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Why Google Should Acquire Pinterest! My Message to Googleplex

cmcrajesh@gmail.com (Rajesh Kumar) — Wed, 13 Jun 2012 00:53:00 -0700

Google should acquire Pinterest!

Build a better mousetrap, and Google will beat a path to your door. A virtual truth! Had Ralph Waldo been alive, he would have quoted so! After many acquisitions, I believe pinterest is the one that Google should acquire for many reasons.

The popularity of inforgraphics is surging with a growing users’ base. ComScore reports that the site has seen a 900% increase in unique visitors with 17.8% million unique views in February 2012 in a short time since its inception in September 2009. Further, Pinterest is only third to Facebook and Tumblr, as per a story published in Mashable, where users spend an average 98 minutes per month.

Huffingtonpost reports that nearly a third of all Pinterest users have annual salaries of $100,000 or more, almost 70 percent are female and the largest age demographic represented on the site are people between 25 and 34. What more could an advertiser want?

High profile people and brands such as Barack Obama, Oprah, STA Travel, Windstar Cruises, and many others have joined the site purposely.

Users’ growing love for Pinterest is due to several reasons including visual infographics that interact users and mesmerize them. The old rule of lengthy text content and optimization technique as per Google guidelines is taking a back seat. Digital users spend less time in reading content of a website/portal. They simply scan. The F-shaped pattern of Jakob Neilson confirms that users don’t read text thoroughly. They scan the information.

Recently, I have observed that users likes' and 'share' of infographics are significantly increasing. Also, noticing plenty of requests from my internal clients come to me asking for my thoughts on using Pinterest to market their products. I do believe that Pinterest has potential to reshape retail and e-commerce strategies. My research is going on as how best we can use this site for e-commerce companies.

Recently, Facebook’s acquisition of Instagram hogged the headlines. Of course, Facebook had reasons to buy Instagram because it did not want another trouble to challenge their territory. Also, Google has a history of acquiring many such companies. Recently, Google acquired Digg @ $15 million and scooped up Digg founder Kevin Rose. I don’t understand why Danny Sullivan posted in his blog that Digg was affected by Google Panda. I believe @Danny, you have got the answer why digg got affected.:)

One of the strong reasons as why I believe Google should buy Pinterest is mainly because of its easy social applications. Google has android but its struggling in social arena in mobile. Pinterest has already won the hearts of desktop users and I believe it has an ability cater to mobile users.

In gist, I would advise Google that it’s better to be managed by a wise employee of any organization than by a foolish manager of its own company! In a small enterprise, such quote has relevance but Google is neither small nor its management is a foolish entity. Hope, G stakeholders are listening to this piece of FREE advice. :)

Google Contains the Seeds of Its Own Destruction

cmcrajesh@gmail.com (Rajesh Kumar) — Mon, 19 Mar 2012 00:50:00 -0700

bels:

Courtesy Image: uncyclopedia.wikia.com

Google’s love for brand is not a new thing to cover in my blog. Much has been written and talked about it but what is not talked about is the declining share of Wikipedia on Google search results. There was a time when Google would display Wikipedia on the top of the search result but now the top organic slot is replaced with big brands like ebay and Amazon.

There are many SEO experts who always write their opinion on the best practices of optimizing a website. Does a site like eBay or Amazon follow the so-called SEO advice? I cease to believe this and one citation would be adequate to prove my belief. Example: how many of you think -‘http://www.ebay.com/sch/Furniture-/20091/i.html’ is SEO friendly ULR? And how many of you think this particular ‘web page’ has followed basic On-Page? Search for ‘antique furniture’ in Google for US location.

Do you also think that ebay on top of Google has very good title? In webmaster, Google always shows ‘short title’. What about eBay’s title? Is it so enticing? Also, see the description and I’ll let you judge the quality of such a dynamic page from SEO perspective.

The logic for top SERP for such a store is ‘reputation’ more than following the so-called Google’s guidelines. Many experts favor this biased approach of Google that causes a sprawling growth of such ‘mash up’ ecosystem. I don’t deny the merits of ‘mash up economy’ but I also see the danger of such economy that tends to produce a monopolistic competition. Undoubtedly, Google encourages such development for being in ‘that area’.

SEO/SEM Job Opportunity and Average Salary in India

cmcrajesh@gmail.com (Rajesh Kumar) — Tue, 10 May 2011 00:49:00 -0700

Jakob Nielsen, the web usability expert

I’ve always pondered over the job market for SEO/SEM professionals in India. There has not been any single survey ever done on this to provide an idea to people associated with this industry. Based on my experience and preliminary web study, I have attempted to provide unverified data. While the accuracy of the data is questionable but they represent some facts that might help us take a sensible decision with respect to SEO/SEM jobs in India.

Fig (1.0)

The above graph represents the average salary of SEO/SEM professionals. The average salary of SEO ranges from 2.5 to 9.5 Lakh depending on the years of experience. I have also observed that the job opportunity for these professionals abounds especially for 0-2 years and 3-4 years of experience. After 5-7 years experience, the job opportunity for SEO/SEM professioanls falls by 30% while the job opportunity for 8-10 years of SEO/SEM experienced professionals falls by 50%. See graph below.

Fig (1.1)

The graph shows a jump of 20% job opportunity for SEO/SEM professional with 3-4 years of experience is greater than 0-2 years of experienced professionals. After this, a rapid fall in job opportunities for people with higher experience in this field. The % gap will be higher that shows lower job opportunities for people with 8 years + experience.

Compared to CTC, the % job opportunity for experienced professionals falls greater than the % increment in CTC. Given the fact that % CTC increase is lesser than % of increase in experience, it would be interesting to know which cities in India pay you off more to relocate for SEO/SEM jobs.

Table 1.0

Based on my preliminary study, I have observed that Mumbai tops the job opportunity for SEO/SEM professionals followed by Delhi, Bangalore, Chennai, Pune, Ahmadabad, Hyderabad and many others. Delhi & NCR, as shown in lower column of this table, is due to low CTC and poor compensation being paid to these professionals compared to other cities including Mumbai, Bangalore and Chennai where the job opportunities for SEO/SEM is GREAT.

If you see Google Insights, you’ll find Delhi tops for SEO jobs followed by Maharashtra. To my knowledge, SEO/SEM job opportunity in Delhi is as great as Maharashtra but the ‘search for SEO jobs’ in Delhi & NCR is higher than Mumbai. See the search trends in Google Insights.

Where to Relocate?

The following graph can help you take decision for taking up job offers in India cities.

Assumptions –

· You must think that you should get decent CTC, at least average as per standard

· You must be ready to relocate

· You must see cost of living

See the graph

Fig (1.0)

This graph represents the above table. Bhubaneswar is at the bottom next to Kolkata both in terms of CTC and job opportunities. As you move from Mumbai down to other cities, the job opportunities as well as salary for SEO/SEM professionals become lesser. Delhi is a just an exception because the city has plenty of job opportunities but CTC being paid to these professionals is low just above Kolkata and Bhubaneswar.

The graph also helps an SEO/SEM professional relocate a city for a job. For example, if a job offer is made for Mumbai and for Hyderabad, you’ll definitely opt for Mumbai as far as CTC and job opportunities are concerned. If you look other factors beyond these two and opt for Hyderabad, you’ll have to settle with lower CTC and lesser number of job opportunities. In that case, the decision is purely yours.

But after 8 years in SEO/SEM industry, things become very tough to live in Hyderabad or Kolkata or any other lower zones unless you further jump to another company as a project manager.

I welcome your feedback on my observations!

Google Is Smarter Than You Think

cmcrajesh@gmail.com (Rajesh Kumar) — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 04:10:00 -0700

Google is getting smarter and smarter, everyday. Faster than you may realize.

Let’s look at this example to see how Google was able to translate what I wanted and what it was able to provide me.

I did a search for “mytunes for mac” expecting to find some sort of app to let me ~~steal~~ borrow music from someone on my network, for OS X. Sure, there are utilities for Windows, but there aren’t that many apps for OS X.

Here’s where Google gets really smart. Below, I have the same search query on the top 3 search engines; Google, Yahoo!, and Bing.

Google was smart enough to know exactly what I was searching for and provide me the results I wanted to see, the first time. The app I was trying to actually see was an app called “ourtunes,” which Google provided me results for.

Let’s take a look at the 3 different engines. First Yahoo!, then Bing, and finally Google, the winner.

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4 Important SEO Infographics

cmcrajesh@gmail.com (Rajesh Kumar) — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 10:30:00 -0700

#1 - Pie Chart of SEO Time Expenditure

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#2 - Hat Color vs. Value Scatterplot of SEO Tactics

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#3 - Flowchart of SEO-Friendliness

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#4 - Venn Diagram of Internet Marketing Professions

details :-http://www.seomoz.org/

skfkjkjkfw

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The Effectiveness of Link Baiting and Seeding

cmcrajesh@gmail.com (Rajesh Kumar) — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 10:27:00 -0700

A great way of driving traffic to your website is by writing link bait. It’s very effective if you can target the right people, but not the easiest thing to do. So what is link bait?

Link Bait and Seeding

Link bait is content that is designed to get links. Not necessarily good content, but content that is worth writing about and linking to. Don’t mistake good content for link grabbing content. Although link bait can be done by writing such great content, you can also enrage people with your writing and get links, or you can make them laugh so hard they have to tell their friends and link to you. Truth to it is it’s an art.

Here’s the deal though - maybe you’ve tried it and failed. That doesn’t mean you weren’t any good. Often, it means you weren’t able to seed it effectively. You can write fantastic link bait but if no one reads it, it’s not going anywhere. You need to seed it, get initial traffic to it. More importantly, the right type of traffic. Your average 13-year-old might laugh but he might not have a website to link to you with. On the other hand he might visit a forum and link to you from a forum page. Those links all count, especially in search engine optimization.

You now have a few options to get seeders. Maybe connect with other bloggers, get them to laugh, link to it, and generate a spurt of traffic.

Another idea, although a little shady and not always a good idea because it can be though of as spamming, register 2 to 3 users on a forum, start a conversation between them all, and then drop your link into the middle of it to get the initial visitors. Or, if these ideas don’t work for you, you can also use a social bookmarking site.

Social bookmarking

All of these systems need to be worked at. You might have to try again and again to get it. Social bookmarking requires you to interact in the community every day and build a profile. It’s like using facebook but as a job. It is a job you have to do with discipline. Once you build a powerful profile, you have a very big asset at your disposal. A powerful profile will automically get votes from people who are friends of that user and allow you to push stories to the front page with more consistency. It’s definitely a long term investment but one that is worth thinking about.

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When It Grows Up, the iiView A2 Wants To Be a MacBook

cmcrajesh@gmail.com (Rajesh Kumar) — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 02:43:00 -0700

If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery than Apple is a-blushing and a-giggling right now. iView's iiView A2 is hitting Singapore next week and, aside from running Windows 7 RC 1 of all things, it seems a bit familiar.

Sleek and sexy, this $467.78 netbook looks good enough to slice cake with. Its design mimics that of Apple's MacBook Air, right down to hidden monitor-out and USB ports. No word on how the lack of an optical drive is being dealt with though.

The specifications don't have anything worth getting excited about except for that last item:

Atom 1.6GHz processor

2GB RAM

Intel 945 chipset

12.1-inch 1,280 x 800-pixel resolution

320GB HDD

Two USB ports, mini-HDMI port, 2-in-1 headphone/mic jack

802.11b/g, 10/100 Ethernet

Six-cell battery

Windows 7 RC1 with Vista Home Premium license

Yes, the iiView A2 runs Windows 7 RC1, but comes with a Vista Home Premium license so that you can upgrade to Windows 7 Home Premium when the time is right. iView explains that this OS decision was made because Vista just doesn't "provide an adequate experience" on netbooks. (Does it provide an adequate experience on anything?)

This is the best looking netbook I've seen so far and a great deal for those craving the style of Apple's line, but dreading the price tag. All that's left is the wait until the iiView A2 hits US shelves.

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SEO Strategy: Bigger and Better Goals

cmcrajesh@gmail.com (Rajesh Kumar) — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 09:01:00 -0700

SEO is not one-size-fits-all.

Although at Fuel Interactive for SEO, we have

A standard SEO process
A prioritized checklist of best practices
Several simultaneous optimization paths…

…we don’t treat every client the same.

We start by looking strategically at rankings, traffic, pagerank, inbound links, and best practice optimizations:

How is the client doing now?
What are their competitors doing better?
What competitive advantages might the client better leverage?

When we’ve met a client’s initial goals, we need to raise the bar. We look for results that are meaningful to the client. Then we say, “Ok, what’s next?” We push for the next strategy to get more results.

Targeting Keywords According to Difficulty

There’s no more obvious place for goal retargeting in SEO than keywords. Every SEO knows that some keywords are more competitive than others.

Brand Name Keywords: If you have a client that’s not ranking for their brand name, you have a serious problem or a serious lack of SEO, and that comes first. Sometimes we get a completely non-optimized client: almost zero inbound links, same title tag for every page- those optimizations come first. It’s also possible in some industries, like tourism, national sites also sell the local brand- if the local brand’s SEO is horrible, they might not crack the first page for their brand name.
General Keywords: Then you can move to more general keywords- categories, geolocations, etc. These will be more competitive, so you’ll have to make the site more competitive. And there will be levels of difficulty within the general keyword group- some are more competitive than others.

Targeting Keywords According to Results

Another way to look at keywords is according to rankings, traffic, conversions, and conversion rate. Here’s how our keyword evaluation process goes over time:

Launch keywords: Initial keyword list based on site, offerings, brand names, category, etc. These come from research tools. At worst, you have no other clients in that vertical and start from scratch. At best, industry experience has already taught you something about the best keywords.
Revised keyword list: Reprioritized and expanded keyword list based on analytics, rankings, traffic. Analytics exposes keywords you couldn’t find in step one.
Conversion keywords: Reprioritized keyword list based on conversion data. A keyword might get a lot of traffic, but if its conversion rate is significantly low, keywords with medium amounts of traffic that convert well might be better targets.

Revising Keyword Goals After Implementing Basic Best Practices

One of our clients ranked about #5 for their brand names, and nowhere in the top 50 for more general keywords. Not surprisingly, they required significant best practice optimizations including:

301 redirects from an older domain name
Clean-up and 301 redirecting of older missing pages
Keyword optimized, page-specific TITLE tags
Keyword optimized, page-specific Meta descriptions

We did all of the above with sensible category-specific and geolocation-specific keywords. The result, after several months, was that the brand name keywords all rank #1, and the site began to rank between pages two and four for more competitive general keywords. We have now switched our strategy to target 5-10 of these more competitive keywords and are building content and finding links to achieve higher rankings for them.

Expanding Focus to Mid-Tail Good-Converting Keywords

Another client was very focused on ranking higher for a very competitive keyword. We had suggested a more broad focus that would start with long and middle tail keywords and work up to the major keyword, but the client insisted. Over several months, we were able to move them from #4 to #2 for that keyword. But we continued to present the data to them, which showed the following:

There’s really no disputing the value of their number one keyword, but the next five biggest converting keywords receive more conversions than the main one does. As you go further into the mid and long-tail, conversion rates go up, and ranking difficulty goes down. It makes sense to go after all of these, too one degree or another.

http://www.seo-scoop.com/2009/07/21/seo-strategy-bigger-and-better-goals/

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GoogleGuy Retire From WebmasterWorld Again?

cmcrajesh@gmail.com (Rajesh Kumar) — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 08:18:00 -0700

The infamous and legendary GoogleGuy at WebmasterWorld has gone almost a full year without posting at WebmasterWorld. GoogleGuy's last post was in a WebmasterWorld thread on July 24, 2008 at about 6:30pm (EST). He replied to confirm a PageRank toolbar update.

GoogleGuy use to be extremely active in the WebmasterWorld forums, ranking up 2,882 posts over the year. But for the past few years, he/she has been very quiet. Why? Well, now GoogleGuy is not the only Google Guy in the forums, there are plenty of Google representatives that go under aliases, i.e. AdSenseAdvisor or their own names, i.e. MattCutts, in both WebmasterWorld, other forums and the official Google forums.

But we would hate to see GoogleGuy expire. So please, GoogleGuy, just say hello, like you did in the past, to let us know you are still out there. If you do want to unmask yourself, that would be fine, but personally, I like the mask. ;-)

Sadly, no forum discussion here to link to.

Source webmasterworld.com

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Geo-Targeting Is not Just only for Local Businesses Anymore

cmcrajesh@gmail.com (Rajesh Kumar) — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 08:13:00 -0700

Most people think of geo-targeting settings for two reasons: either supporting the geographic areas their business supports, or for local promotions or events. While geo-targeting makes perfect sense in those situations, using geo-targeting in even your regular campaigns can have some significant advantages, even if you already have a successful paid search account.

Why should you geo-target your successful paid search campaigns? Basically, geo-targeting provides another layer of data, deeper than the keyword level. It expands on the knowledge of which keyword is performing, and adds information about which state a keyword is performing in. This allows your bidding decisions to be made with better data based on these regional factors:

Competition: The number of advertisers is different for each region. While you may not be geo-targeting, many others are. So your CPCs can, and will, be very different.
Product price: What costs $100 in West Virginia may cost $200 in New York. Therefore, your CPA metrics can and should be different for each region, because revenue will vary based on location. This impacts your ROI and, therefore, your allowable CPC.
Conversion rates: Some regions are in better economic situations than others, and are more likely to purchase and convert. In other cases, one region may have users that are more Internet savvy, etc. Many factors can affect conversion rates, and these factors will vary by geography.
Brand awareness: Your brand may be stronger in some parts of the country. This might be based on the way various media is purchased, or store locations. This difference will impact your CTRs, and therefore your quality score.
Ad copy: It may be hot in Florida and cold in Maine. There are also regional differences in what things are called, or ways things are talked about. The message in your ad copy could target these differences.

searchenginewatch.com

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Nearly 5000 employees quit TCS

cmcrajesh@gmail.com (Rajesh Kumar) — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 00:38:00 -0700

Bangalore: At a time when job losses are grabbing headlines, almost 5,000 employees of Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) have in fact left the company on their own. Last Friday during its quarterly results, the company announced that its annual attrition rate was at 11.5 percent.

The headcount of India's largest software exporter shrank despite a gross addition of staff. According to Hindustan Times, in the latest quarter TCS added a total of 2,828 employees with the total headcount of 1,43,761 at the start of the quarter. If the new hires are taken into consideration, the total employees strength should have reached 1,46,589 by the end of June. However, the firm's headcount was at 1,41,642 as of June 30, 2009, showing a net reduction of 4,947 employees.

A company spokesperson confirmed the staff decline but added that TCS's attrition levels were in line with the industry average. "Our attrition level has remained similar to what it was in the previous quarter. However, since we have controlled gross additions, the overall headcount has come down," said a TCS spokesperson.

The spokesperson added that the company was hiring fresh graduates as per need, but will honor the 24,885 campus offers it had made last financial year and those students would come on board only from the second quarter (July-September). Like its competitor Infosys, TCS decided to honor old commitments on campus recruitments while slowing down the hiring of new graduates. But lateral hiring of experienced staff is continuing, though on a low key.

It needs to be seen if these 5,000 employees have in fact quit voluntarily or were they forced to leave by the company.

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Building Directory Links: A Valuable SEO Trick?

cmcrajesh@gmail.com (Rajesh Kumar) — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 11:41:00 -0700

Although many SEO experts differ on the specific tactics required to gain organic search visibility, the majority of them would place a relatively equal emphasis on the refinement of site structure and taxonomy/hierarchy, the importance of having relevant and indexable content, and the value of inbound links. Each of these focus areas has a variety of different tasks and goals associated.

To ensure the validity of each individual SEO tactic, it's important to constantly measure the performance of each tactic. This can be very difficult, because often many of the recommendations for SEO are implemented in conjunction.

However, in some situations, establishing case studies can measure the apparent results of a specific tactic. From a link building perspective, one of the longest-tenured tactics to employ is to build links within topical free and paid directories.

In late 2008, we launched three new pages within a specific business line of a financial services client. The content was optimized, and some internal links were established in order to get the content indexed. Our next step was for the link development team to request links from free and paid directories.

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Google Expects YouTube to be Profitable Soon

cmcrajesh@gmail.com (Rajesh Kumar) — Sat, 18 Jul 2009 10:52:00 -0700

In its earnings call last night, Google says things are looking up. After a slightly disappointing Q1, Google beat expectations, although its revenue is still growing slowly.

Estimates put net revenue at $4.06B, but Google posted $4.07B, up from $3.89B in Q208 (4.6% growth YOY). Net income for the second quarter was $1.48B, up from $1.25B in Q208 (18.4% growth YOY). Naturally some analysts are disappointed with Google only adding 3% growth over the previous quarter, but considering that Q1 constituted a 3% decline over Q408, it sounds like good news to me.

But even better news: CEO Eric Schmidt says that not only are things turning around (or at least "largely stabilized"), but YouTube will soon enter the realm of profitability. (Or, as one company I worked for optimistically called this, "making the push to cash positive.")

Senior vice president Jonathan Rosenberg said monetized views on YouTube have more than tripled in the last year. The most popular video website on the Internet will be "a very profitable business for us" in the “not too distant future.”

Also, CFO Patrick Pinchette emphasized that YouTube does have a business model, unlike other Internet startups: "There's been so much press with all these documentations of massive costs and no business model."

Another way that Google has been looking to keep the bottom line down? They've lost nearly 400 employees in the last three months.

What do you think? Will YouTube soon be profitable, or is Google just trying to make itself look good? Are you disappointed with Google’s slowing growth rate?

Google Gets Mini-Sitelinks

cmcrajesh@gmail.com (Rajesh Kumar) — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 04:59:00 -0700

Google announced a new, smaller version of their sitelinks search feature on their official Webmaster Blog today. The new mini-sitelinks will appear on more than just the top search result, and will occupy a maximum of one line and four links per result. Sitelinks were originally added by Google to help people jump to more specific portions of large web domains like Amazon or About.com. Additionally, the original version of sitelinks ws only generated for the top-most result of a search query; the new one-liners can appear on other results on the first page.

Sitelinks can be seen as a slow encroachment of Google into a function that is traditionally part of the experience of visiting a site. Depending on how a site is structured, a business might not appreciate customers being pushed directly to a page below the front page. It could be seen as taking away from the customer's average time on site (a commonly measured site statistic) as well as potentially confusing if a company's offerings are complex and require some explanation.

To this end, Google has made available settings in its suite of Google Webmaster Tools that allow domain holders, once registered, to block specific sitelinks from being listed in Google search results. It does appear that the block is only temporary (90 days) and for specific pages - which means webmasters are going to have a headache dealing with it if they have a lot of potential sitelink pages to block. In any case, Google has written about how to block sitelinks here.

Yahoo Site Links: Quicklinks for Navigational Queries

cmcrajesh@gmail.com (Rajesh Kumar) — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 05:04:00 -0700

If you do a search in Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft Live Search, under some of the first search results that you see are extra sets of links to other pages on the same site. Google refers to these as site links and Yahoo calls them quicklinks. Microsoft has published at least one whitepaper that describes the kind of pages that show up in their site links as final destination pages. The site links that all three search engines show look very similar to each other. Can you identify which site links go with which search engine in the images below (hover over them to see which is from which search engine).

While these site links appear similar, one question that I have had is how does each of the search engines decide upon which pages to show as site links?

A patent filing Google published in 2006 describes their listings of internal site links, and may give some insight into the links that Google decides to show. The Microsoft paper also gives us an idea of what criteria they consider in providing those links. What about Yahoo?

Yahoo has been providing a single line of quicklinks under some search results for a few years now, not limiting themselves to the top search result for those queries. Google has just recently started showing single line site links in a similar manner.

A new whitepaper from Yahoo goes into a great amount of depth concerning how they may choose the site links that they show on their pages. In Quicklink Selection for Navigational Query Results, Yahoo tells us about the sources of information that they look at when deciding upon which links to use, the mathematical process behind choosing quicklinks, and some possible changes to quicklinks that they might pursue in the future.

Navigational Queries

One common thread behind the use of sitelinks by all three search engines is that the concept behind providing internal site links to pages on a site that shows up in search results is to improve the searching experience of people looking for information by providing links to pages within a site that searchers likely would want to find.

The types of queries that tend to trigger the appearance of sitelinks are navigational queries - searches where the searcher likely has an idea of the page or site that they want to find already, but doesn’t remember the exact web address, or URL, for that page or finds it easier to just type a query into a search box and click on a link. For example, if I want to go to the ESPN site, I’ll type “espn” into a search box instead of typing http://www.espn.com into my browser address bar.

If I do that in Google, I not only get a link to the homepage for ESPN, but also additional links for:

College Basketball
NBA
NFL
MLB
The NHL
Fantasy Games
Scores
Streak for the CASH
More results

Oddly, Yahoo doesn’t provide quicklinks for that query, but Microsoft Live gives a set of site links that overlaps Google’s somewhat.

Source of Yahoo Quicklinks

The Yahoo paper tells us that they look at a number of sources to find good candidate pages for quicklinks:

Query and click logs - navigational queries, how searchers reformulate their queries during query sessions, and which pages they click upon
Toolbar and user trail data - looking at navigation patterns in the way that people browse a web site
Webgraph information from hyperlinks - ranking the webpages within a site based upon how they are linked to from inside and outside of the site
Information from social bookmarking websites - such as delicious.com and digg.com
Sitemaps or server log information - provided by webmasters of a site

Free Google AdWords Worth £30 for UK or Ireland - Is It Really FREE?

cmcrajesh@gmail.com (Rajesh Kumar) — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 03:02:00 -0800

There is good news for new advertisers in UK and Ireland to take advantage of the trial £30 voucher of Google AdWords now. However, you need to carefully monitor your campaign that you set up using promotional AdWords coupon. Otherwise, you’ll be charged.

Actually £30 free coupon is in fact worth £25 (£30- £5 activation of AdWords account). If your account is less than 14 days, you can avail of this FREE AdWords coupon but not without caution. Read carefully the Terms & Conditions.

“If you do not wish to incur additional charges beyond the promotional credit then you should monitor your account and pause or delete your campaign before or once this amount has been reached.” .” Otherwise, you will be charged for any advertising charges that exceed the promotional credit.

Isn’t this really a good news for small business in UK and Ireland to try AdWords now? At least you are getting FREE from search giant :)

Google Chrome –Why SEO Is More Important Now Than Ever Before?

cmcrajesh@gmail.com (Rajesh Kumar) — Sat, 18 Oct 2008 01:50:00 -0700

Why has SEO become more important now than ever with Chrome?

2. Why should you emphasize now on making website Chrome Compatibility and do Google Optimization?

3. Why pseudo SEO knowledge does not help companies manipulate rankings now?

4. Why marketers need to pay attentions to Chrome or ignore at their peril?

5. Why appropriate content wins while scarp will be thrown out of Google index?

Search engine optimization has become a critical need especially when Google Chrome is now launched. Yes, this browser suggests the top websites based on organic web ranking, CTR, unique and daily visits, etc. However, if your SEO efforts aren’t up to mark or fail to win the top slot on Organic Results Page in Google, the giant search engine will surely ignore you in the testing of their browser, too.

If Chrome attains huge success in the coming years, Google will test against your site - if you rank. SEO companies or online marketers need to pay heed to, or ignore at their peril.

If users think your site is worth to remember, Google Chrome will do it for them. No… you don’t need to bookmark, the next time you open the browser chrome will suggest what you have visited last time. Furthermore, if your site ranks for keywords on organic page, Chrome will suggest it in the browser itself. There is no need to use Google suggest.

Just have a look at the Chrome comic pics.

Google Chrome suggests that if you make your content remarkable, they’ll market it for free to their users directly in the OmniBox. However, time will only tell how this new browser does but marketers should start paying attention to this right now.

Google chrome, as a tool, will surely give huge statistics of human behaviors on website. Every move you make on the browser will be noted by Google. This also implies that analytic becomes more important than ever it was. Who knows, Google analytics might introduce a component of ‘chrome compatibility’ of your website. I analyze following points:

- How much time you spend on a web page

- What you click on or what not

- What parts of the page you read, browse or exit

- What you buy

Beyond doubt, millions of users must have installed this browser by now. With this, box checked and search will become semantic. Search compatible website with appropriate content will continue to find place in check box. Artificially or black hat SEO will soon droop its ranking while ethical SEO of website with good content will gain in rankings based on Chrome’s statistics.

It’s time for SEO or online marketers to pay attention to Chrome Now!

Keyword Bidding Strategies-Google AdWords

cmcrajesh@gmail.com (Rajesh Kumar) — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 14:44:00 -0700

How does AdWords Keyword Bidding Strategies Work?
Why Google charges less than you bid for a keyword?
What does the following answer by Google mean to you?

"The AdWords Discounter monitors your competition and automatically reduces your actual CPC so you pay the lowest price possible for your ad's position on the page." Google Answer

The answer to the above question is -Vickrey Auction.

What is Vickrey Auction?

A Vickrey Auction is where the highest bidder wins - but he/she only pays the second highest bidding price. Now Read carefully the above message by Google Answer.

Yes, the above message verifies that AdWords follows Viekrey Auction or Sealed-bid auction or second-price auction.

Advertiser B's bid = $15
Advertiser C's bid = $12
Advertiser D's bid = $10

If there are 3 ad spots in this auction, then the ad spots will be assigned to the top 3 bidders: you, Advertiser B and Advertiser C. The value of the ad is figured as the value displaced by your participation, which in this case is Advertiser D's bid. You therefore pay $10 for the ad spot. Advertisers B and C will also each pay $10 for their ad spots.

If you wanted 2 of the 3 ad spots, your bid would be $18 x 2 = $36. You'd be displacing Advertiser C as well as Advertiser D, so the value displaced would be:

Advertiser C's bid = $12
Advertiser D's bid = $10

You'd pay $22 for both ad spots - much lower than the $36 you were willing to spend.

The important thing to remember is: bid what you're willing to pay. You'll never be surprised by ad spots that go over your maximum CPM, and our system will figure discounts when possible as a result of the auction. (Source: AdWords Google Support)

If you participate in a Vickrey Auction, you can safely bid the maximum price that makes sense to you in the knowledge that if you win, you will pay less than this. If everyone understands this, they will all bid the maximum they can afford and the seller does very nicely. Furthermore, no one ends up paying more than they can afford.

If budget is not a problem, one can go ahead with this strategies to win the slot but it carries high risk of losing huge chunk of money. However, it also might help you win the top slot on Google Paid Search listing at lower CPC next to the bid set by your competitor.

I strongly suggest for small business or advertisers with low budget not to engage in Bidding War, as explained above.

Why it can be dangerous to bid high?

Google uses a variation on the Vickrey Auction model to determine how much you pay when your ad is clicked. Let's look at the situation when three people again are bidding.

A bids $1.20
B bids $2.50
C bids $1.21

B wins the bid, but Google sets the price paid at 1 cent ABOVE the next highest price. In this case then B has to pay $1.22 for the click. This is well below the price he bid.

Now it may be that B simply set his price high because he thought that $2.50 would guarantee top slot and that everyone else would be bidding much lower which in this case was true.

But suppose C also adopted the same philosophy and bid $2.30 instead of $1.21.

A bids $1.20
B bids $2.50
C bids $2.30

In this case, B would still win - but would have to pay $2.31 for the click this time.

This shows why it is dangerous to bid too high just to achieve a high ranking. You can't always assume you will pay much less than your maximum bid price.

2 Additional Google Twists

Just to make the process more complex, Google adds a couple of twists to this process too.

In the above examples, we talk about bid prices measured in dollars and cents. In practice, Google uses a different "currency". Let's call it your bidding power.

Your bidding power is equal to your bidding price multiplied by your ads popularity for the relevant keyword. What this means is that your bidding power doubles if you run ads that achieve twice the click through rate of competitor ads for a given keyword even if you are bidding exactly the same amount of money per click.

Example:

Bid price $2.12
CTR 2%
Bidding power = 414

Bid price $2.12
CTR 1%
Bidding power = 212

When you bid in Google's real time auction for an ad, it is your Bidding Power and not simply your bidding price that determines where your ad will rank.

If you get a high CTR, you can still have a higher Bidding Power than your competitor who is bidding a higher price than you. This is why it pays to have ads that get the clicks.

How this fits with the Vickrey Auction

The model is the same as the dollar-only model we first discussed but this time, instead of costing you dollars and cents per click, you get charged an amount of Bidding Power.

Example

A bids 400 Bidding Power Units
B bids 300 Bidding Power Units
C bids 349 Bidding Power Units

A wins the bid but pays only 350 Bidding Power Units. (1 more than the 2nd highest bidders bid of 349)

Google charges A in dollars and cents so how much does he pay?

The answer depends on his Click Through Rate. If he has a CTR of 1% he will pay $3.50 because 350 x 1 = 350.

On the other hand, if he is achieving a CTR of 5% (which is what top performing ads can achieve), he will pay 70 cents (70 x 5 = 350)

The second complexity that Google adds to this system is that a similar process goes on for each bidder in order to determine the final order in which ads appear.

Finally don't forget that the click through rate you achieve for each keyword will depend in part on the ad that gets displayed for the keyword. You need to maximize this and the best way to do this is to run several ads at a time and see which ones generate the highest click through rates.

Part of the process of managing your account is to delete poor performing ads and create ads that beat your best performing ad to date.

Key learning points

Treat your Click Through Rate at least as importantly as your Maximum Cost Per Click price.
Don't over bid for keywords unless you are sure no one else is doing the same.

30 SEO Tips in 30 Days to turn your website SEO ready

cmcrajesh@gmail.com (Rajesh Kumar) — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 02:36:00 -0800

Revised 30 SEO Tips in 30 Days - Explained in Google Knol (Won best knol of the Month March 2009 & Top Pick Knol Award)

Having less time to do SEO by your own :) do not worry, now you have a chance to turn your website SEO ready in just 30 days by applying one SEO tip a day? Here are those 30 SEO tips

Tip [1] Add Titles related to targeted keywords, place only important keywords, do not exceed more than 25 characters
Tip [2] Meta description should be unique for each pages with targeted keywords. Do not stuff keywords into Meta description.
Tip [3] Layout pages with CSS, avoid tables
Tip [4] Add Keywords towards H1 tag as page headlines.
Tip [5] Implement Bread crumbs for increasing web site navigation structure example Home >> Service >> SEO
Tip [6] Create Static Header and footer navigation links, Links should be text not as images
Tip [7] Analyze your targeted keywords using Google suggest
Tip [8] Keywords in navigational links play a vital role and have its own importance to search engine eyes
Tip [9] Use most important keyword in file name or URL
Tip [10] Minimize table especially nested tables
Tip [11] Say yes to Quality links and No to Quantity links
Tip [12] Never try to place hundreds of link for a new site on the very first day
Tip [13] Your targeted keywords need to vary a lot in anchors
Tip [14] Always have a good combination of links from new and old sites
Tip [15] Try writing articles having links and have them in the resource page of your site
Tip [16] Images are important, make sure your site logo contains your keyword
Tip [17] Put CSS and JavaScript into external file / folder
Tip [18] Pay special attention to your content
Tip [19] Make sure to have sitemap as text links
Tip [20] Place robots.txt in root on your server
Tip [21] Create Google site map to your web site
Tip [23] Start a blog and participate with other related blogs
Tip [22] Submit site to open directories
Tip [24] Create feed xml and ror xml for xml search engines and directories
Tip [25] Try to avoid automatic directory submission and build manual links
Tip [26] Monitor your hits and traffic by using free Google analytics
Tip [27] Know how to analyze the reports and to optimize the results
Tip [28] Know about redirection methods and theory - 301, 302, and 200 response codes
Tip [29] Implement, understand and react to website analytics reports
Tip [30] Make your body copy sufficiently long and keyword rich

Search engine optimization for Yahoo!

cmcrajesh@gmail.com (Rajesh Kumar) — Thu, 6 Sep 2007 03:39:00 -0700

Yahoo! Inc. it’s an American Public Corporation as well as a provider of global services, founded jointly by Jerry Yang and David Filo. It includes a whole diverse package of products, consisting of a web portal, a search engine, mail (Yahoo! Mail) directory, news and posting. According to sources and web traffic analysis, it is one of the most visited and popular sites in the world. The Yahoo search engine is the second largest in the world, preceded only by Google. Its search engine includes vertical searches such as Image and Video searches.

Yahoo SEO Nuances
Majority of SEO work is done keeping the Google frame in mind, but it would be stupidity to ignore other search engines like Yahoo! that take in a major share too. SEO work done keeping Yahoo! in mind would also give ample traffic through to your web-site.

Techniques

Keyword Density
SEOs usually optimize with a mere 2%-3% of keyword density but Yahoo uses a much larger keyword density level. The attention to keyword density is because Yahoo does not lay much importance on inbound links but rather on content on your site. This however may lead to penalty imposed by Google as they might deem your site or SEO research done as keyword-stuffed and hence forced-optimized text.
This glitch may however be ironed out, by usage of different synonyms of the same keyword in order to maintain the keyword density and yet not get caught on the wrong foot by Google. For example, instead of using a 8% density for the keyword “jewelry” we can use its 3 synonyms at a 2% density each. A sure-shot way to manage SEO research for all search engines at tandem.

Meta Tags
Yahoo still prefers Meta tags which has almost been considered a outdated practice by webmasters today. Using this feature you might give a boost to your SEO stuff on Yahoo.

Freshness and Quality Rules
Regular updates and additions to your already existing content will help it become more search-engine friendly and SEO-streamlined. Blogs, posts etc are a good way to keep your web content fresh. Fresh content and massive use of it will assure you of a favorable place on the Yahoo search-engine lists flawlessly.

Yahoo web-spiders
The Yahoo web-crawler doesn’t issue very active action while indexing your web-pages and indexing them. And hence, a site-map is of utmost importance while doing SEO research keeping Yahoo in mind to maintain a high rank in the Yahoo search results.
Ignoring SEO for Yahoo would only be fool-hardy for though Google actually rules the search world, yet Yahoo has a well-accepted repute as an intricate search-engine. And since using content fit for both the big ones, Yahoo and Google is easy, therefore ignoring Yahoo will only mean a loss of a considerate amount of web traffic to your web site.

Article Source: ABC Article Directory

Top 10 websites for webmasters

cmcrajesh@gmail.com (Rajesh Kumar) — Mon, 3 Sep 2007 00:14:00 -0700

Being a webmaster is a complex thing, you need to know about design, style, graphics, writing, servers, hosting, databases, SEO, blogging, advertising, marketing and more!

Here is a list of top 10 sites which you will help be a better webmaster.

1. Digital Point Webmasters Forums - Digital Point’s webmasters forums are a must for anyone who runs a website. The membership base is huge with over 500,000 members. There are forums for everything from Google to PHP, from domains for sale to marketing. Excellent and essential!
2. SEO Book - Essential SEO reading. The blog posts latest information and news about the world of search and SEO. Aaron Wall (the webmaster) also offers marketing tips, search analysis, and whatever random rants come to his mind!
3. Matt Cutts is an engineer with Google. His personal blog is full of interesting information about Google, search engines, SEO and the web.
4. Adsense - While we are on the subject of Google, if you want to monterize your website then Google’s Adsense program is one of the best.
5. Web designer Wall - A create place for tricks, tips trends and tutorials about web design, CSS, photoshop and flash.
6. Every website needs a host and there are thousands of hosting companies, but no top 10 webmasters list would be complete without one, so I decided on Hostgator. Enough said.
7. Along with a website, you will need a domain name, again there are lots of Internet domain name registration companies, if I have to choose one it would be GoDaddy.
8. Online tools are a great help in optimizing your website for search engines and SEO Chat’s SEO tools are among the best.
9. HotScripts.com is an Internet directory that compiles and distributes Web programming-related resources, geared toward webmasters, developers and programmers looking for enhancing their Web sites with dynamic development tools.
10. And finally, The Web Directories List contains most of the top web directories in the web directory industry. If you are looking for the top web directories to add your site this is one of the better lists to start with.

Yahoo new mail delivers free SMS text messages

cmcrajesh@gmail.com (Rajesh Kumar) — Fri, 31 Aug 2007 00:34:00 -0700

New beta offers free text messaging to mobile phone numbers in US, Canada, Philippines and India.

Online search and services giant Yahoo! today unveiled a major update to its online web mail service to feature two new communication options as it battles with Google and MSN/Hotmail.

The first is the offer of free SMS text messages to any mobile phone number within the US, Canada, India or the Philippines. Instant messaging also gets a deal with Yahoo Mail now able to send instant messages to Yahoo Messenger and Windows Live Messenger.

The company says that the new mail service will include added refinements to performance and speed and will become available today via a worldwide rollout.

However, while Yahoo! is focussing on its new service, it has said it intends to continue offering Yahoo! Mail Classic to users as an extra option.

The new text messaging feature is built into the new Instant Messaging client and offers SMS texting in real-time. All users need to do is type in a phone number, add a message and hit the Send button.

The ability to use instant messaging with the email client also extends to switching email messages to IM chats or text message with a simple click.

"We have always been focused on making it easy for people to connect to those who matter most to them, and during the beta testing period of the new Yahoo! Mail, we were able to incorporate a number of enhancements based on valuable feedback from our users," said John Kremer, vice president, Yahoo! Mail. "Now, with the all-new Yahoo! Mail, we're creating a more social e-mail experience. In addition, we wanted to make sure that people have the best possible Web mail experience regardless of their geographic location, preferences or system, so we're continuing to offer our trusted Yahoo! Mail Classic interface."

Other features include email search refinements, shortcuts (for US users only at this stage) as well as the choice of between six different coloured themes.

Both Yahoo! Mail and Mail Classic services are available now.

Yahoo!, Microsoft and Google are locked in a three-way battle for hearts and minds in the new “web 2.0” domain as web-based mail, storage, applications and messaging merge into a single communications portal that aims to deliver to users a complete package that relies less on PCs and more on portability.

New co-branded versions of Yahoo! Mail will also be available by September/October to customers using the following broadband Internet services: AT&T Yahoo! High Speed Internet, Verizon Yahoo! and Rogers Yahoo! Hi-Speed Internet. The company expects the new mail service will be available to Yahoo! Small Business Mail users in the same time frame.

The inclusion of India in its free SMS text messaging service shows the importance the company sees that country with its huge potential audience.

Yahoo has not indicated when its free SMS text message feature will become available to phone numbers in other regions of the world.

Off-site optimization: Outbound Link strategies

cmcrajesh@gmail.com (Rajesh Kumar) — Fri, 27 Jul 2007 02:09:00 -0700

Getting quality back link is the most important thnig in high search engine rankings. Search engines count links to your site as a popularity vote. Search engines have better idea in recognizing link patterns, linking profiles, deep-linking, farm linking one-way and reciprocal linking, etc. Your links should be inbound one-way links with appropriate anchor text related to your site. They should also come from a site that's related to the theme of your Website or the link is devalued. Search Engines gives values to theame base links.

The basic link building techniques (getting links, link exchanges and directory submissions) aren't that effective anymore. You can say its a big waste of time (except for submissions to some high quality directories like Dmoz, Yahoo etc). Links always were suppose to be a sign of popularity. Link popularity is suppose to be the result of having a popular website, not the result of placing links all over the place. Search engines are now getting so good at determining real (natural) link popularity that webmasters have to get back to basics.

Back to basics means: doing marketing, increasing the popularity of the website/company which results in more links to the website. The marketing step has been ignored for a long time because search engines couldn't tell the difference between links placed for SEO reasons and links that are the result of popularity. Now that they´re getting better at determining why a link was placed, the marketing step now needs to be included into the SEO strategy. Or if you prefer : marketing and SEO need to work together.

The WEB 2.0 makes it possible to do much more with a website. A company that combines marketing and SEO efforts to support each other, are the most successful in obtaining high rankings. This is becoming so obvious that it is almost impossible to ignore the WEB 2.0 for much longer. Websites that have enjoyed high rankings for years need to keep up with technology otherwise they may be passed by competition that does focus on the WEB 2.0. Marketing and SEO need to embrace each other, something that, in many cases, is not that easy as SEO is still often seen as something technical in which a marketing department can't do much. But the reality is that the most difficult thing in SEO, link building, in fact should be handled by the marketing department and not by the SEO.

Negative SEO - Harming Your Competitors Easily

cmcrajesh@gmail.com (Rajesh Kumar) — Thu, 12 Jul 2007 22:53:00 -0700

There are 7 ways you can impact your competitors negatively:

(1) Google Bowling
(2) Tattling
(3) Google Insulation
(4) Copyright Takedown Notices
(5) Copied Content
(6) Denial of Servic

The Forbes article is a little sensationalistic.

Reporting paid links to Google – what Forbes pejoratively calls "tattling" – is not just ethical, it's something we should be encouraging every search engine professional to do. (You should report paid links even in industries that don’t affect you – the better to discredit the link selling industry and make people think twice before using them.)

"Insulation" – creating many sites to take up real estate – is a legitimate tactic employed by a lot of big brands. It can be frustrating to the rest of us who would like to place in SERPS for those brands, but it is not unethical.

Click Fraud – a major problem on the internet and one I spend a lot of time fighting. But the perpetrators aren't competitors. They are "affiliates" of YSM and Google AdWords who try to make money by clicking away.

Denial of Service, copying content, buying links to competitors – yes those are bad things. I wish law enforcement agencies would get involved. Right now it's still the Wild West on the internet.

RSS Feed with Blog Widgets

cmcrajesh@gmail.com (Rajesh Kumar) — Thu, 21 Jun 2007 05:32:00 -0700

Widgets (website's Gadgets) are now found everywhere on the web - people use them for cross promoting their blogs, running picture slide-shows in the sidebar, sharing favorite music or video clips, displaying Amazon Shopping wish-list and more.
Two of my favorite blog widget providers are YourMinis and Widgetbox - both offer detailed stats and an option to embed widgets in your Blogger, MySpace, FaceBook, Netvibes, Google IG, PageFlakes or other accounts automatically.