A search for the query ‘Marriage’ @ google.co.in would show the following un-paid results:
#1: Marriage – Wikipedia link
#2: WebMarriages.com – An international marriage site.
And there’s no Indian Matrimony classifieds site which features in the top 5. Perhaps they are yet to crack the might Google SEO puzzle.
So assuming the user is actually looking at getting married and has a very short attention span, he’ll look at the Sponsored links displayed:
Well good stuff, there are great chances that a user will click these links, because they feature prominently above the normal un-paid links and also on the right hand side.
Before we proceed with the whole Landing Page issues – let us also look at the search query ‘Matrimony‘,
8 Sponsored Links!
Well, Shaadi is SEO’d well enough to grab the 2 top un-paid search links. This is followed by 5 BharatMatrimony sites. Their main site and also their regional Tamil, Telugu and Kerala sites.
Followed by 5 BharatMatrmony links (This pretty much gives you an idea of BM’s immense popularity in South-India).
Now coming to the point…
Via SEO, the User (Searcher) will obviously be taken to the Main page (Homepage) of the concerned site, but it is through SEM (Search Marketing) that you can guide a user to a particular page.
So what pages are these Matrimony sites driving their traffic to?
BharatMatrimony – http://www.bharatmatrimony.com/googlelanding.shtml
JeevanSathi.com – http://www.jeevansathi.com/index.php?source=A09
SimplyMarry – http://www.simplymarry.com/timesmatri/faces/jsp/UserTrackLandingPage.jsp?origin=GOOGLE
Shaadi – http://www.shaadi.com
Why are 3 of the 4 top Matrimony sites in India diverting traffic to a mini registration page? BM, JS and SM all take you to 3-4 step registration page.
Are the sites intentionally doing this or are their SEM agencies doing it?
Why would an SEM agency look at undertaking such a step?
More registrations = More money. Especially if they are charging their client on a Cost Per Lead model. Taking a new user to a simple registration page VS taking him to the homepage and hoping he registers – it’s a simple answer. Every SEM co. would opt for the first, since the margin here is great and they can show definite numbers to their client.
But why are numbers this important? To retain your job in the company? To get more clients?
Taking a first time user directly to your registration page is definitely not the best option available. It kills the reason of adorning your site with dozens of successful testimonials. Why is the first option SEARCH on your main page?
Also, there are far lesser chances that you might acquire a new registrant who’d opt for the paid profile options – if he doesn’t know much about your site. In the craze for generating numbers – the broader picture is getting blurred.
I would rather take a first time visitor to the testimonials, encourage him to use the free search option and showcase the advantages of being a paid member at the site.
Its nice to see Shaadi.com not following the others and still driving the traffic to their homepage. Its one of the reasons why many still consider them to be No. 1 in the Online Matrimony space.
Related Links:
Matrimonial shoot-out: Shaadi vs BharatMatrimony vs JeevanSathi vs SimplyMarry
SEMPO (India) kicks off – ‘Can Search Offer You A Promising Career?
WATConsult.com – Refreshing consulting for Web Advertising and Techonology
"I would rather take a first time visitor to the testimonials, encourage him to use the free search option and showcase the advantages of being a paid member at the site."
Thatz why you run a blog and not a portal.,
Well, Shaadi is SEO'd well enough to grab the 2 top un-paid search links. This is followed by 5 BharatMatrimony sites. Their main site and also their regional Tamil, Telugu and Kerala sites.
Followed by 5 BharatMatrmony links (This pretty much gives you an idea of BM's immense popularity in South-India).
Dont you consider this silly?,
How are popularity in SOuth india and ranking in google related?
I don't 'run' a blog…and the day i run a portal i'll definitely let you know. Currently I consult portals!
3 South Indian states are listed in the first page – why isn't a PunjabMatrimony up there? The popularity of BharatMatrimony in South India is linked to the Matrimonial Shoot-out post.
But appreciate such comments.
Cheers!
Yeah, punjabi matrimony is not there, that does not mean,
Google ranks based on the popularity of a site in a particular region.
You are not fit to be a consultant, if you dont know how to consult.,
On what basis you say, redirecting a page to a landing page is not good?, Actually it depends on the type of products/services you sell.
IF bharatmatrimony network is popular on south india , does it mean it will occupy 5 positions in the google search engine? and you mean to say shaadi is not popular all over india and so seo'd to appear in the 1st position for the word matrimony?
Dont you feel it as contradicting or a stupid statement?
Also do you mean to say that bharatmatrimony appears in the 6th position in google.co.in for the keyword Marriage, Because all popular south indian sites appear in the 6th position for any given keyword?
Who thought you management?
SEO Is an ongoing process, for years bharatmatrimony came first for the keyword matrmony, matrimonial and indian matrimonial., It will come again soon
.,
The surge for shaadi is due to their recent site and links update
A LIve example of your stupid statemnt:
a)
Taking the first time visitor to a testimonial page:
A Guy searches for the keyword agarwal Bride in google.co.in (Wow! most of the ranking is occupied by BM , That too for north indian keyword, does this mean BM Is MOST Popular in North india,, ok leave that fact)
Now he sees an ad that is consulted by you that leads to an agarwal testimonial page.,
WTF, iam searching for a bride and it leads to a page where some married couples testimonial is there, so he exits that page and goes to the search page and searches for a bride, and finds a bride , registers and contacts.
SO here, you give, unneccessary cliks to the user.
But instead, A guy searches for Agarwal bride, You throw in an agarwal related ad, and takes him to the agarwal related landing page, with the ad copy asking him to register free., That gives a more valid conversion than, asking him to foolaround the site.
Landing page or not, It depends on the purpose
Mr. Pramod Jain..You must either be the SEM partner of those sites fuming at the review or simply mad. I dont see a point in whatever you say..Popularity of a website in a region does influence the ranking. Do you know something called the 'internal linking' of webpages that contribute to SEO. And the external linking aspect? BM being popular in South means there exist a lot many people who have created a profile on BM. With every extra profile added, BM gets an internal linking from a webpage. Also, BM's regional websites are considered separate websites by Google. This means that when TamilMatrimony links to BM, it is given higer weightage…All this contributes towards BM's success at the top. PunjabMatrimony is not as popular among Punjabis, which means lesser userpages..
Thanks anand.
@ Pramod: None of the sites mentioned here are our clients. And I do not consult on SEO or SEM. We look at using web 2.0 tools for user engagement. The web is no longer about getting users for the sake of numbers….
For SEM professional – it still is. And I believe in SEM, if you had taken the pains to read my earlier post. But ofcourse, ignorance is often bliss.
But like I said, we love our readers and always appreciate comments.
@Ekalavya,
"
None of the sites mentioned here are our clients.
And I do not consult on SEO or SEM."
Then how can you comment on Ranking, landing pages etc?, so you consult unneccessarily as and when you are bored?,
"The web is no longer about getting users for the sake of numbers." .,
I agree with that, that is said by all and now you are next to say that.,So Numbers is not important, Then what is important?,
You mean to say, Its user participation??, so you need several users for that participation and that again Goes to Numbers!.,
Stupids Say Numbers is not important,
Numbers is important if you make those numbers participate effectively in community Building.,
and how do you know, these matrimony sites who builds numbers through landing pages does not have active user participation?, Do you have proof for that?
Are you enlightened enough to say an SEM Professionals are ignorant?
If you consult on Web 2.0, Please tell me what Web 2.0.
I agree with Anand on what he said on lInking., Linking always matters when it comes to ranking.
SEM professionals who do not care for a Portals long term goal and only concentrate on their own financial goals are ignorant.
I am not here to argue on the value of SEO or SEM. I pretty much know the scope. It's the strategy behind SEM and SMO which counts. I fail to see reason as to why you are getting so defensive.
I appreciate your knowledge in SEM and SEO and in fact its nice to see such passionate guys in this field – apart from the few 'bored' ones of course.
Perhaps we can take this discussion offline and have an undending debate.
@ Ekalavya
Iam not getting defensive , Actually the post that you made was like predecided,
Like,
Landing pages are bad, and its good to lead an user to the homepage.,
I meant only this:
Landing page or not, It depends on the purpose and goal., Any SEM, who takes user of a shopping cart site to a Landing page , Is a Stupid,
But its not the case in another site.,
The purpose varies from site to site.,
"""SEM professionals who do not care for a Portals long term
goal and only concentrate on their own financial goals are
ignorant.""
YOU are 100% Right on This!
@ Pramod:
Finally we are on the same frequency!
This was ONLY for the Matrimony industry. Haven't i mentioned that in the post title? That too when the landing page is designed just to get registrations.
Ekalavya,
No, we are not on the same frequency,
How do you know that for a matrimony site "registrations should not be the goal"., Did you learn it through experience?.,
(H) Lol! You win!
I have no further comments.
You can mail me at ekalavya at watconsult dot com, if you have any further stuff.
"But why are numbers this important? To retain your job in the company? To get more clients?"
Isn't that rethoric? Marketing managers have a mandate to prove numbers… their appraisals do depend on it, after all. And while online is the perfect way to compile and show numbers… that's not proof of clear and concrete acquisition – but who cares? Show me the money, hunny, right?
Well thought through post, me thinks… it's going to take some time for people to wake up and smell the 'java'
BTW, Matrimony sites are not Optimized for 'marriage'? Wow… that's a faux pas. People getting too hung up on SEM? Don't remember the last time I clicked on a sponsored link… why would my users? (?)
Nos. would still make sense when you are marketing a Social Network or Gaming portal – where your sales team can go around saying 'Our portal has 1million users – please advertise on our site'….a smart client would soon realise how many active users your site is actually commanding.
In cases like matrimony – where the site is not really earning off free registrations or advertisements, the approach to 'sell' the site to a prospective customer can be done in other ways – even while using SEM.
Contextual SEM is the way to go. If a user searches for Matrimony and if his ip is from chennai – i'd directly show him the search page with Chennai brides / grooms….and then give him the option to search for other things and register……the landing page is of utmost importance to a first time user and there are ways of predicting user behaviour.
@Eklavya, Pramod
Nice debate guys !!
Eklavya, I guess the views put forth by you might have come across as judgemental and hence the locking of horns. But, I agree with Pramod on a lot of fronts.
Lets look at a few – you mention;
<i>I would rather take a first time visitor to the testimonials, encourage him to use the free search option and showcase the advantages of being a paid member at the site.</i>
Well, the idea of having a landing page is to make sure what works best for you when conversions are concerned. When someone takes the user to a registration page after a PPC trip, it doesnt essentially mean that the page is only about getting their email addr. The same landing page can also have testimonials and ability to search. The idea is to "test" each and every element and figure out what works best. From personal experience I know this is absolutely true. I have personally seen phenomenal improvements after using Multi variate testing on landing pages.
<i>Why would an SEM agency look at undertaking such a step?
More registrations = More money. Especially if they are charging their client on a Cost Per Lead model. Taking a new user to a simple registration page VS taking him to the homepage and hoping he registers – it's a simple answer. Every SEM co. would opt for the first, since the margin here is great and they can show definite numbers to their client.</i>
You mention that more regs = more money for the agencies, but your forget that it also is more money for the people who own the portals. PPC is "direct marketing" at its best and it is very different from SMO. When it comes to PPC you have to have a diff. strategy which is more about low acquisition costs and high conversion rates .. crunching the $ as many call it … So, its not just the agencies but also any other smart marketer who uses the same model. The beauty here is to know that the idea of collecting the leads is to feed the sales funnel and not just "increase number of profiles" – Once such a lead is obtained the follow up is massive – email, telecalls and much more !! This fact is also echoed in Arvind Sahay's (Prof in Marketing at IIM-A)case study on none other than JeevanSathi.com (suits the niche you have selected perfectly) which I recently read.
The idea here is to realise that each advertising tactic has its own game plan; with SMO its more about generating a buzz, improving brand equity and much more .. but with SEM its about how much money can I make. An optimized SEM campaign is like a investment machine, when you know your lead acquisition cost, the amount of conversions that happen and the ROI in exact rupees and paises!
Another Trivia -> Between Mar-Aug 2006, JS spent 9501000 rs. on Google network to acquire 123,116 profiles. That takes the acquisition cost to 77 Rs. and some spare change … how can you calculate such precise values after doing a TV ad or a magazine ad or a SMO campaign. Esp. when you have to know that all the promotions usually happen cohesively, so the traffic coming to your site can be from anywhere!
Conculsion – The beauty about SEM is accountability and SMO can't come close to it. On the other hand what SMO can do for a brand cannot be matched by SEM.
@ Saumil:
Great reply. Thanks for sharing those figures too. I'm still pretty much a novice in the SEO/SEM world….
But it's just that i've actually seen the evolution of affiliate based registration marketing (98-99) – when affiliate companies used to give a publisher 1$+ to acquire leads. That's what led to Spedia.net and a lot of similar clones – which used to pay users to surf, read mail and register on other sites.
If you really wanted nos in a site – rather pay 100 school kids to create 100 fake profiles each – just to prove that your site has a lot of activity! Many are still going to fall for it.
It's great that JeevanSathi was able to acquire so many new registrations – but how many ended up as paid customers? Any figures on that?
Online matrimony sites in India are not surviving because of advertisers – they are working because of paid registrants.
I'm not discounting SEM and landing pages at all – and i know any SEM professional will take offense to this post. It's just that there's an unbelievable scope of innovation in SEM possible – but it's just the main advantage of the internet (The trackability of ROI) which is holding it back.
1 Cannes Cyber Lion short-list and only 1 nomination in the WebbyAwards too….? SEM is being beautifully used to compliment a 360 degree campaign in many countries – apart from just making up numbers.
The mentalility of clients is slowly evolving – and they are willing to to try unique stuff in the digital medium.
Please do continue blogging here too…
"""If you really wanted nos in a site – rather pay 100 school kids to create 100 fake profiles each – just to prove that your site has a lot of activity! Many are still going to fall for it."""
You are absolutely right, Many Clients will fall for it and will ditch you as soon as they identify their negative ROI
<""""
It's just that there's an unbelievable scope of
innovation in SEM possible """"">
Yeah, but not on other person's Money,
IF You are trying to convey that ROI is most important than Numbers, I 100% Agree with you on that,
But ROI also depends on Users (In a matrimony industry, most payment may happen only if a user finds his match).,
so, Out of 100, only 50 Pays (either the male or female), This conversion also depends on global factors such as time, money, and various other things.,
Well, I do have a chart for "Conversion Rates from Free to Paid by Customer for Sept 2006" but I can't get to interpret it correctly. The reason they cite is "some data has been removed/disguised for competitive reasons". Although I don't have numbers, I can give you something equally interesting — For the campaigns they ran for JS, Google was the most expensive network followed by Rediff and Yahoo, but the conversion ration is just the reverse with the highest percentage of conversions of the incoming traffic coming from Google. NRI conversions tended to be the highest.
@ Pramod: How can payment and paid membership be taken up after finding your match? Users take up a paid exclusive membership to increase their chances of finding a match.
And I do know of SEM professionals who are willing to undertake costs of a campaign – just to test an innovative method. (H)
We have some enthu readers here.
@ Saumil: Would be great if you could share this doc with me if possible.
@Eklavya
I would have shared the link already, had the doc been online. However, it is not. I have a book on compiled case studies which is where I am citing the figures from.