Impact of Search Engine Marketing (SEM) on the website success

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Impact of Search Engine Marketing (SEM) on the website success

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Impact of Search Engine Marketing (SEM) on the website success

The Case of “Makina Corpus”

Rim Jallouli, Emna Nehdi

Abstract— the website is definitively a full-fledged product

that requires promotion and marketing orientation. To increase

its visibility, various techniques of web marketing are used to be

implemented. The French company Makina Corpus designs

integrates complex Web applications. Makina

develops and

Corpus is an expert in “Python” development but the company is

little known on the market. To increase its visibility, create traffic

and position itself among the top search results of expert

“Python”, the company implements various web marketing

methods and techniques such as adding quality content, the

correction of the source codes and other techniques aiming to

create external links and increase the visibility of all the pages

referring to the technology.

"Google Analytics" indicates satisfactory results and Makina

Corpus appears on the first page of search results as an expert in

programming “Python”. The pages that are created to talk about

this technology are nowadays the most visited pages by the

surfers.

Index Terms—SEM,

dynamization, Makina Corpus

SEO,

SERP, Web marketing,

I. Introduction

For over a decade the Internet has continued to evolve, both

in terms of households and in the business world. Millions of

Internet users benefit from different services as actors of the

"World Wild Web" feature: chat, email, games, downloads,

blogs, music, video, shopping and news. Internet technology is

constantly evolving to suit the creativity of its designers and

users, these two roles are often played alternately by the same

individuals. Surprising, practical, essential, funny, exciting,

attractive and full living, many common adjectives are used to

describe this new medium that has proven its usefulness for

the professional

its necessity

individuals but also

world. That is why and for nearly ten years, a multitude of

activities are associated to this new technology.

in

Internet marketing is a marketing which mainly pertains to

the products and services over the internet both for consumers

and businesses (thefreedictionary.com).

Manuscript submitted November 2010

R. Jallouli is Associate Professor of Marketing at High School of Electronic

Business - University of Mannouba- Member at the Research Laboratory in

Culture, NTIC and Development -Tunis – TUNISIA, (Phone 00 216

22 609 540; Fax : 00 216 71 881 209; e-mail: [email protected])

E. Nehdi is with High School of Electronic Commerce-University of

Mannouba -Tunis- Tunisia (e-mail: [email protected])

The website is finally a full-fledged product that requires to

be promoted and market oriented. In the same way as a

physical store, the website is the place where the company

operates, promotes and sells its products, communicates,

establishes a relationship with its customers or partners.

Thus, it is important to make it attractive, effective and

unique for prospects, customers and partners. Well located and

well marked, a website greatly enhances its ability to generate

traffic. Create visibility for your website means creating links

that allow the website access: All these ties constitute what is

called Search Engine Marketing (SEM)

Based on a French firm study, “the Makina Corpus

Company”, this paper aims to show the importance of SEM

and dynamization tools of web sites

This paper presents in a first section the principles of web

marketing and its changing face with the rise of the Internet.

Then, the second section studies the case of the Makina

Corpus website: where the diagnostic of the website has been

clarified to set the strategic choices. This case study concludes

the main results of the implemented SEM tools.

II. Importance of SEM and the website dynamization:

The web marketing or e-marketing is the adaptation of the

approach, techniques and marketing methods to Internet. This

specialty covers all means of electronic communication. With

the explosion of the Internet bubble, the techniques of e-

marketing are organized and enriched. Internet, the network of

networks, is a huge information base on which navigation is

not natural and obvious. Web marketing techniques have

therefore found their legitimacy by responding to these issues

in order to facilitate access to information and guide users to

the appropriate sites. Existing only through a website with a

specific content, techniques and principles of cyber marketing

is largely recovered www.eshamel.net.

A. The search engine marketing (SEM)

In the same way that a commercial area, if a website isn’t

visible in its environment, it can’t be efficient and able to

generate sales. SEM is the body of techniques that optimize

the visibility of a website in the different search tools available

on the Internet. In web marketing there are two types of SEM:

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Search Engine

Advertising (SEA).

1) Search Engine Optimization (SEO): The SEO is the natural

indexing, natural positioning at a time t in the search engines.

Understanding the algorithms of search engines and their

development

the SEO

(www.refnaturel.com).The most recognized SEO techniques

are:

anticipate

improve

and

can

Listing in the directory

Directory is a ranking of Websites based upon the selected

or submitted. Publishers analyze the contents of the pages and

create summaries of their contents in order to orient visitors.

The specialized and generalist directories offer a search by

categories and subcategories. To improve the positioning of its

site to directories, there is a technical manually submitting the

URL into the different directories which allow themselves later

(or not) the right to validate or invalidate the bid. The criteria

for acceptance of a site on a directory are wide, for example:

-The contents of the site: the site must correspond to a theme

directory.

within

-The quality of the site: is it a site with enough content? Is this

content regularly updated? Are there many visitors for this

site?

category

the

of

a

2) Search engine advertising (SEA): SEA aims to combine a

series of keywords and advertisements appearing on search

results pages. The method involves defining a range of

relevant keywords and then implements them in search engines

through various technical processes. It will then be possible to

launch for example a campaign Google Adwords (a solution

provided by Google to define and generate keywords based on

a target audience, write advertisements, analyze and exploit the

results of the campaign). It offers the opportunity to create ads

and choose keywords that will be associated. They will appear

in the "sponsored links" of the search engine when these

keywords will be entered. Invoicing occurs only when users

click on the ads and defines the cost per click (CPC).

Although the SEA is paying, it has several advantages:

Advertisement

First, the site is immediately visible at the top of search results.

Second,

the advertiser has complete control over his

investments. He can set his budget and CPC during the creation

of the campaign according to his objectives and may change it

at any time. Finally,the website is positioned within a few clicks

on any keyword even if it is not "naturally" optimized

www.linkeo.com.

-To judge the quality of the site, page rank is often the most

B. Dynamization of websites

reliable if not the most used.

Positioning in search engine results

The visibility is the positioning of a resource in the search

results. It is defined as the consequence of a content which,

depending on the engine, responds to the user’s search. The

positioning in search engine results is the equivalent of the

benchmark in the website field. This is why it is necessary

above to:

and

page

  • Identify what users are looking for (what are the key words

used) and write a descriptive paragraph to appear on the

results

users.

  • adapt its editorial’s vocabulary and thus organize the

contents of the website to the users ‘needs and searches.

  • write skillfully content URL, transfer it effectively on

(HTTP)

correctly.

http://www.comment-gagner-sur-internet.com/

(HTML)

format

attract

more

code

and

the

Anchor text

Using Anchor text is yet another good tip. It’s not too far of

the use of keywords to promote any hyperlink. We must have

proper anchor text links for those coming in as well as those

going out. One of the biggest advantages that offer the anchor

texting is the ability of our search engines to see what

keywords are actually being targeted and what words they

need to rank our site on. Aside from that fact, even our site

visitors will know what the links will take them to without

having to click to find out. After implementing anchor texts the

ranking will increase in a faster way (http://writedeal.com).

The most

important criterion used to determine

the

positioning of a website in google search results is the Page

Rank that is a rating on a scale of 0 to 10. Page Rank indicates

the "popularity" of the pages and the site. The PageRank of a

page of the site depends on the quality of links pointing to the

latter; each link can be considered as a vote for this site. To

dynamize the website, is to create the maximum traffic through

a large number of quality links pointing to different pages.

www.linkeo.com. There are several techniques that create

these links such as affiliation, buzz marketing, blogs, RSS

feeds and e-mailing:

Affiliation

Affiliation is defined as the technical marketing or as a form

of distribution that is specific to the Internet. Membership is

the principle by which a commercial site offers a network of

affiliated partner sites and promotes its products or services

links. Affiliated sites pay a

through banners or

commission on sales, visits or business contacts that are

generated from the affiliates under the terms of the contract

(www.definitions-marketing.com).

text

Affiliates put on their site some elements of promotion of

the merchant site that may be visuals elements (banners,

buttons ...), a product catalog or just text links that refer to the

merchant site. Therefore they made known the merchant site

and these techniques bring visitors. In exchange, they receive

variable or fixed commissions on sales that are generated, or

clicks (simples visits to the merchant site), or on contacts

(visitors who just register to the merchant site or filled out a

questionnaire) (www.commentcamarche.net).

Buzz Marketing

Buzz marketing is a new marketing technique that evolves

through the web. Buzz marketing is a means of communication

that comes from an old phenomenon in the world: word of

mouth. The principle of buzz marketing is to know quickly

about a product, concept or information with the help of the

users. From receptor, the user becomes an actor / broadcast

channel of communication. The information is disseminated on

the internet and many receptors return to and circulate among

their networks.

To give the urge to share information, it is necessary to:

Nurturing the desire, the curiosity or the fun in users to allow

and encourage the dissemination of the message and to use

opinion

like)

leaders

(www.conseilsmarketing.fr)

bloggers

digg

(top

and

Blogs

Blog is an individual and virtual log that mixes functions of

a forum and a content page. The blog consists of a series of

remarks or periodic information posted by its author and

readers can possibly react. The articles published on a blog are

mostly composed of text and external links, but are also

increasingly enriched with images, sound and video. The

chronological presentation of the notes gives the appearance of

Internet

a personal

users. These articles are archived and accessible on the blog at

the same address indefinitely. A blog has several advantages,

compared to a website and it is characterized by its simplicity,

speed, interactivity, its free, its dynamism, and its accessibility

(www.francparler.info).

journal online, accessible

to all

subscribers as well. The advertiser wins in relationship with

readers and e-mailing could be the opportunity to relay the

launch of new services, and play on the image of website and

the company.

Prospecting: Sending regular emails to customers, subscribers,

or other bases that correspond to the target will showcase the

products and the deals in the aim to inform and encourage the

offer test and purchase.

The principle of e-mailing has several advantages such as

the ease of use,

interactivity,

attractiveness and a lower cost than other mediums of

communication (www.webmarketer-en-herbe.com).

speed, asynchronous,

III. Methodology

This study aims to highlight the importance of the SEO and

website dynamization techniques in the success of the

companies that choose to optimize their value chain through a

web marketing strategy. This paper studies the case of a multi-

national company specialized in the software development:

Advertisement

Makina Corpus. In a first stage, the study analyses the web

performances of the company and focuses on strategic

the

orientations

business decision makers (Grunert and Ellegaard, 1992). This

method recommended by Bryman and Bell (2003)

is

convenient with the purpose of the study and allow a best

comprehension of the forces and the weaknesses of the

company, the competitiveness strength and the key success

factors in this context (Porter, 1980, 1985, 1998)

through semi-structured

interviews with

IV. Case study: Makina Corpus

RSS Feeds

RSS (Really Simple Syndication or Rich Site Summary) is a

file format that can monitor the update in real-time news.

These are feeds in XML, indexing content provided by

websites, containing only the interesting information: the title

of the article, its text, its author and its creation date. They

allow, by a single click, to arrive in the corresponding full text.

They are automatically updated whenever a new post or article

appears on the source, without the user needing to connect to

the original website. RSS feeds are a kind of summary of news

produced by a website or blog. With the RSS feeds no longer

users browse the web for fetching information about the sites

but the information itself has to be available to users

(www.qsn-digital.com).

E-mailing

Literally, e-mailing is a web marketing discipline that

involves sending emails to a group of registered users.

An e-mailing campaign has two main objectives: Awareness

and prospecting.

Awareness: In the case of a newsletter, sending regular emails

to subscribers can unite a community around a site, and retain

A. Company presentation

Makina Corpus designs, develops and integrates innovative

solutions based exclusively on free software. The company has

developed special expertise in complex web applications in the

areas of portals, data processing (GIS) and BI (Business

Intelligence). Experts of Makina Corpus mastered perfectly

technologies like Python, Plone, Django, Drupal and Zend.

Makina Corpus met just over 30 experts and has offices in

Paris, Nantes, Toulouse, Pau, Dijon, Brussels and Tunis.

The assets of

the corporation may be summarized:

As a high level of technological expertise, the integration of

heterogeneous applications, a bespoke, designed and

developed internally to meet the specific needs, a reduction in

the cost of acquiring software through the use of software in

the free world and a full-service turnkey (www.makina-

corpus.com).

1) Company Diagnosis

The five competitive forces of Porter

The five competitive forces model of Porter is a tool for

strategic analysis of the competitive environment of a

company. M. Porter (1980, 1985, 1998), assumes that the

"performance" of the company depends on its ability to

confront, influence and resist the pressures of its competitive

environment. Indeed, the main objective of a company must be

to obtain a competitive advantage in its market, which is

measured at

to generate profit

(performance). The five following forces summarize the

factors affecting the performance of a company according to

Porter Theory (strategies4innovation.wordpress.com).

the end of

its ability

The intensity of the intra-sectoral competition: France is the

first Free Software market in Europe which explains the

excessive competition between the various French companies.

Ninety percent of French companies innovative use the Free

Software. The intensity of competition is very tough for the

following keywords: "free software", "Python", "Plone",

"Zope", "Django”. The direct competitor of Makina Corpus is

"Pilot System" which has a page rank 7 and 7730 indexed

pages.

The threat of potential entrants: The perspective of free

software in France is growing: with a rate of 33% in 2009 and

30% in 2010. The position of the programming language

Python in the index TIOBE has recorded a progress between

2009 and 2010, which explains the high demand for this

language.

The bargaining power of customers: Makina Corpus clients

are professionals seeking development of their web sites or

portals. The excessive number of companies specializing in

free software and more specifically in web development has

strengthened the position of customers and their powers of

choice and negotiation.

The bargaining power of suppliers: Makina Corpus providers

are programming languages with which it develops its

applications, web sites and portals. These programming

languages are open source "free" so there is no problem of

price negotiation.

The threat of substitute products: Software and open source

programming languages are numerous and can reach almost all

the same goals. A software or programming language open

source is free, new software can be created from another, thus

it can be substituted for its own.

2) SWOT Analysis for Makina Corpus

The SWOT is the acronym of Strengths, Weaknesses,

Opportunities and Threats. The SWOT analysis is a strategic

planning tool for reviewing the position and the strategy of a

the positive

firm (marketingteacher.com). Strengths are

internal aspects controlled by the organization. Weaknesses

are negative elements which are also controlled by the

organization and can be

the future. The

opportunities are all favorable external factors which may be

improved

in

areas of

firm

improvement or development of

activity. Threats are problems, obstacles or external limitations

that may prevent or limit the development of a sector or

company. They are often outside the scope of influence of the

firm (www.ie-lobbying.info)

Forces of Makina Corpus

the

Teams Web Development / Portal are especially effective

and customers are always satisfied and team geomantic is

recognized as an expert on the market. Also, Makina Corpus is

an expert in business intelligence and its specialization in

Telecom is an important source of revenue for the company.

the

The atmosphere is very good inter-company and scrum

organization bear fruit for many months and contributes to

meeting

customers.

needs

Finally, the company is expert in programming Python, Plone,

Zope and Django and has even created its own product named

"Plomino”. It also has exceptional expertise in the Drupal

development.

real

the

of

Advertisement

And compared to its competitors, the company has

expertise BI (Business Intelligence) by Telecom and GIS

(Geographic Information System), which is specialized in

complex transactions.

Weaknesses of Makina Corpus

The company suffers from a lack of organization / workflow

projects, canvassing and cost accounting. Compared to its

competitors, Makina Corpus does not control other areas of

business

telecom).

Also, the web-portal created by other Web agencies is more

beautiful, simpler and more accessible.

Then, among the bad practices of the company: The traditional

management of small projects, poor coordination and lack of

decision sets and process management of projects.

intelligence

(other

than

Finally, the society lacks of experienced project managers

(management), financial resourcesand marketing skills.

Opportunities for Makina Corpus

.The environment offers the opportunity to take advantage

of free software; direct costs due to license purchase disappear

and all of actors could benefit from the work already done.

Furthermore, free software guarantees the independence of the

company and can change at any time the software. The

company can also see for the service provided by the improved

software without having to pay an update. Free software is the

bearer of particular beliefs and ambitions. In addition, the

evolution of Internet exchange makes the E-commerce in full

expansion. Nowadays, the demand of creating websites, web

portals and applications becomes increasingly important.

Threats of Makina Corpus

The sector competition is very fierce and the free-languages

removed the barrier (price) to the entry of new competitors.

3) Strategic orientations

Web marketing strategy

Strategic choices are based upon segmentation, targeting

and positioning and imply thereafter the operational choices

and the implementation of the marketing mix (marketing-

strategique.com).

The market of Makina Corpus is segmented according to

consumer characteristics (geographical location and social

class) and their responses in terms of need and advantages

sought.

The third C concerns Connectivity and Makina Corpus site

has its own community space where customers and developers

can communicate and share articles and news. To strengthen

the community and interaction between customers, I will

create pages and groups in other community sites such as

social networking.

Finally, and regarding the Continuity, Makina Corpus

employees are web developers and continually provide various

updates needed for the two websites (. com) and (. org).

and

consumers

Referring to the SWOT analysis and Porter's five forces

already developed, the company excludes the segments of the:

individual

training.

Geographically, the company focuses on French and Tunisian

markets in general. These are growing markets and Makina

Corpus has already gained a good expertise and brand

image. For these markets, the target is professionals who need

to build applications that are written in the Python language.

In terms of satisfaction of consumer needs, the company has

already a website, and the aim of the company is to improve it.

News and articles are to be inserted to cover all events related

to Python. In addition, to ensure communication, it will be

interesting to talk about the company and technologies that are

based on the language "Python" in forums. Another action

consists

in creating pages on social networks so that

professionals can give their opinions, interact and discuss with

the company officials.

Finally, to attract Internet users and to be visible by search

engines simultaneously, the company adds content and pages

to the site and presents the various Python technologies,

"Plone", "Zope" and "Django ".

Concerning the marketing positioning, the image that the

company is looking for consist in the ability to centralize

several programming languages based on the technology

"Python" in the company website. To reach this objective, the

company tries to lead the "Web Community" to talk about the

website and present the main technologies, services and

referrals.

The Operational Marketing:

The transition from static Web to a participatory web has

led to the passage of the 4P (Product, Price, Place and

Promotion) to the 4C (Content, context, connectivity and

continuity) (cibleus.com).

Regarding the content, Makina Corpus has an Informational

website and presents, almost all of its services from the home

page. A valuable content is then added to the pages about the

technologies that are based on Python to highlight the

technology, its advantages, and features and also to talk about

the expertise of Makina Corpus and to illustrate few projects

that are already accomplished.

About the context, Makina Corpus website is purely

informational. The website offers a search tool to help them to

find the required information easily and quickly. The website

offers an attractive design and an ergonomic interface that

allows easy navigation between pages that are well structured.

V. SEO and the dynamization of Makina-Corpus.com

A. Improving and Adding Content and Source Code

The best solution to improve its ranking in Google is simply

to write more text and publish more often. Indeed, a major

criterion to be well placed on Google is an important and

regularly updated content (conseilsmarketing.fr).

To improve its ranking the site of Makina Corpus adds

content to existing pages and also creates new pages to

showcase the Python technology. The pages of the other

technologies that are based on Python as Plone, Zope, Django

and Plomino are also impoved and news cover all the events

related to these technologies, are inserted.

1) Adding and optimization of meta tags

A meta tag is a HTML tag that includes elements which are

not displayed on the page of a website. Their major uses are

the control of the search engines. When these tags are used

properly, they can propel the site to first place rankings

(marketing-internet.com).

In this project, two tags "Description" and "keywords" are

created: The first is often taken as an extract in the results

pages and helps to describe the page’s content. It is not

necessary to propose more than 200 characters and it’s

preferable to customize this tag is in all the website pages. The

second tag serves to choose the right keywords that will be

used on a page. These keywords are the pillars of the web

page. Then, the company should build the page around those

keywords to get a good ranking in search engines.

2) Submission in directories

For makina corpus, we have prepared a list of directories

that have categories such as computers, Internet, Development,

and Programming...These directories are chosen according to

their PageRank (PR). The list of directories that is prepared

does not require a link back. This obligation of link back is

more beneficial for the directories than the referenced sites. It

is also required that these links are a hard links, that is mean

HTML links that point directly to the web site, and not a

Advertisement

(example:

tracking

with

www.annuaire.fr/redirect.php?idsite=123). Only hard

links

have a positive influence over search engines.

redirection

URL

B. Dynamization by social networks

Makina Corpus was interested in four networks: Facebook,

Viadeo, LinkedIn and Twitter:

1) Dynamization through facebook

On Facebook, Makina Corpus has started by creating a page

on the networks, invited the public then created links pointing

on the site, and of course written articles which talk about the

company, its activities, expertise and different technologies

that it masters, by focusing on ‘Python’, which is the main

subject.

On the full page (the wall) the company has created links

that point on the site of Makina Corpus. These links will serve

as back links and will help the company to increase traffic and

therefore improve the PageRank of the site.

2) Dynamization through viadeo

As it did on Facebook, the company has created a 'hub' for

Makina Corpus on viadeo.

Then Makina Corpus has written articles about the company

and the technology "Python" links to the website and the page

of the technology are then inserted to facilitate direct access.

3) Dynamization through linked In

To present the company to the public a group is created and

includes basic informations about the company and also

articles and talk about the company expertise and technologies.

4) Dynamization through Twitter

The Company Twitter page followed 75 applications such

as PiPi, PyCon FR, Plone and has got 17 people "followers"

who follow the company news and links on twitter. This

generates a very important source of traffic over time. Twitter

also helps the company to boost the facebook page through

twitter application on facebook. Moreover, to create much

more traffic, the company also uses the Twitter application on

Viadeo and LinkedIn.

C. The results by Google Analytics

Google Analytics is a professional solution for web

analytics that provides rich insights into website traffic and

effectiveness of a marketing standpoint (google.com/analytics).

During the month of August the site of Makina Corpus

recorded 1791 visits with 1032 new visitors and 759 returning

visitors.

So the marketing campaign has generated traffic, brought new

visitors to the site, and also retained other visitors.

During the month of August, users saw 7022 pages which

3051 pages were visited by new visitors and 3971 were visited

by known visitors.

During the month of August there were 3.92 page views per

visit and 2.96 pages have been viewed by new visitors while

5.23 have been viewed by returning visitors.

Analytics showed that 02: 38 are spent in average on the

website where new visitors spend in average 01: 46 and

returning visitors spend 03: 47. These figures show that

visitors are interested in the contents of the website and that

they come back to view other pages.

Furthermore, Analytics shows that search engines are the

largest source of traffic and that visitors are able to find the

site of Makina Corpus among the first results of their

research.

Reference sites are the second largest source of traffic. It

also shows that social networks "Facebook", "LinkedIn" and

"Viadéo" are among the first sites that generate traffic.

Fig. 1: Source of traffic

The results indicates also that the pages "Python", "Plone",

"Zope", "Django" and "Plomino" are more consulted than the

other pages.

Fig. 2: The most popular pages

Analytics highlights the geographical origins of Internet

users who visit the site of Makina Corpus and it should be the

company targeted France and Tunisia, so the objective is

achieved.

Fig. 3: Map overlay

VI. Conclusion

tries

to show

This article

importance of SEM,

dynamization and web marketing in general to increase the

popularity of a website and to be positioned among the top

search results:

the

The first part of the study presents the two types of SEM,

paid (SEA) and natural (SEO) and the different techniques of

each type as submitting to directories and purchases of

relevant keywords.

The paper also showes the importance of the dynamization for

the traffic creation; and presents examples of dynamization as

affiliation, buzz marketing, RSS feeds and e-mailing.

In a second part, this research analyses case study of the

French Company Makina Corpus and develops a strategic

diagnosis that applies the concepts of the five Forces of

competitiveness (Porter, 1980) and the SWOT analysis. Then

this paper clarifies some Strategic Marketing orientations such

as segmentation and targeting choices of Makina Corpus.

Finally, this research presents the results of the actions adopted

by the company and the implementation of SEO techniques

and the website dynamization.

The dynamization and SEO are good ways to be positioned

on the first page of results, but they remain limited methods

because they do not produce immediate results. Any new site

can remain several months before that its content starts to be

sucked by the robots of search engines. In addition, this type of

optimization has less influence on very generic keywords

belonging to extremely competitive industries.

In addition, the SEO implementation imposes constraints

when choosing the technology and the methodology of the

website content. Although the choice of keywords determines

the commercial success of a website, it is the technical

structure of the website that influences its position in natural

search result pages.

A company that wants to win customers through web

marketing has to implement a professional approach and to

spend time each month to check its position on the engines

upon the keywords and to edit its pages regularly with the help

of other sites. That's why the Web Marketing is assimilated

nowadays to “impressionist painting”!

Acknowledgment

The authors would like to thank the officials of all agencies of

the company “Makina Corpus” for their help. The authors

thank Khaled Ben Zina and Amira ben Othman at University

of Mannouba in Tunisia for reviewing this paper.

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