SEO Consultant India - SEO Kolkata

Stick Google Plus Buttons on your Pages or Your Search Traffic Dies

2011-08-31T02:07:00.004+05:30

The day Google launched the Plus One ( +1) buttons, I was having a meeting with our SEO team at [x]cube and I said Plus One is definitely going to be a factor in search results very soon. Whether you are a blog or a website, there needs to be a way for you to integrate Plus One button and entice your users to plus one for you. I had similar discussion with few of my other SEO friends too and not many of them agreed to the fact. One of the few reasons I received against the point was that it is too obvious, this could not be applicable for all types of sites because corporate websites are not likely to get Plus Ones compared to blogs and that Google would probably not like to get into another controversy of pushing their own product based on their search dominance.

While most of the reasons look good, the reason I believed in Plus One being eventually used as a search signal are:

The way search technology has been improving the only way to stay abreast for Google is to involve human intelligence and Plus One buttons are an excellent way of crowd sourcing human intelligence to judge the quality of search results and websites.

Facebook has already married Bing and is not likely to share any data with Google

Google is done courting Twitter and now they don’t have access to the hose. Even when they had it, they didn’t seem to be going much beyond displaying real time results for certain results and displaying pictures of friends who have tweeted them

Plus Ones can easily be tracked back to a user’s Google profile which contains a lot of personalized data. While collecting Personally Identifiable Information (PII) is not something that Google or for that matter, any company would not admit to, Plus One actually provides the scope for the same and it is indeed a treasure trove for any search engine to serve personalized results and also to leverage the social connections of the users ( crowd sourced human intelligence from people with a strong understanding of the user’s personal taste)

Now, why am I saying this again today? It seems Google actually admitted to be using Plus Ones as a signal for ranking websites in their search results in one of their meeting with Forbes, which was also published as an article titled Stick Google Plus Buttons on your Pages or Your Search Traffic Dies ( yes, I borrowed the title) on 18th August, 2011, but quickly canned by Forbes before it could garner more attention from the not-so-friendly Facebook or the Justice Department. The story was not only removed from Forbes website but was also removed from Google's cache. However, before they could do all that a copy of the same was saved by the Raven Tools SEO Blog. In case these gets removed, I have got a screen shot of the same too :)

Related Posts:
a)Google Plus One Likely to Effect Search Results

b)Exploring Google Plus Tips and Tricks

SES San Francisco Live Coverage

2011-08-16T21:05:00.005+05:30

SES San Francsico starts today and I will be attending all the three days. If you are interested in a live coverage follow me on twitter @rishi3211us .

Will probably be doing some detailed post on the blog later but nothing beats live tweets :)

A special note of thanks to my employer PurpleTalk and [x]cubeLABS

If you are attending SES San Francisco, feel free to say Hello..

SEO Jokes - A Collection of 30 Jokes That Only SEO's Can Appreciate

2011-08-07T12:26:00.006+05:30

Though SEO is a very serious aspect of any business’s marketing strategy, we SEOs are mostly nice people with a good sense of humor. In our day to day job we have such a wide variety of experience and some of them are so funny it would bring a smile to the most boring person, besides there is no dearth of naysayers for SEO, who also add to some really funny comments and situations.

I was reading a few of the SEO jokes available on the web and found most of them are basically lawyer jokes replaced with SEO, so I decided to put together a collection of all the SEO Jokes, that actually relate more to SEO rather than being derivatives of lawyer jokes.

You know you are an SEO when:
Your first answer to any general question directed at you is "Google it
You repeat words every few seconds in the conversation.

What's an seo expert?
it's someone who speaks about an algorithm he doesn't know, guaranties a result he can't foresee,asks you a hell of a money while making you work on your website more than he does...

Why seo's prefer democracy to dictatorship?
because they love user generated content.

Why do seo's prefer to date smart, funny girls or guys, better than beautiful ones?
because they know search engines are blind and content is king.

What do blackhat SEO’s eat on Thanksgiving?
A: Keyword stuffing

What did the SEO do on his honeymoon?
A: He put a “nofollow” outside the door.

The company search Optimization officer died – The Company CEO said, “It took seven stone masons 3 months to carve all the headstones. Traffic to the grave site has been excellent”.

Why do they bury SEOs 20 feet under?
Because deep down, they’re really good people.

It is the trade of SEOs to question everything, yield nothing, and to talk by the hour. –Thomas Jefferson

Old SEOs never die, they just lose their rankings.

Why should SEOs wear lots of sunscreen when vacationing at a beach resort?
Because they’re used to doing all of their lying indoors.

What’s likely to get your ship sunk by pirates?
Canonical issues.

What have pig's & SEO's got in common?
SPAM.

What does an SEO have for breakfast?
Spam and JAVA

SPAM = Sites Positioned Above Mine

Hey, this site is now ranking nr. 1 in Google!
Reply: Ok, and what if you turn your personalized search off?

What do you call a man with six fingers on one hand?
Supplemental index.

What’s the difference between a seo consultant and a used car salesman?
A – The used car salesman knows when he is lying

What do you call Zelda in lingerie?
Link bait.

A SEO couple had twins.
For the first time they were happy with duplicate content.

What's likely to get your ship sunk by pirates?
Canonical issues.

What does a chiropractor fix?
Back links.

What do you call a dating service that only collects a fee when two people hit it off?
Pay per click.

What do you call it when the prey hunts the hunter?
A trackback.

What’s the difference between an accountant and a SEO?
Accountants know they’re boring.

Why seo's never play golf?
they fear the sandbox.

Why seo's always live in a good suburb?
to avoid a bad neighbourhood.

What should you understand if an seo expert asks you for a date?
that he needs a backlink.

Why seo's are always excited to take the elevator down a building?
because they like to see (9...8...7..6..5.4.3..2..1)

Two SEOs watching a girl with big boobs on trampoline?
1st: I hate it?
2nd: What, the trampoline? 1st: No the bounce rate.

As mentioned in the beginning of the post, these are SEO jokes collected from across the web and are not really my own content. I couldn't credit a source here as most of them are overlapping and there is no definitive source of origin.

Why Content is King – Though You Can’t Build the Empire without Links

2011-08-07T00:08:00.004+05:30

In this blog though I have written on a wide variety of SEO topics including a bunch of link building techniques and tips I have rarely talked about Page Rank. Unlike many others, I have never been obsessed with PR as a SEO and have always treated is more as an indicator of my page’s link strength and nothing more than that. However, this post is triggered by the recent Google Page Rank update that happened yesterday.

Every SEO consultant would vouch for the fact that it is impossible to get good rankings for any competitive keyword till you have developed a solid army of link. So when search rankings are so dependent on links why do we still say Content is King?

Well the fact remains that an able King never has trouble in putting together an army and the case is no different in the world of SEO. Good content automatically generates link ( and if you fret about PR, you will get PR too ).

For one of our company websites we have been working incessantly to improve the search rankings and while we have been building links through various techniques we have always been heavily content centric.

Just 12 days back we launched a viral content. In 12 days , the content got 277 Facebook Likes, 365 Tweets, 3277 Stumbles and 435 Google Plus Ones and a good number of links too. Result : with the recent PR update, the content page now has a PR of 5 – the highest on the website, even more than the home page.

So are you still sticking to the old scale link building or would you rather depend on your king ( content) to build his army of link ?

Related Posts :
Effective Link Building in 2010

How to build Free back links

How to build back links with Google

Exploring Google Plus Tips and Tricks

2011-07-01T13:59:00.002+05:30

Google + seems to be the talk of the hour and unlike other Google products this one seems to have a relatively higher learning curve for most users. While the platform is opening up slowly to the general audience, we need to keep in mind that right now most of the people in there are web savvy, early adopters. If a portion of them find the learning curve to be steep, how is it going to work with the regular people?

Having said that, there are few key elements in Google + that would probably comfort the users and encourage them to explore the platform further, the first being ; a Facebook like Time line. Yes, we are now all used to Facebook and Google + has an absolutely similar looking wall where you share your status and get updates from people in your circle – so a first time user doesn’t really feel out of place.

There is no doubt about the fact that Google+ is probably “the most “ feature rich social platform at this point and it brings together the awesomeness of all the leading platforms that people are used to working with. However, probably as a result of putting too many of this good stuff together at one place, it is often a little confusing for new users.

I have been playing around on Google + for a day now and based on some of the posts I read and some shared by people on the platform here are some Google + tips that new users can find handy.

Circles :
An easy way to group your contacts. You can have a friend circle, a professional/office circle, a circle of acquaintances and more. There are some predefined ones, but you can create your own as well.

Fun With Deleting Circle:
Create a circle and then try deleting it. You will see a funny animation showing the circle roll off your screen.

Chat :
Google+ integrates the Google Chat but you need to enable it for the first time by clicking on the link to the left : “Chat with people on Google+”

The Chat feature is integrated and if you are chatting on Google Talk on your mobile and jump on to Google + , you will find the entire conversation there .

Privacy :
The more active you are on Google+ the more emails you tend to get. To control when you get an email and when you don’t, click on the Gear icon on the top right of the screen beside your name and go to Google + Settings. All the notification options are nicely laid out there for you to choose which ones you want to activate/deactivate.

Unlike Facbook, Google + offers great control over what you want to shareand with whom you would like to share stuff on your timeline. You can share your status messages with only specific circles, with specific users only or you can make it public. While making a post on Google+, you get an option to select your sharing settings.

Photos:

I love the way they display Photos in Google + .
You can also edit your photos right there. Go to the Photo Page > Actions> Edit Photo. You will get a bunch of filters that you can apply on the photos. You also have the options to rotate the photos.

Messaging :

How do I disable Resharing of my Google + Post
- If you’re sharing a post with a small circle of people, you can prevent resharing. Click the arrow at the top-right of the post and choose “Disable reshare.”

- If you type + or @, it shares the post directly with them, just like if you added their name in the sharing targets. You can also do this in a comment, to pull someone else into the conversation.

- Want to see who can see a post? Next to the dateline at the top of a post, you’ll see something like “Public” or “Limited.” “Limited” is a link — click on it to see who has access.

- At the top right of each post, there’s a little circle-and-triangle menu. For your own posts, this menu lets you edit or delete the post, or disable commenting or resharing. For other people’s posts, it lets you link to the post, mute it, block the person completely, or report abuse.

How to send a DM in Google+
- If you want to send a private message to someone, just create a normal post and share it only with them. It’s that easy to have a one-to-one conversation!

How to Format text in Google+
(*)bold(*)
(_)italics(_)
(-)strike-through(-)

Keyboard Shortcuts for Google+
j: In the stream, you can click ‘j’ to navigate down to the next item
k: Navigate up.
@ or +: mention someone in a post
q: While on the Home tab, press twice the q letter on the keyboard to search and add people to your chat list.
Tab: Scrolls through comments/users on a post
Enter – Hitting Enter when focused on a Post opens up the comment box.
Tab+Enter: Post comment

How to send Google + Invites
Double Click on a user in Circles to open the invite option

Also, if you have the gmail address for an user, you can write a post and share it with just that person. This will send an invite to join Gooigle+ to that person.

Notifications:
In Google + the notification alert is similar to Facebook with a small squareshowing the number of notification on top right, beside your profile. When you have any unseen notification it goes bright red. The cool part is you can click that red box to see the notification and take action ( post a comment, add an user etc) right from the drop down, without having to move to any other page.

Sparks:
This is where you can search cool content ( most likely determined by the number of +1s it gets) relevant to your interests. You can also save your interests for easy future access.

Hangouts:
This is probably the coolest feature in Google+, where you get to do group video chat. Unfortunately , I haven’t had a chance to test this one yet.

Adwords is Easy to Set Up – Why Do You Still Need a Consultant?

2011-06-26T23:45:00.017+05:30

Small businesses on the Internet are increasingly resorting to Google Adwords and with Google’s effort to rope in more and more businesses to try the service with all the free Adwords coupons and assistance, there is every reason for the businesses to try this amazing advertising service.

Given Google’s simple and intuitive interface a person with half decent knowledge of Internet can set up and run an Adwords campaign and apparently there is no reason for a business to hire an Adwords consultant or specialist . So why do you still need an Adwords specialist?

Recently I have been working with a client in Hyderabad helping them with Internet marketing for some of their projects and one of their projects was an e-commerce website, currently selling products only in Hyderabad and projected for nation-wide growth in near future. They were running a very small Adwords campaign at their end and was seeing decent results however, they wanted me to do an audit of their account and do any necessary change required to improve the performance.

The top level figures for the account were ok but nothing great. They were particularly struggling with an extremely low CTR ( 0.07%) while still paying a CPC of around Rs.16-Rs.20.

After studying the account and the website I noticed the following:

a)There is no conversion tracking in place. The way their website was set up it wasn’t easy to set up the conversion tracking.

b)There were dual objective for the campaign : to sell a specific product each day and also to get user registration, however, the way the website was set up it was predominantly focusing on selling the product of the day than getting user registration, which is a more profitable objective for the campaign.

c)The campaign was running on both search and display network and Display was literally cleaning the campaign in terms of extreme low CTR.

d)The campaign structure was missing a proper planning.

e)There were adgroups with mixed keywords like restaurants in Hyderabad and consultancies in Hyderabad.

f)Some of the keywords were too broad for a small budget campaign. There were keywords like sale, deal coupon etc.

g)Also noticed they were missing on certain opportunities in terms of keywords.

h)All visitors were sent to the home page of the site ( which featured the deal of the day) irrespective of the keyword or ad copy they clicked

Whether its SEO or Adwords consulting my approach has always been to provide a more holistic solution and after some discussion with the client I felt that it is not just the Adwords account but for the campaign to be successful we need to work on the website as well.

So here is a small account of what we did.

a)The campaign was completely restructured. Keeping the limited budget in mind, we set up basically four campaigns Generic (covering generic keywords), City (covering Hyderbad specific keywords), Category (covering broad product categories), and Daily (keyword specific to the product of the day)

b)A thorough analysis of the existing campaign was done to identify performing keywords and keyword research was done to find more potent keywords

c)Some of the existing ad copies were modified and a few new ad copies were written with suitable landing pages

d)Display network was switched off

e)Targeting was set to Hyderabad and 40Km around the city

f)A new landing page was designed with the objective to drive registrations with very clear call to action. The landing page had a sole objective and there was no chance for the user to be confused.

g)The website structure was slightly modified to ensure all conversions could be tracked.

So did it make any difference to DealDrums Adwords campaign ?

CTR increased by 31 times to 2.17% and CPC came down by Rs.5.95, which effectively means at a budget of INR 10000, earlier they could get 622 clicks, which has now increased to 989 clicks ( an increase by 59%). They did not have conversion data earlier on Adwords so it was difficult to map the progress, but from the number of overall signups they were seeing on a monthly basis they were not close to the present numbers. A conversion rate of 31.32% is definitely something that any business would love to have.

There are still a few variations of the landing page that needs to be tested and can be further optimized to increase the conversion. This is in progress. However, going by the figures and the clear increase in performance it shows how an experienced Adwords consultant can drastically improve your campaign performance.

Adwords campaign set up being so easy, it often doesn’t occur to the beginners that there could be so many nuances to it and there could be so many different factors that play a role in the success of a campaign. Adwords is an extremely powerful tool and to make best use of it, it is of extreme importance that you have complete knowledge of all the tools, features and functionalities that Google provides and also have a proper understanding of how Adwords work. There is no harm trying to learn or taking a DYI approach, however if Internet marketing is not your domain of expertise, it is always wise to take help of an Adwords consultant while doing it for the first time. In all likeliness he will pay off for his fees in terms of the savings/increased number of clicks and conversions you receive from Adwords with his expertise.

p.s. This post has been edited to remove some of the specifics of the campaign on client request for competitive intelligence reasons.

Google Plus One Likely to Effect Search Results and Quality Score

2011-03-31T12:54:00.002+05:30

Google is adding its own version of “Like” button with the launch of +1 ( Plus One) in an attempt to make search more social. Now Google will allow users to vote Plus One for search results as well as on Search ads. Users will get to see both the total number of Plus One votes along with names and contacts of their contacts who have shown their preference.

While it looks primarily like Google’s attempt to replicate Facebook’s “Like” what does it mean for search marketers ? A Plus One vote is a clear indication of human preference and there can be no better judge of a webpage’s quality than a real human user. Google is definitely going to use this as a signal in its algorithm. In fact, this time Matt Cutts himself clearly admits to this , “"When someone recommends something, that's a pretty good indicator of quality," said Matt Cutts. "We are strongly looking at using this in our rankings."

Similarly, on the Adwords front, we already know that high quality score would mean lower CPC and better exposure and this is going to get a shot in the arm with implementation of this Plus One feature. Ads that get a Plus One would likely have a higher quality score, resulting in better performance for the advertiser. This has been further confirmed with the statement by ads group product manager Christian Oestlien, "We will provide reporting in AdWords for plus-ones” "Our belief is that advertisers will see increased performance from ads with personalized annotations."

Inbound links have been one of the strongest signals for organic ranking for a long time now and now as Google has started to become more social , incorporating personalized search results, real time twitter results etc, Plus One is definitely going to be a big step ahead in that direction and can prove to be a key player in determining relevance for algorithmic search results.

Also, looking at it from Google’s perspective, introducing Plus One has multiple benefits. Besides getting a new powerful signal to tidy up the search results, Plus One can actually give Google a second chance to penetrate the social web. When the user tries to hit Plus One for the first time, they would be invited to create a Google profile and adjust the privacy settings. Also, Google would offer publishers the option to embed Plus One buttons to their content pages, so users can vote on content on other websites beyond search results pages and most webmasters would be more than eager to implement this as they realize that Plus One votes can help them get better with organic search results. A positive aspect of this for webmasters would be that to get this Plus One embed code, they would need to login to the Google Webmasters Tools. So the ones who have not yet registered with Webmaster tools would probably have one more reason to do it now.

Everything said and done, it would be fun to see how BlackHats and spammers use the Plus One votes to their advantage. Though Google has been doing a fair job at fighting them, there has been one too many cases where BlackHats and spammers have gamed the Google results and introducing such a simple, manual signal to influence the search results might throw a new challenge for the Google anti-spam team.

RBI Vs. PayPal - A Few Million Indian Casualties

2011-01-30T00:08:00.006+05:30

*Note: This post has got nothing to do with SEO, SEM etc

Reserve Bank of India (RBI) and PayPal has been up to arms for some time now- multiple times, multiple attempts, multiple regulations and the only casualties have been Indian freelancers and small Indian IT start ups that have been using PayPal for their payment processing.

I received the most recent PayPal email on this yesterday that says..

Payments from PayPal needs to be withdrawn to bank account within 7 days

This is most likely because if they hold money for more than 7 days RBI would want them to be treated like a bank(also pay interest) and they would come under RBI regulations. RBI doesn’t seem to understand the “online wallet” concept yet and PayPal don’t want to have RBI as the big boss either. So, the burden is now on users to move their money out within 7 days.

Export related payments may not exceed $500/transaction

We are still stuck with the FEMA rules that were framed pre-internet/ecommerce revolution and PayPal would need to report any transactions above $500 to RBI – which they want to avoid and so they have put the burden on their users.

Now let’s try to understand what this means for India as a country:

The whole process of accepting payments from International clients becomes a lot more hazardous and restricted resulting in client’s getting irritated about working with Indian freelancers. Think if a client needs to pay you $600 – he will have to make two separate payments – isn’t it an additional hazard? Why would they take this trouble when they have other people to do the work? ( India isn’t the only country that is good for outsourcing )

As a consequence of the above, some of the clients would move out – especially because they have tons of freelancers in countries like Philippines and Vietnam waiting to do similar work at an even lesser cost.

At least a few millions Indians earn their bread as freelancers and some more employed with really small IT setups that are currently using PayPal. As this problem takes a toll on the number of clients who outsource work to India, many of these people would be effected – lose their clients, resulting in lesser income or going jobless ( as if we don’t have enough of them already )

Lesser work coming to India with same number ( rather increasing) number of freelancers would mean a higher competition, resulting in even cheaper rates and lower quality of work offered by freelancers, earning Indian freelancers an even worse reputation.

And for those who are touting PayPal alternatives, I can say from firsthand experience, none of these alternatives have half the credibility that PayPal has and so most international clients would think ten times before using them.
While I am not even close to being called knowledgeable about banking regulations or economic reforms, after being in the industry for almost 9 years now and being working with International client for more than 5 years I have some understanding of how business works. Unfortunately I don’t see any positive impact of these regulations on the Indian freelancer community and the innumerous small businesses that are cumulatively earning at least a few million dollars every year for the country.

Isn’t it time we look back at our rule books that are way outdated and rather than putting more and more restrictions try doing things that help these people grow their business, earn more money for themselves ( I believe that adds to the country’s economy also).

Frustrated !!!!

Google Keywords Tool Now Shows Mobile Search Keywords

2011-01-16T23:53:00.006+05:30

As I mentioned in my 7 Notable points for Internet marketers in 2011, Mobile is going to get bigger this year and it seems Google is doing everything possible to help the search marketers to target this growing mobile audience.

Google Adwords campaign by default includes desktop as well as mobile devices to run
your ads, however, over the last year we have seen further fine tuning of this capabilities, which now allows paid search professionals to target their mobile ads through Google Adwords to users on specific mobile devices and on specific carriers.

Google mentions that in the third quarter of 2010, Google mobile searches jumped 130% year over year, which indicates that more and more advertisers would be interested in mobile ads.Now to further help Adwords consultants Google has enhanced its Keyword research tool to show mobile specific data. The Google keyword tool now offers options for users to see keyword ideas and statistics for various types of mobile devices under "Advanced Options".

The tool is pretty detailed and there are multiple options to choose from, you can choose to view keyword ideas for -

Mobile device with full internet browsers ( iPhone, Android and similar smart phones)

Mobile WAP devices ( most Internet enabled phones)

All Mobile browsers

Besides, desktop and laptop devices

This could be a fantastic addition for search marketers to understand which queries are specific to or are more common on which type of device. It’s a good idea to search for your target keywords using the keyword research tool, set once for “Desktop and Laptop Devices” and once for mobile. Export both the options in Excel and the compare the volume for common keywords across platforms to better understand the search trends by device.

Also, I would strongly recommend keeping a close eye on your analytics to see if you are getting a sizable traffic volume from mobile devices. Based on this consider setting up separate “mobile only” campaigns, so you can further experiment with these platforms.

It would not be surprising if Bing also beefs up its mobile user targeting options and starts offering new tools of similar nature. This enhancement to Google’s keyword research tool is definitely a great addition for all SEO and Adwords consultants in the New Year and I am sure there would be a lot more new stuff happening in the mobile marketing space this year.

What Rates do you Expect from a SEO Consultant in India ?

2011-01-12T15:12:00.005+05:30

Well, this is kind of a rant post and am not sure how much value you will derive from it but I presume if you are reading this, next time when you are looking for a SEO consultant whether from India or anywhere else in the world you will probably have a different perspective.

On an average, I get around 3-4 request for SEO consulting job from this blog every month, and though I said “consulting”, some of them do not really require a SEO consultant and are primarily looking for someone who can just follow instructions blindly and carry out stuff like link exchange, directory submission etc and I politely decline those.

Now there are some other clients who actually require a senior level consultant who can create a proper holistic internet marketing strategy for their business and implement / help in implementation of the same. These are the projects that I really look forward to.

Typically with this type of clients and projects , we would have a few discussion/ email exchange to understand their business model and marketing requirements and when they are all happy and ready to start the fun begins as it comes down to pricing.

Because I am based out of India, some people would have an impression that I will work for peanuts and the most common phrase that I get to hear from them is, “there are so many other SEO experts in India who work at a much lower price” – Agreed ! but I offer much more than just that! What you get typically from those so called “SEO Experts” is what I call 90’s SEO – Keyword stuffing +link building( read: link exchange) for a few months without any effective strategy and noticeable result.
Some clients definitely understand the difference in the level of service, knowledge and experience but then there are others who fail to understand that if you pay peanuts you get monkeys.

Being in India, shouldn’t be a reason why someone would devalue my services. Of course, it does give me the opportunity to offer my services at a lower rate compared to my US or European counterparts and I do leverage that advantage by offering a much lower price compared to SEO consultants from those countries. My location doesn’t really affect the quality of service I provide and when you are looking for a premium service isn’t it natural to pay a few dollars more than usual? Though most SEO projects are priced based on a monthly fee in India, a little calculation would reveal the hourly rate to be at around $10-$12/hour. My rates are typically a dollar or two higher than this and I offer a lot more for that minimal premium.

Just to put in perspective, here are the SEO consultant rates for some of them who have been nice enough to put up some ball park figures on their website:

Scott Hendison ( UK) : $2500 Set Up fee+ First Month, Monthly Price: $1000 or higher

Simon Shandler ( US) : price varies by project complexity, $4000 retainer fee

Shane Hunter (US): $1000-$2000/month

Dream Ware Enterprise(US) : $350/hour for Telephonic consultation

SozoFirm (US) : $150/hour Email, chat, & phone consultation

Sheffield Marketing (Chicago, US): $150/month for telephonic SEO consultation

iOptimal.co.uk –Cost: £6300. Delivery time: 7 months ( for moderately competitive keywords)

(The rates are taken from their respective website as on 12th January, 2011)

Now when you look at these prices, I am sure you can understand that if an equally experienced guy in India is asking you $250-300/month, he isn’t really asking the world from you.

I really don’t mean to offend anyone or come across as a snobbish high priced SEO consultant, most of my clients are small businesses and I do understand that each penny counts when it comes to small businesses. I am more than open to talk about prices, discuss and find mutually beneficial options, however, it really pains, when some potential client tells me “why can’t you work for $5/hour, after all you are in India” .

I hope this blog gives a fair idea to my readers and potential clients about the level of expertise and experience I have in this domain and while we are all looking for bargain prices, as a professional, I expect the rates to be respectable.
I would rather end this rant on a positive note. I have found some of my best clients through this blog and I take this opportunity to express my sincere thanks for all the business they have offered. Hopefully the New Year will bring in a lot more business for all of us.

7 Points Internet Marketers Should Consider in 2011

2011-01-10T13:03:00.007+05:30

A very Happy New Year to all the readers! Now that we have all stepped into 2011, it’s the season for predictions on every possible aspect and I thought I would hop on to the same bandwagon and share a few points that I feel might be crucial for all of us Internet marketers.

With the way technology has been evolving and more and more new data sources and marketing channels opening up Internet marketing is going to become a much more interesting mix than it was even a year back. While some of these are very apparent some would still leave many of us speculating, whether or not this is going to happen. Let’s take a look at the following points:

Location Based Marketing: Yup!! We have seen Foursquare, Google Places, Tags, Boost, Facebook Places, Gowalla and innumerable more and this definitely going to grow. With increasing number of people using internet from mobile devices, people would get more comfortable checking into places, merchants would work actively in tapping into this audience by offering coupons, discounts and local offers. I would expect search engines would probably also tap into this data and use this for improving their local search results and location based web search results.

Search & Social – Search is likely to get more and more dependent on social, in other words, search engine algorithms would factor in social media metrics in much more details and these would become crucial functions for your search rankings. You can read my other detailed article on how Social Media is going to affect Search in 2011.

Videos : Videos are going to be one of the most important marketing tools on the web in 2011. We have seen how brands have been increasingly using videos effectively and this is going to get all the more intense. Besides typical video syndication, I would predict live streaming on the web become more frequent and more and more businesses would be using this for effectively reaching out to their target audience. Besides, YouTube, it would be wise to keep our eyes on sites like Daily Motion, Viddler, Vimeo and UStream. Adoption of Universal search has already made videos an easy way to hit the first page of search results for competitive terms and with more brand conscious marketing strategies and the inherent viral nature of videos would make them all the more important in this socially focused web.

Social Commerce: This has also taken off already and is going to get bigger by days! The same reason why word of mouth marketing is immensely powerful, social recommendations are going to be big time influencers in purchase decisions.
Merchants have always set up shop where people are and in 2011 what better place to set up your shop than the social platforms like Facebook ? Facebook already has a full-fledged ecommerce integration option and it would not be surprising to find other social platforms offering similar facilities and even simpler point and click setup for ecommerce stores within social platforms. The ease of setting up such social ecommerce stores would be a big determinant of the growth of social commerce in 2011.

More Than Your Website: If we look back a few years, we would remember where businesses were just dying to have a website, anyone who had a website had a clear advantage over the ones who didn’t it. Now in 2011, that almost all businesses have a website, what would make the difference? The differentiator would be whether the businesses are present where their customers are, namely, social platforms. It would be equally important for businesses to establish their presence in Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn FourSquare and similar social platforms – having a website is just not enough anymore.

Reputation Management : The wave of reputation management would continue to get bigger. Even smaller businesses would get extremely brand conscious and work actively towards reputation management. This is also likely to give rise to a lot of new businesses who would start offering/ claim specialization in reputation management. From a SEO’s perspective, educated customers are likely to get demanding in ensuring that SEOs are careful about what they do to achieve ranking, so as not to affect the reputation of the brand in any way during the process.

Mobile & Smartphones: Most companies would start considering a mobile strategy very soon. A huge number of users are already accessing internet on their mobile devices – the smart phones and tablets are getting increasingly powerful. Businesses would leave no stones unturned to tap into this audience and mobile apps and advertisement would be the two most effective and popular channels adopted by businesses. The war for establishing your apps in the crowded appstores have already started and it is going to get fierce in 2011. There would be a lot more independent agencies and mobile strategy companies that would start offering app marketing as a stand-alone service.

There are definitely more surprises waiting for us in 2011 and one year down the line if we try to do a review of this year has delivered this list would probably get much longer. Feel free to share your thoughts on these predictions and also what are the other possibilities you think 2011 holds for us.

Question Answer Site With Social Network Script Comes Together in FamousWhy

2011-01-07T22:19:00.002+05:30

Question-answer sites have been a real craze over the last year and besides the highly popular Yahoo! Answers we have also seen a bunch of other question answer sites coming up. There are various advantages of having a question-answer site, the main one being it is based on user generated content. This relieves the users from the headache of generating content for the site and as more and more questions are being answered, the site automatically develops authority in respect to high quality content. Further to this most of this question answer sites have an inherent social networking nature which furthers interaction between users and contributes positively towards the growth of the site.

However for an average webmaster it might not be very easy to set up a question answer website as it typically requires a lot of programming skills. While doing a little research on this I found the Famous Question CMS and was really surprised to see that someone might consider building a CMS for such a niche. Digging more into it revealed some really good features and honestly I was a little impressed (probably more because I never thought that such a CMS would be there).

It is basically a PHP based CMS that has integrated a question answer script with a social media script – undoubtedly a potent combination. The whole thing looks SEO friendly as well – the question answers can be categorized pretty easily, helping in creating thematic content groups, the users also get to create their own customized profile pages. Typical to any social network script, the users can communicate with each other and also have debates. To make the script further user friendly besides its registration and login section, sites built in this CMS would also allow users to login using Facebook Connect.

Keeping in mind the monetization aspect the CMS also has advertising modules built in which allows for webmasters to place ads of their choice in strategic locations. While inquiring about support options, I noticed that the script has a support board and also there is a forum from Famous Why( developers of the script).
With the ease of setting up a question answer website with this CMS I am now a little tempted to start one of my own, maybe I will need some more time to make up my mind.

3 SEO Predictions for 2011

2011-01-03T00:14:00.002+05:30

First of all a very Happy New Year to all my readers! May this New Year bring in a lot of SEO and Internet marketing success for all of you!

It’s that time of the year again when we are reflecting and reviewing what the previous year has left us with and predictions are raining about on every other blog on what 2011 is about to reveal. As I have already been guilty of not posting in this blog so often, I thought I would jump on to the bandwagon and share a few interesting and slightly futuristic thoughts on how SEO is likely to change in 2011.

As most of us can already predict one of the key factors would be Social Media – it has already started playing a major role in most planned internet marketing strategies and now if we try to look a little deeper on how specifically it would affect SEO there are two definitive predictions that I would like to make :

Social Links - Yes, we know search engine algorithms and specifically Google’s have been highly dependent on backlinks and we SEO’s have tried every possible form of manipulation to drive links to our websites, genuine or not. ( While personally I do not really work towards “manipulating” links for my websites and neither recommend it, as a part of the SEO community, I feel I will have to equally accept the responsibilities for good, bad and ugly acts). Now that the search engines have started drinking from the live hose of some of the major social platforms like Twitter, they are surely going to leverage it to improve their results. The primary reasons being, using data from social media would actually mean they would be using data generated by actual human mass intelligence, which is highly difficult to manipulate due to the “mass” factor.

Given the situation I would not be surprised if social media links starts to get more importance compared to links from other websites and blogs. Contextual in-content links will still hold their fort but blogrolls, footer links, link exchanges( I think this is already almost dead) etc are going to get diminishing importance in Google’s algorithm.

Also, in terms of social links, it would not just be the link count that would matter, a lot of other factors would also come into play, the user contributing the link and his profile would be of paramount importance. For example, if this article gets tweeted by Danny Sullivan (@dannysullivan - my New Year dream!! Lol ) it would get far more importance with the search engines compared to if it gets tweeted by someone who doesn’t have the authority of Danny or by someone who might be an equally big authority in some other industry but not in SEO. Parsing a user’s timeline, followers-following ratio, number of likes & shares their posts get in Facebook, the communities they are fan of etc give a very clear signal to the search engine about a user’s profile and level of authority he/she has on that particular domain and accordingly that can be factored in while evaluating links placed by them in the social platforms.

From a SEO’s perspective it would mean that the days of hitting up the search rankings with those small links from mushrooming directories, link exchanges, buying links etc are coming to an end and this might be the actual beginning of links generated by virtue of quality content. Search engines have always been preaching this but for most small businesses ( who cannot afford to spend money on creative link builders or do it themselves) it has mostly been an utopian situation till now.
This New Year, let’s generate a lot of good and useful content that people would love to read and share – links and rankings would automatically follow.

Social Mentions - Yes, I believe it would not just be links, even brand mentions would matter and count in your search rankings. All the contributing factors as discussed on the point above for Social Links would hold good for this too and even if there is no link it would add to the search engine’s perception of your website and brand. Of course, context would probably be the biggest factor in contributing keyword/ topical relevance to your website when it would come to social mentions.

For both social mentions and social links there is also the indirect advantage of getting a lot of genuine links from various blogs and websites as your content gets syndicated.

Location: More and more users are surfing internet from mobile devices, we have already seen a big leap in the local search space and things would continue to improve. My prediction in this case would be that regional directory listings and location based tags are going to be factored in location based search queries (not just local search results but also the way web results are ranked). We already know that search results today are customized as per our location; this would probably see a lot more improvement based on these location tags. For example, if someone searches for “Pubs in Kolkata” besides the local results, if there are some pubs that has been tagged by users from Kolkata those websites are probably going to be ranked higher compared to other Kolkata pubs that has not been tagged. While I do think this is very likely, a piece of the puzzle that I am not able to work out till now is from where is Google going to collect this data? Facebook places? Foursquare or someone else?

I am sure there are lot more new things would happen in SEO this year, with new and evolving technology and additional data sources opening up for the search engines, algo’s would get more complex and it would be a tougher time for SEOS – however, all these are likely to lead to a better web with lot of useful and relevant content and accurate information at finger tips.

Does Google Bend Their Rules for Brands ?

2010-11-13T13:55:00.007+05:30

There has always been a rumor that Google tends to offer some special privilege to the big brands - may it be in organic listings or paid search. While I have mostly been against such notion, today I found something which really surprised me.

We all know, the Google ad standards allow only 25 characters for the headline of an Adwords ad but see the ad copy below - ad ad by ESPN promoting live cricket streaming....

This headline has 30 characters - I tried inserting the same ad into one of my account and as usual Adwords would not allow me to write anything beyond 25 character in the field specific for ad headline.

Then how did ESPN get this?

Does Google bend their rules for big brands ?

How Google Instant Affects SEO and PPC

2010-09-09T23:41:00.003+05:30

I have been watching the launch of Google Instant and keeping a tab on the updates and predictions on the web, based on what I see here are few points on how Google Instant would affect SEO and PPC.

How Google Instant Affects Adwords

The number of impressions are going to increase – Google now considers an impression if the visitor is on the same page view for 3 seconds or more – this would be pretty common as visitors would tend to scan through the changing results as they type and also there are slow typers for whom typing a search query with some long words are going to take time. In addition the regular impression count as we used to get based on when the user hits enter or clicks through to some other page would be accounted for.

As an effect of the above point, we are likely to see a higher CPC – with more number of impressions happening on the go the click through rate is likely to go down. Once the CTR is down that would adversely affect quality score and to offset that we will likely have to increase CPC.

Broad keywords would become more important, importance of long tail would be reduced – As we start typing Google starts showing results, as an example- if we consider the query “iPhone Application Developer” – when the user starts typing iPhone Google starts showing relevant ads about iPhone, the user types “app” the results change a little and focus more on iPhone apps and developers and finally if the user completes the query and hits enter Google shows the most relevant set of iPhone application development ads. Now, it would be a clear benefit for a advertiser trying to get traffic from the final keyword to be visible right when the user has typed in the first word of the search phrase( in this case , iPhone) – because if the user can see the relevant result right after typing the first word he is more likely to click through to it rather than completing the full query.
This would mean the advertisers would need to spend more on broad keywords ( making it difficult for smaller companies). Again in doing that, in most cases the broad keywords might not be the most relevant one’s for you – so you tend to receive a bunch of un-targeted click and also the broad keywords would likely have lower level of relevancy, in turn affecting quality score and CPC.

How Google Instant Affects SEO

On SEO front while there is no major shift in the algorithm or ranking factors with Google instant, it would definitely affect the traffic from organic searches. As Google starts to show results on the go, the top three positions would become more important than ever as many searchers would click through to the site once they see the relevant results . Most of them would not bother to scroll down the first page unless they complete the query and in case of a multiphrase search query it is likely that they might find their answers even before completing the query.
However, one of the factors that we always hated Google for might now come to our advantage in some industries. Google has always listed the most authoritative sites on top - taking the example of the previous query "iPhone application development" the above the fold positions are mostly taken by Apple website who is not a direct competitor to the companies trying to sell iPhone development service - hereby forcing the visitors to scroll down. I would also presume, because users would not be able to find the exact type of results as they type the query, chances of them completing the query is much higher in some industries like this ( unless they click through to paid search results) compared to various other industries, in which case they are likely to scroll through the entire search result page.

In long run however the importance of long tail keywords are likely to be reinstated because with this predictive search query inputs and instantly changing results, users would get more knowledgeable on how to search , and which queries can get them the most relevant results and this is likely to initiate more long tail searches.

I think it is too early to predict exactly how Google Instant would change SEO and PPC but apparently it seems this would mean more Adwords spend for advertisers and a tougher competition on the SEO domain.
Feel free to share your thoughts and inputs on how you think Google Instant's effect on SEO and PPC.

SES San Francisco 2010 Photos

2010-08-20T08:48:00.002+05:30

Here are few photos from Search Engine Strategies Conference in San Francisco, I haven't yet got the time to put all the photos together, here are just a few of them.

@aimclear in session on Do's and Don't of Facebook Marketing

Session on Facebook Marketing

Andy Beal on Search Engine Reputation Management Session

With Bruce Clay

SES San Francisco 2010 Day 3 Live Update

2010-08-19T21:44:00.003+05:30

Keynote by Tim Nash to begin in another 15 mins or so, waiting for it to begin. Will post live updates through Twitter @rishi3211us and also in this blog. Stay tuned...

SES San Francisco Day 3 Live Updates

SES San Francisco Day 2 Updates

2010-08-18T21:57:00.003+05:30

Waiting for the keynote to start.. follow me on twitter @rishi3211us to get the live updates - will live tweet SES San Francisco, 2nd day.

SES San Francisco Day 2

Attending SES San Francisco this Month

2010-08-14T15:25:00.005+05:30

Live Twitting first day SES San Fran session - follow @rishi3211us

Search Engine Strategies is probably one of the oldest SEO conference and since the day I have stepped into the SEO world I have always religiously followed the numerous blogs and websites that posted sessions summaries and live coverage of SES conference sessions. This is time when I get a real taste of it.

Though SES San Jose was declared dead a few months back, it has basically moved to San Francisco and thanks to my company, PurpleTalk - I am attending SES San Francisco this year 17th-19th, August, 2010.

I am super excited with learning and networking potential that this conference offers and more so because the Indian search marketing scenario doesn't have much to boast about in respect to similar conferences ( except for the annual SearchSummit (erstwhile Search Camp) which is in no way a match for an International SEO conference like SES, but undoubtedly a good initiative ) an exposure like this is simply invaluable.

I thought of live blogging the sessions initially but planed to drop it because that severely restricts your capacity for networking but I will definitely be posting a detailed session summary for each day on this blog. So stay tuned...

Related Posts :

SEO Training in India and Kolkata in Specific - Think Again !

2010-06-30T17:21:00.003+05:30

Well, I never thought of writing a post like this but due to the increasing number of queries about SEO training that I am receiving these days, I feel that it might be better to have a post on this.

I do receive a lot of request for providing SEO training or to suggest some SEO training institute. I receive these requests from people all over India but specifically more from people in Kolkata. Also there are few who plan to join some SEO training course in Kolkata and call me to check if I know anything about or recommend the person/ institute offering the training .

I have never been a fan of classroom training for SEO and I always tell people that the best way to learn SEO is to read on the web and try them practically. There are thousands of good blogs and SEO forums that provide valuable information and help for the SEO beginners. There are also tons of SEO whitepaper available for Free that can work as a starting point.

While there are definitely a few institutes that might be helpful for a beginner to grab the basics of SEO, there is no full proof course that can make you a SEO guru. For those of you, who are planning to join a SEO Training institute or some personal SEO training class allured by the possibilities of high paying jobs, here are few questions that I suggest you ask your SEO trainer…

How did they learn SEO ?
If they could learn it by themselves or through on-job training, you can too..

What has been there career graph? Have they ever worked for any leading brand? Do they have a portfolio to show their SEO skills?
Trust me, someone who does really well for himself as a SEO would not get into training. Working as a SEO pays much more than running a SEO training course.

What about their accreditation? Are they associated with any university or any bigger institute ( e.g,NIIT) ?
Remember, if they don’t have a proper accreditation, the certificate that they give you is absolutely useless.

Do they give a job guarantee?
Don’t be fooled by vague promises like “don’t worry about jobs, once you complete this course jobs will come after you”. In most cases even after completing one of these so called SEO courses you will probably start off in your first job at the same salary that any other fresher gets at your position.

Industry Exposure?
Most SEO training institutes offer a “industry exposure” for their students. In most cases the SEO trainer or the training institute also have a service wing or operates as freelancer where they provide SEO service to external clients. In the name of industry exposure they are able to get half their work done through you for free (rather you are paying them – training Fees). This experience can actually be a good exposure but you can also get the exposure if you build a site of your own and try optimizing them. Ask them if they would allow you to work on your own website to gain this exposure?

I would also suggest you do a few reference checks before joining any SEO training course. The reason I say this because I have received two calls till date where someone running a SEO training institute in Kolkata told the prospective students that they have actually learnt SEO from me – where the fact is that I just know that person as a casual industry acquaintance. I would not be able to name the person/ institute here because I don’t have a written proof on this but I am thankful to those two guys who actually cared to call me to check if I was actually involved with the SEO training institute/person.

I am more than happy to help people learn SEO and that is one of the main purposes of writing this blog, I have also provided a FREE Guide to SEO whitepaper that details the SEO process and ideas for a start and I also make sure I answer all questions that I receive from people about learning SEO – and yes, you DON’T need to pay me anything for that.

p.s. I am NOT involved with any SEO training institute in Kolkata or elsewhere or HAVE NOT provided any formal training to any individual. I did conduct some corporate training for few companies though.

Height of SEO or a Google Screw Up ?

2010-06-10T14:23:00.005+05:30

Well, am still undecided! Searched for the keyword Symbiosis Distance MBA in Google and the first result was a hard core p**n site. And further even without clicking on the link it attempts to download some malware onto your site - which looks absolutely absurd and unbelievable to me. While I can attribute the ranking for the p**n site to some out of mind SEO genius, I have no clue how is it technically possible to initiate a malware attack from the site without clicking the URL or visiting the site.
Check the screen shot for details..

When I first saw this search result, the only thing that I could think of was Google bombing, but then Google has already formally declared that they have killed Google bombing - so what is it this time ?

Free White Paper on SEO Content Writing

2010-05-13T17:53:00.004+05:30

I have been a big fan of CopyBlogger for a long time and recently due to my ever increasing work pressure it has become extremely difficult to follow up with my favorite websites ( I have more than 50 blogs on my Google Reader) and the time crunch has also taken a toll on this blog as I hardly find time to write.

However, today, while I was checking CopyBlogger after a long time I found this free give away and thought I would mention it here for my readers. Brian Clark , the founder of CopyBlogger is giving away a fantastic 28 page white paper – "How to Create Compelling Content That Ranks Well in Search Engines" . And the best part is that this white paper is actually FREE – you don’t even need to trade your email id for this.

Of the 28 pages, as Brian have been extremely honest to mention, the first 24 pages are pure educational stuff on search engine friendly content writing while the last four pages talk about the Scribe Software. If you are not interested just ignore it, but Scribe isn’t really bad and can be pretty helpful for people involved in SEO content writing.

You can download the whitepaper here.

Mobile Marketing - Much More Than SMS Spamming

2010-02-25T17:33:00.005+05:30

There is no need to mention that digital marketing is a highly dynamic field and with the advancement of technology marketers are finding newer ways to leverage it to reach their target audience.

We are all familiar with the tons of SMS advertising that we receive this days and many of us tend to think that is probably what people mean by mobile marketing. But as I have always said, mobile marketing is a much broader thing and involves a lot more than spamming the hell out of your customers.

I wrote a short article today, that is though very basic, gives a bunch of hints on how mobile development influences marketing strategy.

Hope you like it !

What I did in Last One Month - Nothing About SEO

2010-02-17T18:26:00.004+05:30

Its been quite some time ( exactly a month - to be precise) that I have written a post here and while I have my own justifications for it - I do admit that it is bad and more so because this new year I made a resolution to blog more frequently. I knew that New year resolutions are meant to be broken but never though I will do it so early :P

However, just so you understand the reason for this long gap, my life has been moving pretty fast and there has been some changes. To put them in short ...

I have left my last job with Ecselis, Havas Digital

Took a short break to visit my home town in Kolkata and spent a few good days with the family.In midst of those 5 days attended two weddings ( now you know why I was away from computer :)

Bought a car - my first car rather - a red Maruti Swift

Took a short vacation with my wife in Goa and feasted on the heavenly Goan delicacies - you don't expect me to blog from the beach, do you ? :p

and finally, I have joined PurpleTalk as VP - Marketing and now have tons of work to do.

So am back to work now and though there are boat loads of work to do, I will try to keep posting here on regular basis.

Microformats and SEO

2010-01-17T22:08:00.003+05:30

It has been in discussion for quiet some time now that wether Microformats would play any role in search engine optimization in the near future. To understand how Microformats might come into play in respect to SEO, let us all first understand what Microformats are.

To quote Wikipedia, “A microformat is a web-based approach to semantic markup that seeks to re-use existing XHTML and HTML tags to convey metadata and other attributes.” Basically Microformats enable the use of XHTML and HTML tags in such a way that information on a web page that are actually meant for the users would become clearly comprehensible to software ( search engine robots in perspective to SEO ).

It might sound a bit confusing because all of us know that search engine bots can already read and understand the content of web pages which is the basic foundation of any organic search algorithm, then why do we need Microformats ?

Looking back at the Wikipedia definition, microformats “convey Meta data and other attribute” about the existing content that the search engines are already indexing enablng them to understand exactly what they mean and stand for; basically attach semantics to the information for better processing by software.

Let’s look at an example, my contact information can be displayed as

<div>
<div>Saptarshi Roy Chaudhury</div>
<div>SEO Consultant India</div>
<div>09963111179</div>
<a href="http://seo-kolkata.blogspot.com">http://seo-kolkata.blogspot.com </a>

A search engine bot can read this information , index it but it would probably not mean much more than that at this stage. Once we use Microformats for presenting this information, the same code would look like…

<div class="vcard">
<div class="fn">Saptarshi Roy Chaudhury</div>
<div class="org">SEO Consultant India</div>
<div class="tel">09963111179</div>
<a class="url" href="http://seo-kolkata.blogspot.com">http://seo-kolkata.blogspot.com </a>

Now, this is basically a simple use of the hcard ( HTML vcard) Microformat, and because the data is bound within the “vcard” class, search engines would now treat it as my virtual visiting card and interprete
fn as full name
org as organisation
tel as telephone number
url as web address

There are a lot of such mircorformats that add properties and attributes to the data available on a web page, which in turn helps search engine bots better comprehend and process the data.

So how can these Microformats change or effect SEO ?

We all know the main objective of search engines are to serve relevant results. So with enhanced data comprehension ability due to the use of such microformats they would be able to search more relevant results.

Again taking a leaf out of Wikipedia, “processing of microformats enables data items to be indexed, searched for, saved or cross-referenced, so that information can be reused or combined.” Note the point about “Cross-referenced”, I feel that would be one of the key benefits that search engines would have once the usage of microformats become ore common on the web. We already know that search engines are trying to have access to social network data of users ( twitter and Facebook are already in) now once search engines start getting more info on these and also cross reference this data with the data about the users found through other sources, it would probably allow them to weigh the social messages in a much better way.

Use of microformats can be a great help for search engines to parse local queries and serve relevant results.

Google has already announced last year that they are capable to read hProduct Microdata and encourage webmasters to use the same to mark up their products on their website and ecommerce store.

I have a strong feel that th use of Microformats would increase greatly by the end of 2010 and not just that search engines would start using them effectively to increase their search result relevance. While that would definitely be a big enough push for the SEOs to start advocating the use of Microformats, looking at the greater interest of forming a semantic web, it would be great if we start using these wonderful tags from now on and help make the web a better place.

For those of you interested to learn more about the different types of Microformats and their usage check out Microformats.org .