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The world of SEO can be intimidating for anyone who is just jumping into the game at this point. Terms like PageRank sculpting, temporal analysis of links, canonicalization, and a multitude of other esoteric terms are constantly being bantered around the industry. For a new practitioner, it's easy to see why many people view SEO as some kind of voodoo. And truth be told, there are a lot of small details that can have profound effects on SEO, so the reputation isn't completely undeserved. However, as much as these arcane bits of knowledge might be, the difference for some websites in ranking in the top three for a particular competitive search phrase (the art of SEO) really isn't about black magic, but more so, it's about the study of the user that you're trying to target. The reason I say that is because ultimately the user decides what the profile of a top ranking site should be. Google, Bing, and other search engines have historically spent millions (if not ...

For the past couple of months, Google has been telling the world that page speed is an increasingly important aspect of Web sites. The Google Speed site – which has the laudable goal of making Web browsing as fast as turning the pages of a magazine – has been featured in several posts on their Webmaster blog, and features links to various free tools that they, and others, have made available for the masses. So, as someone responsible for a site, if you suspect that you may have page load issues, what's your first stop? Where should you go to get an overall idea of your site performance, short of opening every page of your site while holding a stopwatch? The first place that many of us will start is in our Google Webmaster Tools account. Log in, click on Labs, then Site Performance. There, you'll see site performance data based on feedback from their crawlers.  On the page you'll also see a sample of 10 pages with the load times for each. Unfortunately, it doesn't ...

Just about ten days ago, we reported on the launch of the new Google search results pages (SERPs). Some positive feedback has emerged, both from the general public and from search professionals, although users seemed mostly infuriated at the outset. So hit or miss ? On May 5th, Google unveiled its new search results page, deploying a whole range of tools including Universal search as a core feature, more search options, find and compare, a cleaner logo and finally, the much-criticized dynamic left-hand navigation bar. The look and feel - "Hate it !" At the time, and judging from the comments to our post, the majority of users were forming a solid "I hate the new Google search page" camp. The left hand navigation bar was disqualified as "counter-intuitive", "redundant" with the top menu, and the icons for the various "Everything" options were said to be "clutter", "as ugly as sin" (in case you wonder, these are...

As marketers, we should all pursue how to better communicate a message -- yet many of us naturally limit our opportunities by focusing only on what we know. For example, when you hear the phrase "content is king" in the context of sales and marketing, does your thought process default to content that should be written? We're all familiar with the old adage of "a picture is worth a thousand words." In this attention (deficit) economy, what's old has become new again. Many consider visual assets (e.g., images, diagrams, illustrations, animation, video) as secondary marketing elements. However, these are the assets people are most interested in sharing. You may think this is obvious, but consider what Facebook had to learn, as stated by CEO Mark Zuckerberg in his recent "60 Minutes" interview: "Photos originally weren't that big of a part of the idea for Facebook, but we just found that people really liked them, so we built out this f...

Many people know how to find the right search engine optimization (SEO) company for their business. And many articles also describe how to find the best SEO and how to "manage" them. Because after all, you can't trust an SEO, right? One thing that isn't talked about that much is the other side: to get a successful SEO project going, you need to find the right SEO to do the job for you. But once you've found that great SEO, it's easy to screw up the project. And I don't mean by the SEO provider, but by you, the client. So below find the rules you have to know before you should allow yourself to be an SEO client. Be Honest Being honest toward your SEO is one of the, maybe even the, most important matter when you're hiring one. If you "hide" things the SEO will never be able to make your sites rank. I've seen many cases of clients who didn't tell their SEOs they had a penalized domain. You have to tell them right at the start...

Truly measuring and analyzing the impact of social media efforts has been a difficult, time intensive process that often leads to more questions than answers. Why? Because a true social media analytics tool doesn't exist. Yet. This means we're left pulling data from multiple sources in an attempt to cobble together a way to analyze our social data that we hope will provide the insights necessary to evaluate the success of our social media efforts. If you've tried to do this on your own, you know the headaches involved with compiling data from Facebook Insights, YouTube Insight, Twitter data, social media monitoring data, web analytics data, and any other social source that you're involved with. The solution to this problem is a means to bring all the data together into a single social media analytics tool where you can analyze each social channel individually, as well as analyze across channels to uncover a true holistic social media view. A social media analy...

Google has not abandoned the idea of providing results before search and in fact, the search giant has reiterated that it's working what it calls as 'contextual discovery' which will give users search results before they even know they want them, reports Sharon Gaudin from computerworld. The concept revolves around the idea of being able to look at either a person's browsing profile or their location profile and serving up interesting data to them without them searching for anything. Marissa Mayer, Vice President of Location Services at Google said the company is working on giving users results without the search at the LeWeb '10 conference in Paris. "The idea is to push information to people," said Mayer, during an on-stage interview. "It's location in context. Inside the browser and a toolbar, we can look at where people have been going on the Web - then we deliver it. But it's a big UI challenge." Google aims to provide information...

Cyber attacks against critical infrastructure providers in India have become more frequent and increasingly effective, said a survey released by Symantec. According to its India findings of its 2010 Critical Infrastructure Protection (CIP) Survey, successful attacks on cyber networks of critical infrastructure providers could have a significant societal impact and potentially even threat national security.   "Critical Infrastructure Protection is not limited to protecting government and defense infrastructure, but extends to both publicly and privately run infrastructure such as telephone networks, power generation and distribution, oil refineries and gas pipelines," said Shantanu Ghosh, Vice President, India Product Operations, Symantec. According to Ghosh, today security threats have become so advanced that they require a comprehensive and risk-based approach that encompasses security, disaster recovery and information management technology to maintain true network resil...

Soon internet will find its place in remote areas of country with the launch of 3G services.Village having a population of 500 people will be connected to broadband internet. Speaking at the Internet and Mobile Association of India's (IAMAI) 5th India Digital Summit in Delhi on December 7, 2010, Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) Chairman JS Sharma talked about the Government's upcoming broadband plan, the details of which would be revealed in the near future. A key point that he was willing to reveal about it though, was that the Government planned to have a strong focus on rural areas by encouraging development with local cable operators as one example, who could collect and operate networks in more distressed conditions than the organised sector. "The national broadband plan will be out soon, and we will extend broadband connections to every village in the country that has a population of more than 500 people. By 2012, every gram panchayat in the entire co...

sIt's all about Google in search today. They have the market share. They have control of the press (can you think of a day in a recent memory that Google wasn't in the news?). They have the innovation. They have some of the smartest minds in the world, although that trend is shifting of late . Ignoring Google means ignoring online marketing, period. Ignoring Bing, on the other hand, or Yahoo usually means ignoring nothing more than a few extra clicks; like having a meal a la carte or ordering your pie without whipped cream. Even Google likes Bing's interface. But there's a problem with that mindset. The problem is, marketers -- especially SEOs -- are ignoring Bing entirely, and in the process, ignoring a heavily e-commerce-focused demographic that can provide modest, but incremental, traffic, and revenue. What if I told you that your company could experience between 5 and 10 percent incremental traffic and revenues by focusing on Bing? Who wouldn't be interes...

Most often, software developers seem locked into certain failure modes that can't be avoided and such is the frequency with which they fall prey to a particular poor programming practice. Peter Wayner of Computerworld writes about twelve most common programming mistakes, each of which is accompanied by its opposing pair. Below are the twelve programming pitfalls developers should stay away from. Playing it fast and loose Failing to prop up the basics is the easiest way to make errors in coding. There are a lot of small places where a developer may make a mistake which causes software to fail. And the worst part about sloppy programming is that advances in language design aimed to fix these problems don't do their job. There have been improvements in syntax in programming languages. For instance, the latest version of Java tries to make null-pointer checking easier by offering shorthand syntax for the endless pointer testing. But such syntax improvements can only prevent code...

The lottery has a slogan, "You have to play to win." In business, you have to be considered to win. The more often you are considered the more chances you have to win. If you want to increase your odds of being considered, and even more importantly, increase your odds of winning, then you need to engage consumers as early as possible in the buying cycle. Consumers go through the following progression when deciding to buy something: 1.Problem recognition 2.Information search 3.Evaluate alternatives 4.Purchase decision 5.Buy Before a consumer decides they need to buy something, they need to recognize they have a problem. •My jeans don't fit. •My computer is too slow. •I need to lose weight. •I don't know which of my ads are working. •My roof is leaking. •I'm going to propose to my girlfriend and need to buy a ring. •I can't read a magazine while keeping my blanket on me. •I'm not going to be able to retire. In many cases a consumer doesn...

In the closing moments of conference season this year, it occurred to me that search engines are desperately trying to appeal to the masses on several different levels, especially of late. Google and Bing have both made significant investments to improve user experience including: •Measuring speed at which results and landing pages are served to users. •Improving the quality of short and long search query results. •Injecting as much local content into search results pages as possible. •Factoring in social media influence and reach from various platforms. •Optimizing experience on each and every user screen. Take note of each of these developments because optimizing for conversion starts with fulfilling each engine's promise of great user experience -- regardless of device. How do you optimize conversion and improve user experience? Here's a list of free, inexpensive, and premium tools to get you started in collecting qualitative feedback and objective data on f...

Whistleblower website WikiLeaks, which is in the middle of releasing confidential diplomatic documents, emigrated Friday to a new Swiss address after its U.S.-based internet hosting service was shut down. The new hosting is located at www.wikileaks.ch, a site registered by the Swiss Pirate Party. On late Thursday, the website www.wikileaks.org went down, with the owner of the hosting services saying a denial of service attack had forced it to take the move. Early last month, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange said he feared for his safety and might seek asylum in Switzerland. According to the Swiss news agency ATS, the group has also reserved for good measure www.wikileaks.li, using a domain allotted to the tiny principality Liechtenstein, nestled between Switzerland and Austria. Earlier this week, Amazon stopped hosting the site, after coming under fire from members of the US Congress, including Senator Joe Lieberman. "If Amazon are so uncomfortable with the first amend...

India is undoubtedly the fastest growing automobile industry in the world. And what do Indian consumers need? That's what all automobile companies are brainstorming after. Is it style? Is it comfort? Is it mileage? Is it price? Well, if you give us all these features in one car, we are more than happy. And hence the answer - economy cars. Local Startups: Small is definitely the new big and the world watched with keen interest the developments on this front in India. For the first time, multinational companies are carefully studying the Indian market, deciphering its needs, desires and aspirations, and then developing cars which will be sold around the world and, at times, manufactured in India. Indians who give prime importance to family and basically likes to go places with them definitely prefer small cars over big ones. To serve the cost-effective mileage oriented buying habit of Indians arrive new economy cars. Stay tuned for those mesmerizing machines. Here are top 5 among th...

 [Source: http://www.siliconindia.com/shownews/Four_Indian_origin_young_entrepreneurs_under_20-nid-74822.html/1/2?utm_source=clicktrack&utm_medium=banner&utm_campaign=mostcommented?utm_source=Subscriber&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=Weekend%20Newsletter ]  Are entrepreneurs born or made? There is no single, clear-cut answer. But there are a few who make us believe that they are born entrepreneurs. These young Indians have figured out their passion at an early age to purse them to be an entrepreneur in this tough corporate world. The rich entrepreneurial spirit and the attitude of never giving up enable them to explore their innate tendencies to identify the business opportunities. 16 years old Farrhad Acidwalla from Mumbai started his entrepreneurial journey with an investment of just $10. When he was in the eighth grade, he borrowed $10 from his parents and bought his first domain name. Farrhad began building a web community devoted to aviation and aero-mod...

Broadcom Corporation has announced that Dr. Arogyaswami Paulraj has been named the recipient of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers' (IEEE) Alexander Graham Bell Medal, the organization's most prestigious honor. Arogyaswami has been recently joined Broadcom from Beceem Communications. In its award statement, the IEEE's Board of Directors said that in its efforts to recognize "exceptional achievements in our profession," Dr. Paulraj was selected for pioneering contributions to the application of multiantenna technology to wireless communications systems. Dr. Paulraj, a co-founder of Beceem Communications Inc., which Broadcom acquired last month, is a pioneer in MIMO (multiple-input, multiple-output) wireless technology, which relies on multiple radio antennas as both the transmitter and receiver to improve communications performance. An emeritus professor at Stanford University, where he supervises the Smart Antennas Research Group, Dr. Paulra...

Google, the Nasdaq listed company launched its new call centre in Hyderabad which focuses on sales, operations and human resources functions. Google said it will expand the Hyderabad centre to serve and support its company's worldwide advertising clients. Antoine Colaco, operations manager for the India Online Sales, said that Google chose Hyderabad because of the technology-literate English speaking population, a competitive economic environment and good infrastructure. "Google's AdWords adver tisers and AdSense publishers throughout the world will receive seamless online sales service and support in their local time from the team in Hyderabad," a Google release said. "Engineers hired into the Google Hyderabad engineering centre will mirror Google's other engineering offices, with the same scope of work, hiring standards and Google culture. They will be part of a worldwide effort to create the best search experience for Google users and can expect to tackle...

[Source:  http://www.siliconindia.com/shownews/Google_Open_Sources_websecurity_scanner-nid-66489-cid-2.html ] Google continue to contribute to the open source community and has now launched open-source web-security scanner called Skipfish that is designed to allow people to scan web applications for security holes. The tool scans a web application for flaws including "tricky scenarios" such as blind SQL or XML injection, Google developer Michal Zalewski said in the Skipfish wiki, according to ZDNet.  Zalewski wrote that there are already a number of both commercial and open-source scanning tools available, including Nikto and Nessus, and recommended that people use the tool that suits them. However, he added that Skipfish is high performance, with over 500 requests per second against internet targets, and over 2,000 requests per second on LANs, depending on the capabilities of the server being tested. Skipfish prepares a sitemap annotated with interactive crawl results...

[Source: http://www.siliconindia.com/shownews/iPhone_developers_to_write_Android_apps-nid-66480.html?utm_campaign=Newsletter&utm_medium=Email&utm_source=Subscriber ] Over 70 percent of iPhone developers are planning to also write for Android in the next six months, which may give Android an unambiguous lead in mobile app development among those tracked through the mobile ad service, according to AdMob.  The study which is done by Ad Mob also found that Symbian and webOS developers are the most likely to consider their apps at least somewhat successful and write more apps, but Symbian is also one of the least-liked by the developers themselves; RIM's BlackBerry OS and J2ME are the only others to face more hostile reactions from app designers. Android and iPhone are virtually tied for being the most likely to at least partly please developers. Till now no explanation is given for the new lean towards Android, but the existence of a genuinely popular device like the Mot...

[Source: http://www.siliconindia.com/shownews/Organizations_embracing_Windows_7-nid-66426.html?utm_campaign=Newsletter&utm_medium=Email&utm_source=Subscriber ] As part of an ongoing research series on Windows operating system (OS) adoption, the latest Dell KACE global survey shows 87 percent of IT professionals surveyed now plan to deploy Windows 7. While concerns for software compatibility and migration costs remain high, this is a dramatic increase from a similar study released in April 2009, which revealed the majority of IT staff had no plans to upgrade existing systems to Windows 7 in the next year. This year's study attributes increased confidence in performance, security and stability to the overwhelming change of heart. Further demonstrating affinity for the new OS, almost half the 900 respondents said they plan to deploy Windows 7 before the anticipated summer release of its first Service Pack (SP1). And for the first time since KACE initiated this research in...

[Source: http://www.siliconindia.com/shownews/Windows_Phone_7_Series_do_not_support_Flash_-nid-66398.html?utm_campaign=Newsletter&utm_medium=Email&utm_source=Subscriber ] Newly launched Microsoft's Windows Phone 7 Series won't support Adobe's Flash multimedia Web graphics software, nor will it allow users to perform simple cut-and-paste procedures on applications and messages. The company said that it did not feel it worth delaying the launch of Windows Phone 7 to include features it doesn't believe are deal breakers. The company is hoping to get Windows Phone 7 devices into the market in time for the 2010 holiday season. According to the various reports, the company is planning to add support for Flash and cut-and-paste in later updates to the Windows Phone 7 OS. Regarding this issue, Adobe developer Relations Manager Mike Chambers said, "One thing I wanted to clarify as it may have been lost in some of the other news is that Adobe and Microsoft a...

[Source: http://www.siliconindia.com/shownews/Indian_made_ereader_to_take_on_Kindle-nid-64961.html?utm_campaign=Newsletter&utm_medium=Email&utm_source=Subscriber ] After two years of hard work, Vishal Mehta, an ex employee of Amazon.com, launched the Infibeam Pi, an e-reader that looks like the Amazon Kindle. It has the same e-Ink screen that the Kindle sports, reports Sruthijith KK of The Economic Times. Mehta, who is having an engineering degree from Cornell and an MBA from MIT-Sloan, worked in Amozon.com for five years and was a Senior Manager at the company in 2007. To start his own online retail venture, Mehta quit his job, sold his house and his car.  The Infibeam Pi, which is priced at Rs.10,000, can be ordered online now and is likely to be shipped in February, is priced at Rs. 10,000. The Amazon Kindle, when shipped to India, costs about Rs.18,000. The Pi supports 13 Indian languages. Infibeam.com, an online retailer that sells everything from flowers t...