Orkut in India

a gesture of honor from Orkut on India's 60 years of Independence...

Technorati Tags: Orkut, India, Blog, Blogging

SEO Mantra

When Sumantra asked me "Do I need to know basics of SEO so that I can design more search-engine friendly templates?" I kept quiet for some time. I was thinking about Aji’s post – SEO a curse for Content Writers. But, as I think that people involved with Web Development should know basics of SEO, my answer to Sumantra was "Yes".

Here is what I told to him:

Since Search Engines are nothing but artificially intelligent software programs, they cannot sense if a design is good or bad. But, as a Designer you should read the pages from Search Engines’ perspective.

Suppose your site has a good, really good content. Now, while designing the site you place the navigation panel at the left hand side. What will happen now? Search Engines, while crawling the site will read the content of the panel (that may contain product list, site navigation, sponsored ads, AdSense and all) first and then go to the main content. So your main keywords are pushed down if they are not there in the panel.

Now, some SEO checklist makers believe that early appearance of keywords in the page makes positive result. And you are losing it there!

I showed Sumantra some Tools that output how Search Engines read the text of a page. Needless to say that Sumantra was happy with it.

Do you think I should say something more to him? Feel free post your feedback.

Technorati Tags: SEO, SEM, Search Engine Optimization, Web Design

Let the World know

I received this message from one of my Journalist friend and I thought this is worth covering in my blog.

pls do this...tell every indian to have indian flag as their profile photo on aug 15....try this...lets show our unity itz not silly plz try 2 forward dis 2 every buddy of ur list try 2 imagine every orkuting india wid our ticolour falg let us celebrate our 60 years of independence

Dear Readers, please consider changing your profile picture not only in orkut, but in the other community sites and forum. Let the world know India is celebrating its 60 years of INDEPENDENCE.

Ask all your friends to do the same and spread the words.

Technorati Tags: India, Blogging, Blogger, Blog

Unsuccessful Interviews help you learn Parallelism

There was a time when I used to buy newspapers and magazines for Jobs. Then I used to go through the columns of hundreds of ads, highlighted those which match my profile, chalked out a plan to visit the offices and set out for the Interviews.

Needless to say that most of them did not work out otherwise I would not be writing this post. But I never regret or blame my fate for taking me through such a painful span in my life! Trust me; I have learned several things from these Interview sessions. One such thing is Parallelism.

The idea was not new for me, somehow I realized that while creating a list of items, we should maintain same style of addressing, e.g.,

Here we will see how to:

• Design web page
• Writing for web
• Develop content

This is WRONG. It SHOULD be:

Here we will see how to:

• Design web page
• Write for web
• Develop content

OR,

Now, let us know about:

• Designing web page
• Writing for web
• Developing content

In an Interview, I was given a paragraph and asked to run a Parallelism check. Though the Interview did not work that time but it helped me learn one professional term and investigate it further. That’s the way failure should be considered isn’t it?

Know more about Parallelism at wikipedia.

Cheers!

Technorati Tags: Content Writing, Grammar, Writing

Where SEO ends

I am a supporter of SEO, white hat for sure. However, I must admit that SEO has certain limitations. Initially, when a site launches, some SEO campaigns like link development, article submission, directory listing are good. But once your site start receiving steady traffic, you should concentrate on another vital point, i.e., CONVERSION.

Just think, your site is receiving thousands of visitors, but too few of them are buying your product! With analytics, it’s no more difficult to know the source from where these visitors came and the keywords that took them to your site. I am sure that you will be surprised to see that most of visitors, who left your site immediately after landing, were looking for the main keywords of your site!

This is the time to start analyzing visitors’ behavior deeply. I am not saying that you should stop doing SEO. No, not at all; but you should testing various things with your site just to see how your visitors react to those changes. Now, go through the images below:



Yes, Google has also started doing it! I am sure the setting that receives maximum hit will be finalized OR, they may display various messages randomly.

You can also do similar things with your site. Change the background color, edit the CALL FOR message, place a different button and see if the changes result positively or not. However, all these things should be done in a thoughtful way, perhaps with the help of experts. Go through what Sumantra Roy, CEO, Conversion Multiplier has said at:

• 10 Factors to Test that Could Increase the Conversion Rate of your Landing Pages

Technorati Tags: SEO, Internet Marketing, Internet, Online Marketing