Kailash - SEO & Online Reputation Consultant, Bangalore

Finance & Accounting Globalization

2010-06-24T00:34:00.000-07:00

This blog will deal with globalization of the Finance & Accounting function.

Well if you are running a company and made a decision about staying away from handling finances, I wouldn’t blame you. There are a whole bunch of activities in that function with varying levels of complexity and dependencies. On a very broad level they can be classified into Procure to Pay, Order to Cash, General Accounting, Closing & Reporting, Treasury & Tax, Financial Planning & Analysis and Compliance. The activities are mentioned in their decreasing order of offshoring/ globalization propensity.

For most of the transactional activities globalization makes a pronounced impact since it does not require any high levels of intellect. These activities are typically offshored and are carried out by fresh graduates with minimal work experience. Then there are other activities which cannot be globalized since the laws in the head quarter country forbid certain types of data from being taken out of the geographical boundary.

Based on my experience in the past couple of years a trend that I have noticed is that small sized companies (Revenue < USD 5 Bn) and mid-sized companies (Revenue: USD 5 – 20 Bn) have typically globalized F&A activities to 3 locations, while large sized companies (Revenue > USD 20Bn) have globalized across 6 locations.

(The trends are limited to technology product companies)

The locations are closely co-related to where the company has its customers (Since the company is bound to have significant operations to either cater to the customers or target them for potential sales). Another interesting trend is that there is at least one location to cater to each geographic theatre – APAC, EMEA, Americas. Typically the APAC region is catered to from India, China, Singapore, Australia or Malaysia; EMEA region from Ireland or UK; Americas from the HQ itself.

The Asian locations have matured significantly to handle global F&A activities. This trend can also be explained by large pools of talent available in these locations which makes them attractive for companies to set-up shop, F&A wise. I think this trend would continue to take place until most offshore locations become the F&A hubs for companies.

Author: Anand Tatambhotla, Consultant, Zinnov LLC

Blog: http://tatambhotla.wordpress.com/

LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/tatambhotla

India’s Problems, a Source for Product Development Companies

2010-06-17T05:37:00.000-07:00

In Hinduism you always pray to Lord Ganesha (Deity) before you start any work, be it small or big. I was wondering, if there is something similar which can be done while starting to write a blog. Then it struck me, probably its good to think about Google, before you write anything, because a) Reminds you that you need to be innovative b) Google is watching you, and finally c) Google can punish you really bad. So to please the almighty, I decided to write something interesting that I had heard about Google from one of its top executives.

In one of my recent engagements, my team conducted a study to understand the Captive (R&D/IT/BPO) Landscape in India. Apart from many things, we were interested in knowing the key drivers for MNC’s to set up their captive centers here in India and how they are shaping up with time. Also what drives them to continue business in India and what challenges do they face? For this purpose, I had interviewed country heads of various captives from various technology companies.

One of the very interesting and strikingly different conversations I had was with one of the top management leaders of Google (here after referred to as John in this post). I started off the interview by introducing myself and posted the standard set of questions. It is a very well known fact that cost and talent pool are the key drivers for offshoring R&D activities to India. I was just waiting for a similar answer, but I heard something different. John’s answer to this question was a big NO. I was surprised and asked for reasons. He gave me a very interesting and a different perspective of globalization.

He said, “I don’t think there is any cost advantage as Google pays really well to their employees; the difference is very less. Also in terms of talent pool, for the kind of work we do I think we can find better people in the US than in India. India has nothing. There is no advantage to do R&D related work out of India. I dont see cost or talent pool as the reasons. Even if they were, the ROI on these two factors is very minimal for us.”

“However what India has is a whole set of problems. Problems for which people still struggle to find solutions. We are here in India in search of those problems and solutions for them. These problems give us lot of scope of develop new products.”

“Take for example the Indian cities. It is just impossible to locate a particular place. Looking at India, it brought us the thought of Google Maps. India did not have maps for 90% of the cities. We developed Google maps for 160 countries and India was the 57th country to be launched. The strategy here is to look at the problems in countries like India and take it to a global level.”

“Another good example, is the translation tool that we developed. It was released in 47 languages of which 42 were non-Indian. But the inspiration was from the multi lingual culture in India. This product was very successful the first day of its launch in countries like Japan, US and Europe. Fortunately or unfortunately, the power users reside in the developed countries like US and the adoption is very fast.”

“The Indian users caught up with it only after 3 to 4 months. So for us the strategy has been to develop products for global issues by getting inspired by the problems in India. That is the reason why we are in India”
This was a completely new story with interesting insights giving a new dimension to my understanding of globalization. My takeaway from this interview was a whole new set of questions.

How did Google come up with this as the reason for globalization? What stops other companies to think in this fashion? Can this model be used by other companies? Can small companies or companies new to globalization think this way? or Is it restricted to only the big players?

I will attempt to answer some of these in my next post.

Thanks for reading.
Author: My Colleague Kartik Vittal, Consultant, Zinnov Management Consulting

Search Meet UP 2009 Pics

2009-11-04T00:59:00.000-08:00

Want Free Search Engine Traffic? Choose the Correct Keywords!

2009-11-01T08:36:00.000-08:00

If content is king, make your keywords your servants! It's pretty simple; good keywords bring lots of traffic, bad ones don't. If you want that free search engine traffic, the first thing you need to do is to find out what exactly it is that people are searching for in the area that you are interested in. Then you pick key words that relate to your topic of interest, and that people are really searching for. You can have the best content in the world, but if you optimize for the wrong keywords you still won't get that sought after traffic.

For example, let's assume I am going to build a site about water heaters, and I want people to come to my site. I need to find out what kind of information about water heaters that people are looking for so I can build pages optimized for the keywords that people are really using.

The first thing I do is go to a keyword tool to do my keyword research. There are a number of keyword tools online, my favorite is Wordtracker. Others include KeywordDiscovery, and the Google AdWords suggestion tool There is simply no substitute for doing your keyword research. With these tools you can put in a seed word or phrase, and the tools will provide you with lists of related keywords and keyword phrases that are searched for, and how many times per month they are searched for. Using these tools there are ways to estimate the size of the market for products and services, ways to optimize you web pages, find new niche markets, and much more.

With Wordtracker I find quickly that many more people search for "tankless water heater" than search for water heater...which surprises me. Nearly as many people search for "hot water heater" as search for "water heater". Wordtracker also informs me that there are far fewer websites trying to be ranked high for "hot water heater" than for "water heater". Ah-Ha! I'll be sure to optimize a few pages for "hot water heater". In fact, I find that the terms "tankless water heater", tankless hot water heater", tankless water heaters, electric tankless water heaters, and tankless heaters all have more people searching for them than "water heater".

Single word keywords are very difficult to get high rankings for, so it's wise to shoot for longer keyword phrases. Three and four word phrases are what I use most often.

After finding out what information people are looking for, and what keywords they are using to find that information, you can build the appropriate pages and optimize them for those keywords that have significant traffic searching for them.

Now that we have our keyword list and we are ready to build our pages, where do we put the keywords?

The first and probably one of the most important places to have your keywords are in the title tag. This is one of the tags in the head section of the html code of your web page and lists the title that is displayed in the web browser. Internet Explorer displays this tag in the top bar of the browser window. It's very important that you always write for humans. The search engines are getting smarter and smarter, and they are looking for sites optimized for humans, not search engines.

Get some of your keywords into the keyword meta tag, not crucial but it won't hurt.

Make sure you have some keywords in your Alt tags for your images...don't overdo it though. Write it for humans, but try to work a few keywords in if you can. Alt tags are displayed as a popup when you pass your mouse over an image.

The Description Meta Tag is still a valuable place to use your keywords. Many search engines will look at the description Meta tag for keywords to compare against your body copy. Yahoo uses your description tag as the description of your site in their listings. Consider the description tag just like it is named, a concise description of your site. Keep under 50 words.

Your body copy is obviously a very important place for placement of your keywords. Remember, write for humans. If your keywords don't appear in your body copy, you won't place high in the search engine results for those keywords. Work your keyword into the text appropriately. Select one or two keywords and make the page specifically about those keywords.

Use your keywords appropriately for humans on your site where you can. This will increase your search engine effectiveness.

Fake SEO consultants...Beaware..!

2009-10-05T05:33:00.000-07:00

Some important facts you need to know before you choose your Search engine optimization company or an SEO specialist.

If a Search engine optimization SEO firm has guaranteed you number 1 position on Google, number 1 Yahoo listing, Top Msn ranking or any other top search engine position then just stop there.Either it is a Fake Seo specialist or an individual calling himself a representative of an seo company who will extract hundreds and thousands of dollars out of you and leave you with a Free for all (FFA) , search engine submission report or get you on a number 1 page ranking for a particular keyword which no surfer will ever take the effort to type in. It is very imporant to stay away from such SEO companies that do tricks which might get your site banned on search engines. People everywhere scramble from gimmick to gimmick , trick to trick to get to number 1 position for a general search term and sometimes they even manage to do that - but for how long ?.One small change at Google and they are back on page number four, rank number 44. It is therefore important to follow traditional SEO tweaks along with new and genuine techniques for website promotion like fresh content for your web or using Rss and blogs.

Do not do Doorway tricks or Spamming to get a high rank on search engines like Google.

Google Quality Guidelines :

Avoid hidden text or hidden links.
Don't employ cloaking or sneaky redirects.
Don't send automated queries to Google.
Don't load pages with irrelevant words.
Don't create multiple pages, subdomains, or domains with substantially duplicate content.
Avoid "doorway" pages created just for search engines, or other "cookie cutter" approaches such as affiliate programs with little or no original content.
Dont use fancy features such as JavaScript, cookies, session IDs, frames, DHTML, or Flash.
Keep the links on a given page to a reasonable number (fewer than 100).

It is impossible to guarantee rankings."No one can guarantee a number 1 ranking on Google - Beware of SEO companies that claim to guarantee rankings, or that claim a special type of relationship with Google or other search engines. Also note that there is no priority submit for Google.com.In fact, the only way to submit a site to Google directly is by using the page at Google.

Submit only once.Your Site Needs to Be Continually Resubmitted to Get On top and Stay On the Search Engines is not true.Continually submitting to search engines will not help you in any way. It is also important to tweak your Webpage and meta tags.If you think meta tags are old then think again.If you want a decent ranking on the new MSN it is important that you give attention to your webpage meta tags.

RSS Feeds and SEO Search Engine Optimization

2009-10-04T01:41:00.000-07:00

have been asked many times if adding RSS feed content to your web site helps improve page rank and web site placement in the free search listings. First we have to look at RSS and if it's right for your web site.

RSS is basically Really Simple Syndication written in XML code. It allows a script to run in a RSS Reader or on your website that allows updated content that you subscribe to automatically become up to date as soon as it is published.

The great thing about this is that you can always have fresh content on your site without having to do any updating or babysitting.

Search engines have been known to eat up RSS feed content on web sites. They love to deliver new information to visitors. One thing to remember is that the feed must be displayed in HTML format. Search engine spiders do not read java script as plain text, so it is essential to better placement that HTML code be placed in your site instead.

There are several programs that do all the hard work for you. RSS Equalizer is easy to install and lets you customize your feeds to fit your particular subject content you need. It all works on your web server backend. You log in, set up the categories of feed you want, test them, and place them on your site. No need to update, it's all automatic.

Next, does your site have an area that you can ad RSS feed content to? You can ad some to the home page. In the setup, you can set how many topics you want listed on a page.

It is only relevant to the engines if the keywords you are trying to place with also reflect in the RSS content. So the keywords must be in the title tag, keyword tag, description tag, page content, and RSS feed content for best results.

Try testing a secondary page that is not your home page. Optimize your web site for best placement, and then add the RSS content. MSN will pick it up very quickly, Yahoo, and Google will be soon to follow. If certain content doesn't work, go back to the sites where you pulled the RSS feeds from and see if there is more keyword relevant content.

For example you can pull an SEO search engine optimization related feed that will have SEO in every topic. Ten topics to the feed, that's 10 keywords added to your page content.

Keep an eye on it for the first few weeks. If it is getting you into the listings, you are doing great. You have a robotic editor keeping your site in great position.

Good luck and have fun not matter what you do.

SEO & Reality..

2009-10-04T01:25:00.000-07:00

I’ve noticed a lot of discussions about SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) lately. It’s is the skill of working the content of a website and the inbound & outbound links in such a way that your site receives a top-ranking in the relevant search results. There are some really smart SEO experts out there you will get your site to the top listing in relation to certain keywords.

However I have certain questions in regards to all this. If the top 5 results of my search are there because of smart SEO and *not* because they : 1) have a really good product/service 2) are excellent in the way they do business or 3) lots of people are mentioning them online, then how relevant does it make these results? If they have a crap product & terrible customers service but spends lots of money on good & relevant SEO they will still end up at the top search results. So what do the top search results mean then?

Personally I think the 2-3 lines of text below the title of each search result says a lot more. I normally scan these bits of text in my search results for relevancy to my query. This means that more often than not it will be result 5 or 7 or even 12 that I might click on rather than 1, 2 or 3. As for Google Adwords; I can’t remember the last time I looked at those or if I ever clicked on an ad.

The relevancy becomes even greater if & when you move away from Google as a lot of SEO specialists will use the “price” of a Google keyword as an indicator of it’s relevancy and will adjust their SEO-work accordingly. Other search methods and engines might give rather different results. There are certain search engines that are specific to a particular line of work or research. Getting a good listing on these will solely depend on real reputation and not on “worked” relevance. My personal favorite search engine is Copernic. Copernic has pulled up relevant results for me that no other search engine (incl. Google) has ever found for me. The best one was my grandfathers name in a scanned newspaper page from 1903. No other search engine has ever been able to find this page.

So how important is SEO? That’s up to you to decide. In my opinion it is a prefereable to ensure a good reputation (as in being a reliable business with a good product or service) and getting lots of positive online feedback clearly mentioning your product or your business name. Twitter, Facebook & blogs are ideally suited for generating this type of feedback.

11 Tips to make SEO friendly WebSite

2009-09-24T11:31:00.000-07:00

In the present Internet era where billions of website are being surfed every day it is not enough merely to own a website or creating a website with good look but it is very important to make it reachable to the targeted visitors and provide them with all the essential elements to convert them into potential customers.

Here get some simple steps to make your site a search engine optimization SEO friendly site:

1. Make it Simple
Try to make your site as simple as you can. Make use of white spaces on your site so that it visually also pleases visitors. Use appropriate font color with contrasting backgrounds. Less is more. It will help to make important elements more eye catching.

2. Avoid JavaScript
Try to avoid excessive use of JavaScript or any other scripting language on your webpage. Search Engine robots as per their algorithm do not read JavaScript codes and use of these codes increases the load time of websites which annoys the user. As a result of which you may lose your potential customer.

3. Avoid use of Frames and Flash
Try to avoid excessive use of frames and flash as they increase load time of the websites.

4. Organize site
Organize sites in a manner so that every page is easily navigated from all the pages of the site. Navigation to the pages should be simple and clear. The Anchor text should be relevant to the link contained underneath.

5. Avoid Excessive use of Images
Avoid use of unnecessary images on the website as they increase the load time of the website and make the website bulky. Do not overuse graphics on the web page.

6. Minimize Site loading time
Site should be quick to load so that it can easily and quickly reach your potential visitors. Minimize the loading time on your site as much as you can.

7. Check Availability of Server
The web server on which your website is hosted should be 24 X 7 up as search engine robots can crawl your website anytime. And unavailability of your site on being visited can lose you your potential visitor and thus you may lose your business.

8. Keep Navigation at the left
Create a Navigation tap and place the navigation links on that section. Keep the navigation links to the vital pages of your website on the left of the web page as search engine robots generally start crawling your website from the top left corner of the website and also it is very much convenient for the web users.

9. Relevant content
Don't forget that visitors are coming to your website to take some information. And for providing the required information to the visitors, search engines crawls your website. The ultimate main purpose is to provide information to the visitors. So keep your website more informative and post content on the website that is relevant to the site.

10. Manage Sitemap
Manage a sitemap containing the links of all the pages of the website on a single page so that a visitor can easily get to the page he wants to with the help of sitemap.

11. Avoid Scrolling Horizontal Scrolling!!!!
Users use to hate horizontal scrolling on a web page. It must go now. Vertical Scrolling is OK if it is very much necessary to keep it. But try to make your content or the information on your webpage very concise and snappy. Users should have good feel when they come to your site.

These are just general aspects that one should consider while designing a website or optimizing a website.

Image Optimization

2009-09-19T01:36:00.000-07:00

Excellent images are essential for web sites and can lift an ordinary web site to a professional level. The average surfer responds better to websites that use good quality images, tending to linger longer and browse more pages than when faced with dense, text-heavy pages. There are many reasonable priced picture libraries online where one can source everything from flower pictures to computer equipment images.

Here are a few rules that need to be followed to ensure that the images become an asset to your site rather than an unwieldy burden and that your careful search engine optimization SEO use of keywords in the text is enhanced by the images:

1. Make sure all your images are correctly optimized: i.e. a relatively large image of 600x475 pixels should be between 20KB and 50KB in size(maximum). If you use a lot of thumbnail images on one page (125x125 pixel) then they should be between 5KB and 10KB in size.

By sticking to these simple size guides you will ensure that your page loads quickly. Do check every single image that you put up. I have seen images on websites that are 2MB in size, leaving the web site owner scratching his head and wondering why the page takes so long to load. Casual surfers will have long since departed to faster loading sites.

2. Naming your images appropriately will substantially help by making it easier for Google to find the images on your web site (Google has recently changed its algorithm to take into account images and other media more than ever before) improving your overall search engine optimization.

Try to name each image using keywords that link to the subject of the page that the image is on. If the subject of your page is red flowers, then find an image of a red flower and name it red-flower.jpg. Hyphenate the image names or use underscore between the words. The search engine spiders will see this image name as separate words if you do this.

Don't be tempted to abbreviate your image names, thus rendering them unrecognizable for search engine optimization SEO purposes e.g. rdflwr.jpg. You may end up with rather long image names by using the full keyword names but you will maximise the search engine optimization SEO benefits of your chosen key phrases for each page.

Lastly vary the image names that you use, when you have multiple images on one page, even by one letter to make it a plural e.g. red-flowers.jpg or flowers-red.jpg so that the search engines don't penalise you for keyword loading.

3. Make sure you add alt tags to every image, which are also taken into account by the search engine spiders, once again using appropriately varied keyword phrases that link to the subject of the page.

4. Search on the Net for royalty free stock picture libraries. There are many of them, some specialising in one subject others covering a huge range of subjects. They are normally free to register with and generally use one of two payment systems: a credit system whereby you purchase x number of credits and each image costs a number of credits according to size; or a monthly subscription which allows you to download a certain number of images each month. Most libraries provide web ready images at 72 dpi or print ready images at 300 dpi. Web ready images are generally from 450-800 pixels wide or high, but this is perfectly adequate for use on a website. With prices often ranging from $1 per web ready image to $50 for a A4 sized print ready image this is a very affordable way of enhancing your web site and attracting both spiders and surfers.

How To Measure The Value Of A Fan Or Follower In Social Media

2009-09-05T08:25:00.000-07:00

It’s hard to justify the time spent on social media account management. But there are ways to measure the real value (monetary or otherwise) of fans on Facebook and followers on Twitter. These top two social media websites offer free advertising, an open customer service and communication platform and a demographics database all wrapped up in one, so knowing the value of fans and followers can be a big help when deciding how much time should be allotted to social media efforts. Here are some of the ways to measure how much Facebook and Twitter users are really worth.

Number of quality fans

Many being social media marketers believe that the total number of followers or fans is what matters when it comes to having a great presence online, but that simply isn’t the case. Websites that offer programs to garner “1000 followers in 24 hours” or the like absolutely cannot guarantee that these followers are actual real people who are interested in your product and what you have to say. Buying followers is like running a search engine campaign with few or irrelevant keywords—your message is not targeted to the correct demographic. Think of gaining quality followers and fans as building up organic search engine rankings.

Remember, getting a high-quality audience goes both ways. Do not follow someone on Twitter solely because they have followed you. This is how many spammers gain followers so they can litter twitter feeds with their own links. When a person becomes a follower, visit his or her account to see if they are in the same industry or would be interested in your products or services. If either of these is true, follow them back. This is the same for a person that becomes a fan of your page on Facebook—add them as a friend if they are an industry colleague or potential customer (if you have a company profile). Periodically updating and evaluating fans and followers is a great way to measure the value of Twitter and Facebook accounts. High quality accounts will have followers that are specifically targeted to their product or service—this makes the social media relationship mutually beneficial.

Advertising & promotion value

In terms of actual monetary value, fans and followers can be measured and analyzed from two different angles: from a CPM standpoint and from a website analytics point of view.

CPM value. When users become a fan of someone/something on Facebook and Twitter, that action is front page news on their friends’ front pages, as well as appearing on the right side column under “Suggestions” while they are surfing around Facebook. Because most people are friends with others who are in their demographic or share similar interests, they are much more likely to also become a fan (or visit the page). Therefore, it’s easy to think of Facebook fans as “free” CPM campaigns. Adam Goldberg does a great job of explaining this in his article entitled What Is The Value Of A Facebook Fan? by comparing Lamborghini’s fan base against Toyota’s. By estimating CPM (cost per 1,000 impressions) and average number of friends a fan may have, you can get a reasonable estimate of what it would have cost to run an actual online ad campaign of the same reach.

As for Twitter, it’s a little more difficult to have the same level of natural impressions that occur on Facebook. Including hashtags (#keyword) makes it easy for those searching for that keyword to find your tweet. Additionally, the phrase “please retweet” is a call-to-action that can help spread your tweet quickly.

To track how many visitors viewed a website from Twitter or Facebook, use Google Analytics or free URL shortening services like bit.ly and cli.gs that include analytics within user accounts. High levels of spam or inactive accounts make Twitter impression value harder to calculate. Mashable’s Pete Cashmore reported that 24% of all tweets are from automated bots, whereas 5% of all Twitter accounts create 75% of all tweets, meaning most Twitter accounts are inactive or have little significance.

Measuring conversions with goals and funnels. Besides tracking traffic and visitor sources with Google Analytics, its goals and funnels feature can also be used to track the actual monetary value that social media sites have brought to an e-commerce website or as a generated lead. Google’s definitions of goals and funnels:

Goals. A goal is a website page that serve as conversions for your site (with some extra code, they can even be file downloads or on-page actions). Some examples of good conversion goals are:

A “thank you” page after a user has submitted information through a form. This can track newsletter signups, email list subscriptions, job application forms, or contact forms.
A purchase confirmation page or receipt page
An “About us” page
A particular news article
Funnels. A funnel represents the path that you expect visitors to take on their way to converting to the goal. Defining these pages allows you to see how frequently visitors abandon goals, and where they go. For example, funnels in an e-commerce goal may include the first page of your checkout process, then the shipping address info page, and finally the credit card information page. The only report that shows the funnel path is the Funnel Visualization report.

Google Analytics Help offers a short tutorial on setting up goals and funnels, including a case study of how the Chicago music festival Lollapalooza Tracked Social Media Campaigns with Google Analytics.

Finally, for measuring offline reach (e.g. if a customer comes into a company’s bricks and mortar store), asking customers how they were referred is a good way to see if Facebook or Twitter influenced their decision.

Direct communication. Social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter allow organizations and websites to have a direct line of open communication between themselves and their customers or users. This is also a great way to build up a free, but closely-targeted, demographic database or sample group. Asking for feedback on new policies, products or website layouts via Twitter and Facebook is a great way to get free feedback from people invested in what you have to say and offer. Additionally, answering customer questions and comments through Twitter or Facebook is a great way to both communicate individually with customers while also sharing those answers in a public forum for others who may have had the same question or comment, especially if it is negative or causing dissatisfaction.

While social media sites will (almost) surely never replace customer service phone lines, they are an affordable companion and occasional alternative. What’s most important in social media is ensuring that a company continues to show appreciation and respect for their fans and followers—whether they are customers, industry colleagues or potential leads by supplying high-quality information and service.

Opinions expressed in the article are those of the guest author and not necessarily Search Engine Land.

Copywriting as an Search Engine Optimization SEO Tool

2009-08-10T05:38:00.000-07:00

Copywriting as an SEO Tool

When you think of search engine optimization, you probably think of link exchanges, strategic keyword placement, and other technical tricks that are supposed to help you get a high web site ranking. While all of these methods are important for good search engine optimization results, good copywriting can also be used as an excellent tool for search engine optimization. When done correctly, copywriting can complement all of the technical aspects of your web site and draw more traffic to your business. Learning about how copywriting can be used as an Search Engine Optimization SEO tool can help you to understand why good copywriting is so important and make the decision to hire a copywriter for your Search Engine Optimization SEO efforts.

Persuasive Content - Search Engine Optimization SEO Tool

When people visit your web site, you need to have persuasive content that drives them to take action. That action might be making a purchase or requesting more information. In any case, professional copywriters know how to write compelling copy that brings people to perform the action you desire. When you hire a professional copywriter to write your web site copy and provide articles and other content for your site, you are making a solid investment.

Keyword Optimization - Search Engine Optimization SEO Tool

Keyword optimization is a very important part of search engine optimization. When you select keywords to be used on your site, those keywords need to fit naturally into the content that you place on your site for visitors to access. If you're not a professional writer, using these often lengthy words and phrases naturally within your text can be difficult. Professional copywriters can incorporate your keywords into copy without making it sound like you are keyword spamming. Having natural-sounding text will help keep the attention of your visitors and will make your site more appealing for new users.

Content Development - Search Engine Optimization SEO Tool

When you set out to fill a web site with content, you may become overwhelmed at the thought of coming up with many topics to use. Your specific knowledge and skills may limit you to writing about only a few topics. A professional copywriter with experience conducting research and writing on a wide variety of topics can write about any topic you assign and make the words compel readers to take action. Your list of four or five content ideas can easily become a list of one hundred ideas with the help of a professional copywriter.

Text Quality - Search Engine Optimization SEO Tool

When you're not a professional copywriter, proofreading and editing your web site text may be the furthest thing from your find. However, having web site text with glaring spelling errors and grammar mistakes that make the content difficult to read gives users a negative impression of your business. Hiring a professional copywriter will help you to have the highest quality content to help your business maintain its professional image.

10 Ways to Tackle Keyword Research and Selection

2009-08-04T01:40:00.000-07:00

10 Ways to Tackle Keyword Research and Selection by Michael Murray, VP of Fathom SEO Search Engine Optimization

You need to be extremely careful with keyword research so that you don't miss excellent opportunities or aim so broadly that you target phrases that will never rank well. Here are 10 strategies to guide you along the way:

1. Know your potential customers. We can't tell you how many businesses we've met who simply pick keywords out of thin air. They don't talk to customers or hot prospects in order to determine what might be a useful set of keywords.

2. Start with core words. A core set of keywords - even if too broad - can stimulate creative thinking.

3. Look at the industry. Examine industry trade group web sites and related newsletters to find potential keywords.

4. Study competitors. Some companies make a bigger deal of competitors' keywords than they should, but it's still a useful strategy. Invariably, a competitor will be using a strong keyword or phrase you don't want to miss. Often, however, they load their web sites with single keywords that aren't appropriate. If Internet users are seeking cookware, their search terms shouldn't be laundry-based words. Yet we came across that very example. Be careful which words you use.

5. Be specific - add other words to your primary phrases. If you sell metal, try metal stamping or metal stampers. Or, how about metal stamping companies? Words like services, companies, products, accessories, and many others can really pay off. Ok, everyone wants to rank #1 for terms like "toys" and "sports." It would take more time and budget than you may have to land such terms (through META updates, content adjustments and links).

6. Visit Wordtracker. It's a great tool even if it only collects a sampling of actual searches (more than 300 million). You'll get a good sense of how frequently someone may search. Here is their URL: http://www.wordtracker.com

7. Use your intuition. Don't hesitate to try some ideas; Wordtracker and other sources can confirm whether you have a search term people might or might not use.

8. Limit your selection. Come up with a list of words - 10, 20, 30, maybe 50 or more. But don't get so many that you can't manage them all.

9. Tie keywords to site planning. Pick keywords you can work with over time. Make sure you don't plan to drop a page from the web site or change it so often that your target keywords may be knocked off or irrelevant every 30 days.

10. Study your log files. Web analytics is a great tool if you want to see how your visitors are searching. Study the results and you will come up with a revised set of keywords.

White Hat SEO vs. Black Hat SEO

2009-08-04T01:19:00.000-07:00

There are two general terms of SEO techniques:

Black Hat SEO
White Hat SEO
White hat SEO is SEO that is “approved” by the search engines. This is classified into good design, using optimum, etc. These types of services tend to produce the results that last for weeks on end (and even longer!).

Black hat SEO is the exact opposite of white hat. The search engines do not approve of these tactics and will certainly remove your site or ban it from their indexing if discovered.

White hat tactics are named so if they conforms to the search engines’ guidelines and involves no deception. This is actually one of the key factors to note. Aside from following the rules and guidelines, white hat SEO is also about making sure that the content that a search engine indexes and ranks is the same content that a user will be able to access. White hat SEO is quite similar to web development that promotes accessibility, although the two are not identical.

Black hat SEO is a way of attempting to better rankings by deception and other tactics. One black hat technique involves using hidden text, (like colored text that is invisible to the reader). Another method gives a different page depending on whether the page is being requested by a human visitor or a search engine, a technique known as cloaking.

Search engines have various ways to punish black hats once they are discovered. These tactis include reducing rankings or eliminating them.

SEO that is “debatable” (not white hat nor black hat) is considered grey hat. A very good example of a grey hat tactic is purchasing links. This is a risky way of conducting SEO but not as obvious as other black hat tactics.

Ghost Writing Eases the Content Challenge

2009-07-07T07:26:00.000-07:00

Web publishing is the most innovative opportunity of the recent times. Many business start-ups look towards this channel as a viable business activity. However, not many of the entrepreneurs have significant writing abilities. Ghost writing comes to their rescue.

Internet publishing does not depend on excellent language skills alone. One needs smart writing abilities tuned to this unique setting. Therefore, ghostwriters not only have sufficient domain knowledge, they have the ability to produce content that can reach high rankings of the search engines.

Ghostwriters can create different types of web content. They service their clients by writing the articles, newsletters, e-zines, blogs and journals. The client decides the broad specification of the content framework and the ghostwriters create copies. Sometimes, both the parties brainstorm for possible content ideas.

Most search engines work with automated, spider-like logic to scour content of the web pages. The keyword density determines the number of links to the site. Hence, ghostwriting focuses on search engine optimization by maintaining appropriate keyword density. Thus, the final web pages can achieve higher rankings by the search engines.

Keeping the impatient web audience glued to the content is a skilled task. To generate greater sales, the web page should be pleasingly laid out and have impeccable content in a crisp and business-like manner. Ghostwriters can help achieve more traffic to the site. In turn, this leads to more revenue.

Swapping Links & Black Hat SEO

2009-07-02T07:34:00.000-07:00

Ever heard of the term “black hat”? Well, for seasoned internet marketers, this is all too familiar. For the benefit of those who don’t know, black hat techniques are “illegal” methods of advertising. These aren’t really prohibited by law but these are the tactics hated by Google and can get your site banned permanently.

Now, several internet marketers actually use this technique in the hope of driving more traffic to a site, ranking high in the search engines or earning more through adsense. Other black hat techniques include link farms, link exchanges and other gimmicks which could artificially inflate your site’s popularity.

Google, Yahoo and MSN all forbid the use of these techniques and though Google is getting better at detecting thus fraud, a lot of internet marketers use this technique.

Remember, however, you don’t just need simple backlinks. Your goal is to get quality back links from related sites. Linking with authority sites is a lot better than ordinary links. Also, older links is so much better than new ones. Also, keep in mind that one-way links are ranked higher than reciprocal linking.

RSS and Press Releases can cause a bump in the search engines but it still your content which will determine your website’s success. Nevertheless, don’t forget that writing articles are still the best way of getting quality backlinks and enhancing reputation.

20 Open Source PHP Content Management Systems(CMS)

2009-06-30T22:15:00.000-07:00

Content Management System, or CMS is an application used to manage news easily so that users can publish, edit and delete articles from the back-end admin system. HTML and other scripting language are not necessary to operate a CMS, though having them will add more advantages.

Since we had looked into 22 open source PHP frameworks, i decided to do a roundup of 20 Open Source PHP Content Management Systems so that readers who don’t have strong PHP knowledge can easily create their website using free and open source CMS.

1. Wordpress

Wordpress is a powerful yet easy to use content management system. Initially it was designed as a blogging platform. However, it slowly become popular and can be customized into a powerful CMS with some tricks and plugins. I had wrote an article about Wordpress SEO plugins and also talked about things that you should know about Wordpress 2.8.

2. Drupal

Drupal is a free and open source modular framework and Content Management System (CMS) written in PHP. It is used as a back-end system for many different types of websites, ranging from small personal blogs to large corporate and political sites.

3. Joomla

Joomla is an award-winning content management system (CMS), which enables you to build Web sites and powerful online applications. Many aspects, including its ease-of-use and extensibility, have made Joomla the most popular Web site software available. Best of all, Joomla is an open source solution that is freely available to everyone.

4. Frog CMS

Frog CMS simplifies content management by offering an elegant user interface, flexible templating per page, simple user management and permissions, as well as the tools necessary for file management.

5. SilverStripe

SilverStripe is a PHP CMS built with Sapphire framework, and it uses MVC design pattern. you can view example sites that built with SilverStripe from the official webpage.

6. Mambo

Mambo is a full-featured, award-winning content management system that can be used for everything from simple websites to complex corporate applications. Although some Mambo sites had already migrated to Joomla, but i think i should include Mambo as it is still a great CMS.

7. TYPOlight

TYPOlight is a PHP 5 CMS and it has a lot of features such as live update, cross-browser CSS framework generator(IE7 compatible), templated based front end output, use Ajax and Web 2.0 technologies. You should check out the main page for more info.

8. Concrete5

Concrete5 is an open source content management system with simple administaror interface. You can edit a web page live by using the editing toolbar provided after you log in as administrator.

9. Textpattern

Textpattern is yet another very popular content management system. It requires PHP 4 to run and has a lot of plugins that you can use for various customizations.

10. Symphony

Symphony is a CMS that uses XML/XSLT as its templating language. Symphony lets you customize anything you like, from the website’s URL structure to your publishing environment. For a non programmer, this CMS might be complicated to learn.

11. MODx

MODx is both a PHP application framework and content management system. MODx is the first free PHP CMS to offer an API that fully supports Web 2.0 Ajax technology. It is SEO friendly CMS, and allows you to configure the meta content for each page.

12. Habari Project

Habari is a highly recommended open source blogging platform. It is being written specifically for modern web hosting environment, and uses modern object oriented programming techniques.

13. CMS Made Simple

CMS Made Simple is highly customizable and there are a lot of Modules for you to download. The Documentation is pretty complete and easy to follow.

14. ImpressCMS

ImpressCMS is a community developed Content Management System. It is highly scalable and is extremely useful for managing online communities.

15. Exponent CMS

Exponent uses an intuitive and flexible content editing system that allows website pages to be edited on the page as it is displayed. You can download modules and themes from the official website too!

16. MiaCMS

MiaCMS is a fork of the Mambo CMS. It has a powerful and extensible third party entension system, and also a flexible site theming capabilities. MiaCMS supports OpenID and can consider to be a stable and mature CMS.

17. Jojo CMS

Jojo is a search engine friendly CMS. You will have SEO friendly URL to your article, and Jojo will handle www/non-www domains for you. Beside SEO friendly, Jojo also lets you extend the functionality by adding product databases, blogs, image galleries or whatever takes your fancy.

18. TYPO3

TYPO3 is a free Open Source content management system for enterprise purposes on the web and in intranets. It offers full flexibility and extendability while featuring an accomplished set of ready-made interfaces, functions and modules.

19. Elxis CMS

Elxis CMS comes with a lot of features such as Search Engine Friendly URL, strong security, adjustable member list and complete user profiles. Its automated tasks, modern design, AJAX technology and multi-lingual interface helps you be more productive.

20. Chyrp

Chyrp is a lightweight blogging platform and it uses Twig as the templating engine. The documentation is quite complete and you can download a lot of useful modules from the main site.

Little man - The way girls are

2009-06-23T22:43:00.000-07:00

A story about a boy and his homework, and his attempt to understand girls. This pretty much sums up the relationship between the opposite sexes.

Alternate Search Engines

2009-06-19T02:48:00.000-07:00

Name	Link	Category
FindSounds	www.findsounds.com	Audio Search
Blogdigger	www.blogdigger.com	Blog Search
Gigablast	www.gigablast.com	Blog Search
IceRocket	www.icerocket.com	Blog Search
sphere	www.sphere.com	Blog Search
bookmach.com	www.bookmach.com	Bookmark Search
Clusty	www.clusty.com	Clustering Search
gnod	www.gnod.net	Clustering Search
iBoogie	www.iboogie.com	Clustering Search
KartOO	www.kartoo.com	Clustering Search
mnemomap	www.mnemo.org	Clustering Search
Mooter	www.mooter.com	Clustering Search
mrquery	www.mrquery.com	Clustering Search
qksearch	www.qksearch.com	Clustering Search
Quintura	www.quintura.com	Clustering Search
Webbrain	www.webbrain.com	Clustering Search
WiseNut	www.wisenut.com	Clustering Search
Quintura for Kids	http://kids.quintura.com/	Clustering Search Kids
KoolTorch	www.kooltorch.com	Clustering Search Visualization
AllTha.at	www.allth.at	Continuous Search
searchbots	www.searchbots.net	Continuous Search
SWAMII	www.swamii.com	Continuous Search
Mojeek	www.mojeek.com	Custom Search Engines (CSE)
decipho	www.decipho.com	Filtered Search
factbites	www.factbites.com	Filtered Search
fisssh!	www.fisssh.com	Filtered Search
Hyper Search	http://hypersearch.webhop.org .90.seekdotnet.com	Filtered Search
ChaCha	www.chacha.com	Guided Search
1-800-KNOW-NOW	www.1800knownow.com	Guided Search Mobile
Yahoo! Mindset	www.mindset.research.yahoo.com	Intention Driven Search
Local.com	www.local.com	Local Search
SearchTheWeb2	www.searchtheweb2.com	Long Tail Search
hakia	www.hakia.com	Meaning Based Search
SurfWax	www.surfwax.com	Meaning Based Search
Find Forward	www.findforward.com	Meta Feature Search
FyberSearch	www.fybersearch.com	Meta Feature Search
GoLexa	www.golexa.com	Meta Feature Search
crossEngine	www.crossengine.com	Meta Meta Search
goshme	www.goshme.com	Meta Meta Search
AGENT 55	www.agent55.com	Meta Search
Dogpile	www.dogpile.com	Meta Search
gnosh	www.gnosh.org	Meta Search
GoYams	www.goyams.com	Meta Search
grokker	www.grokker.com	Meta Search
ixquick	www.ixquick.com	Meta Search
mamma	www.mamma.com	Meta Search
PlanetSearch	www.planetsearch.com	Meta Search
PolyMeta	www.polymeta.com	Meta Search
SRCHR	www.srchr.com	Meta Search
turboscout	www.turboscout.com	Meta Search
whonu?	www.whonu.com	Meta Search
zapmeta	www.zapmeta.com	Meta Search
sidekiq	www.sidekiq.com	Meta Vertical Search
Ask Mobile	www.m.ask.com	Mobile Search
Yahoo! oneSearch	http://us.m.yahoo.com	Mobile Search
Netvibes2Go	http://m.netvibes.com	Mobile Search \| Netvibes
Slifter	www.slifter.com	Mobile Search Shopping
Boing	www.boing.mobi	Mobile Web Search
Lexxe	www.lexxe.com	Natural Language Processing (NLP)
Blabline	www.blabline.com	Podcast Search
PodZinger	www.podzinger.com	Podcast Search
Congoo	www.congoo.com	Premium Content
Gruuve	www.gruuve.com	Recommendation Search
Deepy	www.deepy.com	Rich Internet Application (RIA)
WASALive!	http://en.wasalive.com	RSS Search
Yandex	wwww.yandex.ru	Russian Search Engine
Trexy	www.trexy.com	Search Trails
CogHog	www.infactsolutions.com /projects/coghog/demo.htm	Semantic Search
AnswerBus	www.answerbus.com	Semantic Search \| Natural Language Processing (NLP)
Swoogle	http://swoogle.umbc.edu	Semantic Web Search
filangy	www.filangy.com	Social Search
Omgili	www.omgili.com	Social Search
Sproose	www.sproose.com	Social Search
url.com	www.url.com	Social Search
collarity	www.collarity.com	Social Search \| Collarity Compass
Spy Fu	www.spyfu.com	Spy Search!
Twerq	www.twerq.com	Tabbed Results
Zuula	www.zuula.com	Tabbed Search
dumbfind	www.dumbfind.com	Two Box Search
Ujiko	www.ujiko.com	User-Rated \| Votes
yoono	www.yoono.com	User-Rated \| Votes
pipl	http://pipl.com	Vertical Search People
ZabaSearch	www.zabasearch.com	Vertical Search People
TheFind.com	www.thefind.com	Vertical Search Shopping
blinkx	www.blinkx.com	Video Search
ClipBlast!	www.clipblast.com	Video Search
PureVideo	www.purevideo.com	Video Search
girafa	www.girafa.com	Visual Display
Pagebull	www.pagebull.com	Visual Display
RedZee	www.redzee.com	Visual Display
Slideshow	http://slideshow.zmpgroup.com/	Visual Display
Ditto	www.ditto.com	Visual Search
exalead	www.exalead.com/search	Visual Search
like	www.like.com	Visual Search
retrievr	http://labs.systemone.at /retrievr/	Visual Search
Ask Vox	www.askvox.com	Vocal Search
AbbyMe	www.abbyme.com	Vocal Search Mobile
Ms. Dewey	www.msdewey.com	Vocal Search Unique Interface (UI)
Web 2.0	www.web20searchengine.com	Web 2.0 Search
Wikio	www.wikio.com	Web 2.0 Search

Pics After Rain On Wednesday in bangalore

2009-06-11T20:45:00.000-07:00

After heavy Showers on Wednesday..!

Vehicles Parking Area in my Office.

Are You Limiting Yourself On Twitter?

2009-06-11T20:39:00.001-07:00

What is this hype about Twitter anyways? Should I create a Twitter account? What can my business gain with a Twitter account? Yes, these really are the questions I am hearing these days. If you aren’t on Twitter then you missing out on the free, (yes, I said free), benefits that you can achieve with an active Twitter account. Twitter is more than a place to update your followers on your detailed daily routine, but can also be a highly effective social media tool. Below are just a few benefits of having an actively managed Twitter account for your business or website.

If you already have a Twitter account, have you used the Search box on your Twitter homepage? This acts as a great search tool, as you can find valuable resources that the Twitter community is tweeting about. With enough networking and engagement through Twitter, you hope in time that you can search for your business name, or website’s URL in that Search box, and find individuals tweeting about you. Follow these people, see exactly what they haveto say about you and your business, and you may find yourself using Twitter for improving and managing the customer service facet of your business.

Brand your business and your logo with your Twitter background. There are multiple applications to use to enhance the background of your Twitter account. Twit Backs, Twitter Backgrounds and Sweet Tweet are just a few applications that allow you to personalize and customize your Twitter background. Give your Twitter background the look and feel of our website. Consistency is key. Prominently display your business logo, slogan, URL, blog URL, toll free numbers, and any other information you feel your customers will be interested in.

Reach out and follow others in the Twitter community who posses the same interests as you do. You may find the individuals through the Search box I’ve highlighted in my first point, or you may use a Twitter search directory, such as Twellow, to explore individuals in the same industry, profession, or expertise. Network and collaborate with these individuals. You will find some of the interaction that occurs could lead to new ideas, new partnerships, new business avenues that you otherwise wouldn’t have considered in past networking opportunities.

An important goal for many businesses and website owners is building traffic to their store and/or website. Twitter is one tool to help build the number of visitors to your site. To gauge the number of Twitter visitors and the level of traffic to your site from Twitter, take a look at the “Referring Sites” area under the “Traffic Sources” section of your Google Analytics account. Do keep in mind that with any analytics program, there is a slight margin of error. Overall, Google Analytics can help in providing you an estimated level of Twitter traffic. With the increased popularity of users utilizing desktop Twitter clients, these visits will not be included in the Referring Sites tally, but may be a portion of the number of direct visits to your site. You may want to consider the growth in Direct traffic over the course of months when you did not have a Twitter account with those months you had an active Twitter account.

Have fun with Twitter. Beyond following those with similar interests and goals, connect with old friends, past coworkers, and build new relationships. Twitter is a great tool to bounce your business ideas around, and also a wonderful tool to explore new areas outside of running your business. Find a lot of buzz about a new movie, or a new restaurant in town? Check it out, explore what’s out there.

Twitter has changed the way we all use the web and how we connect with our friends, our customers, and our audience. Whether using Twitter as a social site for building friendships or to capitalize on increasing your brand and online presence, enjoy it! Stay up to speed on the new advancements and opportunities within Twitter and you may be able to expand on my list of Twitter benefits!

Thanks To Rebecca Rowett

Searchology: Google Search Options

2009-05-16T20:40:00.000-07:00

On the plate today is Search Options, which is maybe the most ‘megaton’ announcement in terms of the way it will actually change the way that Google users search.

Search Options (do a Google search for anything and then click the Show Options link below the search box) lets you segment and filter the search results you see when you submit a query. The filters in Search Options allow users to look for their query in images, video, reviews, and forums and also allows users to filter based on when the content they’re served in results was created.

What does this mean? It’s going to be much easier for searchers to find the content they’re looking for regardless of rankings. It is also another nail in the coffin for the rankings obsession some ecommerce owners and SEOs have - because results can be “sliced and diced” so many different ways. The time filter on searches (which has always been there, just as an option under Advanced Search) being placed in a user-friendly location also indicates that, although it may not be weighting it more heavily, Google is favoring social media content, which often has the most immediate content on a given topic.

That’s this week’s big Google news in a nutshell. None of this changes the way that search functions or that your site will rank, but it does offer up the possibility of changed user behavior.

Thanks Jeff Stolarcyk

5 Places To Get One Way Free Backlinks

2009-05-11T20:35:00.000-07:00

If you are new to online marketing and have high hopes to make money; I am sure that you have heard about the key to ranking high in the SERPs is SEO and gaining quality backlinks. Though this may sound simple I have been amazed at the amount of people that are not sure where to start when they begin to acquire backlinks. One of the biggest things I would like to stress to new webmasters and/or bloggers is getting enough backlinks to rank well in the SERPs (search engine ranking pages) is not a quick task. You will need to be willing to spend hours daily building and building making sure to place the keywords you would like to rank well for within the text of your backlinks. It is also a good idea to rotate the keywords you would like to rank well for. As you move up the SERPs the chances to make money online increase. Anyway let’s move on to where a new webmaster should look to when trying to gain quality backlinks.

1. The first thing to do when you have completed a website is begin submitting free press releases. A press release website is a website dedicated to a place that reporters can go to find new news. The most successful sites will be ones that are ground breaking these have the possibility to gain tens of thousands of backlinks. More than likely though you will end up with only a few, but it is a good start. To find a list of free press release sites simply do a Google search with those keywords.

2. The next thing a new webmaster should do is begin an article writing campaign. If you have a website or blog it is very important that you know your niche well enough that you will be able to write articles about the subject. Again to find a list all you need to do is search Google for “list of article directories” and you will be able to find one. Remember to submit your unique articles to high PR article directories at first then after they are published start submitting the old articles to lower PR directories.

3. Posting in webmaster forums. Now doing this actually will help you in two ways. First you will get a backlink for every post that you complete and second you will be able to learn all the ways to market a website and get backlinks. V7N Forums is the best webmaster forum and is mandatory for anyone trying to make it as a webmaster this is where I found my lists.

4. Start a blog (if you have a blog start one to support your first one). Ok this tip really is my little experiment so I suggest you do this at your own risk. What I do is in note pad get 5 or 6 sentences that have all of your blogs, websites, and webpages you would like to promote place each URL within each sentence for the keywords you would like to rank well for. Make sure as you go from sentence to sentence you use different keywords for each URL. Next start a blogger blog and begin posting 20 times daily making sure to copy and paste the html at the bottom of each post. Personally I use the free content that article directories have to post on my support blogs. You will want to build a few backlinks to the support blog making sure the links pointing from each post will hit your website. Fool around with the idea and see if you can figure out how to make it affect your SERPs position. This idea is mine I have not seen it, though I am sure it has been used before anyway it is a good way of not only gathering articles on a particular subject, but also getting links from every article you republish. On a side note do not screw over the article authors make sure if they have an author bio to place it under the article and keep the links active.

5. Social Bookmarking Websites: these are usually high PR for example digg.com is PR 8. They allow you to submit your website for the community to vote good or bad and again there are two good points to submitting to social bookmarking sites. First you will receive free one way high PR backlinks. Second if your website is very useful to the community using the social bookmarking site and is voted to the front page you have the possibility of thousands of referral visitors coming from the social bookmarking site.
Well these five are definitely a must for any new webmaster trying to get free one way backlinks. Remember that the only reason anyone fails online is they think it is too hard so keep your head up never give up and you will succeed.

some PPC Tips

2009-04-13T09:14:00.000-07:00

Pay per click search engine advertising is becoming increasingly popular as they allow anyone to bid for top positions in major search engines and drive immediate traffic within hours of launching a website. Pay Per Click enables you to list your site at the top of search engine results by advertising on keywords that best describe your product or service.Pay per click allows you to be listed at the top of the search results quickly.

I would like to suggest some ways to optimize pay per click search engine ads.

Make a list of targeted keyword phrase and submit them to your pay per click management account. Make sure you include plural versions of all keyword phrases if the pay per click search engine does not automatically pluralize keyword phrases. Search phase should be included in the ad title. This will help to catch the search engine user’s attention.

Concentrate on descriptions. Explain your visitors how your website meets their needs. Offer incentives, such as online coupons, free trials etc. Monitor the performance of all keyword phrases. Avoid bidding wars. Instead, try to find more specific multi-word phrases that cost less per click. Create landing pages for different keyword phrases to grab the visitor's interest.

Update your listings as the shopping season changes. For example: Christmas, Easter, Valentines Day, etc. Test with different keywords, titles, descriptions, bids, landing pages, etc.

If we use major pay per click search engines like Google or Yahoo, the result will be scaleable and also feedback will be quicker.

Shocking, Ripoffreport.com Page rank is 725..! Is that a Bug In SEO-Firefox?

2009-03-20T03:53:00.001-07:00

If you have SEO-Firefox, please check the Page rank of Ripoffreport.com in SERP results..Not in Google tool bar, I found this when i was searching for contact information of Ripoffreport.com

Is this a Bug in SEO-firefox or Any Story behind this..?

Only single keyword in Rippoffreport.com is Enough to damage your reputation...! With out even a Link in the partiular post & keyword density is also not necessary..!

How is this Possible?

Does Google have anyrole Behind this..?

Dynamic Pages & Dynamic content.

2009-03-17T05:47:00.000-07:00

Dynamic pages are the data driven pages which are created depending on the user request. It is created by server-side scripting languages such as php, asp, jsp, perl, cgi and so on. Here in this scripting language it cannot be compiled beforehand, it will be processed by the web servers depending on the user request.

Dynamic URL and dynamic content, this can lead into confusion because they are two separate but related terms. Dynamic content is the information that is delivered to the web browser in a different form than it exists on the server, where as Dynamic URLs, are website addresses that contain (?).Dynamic Urls are the addresses of the dynamic content.

Dynamically generated web pages do not actually exist on the internet until visitors submits a request. Visitor will find their relevant information in a dynamic site using search query. The portion of the link containing the search parameters are called as query string. But the search engine doesn’t know to answer the question, so they get stucked up and stop indexing. Search engines are very much cautious when indexing dynamic pages because they don’t want to get stuck up in an endless loop.

Don’t play hide and seek with search engine, tell them where exactly to find every page on your site. Remember Search engines want to index any core content only once and also prefers that the visitors to a particular URL see the same content its spider saw.Give them a map so that it will be easy to find every page on your site. Use static URLs to reference to dynamic content. Link to Dynamic URLs from static URL content.

What About You..?

2009-03-12T04:07:00.000-07:00

Search Engine Marketing.

2009-03-05T02:45:00.000-08:00

Popular and significant Tips and Tricks, to get your website googled.

Search engine optimization/Marketing, is just about making your website top most in the various search engines. A better Search engine ranking means better leads and in return better business. A website which is optimized in search engines can provide huge benefits on to your website. Way of search engine optimization consists of web promotion activities. Choose an effective Content, keyword phrase that describes your website and business. Due to this you will have good ranking, much more traffic to your website and it will be familiar to search engines and can be easily searched. If you need a good Search Engine rating, you will have to work extremely hard. You would have to leave and breathe your website.

There are many ways where you can promote your website. There are Free Promotions and Paid ones too. Paid submission gives instant result.

Free Promotions constitute of:

Ø Submit Webpage URL to Search Engines
Ø Submit Your Site to Key Directories
Ø Creating Sitemaps
Ø Feed Promotion
Ø Request Reciprocal Links (Link Exchange)
Ø Write Articles for Others to Use in their Newsletters.
Ø Issue News, Press Releases
Ø Post Classified Ads
Ø Ask Visitors to Bookmark Your Site
Ø Sign Other Website Guestbook’s
Ø Include Your URL on Stationery, Cards, and Literature
Ø Promote Your Site in Mailing Lists and News Groups.

Paid Promotions would include:

Ø Pay Per Click
Ø Auctions
Ø Paid Submissions
Ø Affiliate Marketing
Ø Paid Classified Ads

Thus Search Engine Optimisation and Marketing plays a significant role in determining its position in the search engines. Its not only quantity, quality improves in website rankings.

Me & Ezhil Raja

2009-03-01T01:15:00.000-08:00

Day 2 of Search Camp

Me & Adam Lasnik

2009-03-01T01:06:00.000-08:00

Search Camp Pics

2009-02-28T20:18:00.000-08:00

Blog Camps in Delhi & Bengalore.

2009-02-24T03:44:00.000-08:00

The Indian Blog and New Media Society is pleased to invite you to the latest editions of the New Media and Blog Camps in March 2009 in Delhi and Bangalore. Read on to know more about the same - and sign up to attend and/or speak at the event.

What is New Media & Blog Camp?
The event is an unconference where a relevant audience comes together to talk about/ discuss/ rant/ brainstorm/ share opinions on all possible subjects related to new media and blogging. BarCamp style, these are open events where anyone may sign up to attend and choose to speak on a topic of common interest.

This is the second edition of the event in Delhi and the first in Bangalore. These events do not follow any schedules, and may occur once a year or every few months depending on when volunteers come together and take the initiative.

Who is organizing the event
The event is being organized by the Indian Blog and New Media Society (www.ibnms.com), the umbrella body for this space in India.

Attendees
These events are attended by many kinds of people, each with their own interest in this space. These include, besides others:

Users, content creators and publishers of new media and blogs
Individuals and companies providing services in this space
VCs, Angel Funds and other investors
Techies
Journalists looking to or already using new media as an outlet for their work
Consumers and readers of new media and blog
PR, Advertising and Communications industry
Social Media practitioners and users

There is no restriction on anyone participating nor is there an entry fee. Total audience size is expected to be 300, an optimum number to allow for quality discussions.

Schedule
Delhi: March 7
Bangalore: March 14 (and March 15 too probably)

Links:

Delhi Event Wiki: http://wiki.ibnms.com/BlogCampDelhi2
Bangalore Event Wiki: http://wiki.ibnms.com/BlogCampBengaluru

ME & My Team in Palace on Wheels...! ( Champion cruiser)

2009-02-17T23:21:00.000-08:00

This Was My trip to Mysore in Champion Cruiser

The Web/SEO Team

I am in front of office

Me & Inder ..! Best SEO partnership

Just relaxing.

Best SEO triplet its me, prakash & lohith

Our Champion Deepak out there ( Changing the video)

Sudarshan Sugas & Prakash Relaxing...!

My team In ZOO...!

Relaxing After a Long Journey....! Inder & kiran

Our Champ Lohith Is Thinking deeply...!

Champion Cruiser, really Palace on Wheels...!
i Enjoyed A lot....!

Webmaster Conference at Bangalore Google Office

2009-02-14T06:13:00.000-08:00

Google India is organizing a conference for webmasters (and bloggers*) at their Bangalore Office on February 28 to help you with your webmaster related questions and how you can leverage Google tools to improve your site’s performance.

The full day event, known as Search Masters ‘09, will include presentations and interactive sessions with Google’s Search Specialists and Product Managers including Adam Lasnik (search evangelist at Google) and Rajat Mukherjee of Google Custom Search.

Here’s a complete list of topics that will be covered at Google Webmaster’s conference:

Webmaster Central and Best Practices: Understand the webmaster resources that Google offers and how to find help for your site through them.
Webmaster Help Forum: Learn about the community where you can find answers to your Search and Webmaster related questions.
Google Custom Search: How to harness the power of Google to create a search engine tailored to your needs and interests.
Building Mobile Friendly Websites: Find out why there is a need for mobile friendly websites and learn how to go about building them.
Google Analytics and Website Optimizer: Learn how you can gather, view and analyze data about your website traffic.

The webmaster conference is a free but invite-only event. Google India has sent invitation emails to some India webmasters (and bloggers*) who in turn can request an additional invite from Google and pass it on to their friends.

So if you know someone who has already received an invite for this conference, he may help you secure an invite by passing on your request to Google India.

Finally SearchCamp has arrived..! 28th February & 1st March 2009

2009-02-12T21:23:00.000-08:00

Finally the dream of all SEO Professional's Came true Because of Ezhil Raja, Syed Nazir Razik & Their friends..
All SEO's Must be Thank full To Ezhil Raja & Co for their hard work In organizing Search Camp..!

First Edition of Search camp was Huge Success.!
We Should not forget the Sponsors They have done a great Job..!

Here are more details...!

SearchCamp is a two day event aimed to bring together the best minds from the Search Engine Marketing space to talk about search engine advertising, including optimization and marketing issues. The event is scheduled for the 28th February & 1st March 2009.

This is the second edition of the event and the first edition happened during 6th & 7th of October 2007, at Tidel Park, Chennai. SearchCamp will feature workshops, debates and keynotes on the present state and evolution of Search Engine Marketing.

Why Search Camp..?

Because search marketing is one of the most if not THE most accountable forms of advertising your business today.

So what are you doing about capturing search traffic for your business?

Do you rank for the keywords that are mission critical to your business?
Have you optimised your local listings for maps and mobile search?
Have you optimised your corporate videos for search?
Do you optimise your corporate blog?
Have you trained your technical staff in good SEO practice?

We could keep asking questions, the one you need to ask yourself is this - Are you happy with your return on investment from search marketing?

If not, then you need to attend SearchCamp 2009, India’s leading search marketing Conference.

Topics To be Discussed in The 2 day Camp.

Day 1 of SearchCamp will focus on Organic Search, and Day 2 on Paid Search. Following are the broad areas of content that will be covered during this edition of SearchCamp. Exact sessions can be found here - Sessions

Organic SEO

Keyword Research
Onpage Optimization
Converting SEO Traffic
Technical Issues for Developers
Copywriting
Brand Building
Link Building
Local Search Tactics

Paid Search

PPC Keywords & Bids
Landing Page Strategies
Automated Bid Management
APIs
Tracking Conversions

Social Media Marketing

Hot Trends
Online Reputation Management

Web Analytics

SEM Careers

For more information:

Ezhil Raja 98840 54506 ezhil@searchcamp.in / Syed Nazir Razik - 98842 08327

Thank You Guys For making it to Happen Again.!

Some Extremely Wrong Words in Email Marketing.

2009-02-11T03:40:00.000-08:00

In a post at Entrepreneur.com, Susan Gunelius identifies ten words marketers should avoid in the coming year. "I think her list will surprise you," says Drew McLellan at his Marketing Minute blog. "It includes words that traditionally have been touted as buying trigger words … [and] … copywriting 101 tips that have been passed down for ages." For instance:

Free. While "free" will grab anyone's attention in a down economy, it'll also attract the unwelcome notice of an ISP's spam filter. According to Gunelius, reaching a recipient's inbox is more critical than ever, and you shouldn't risk having your email consigned to the spam folder. "Replace 'free' with 'complimentary' or 'gratis' to sneak by spam filters without compromising the effectiveness of your message," she recommends.

Very and Really. In most cases, these two add nothing to your copy except unnecessary filler—deleting "very" or "really" will likely improve a sentence's flow and impact.

Drinkability. If you're one of Budweiser's competitors, you shouldn't even consider a word around which the brewer has built an entire campaign; likewise, steer clear of words your customers will also associate with your competition. "Instead," she suggests, "differentiate your product and business with unique copy and messages that your target audience is likely to respond to."

How Do Meta Tags Work?

2009-02-09T21:21:00.000-08:00

Meta Tags do not affect the appearance of a web site and are not visible when you look at a Web page, but they provide information regarding the content of the site. Meta Tags are used primarily by search engines that scan through the programming code and text of each page.

When you submit a web site to a search engine, that search engine sends out a robot called a "spider" or "crawler". This robot is a program that looks at your site, decides if it will be indexed, and then (if you're accepted) looks through your web page more thoroughly before finally indexing it into a specific search engine database.

It is during this stage that having properly written Meta Tags is important. If the spider or crawler encounters optimized Meta Tags on your home page it will have a much easier time when looking at the rest of your site. Meta Tags make the spider's job easier by providing the spider the information it is looking for such as, keywords, a description, rating, and other variables.

What’s The UK’s Most Popular Browser?

2009-02-04T06:20:00.000-08:00

Hitwise have released some data which quantifies something that I’ve thought for quite a while: for many people Google has now replaced the address bar as the primary way of navigating the web, even when they know the address they wish to get to.

Hitwise’s stats suggest that in May of this year:

88% of searches for the top 2,000 search terms in the UK were branded in nature, up from 81% in 2007 and 66% in 2005.

and whilst it’s a very high percentage, the more I think about the less surprised I am. On a daily basis I see very literate web users typing the name of a brand or website into Google when they want to reach the site in question, even when the web address is utterly obvious, or one that they surely know.Howver there may be another factor in play and one which I’m guilty of: if you use Firefox (which more & more of us do) then the address bar actually performs Google searches for you: try typing face into the Firefox address bar if you don’t believe me. This has now become my default method of browsing and I wonder how many others share my habits.

Hitwise also go on to list the most searched for brands and whilst they may be struggling to work out how to make enough money to justify their valuations, as far as British internet users are concerned it seems that the social networks are still the place to be, with Facebook, bebo, YouTube & MySpace all featuring in the top 10.

So what does any of this mean for brands that don’t feature in this list? Well, for a start it suggest that, if you can prove an ROI, bidding on your competitors’ brand names may be something that you should really be considering (even if it’s a method we don’t necessarily agree with - at the end of the day business is business.)

Admittedly Google’s quality score often makes it difficult to keep the CPC at a level where it’s worth doing but if I were competing with Amazon, eBay or Argos (all listed in the top 10) I’d be investing in research to prove why my service was better than theirs and then creating content detailing this and using these as landing pages for ads on searches against these brand names.

It also shows how vitally important it is to make sure that you are optimised for your brand name. This may sound utterly facile, but I’m regularly astounded by brands that don’t rank for their own name. This often happens when companies decide to re-brand and come up with a new name that is also used by companies in a million other sectors or which has a plethora of different meanings. And this is an especially dangerous move to make as re-branding often also involves changing domains, which brings with it all the pain of Google’s Sandbox, which I’ve seen in action far too many times, no matter how much some people deny its existence.

The one thing that really disappoints me about this data is that it doesn’t back-up the old story that suggested that the most popular search term on Google was Yahoo, and vice versa.

What is Online Reputation Management.

2009-02-02T05:30:00.000-08:00

Online reputation Management means When you search your name/company name and when the result will come up with a negative result. An abuse or some Negative comments on a sleazy site.

This has become a Regular news in todays World...! Number of UGC (User Generated Content) sites is increasing these days, the chances of your online reputation getting damaged is also high. ORM is important for companies and people these days. There Are ome Simple Solutions to Over Come..!

1 Analyze Top 10 websites which is Linking to your Site.

2 Start submitting in Social media sites..!

3 write some good Article & Start promoting It.

4 Try the maximum to get a one way link from high ranking sites.

5 Start blogging