehensive assessment will make your systems or applications land in a cognitive ready cloud environment so you can speed up the design and implementation phase to innovative services.

The potential for these services is every time unlimited, so you need to consider the new insights made possible by cognitive computing. With the help of cognitive services process, you can see the tremendous amount of structured and unstructured data generated by billions of mobile devices every day.

It’s time to go beyond migrating your applications and systems into the cloud, and also look into its readiness for innovations how cloud and cognitive services could revolutionize your customer experiences.  By doing so you could drive your digital transformation.

• Diigo, Pocket, Evernote and Delicious are some of the famous bookmarking websites that allow the users to highlight any part of a webpage and attach sticky notes to specific highlights.  You can access to these WebPages anywhere and on any device.  By using, Diigo you can create your own personal library. Diigo is the preferred tool for educators.

• Diigo allows you to highlight the paragraphs and picture clips while you are reading.
• You can bookmark any page in your “virtual” library or online archive, even PDFs or videos.Add your own tags to search for information later.
• You can add your entire school or class in Diigo as a group, and share the resources as needed.For example, a physics class might share its content, online lessons, or practical assignments.

• Use a reader to subscribe to blogs.  You can do this through Google reader; as it allows you to manage multiple subscriptions to blogs; and you have easier access to new research.  You can also use an application like Yahoo News Social or Scribd to publically share what you read with others.
• Start your own platform. Consider establishing a blog site using Word Press or blogger.com.  A blog provides a worldwide platform to share your views, ideas and plans of education. Spread your passion and find kindred spirits, from there you can start develop lasting connections and plan new projects.  Make good followers and follow your fellow bloggers, as they will appreciate the time you put into creating significant materials. Your ideas can be then be re-shared as a link.
• Make use of Social Networks. Start sharing your ideas or content on Twitter first. You can use of technology and change anything using it, but Twitter is the most commonly used community among academics for expanding professional learning networks. Whereas,   LinkedIn, Facebook, and Google+ also provide access to different types of networks; but they are into more connecting professionals, family and friends rather than learning. However, you can use other tools to further expand and manage your network, such as Skype and Google tools. Many new platforms are emerging so stay connected to the current trends or be active participate of social media news sites like, Mashable, BBC, ToI, etc.

• Power your role, by introducing new topics, write-ups and by empowering your global learning; as ‘Individual Learning’, sheds some light on learning roles. Consider your learning style when designing a specific approach to your learning network:

• Advance your learning by writing a blog.
• Be a reflector; learn by reviewing situations, and post opinions to articles.
• Prefer to learn by researching information and data, such as by creating a model.
• Pragmatist-Apply learning to real situations, such as by creating a project that uses PLNs in the classroom.

According to Wikipedia, professional learning network role can include, “searcher, assemblator, designer of data, innovator of subject matter, and researcher”.

• Aggregate resources together. Applications like Flip Toast and Hoot Suite allow you to merge all of your social media accounts into one interface. You may want to play around with different types of portals until you find the one that is right for you. Map out an organized plan for using your PLN. There is a great chart of resources for mapping out your PLN plan on this blog.
• Take a free course to learn about PLNs. MOOCs are Massive Online Open Courses that are free to the public.  For instance, this course complete with handouts shows you how to establish a PLN.  You learn actively by taking small steps to create your PLN, such as creating a blog, twitter account, and content.
• Stay current with new tools. For example, try Pearltrees. This is one of my favorite new tools for PLNs.  Pearltrees is basically a visual organizer for your links.  Pearls are collaborative and public.  You can add pearls as you browse and share them with others on Twitter and Facebook.  Customize your experience.   There are many specific tools on different applications that allow you to customize and organize your PLN to fit your own needs.  Chrome and Windows 8 have several free applications that are worth trying.
• Simplify logins. You can speed up the log in process by installing a Password management application.  To further simply your PLN, use Google to keep a shared document drive, email, chat, and Google+ networking in one place.
• Establish a classroom learning network. Share your own expertise with other educators on a website or blog.  Create a class website or teach students how to create their own PLN. You might want to design a classroom project that relies on using one aspect of PLNs.  Doing so allows you to learn new ways to use PLNs. A YouTube video, The Networked Student, does an excellent job of explaining how a student might engage in a PLN. Teach students how to establish a PLN in small steps.  For instance, they might use Google scholar to research a paper or share ideas on Google Hangouts.

Professional learning Network is a powerful change agent. And in today’s world an online professional learning network is indispensable.  Technology allows easy access to an unparalleled network of professional resources. Growing your network can lead to opportunities for professional growth and help change the future of education.

Big or small, companies today are finding different ways to capture and use more data. Almost everyone agrees to this that Big Data has taken the business world by storm. But what’s next?  What are the technologies which will develop around it?

Or Will data continue to grow; and can it become a relic as quickly as the next trend — Cognitive Technology? Fast Data? - appears on the prospect. Let’s look at some of the predictions from the foremost experts in the field, and how likely they are to come to pass and see how the push to make big data more mainstream and stronger in 2016. 

• Volume of Data will grow. There’s absolutely no question that companies will continue generating larger and larger volumes of data, particularly considering the number of handheld devices and Internet-connected devices are expected to grow exponentially by 2020.
• Ways to examine data will advance. Though SQL is still the standard, Spark is rising as a paired tool for analyzing and will continue to grow, according to analysts.  
• More tools for analysis. Microsoft MSFT +2.24% and Salesforce are recently announced features to let non-coders create apps to view business data, furthermore the tech experts are on developing more tools.
• Regulatory analytics will be built in to business analysis software. As per IDC predictions half of all business analytics software will be integrated to the intelligence by 2020.
• Real-time streaming insights into data will be the certifying the data winners moving forward according to Forrester. There will be huge growth as many users will want to be able to use data to make decisions in their real time with programs like Spark and Kafka.   
• Device learning is going to be top strategic trend for 2016, according to Gartner predicts, we can see more that of device learning; as it will become the necessary element for data preparation and predictive analysis in businesses to move forward.  
• BD will face vast challenges around privacy, especially with the new privacy regulation introduced by the European Union. Companies and businesses will be forced to address the ‘gaint in the room’ around their privacy controls and procedures. Gartner predicts that by 2018, more than 50% of business ethics violations will be related to Data.
• Companies will look for a Chief Data Officer. As per Forrester the future businesses will be in need of a CDO; who will see a rise in prominence in the short term. But again for certain types of businesses and even generational differences will see less need for them in the future.
• Independent agents and things will be the huge trends; Gartner includes that robots, autonomous vehicles, virtual personal assistants, and smart advisers will the future trends.  

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• Data staffing shortages will grow from analysts and scientists to include experts and architects in Data Management according to IDC.  
• BD talent crunch may ease; as companies employ new strategies and the International Institute for Analytics predicts that organizations may increase their recruiting and provide internal trainings to get their personnel problems solved.
• Data-as-a-service model is on the scope. Forrester suggests that after IBM, more businesses will attempt to monetize their Data.
• Cognitive technology will be the new buzzword for many businesses in future, the link between cognitive computing and analytics will become identical in much the same way that businesses now see similarities between analytics and Big Data.
• Companies and Data businesses will grow; according to Forrester more companies and businesses will attempt to drive value and revenue from their data.  
• Businesses using their data will see billions in productivity benefits; according to International Institute for Analytics this will happen over their competition not using data by 2020.
• Fast Data and Actionable Data is going to replace Big data; some of the experts say that  argument is that big isn’t necessarily better when it comes to data, and that businesses don’t use a fraction of the data they have access too. Instead, the idea suggests companies should focus on asking the right questions and making use of the data they have — big or otherwise.

Time will only tell which of these predictions will come to real pass and which will merely pass into darkness. But the important takeaway will be all about Big data that is only going to get bigger and every business for and into data and for those companies that ignore it will be left further and further behind.