Resources on Web, Mobile, SEO, Outsourcing and more.

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Not exactly, if you optimize your site for Google SEO factors you will generally do well for SERPs in all the major search engines. In addition you need to do some tweaks in turn for the difference in the algorithm. I have done some research to the sites that lists in Google and Bing for high traffic Global and local keywords and I see some additional importance to the on page and off page factors related to the Google and Bing algorithm. Hope these helps for Bing SEO too

(1) Title tag – Equal importance for Both Google and Bing
(2) Keyword prominence – Equal importance for Both Google and Bing
(3) Keyword density – Bing looks for lesser keyword density compared to Google
(4) Link density – Google gives more priority than Bing
(5) H tag – Bing gives more priority than Google
(6) Clean code – Equal importance for Both Google and Bing
(7) Meta tags – Equal importance for Both Google and Bing
(8) Anchor texts – Bing gives more priority than Google
(9) Super relevant content for optimized keywords – Equal importance for Both Google and Bing
(10) Domain age – Bing gives more priority than Google
(11) Site popularity – Google gives more priority than Bing
(12) Social sites in links – Google gives more priority than Bing

BTW, if you are new to Bing and not listed in Bing search results you may submit your site to http://www.bing.com/docs/submit.aspx

In addition, to list better in Bing you need to implement some additional tasks along with above on page and off page factors.

Configure your site to Bing Webmaster tool http://www.bing.com/webmaster by adding your sitemap.xml file and with an XML file verification code for your site ownership .

And you may also validate your Robots.txt file using the Robots.txt validator tool in the Bing Webmaster section and robots.txt would look like

User-agent: *
Disallow: /images/
Disallow: /includes/
Disallow: /media/

Sitemap: http://www.xyz.com/sitemap.xml

These would help Bing bot to crawl your site pages and lists in search results efficiently

Hope the post helps and more research has to done as the Bing algorithm changes. I will be positing than and then, so keep watching

Today I revived few questions from Carl Williams of Odin Jobs for a blog entry. I believe every designer should ask themselves to keep the answers with them always.
1. When and how did you get started in web design?
2. What is the single most important attribute/skill a good web designer must have?
3. What hard and soft skills should a web designer have? Should he/she have a degree or can you be self taught?
4. Your opinions on:
a. Fixed width or Fluid Design?
b. EMS, percentage, pixels or points?
5. What tools are a must have in a good web designer’s arsenal?
6. Any advice to budding and beginning web designers?
I am sure you will find yourself interesting in your job, if you have the right answers.
I welcome your answers as comments.

Indexing:                 
           One of the most advantageous methods for increasing the performance of queries is the formation  of efficient indexes.  A well-built index helps the query to avoid the necessity of scanning the entire table for results. If you have created an index, SQL server will automatically measures and stores the equivalent statistical information regarding the distribution of values in the indexed column. The optimizer to determine the optimal strategy for evaluating a query uses this statistical information.

There are two types of indexes: clustered and non-clustered, each with some unique advantages depending on the data set.

Clustered Index:
           A clustered index dictates the storage order of the data in a table. When searched for range of values the clustered indexes are more efficient on columns of data as the data is sorted. These index types also shines at finding a specific row when the indexed value is unique.

Non-clustered index:
            In a non-cluster index, the data is stored in one place and the data value in another place. When a query search for a data value, first the query searches the non-cluster index for the corresponding data value in the table to find the location and then retrieves the data from the location. Most often non-cluster  indexes are used for the queries resulting in exact matches.

Statistics:
               In a broad-spectrum, indexes should be kept as slight as possible, to reduce the amount of processing related with each query. For analyzing and optimizing the performance of a query the measurement and collection of statistical data is inevitable. The statistical performance data about the index keys are maintained in SQL server. If its configured, non-indexed keys can also be measured statistically.

 The basic statistical concepts, which a database administrator needs to understand regarding performance optimization, are:

• Cardinality: measures how many unique values exist in the data set.
• Density: measures the uniqueness of values within a data set. Density is determined by dividing the number of rows that correspond to a given key by the number of rows in the table. The optimizer will likely ignore indexes with high densities.
• Selectivity: measures the number of rows that will be returned by a particular query. Selectivity is determined by dividing the number of keys requested by the number of rows they access. To calculate the relative cost of a query plan, the optimizer needs a valid selectivity measure.

               SQL Server automatically updates the statistical information periodically as the data in the tables change. Sampling the data, rather than analyzing all of it minimizes the cost of this automatic statistical update.

Optimal performance:
               To design and choose indexes in a complex database table is normally a tedious task. Providentially, SQL Server has a built-in Index Tuning Wizard to establish an optimal set of statistics and indexes. Running the Index Tuning Wizard will provide a list of suggestions based on a scripted workload for improving the query performance of your database. We need to implement only the recommendations of the wizard, which applies to the particular situation. In case of any dynamic system, periodically we need to update our analysis on optimal database performance.

Our New business site is up for us from today : www.macronimous.com . The previous site was around 8 years old, and grown up to over 600 pages of static content. A complete makeover was a challenge and our team was able to achieve it in 3 Months.The main changes are,
1. Layout and Graphic changes (With same colors as the previous site) – It is three column now.
2. Table-less XHTML/CSS coding
3. W3C compatibility
4. Content Addition with case studies etc
5. Better SEO readiness.
6. Google friendly internal linking
7. Better sitemap, Breadcrumbs and Bottom Links
8. Homepage Flash banner
9. Content correction – Spelling and grammar correction. (Thanks to our client Anthony Passeri of NYC Data Systems)
10. Cross browser compatibility – Covers Chrome, IE 8 etc.I thank team for the great support, extended thoughts and creativeness.  There are few improvements are under process. If you want to send your feedback you can post your comment here, and if you find any issues, please report to designteam@macronimous.in, we appreciate it.I thank our teams (Design, Porgramming, SEO and QA) and some of our clients – without them all, we couldn’t get this new face.We have decided to keep the site fresh by adding more content and changes on design now and then. I believe Google will like our new site and increase page ranking! J

Out of my experience in handling various projects for our company, I have realized this one hardcore fact that Project Management is one of the very essential constituents of a project. I was initially going through various PM tools and found dotProject to be a useful tool. Since then our company has been using dotProject as one of our PM tools. We usually give the access to our clients so that they can check the status of the project any time they need. 

Being an open source tool, it also facilitated my fellow colleagues me and to use it the way we need it. I can customize it the way I require, as per the requirements. This comes as a boon to me as I can keep my clients happy by delivering them the project status, the way they need. So contended clients, which means a happy company and a happy me!

To wrap it up, I have listed few of the advantages below that I have experienced in dotProject PM tool, which are 

• Calendar updates  
• Task delegation details  
• Various report generation like approaching deadlines, timelines, modules pending and completed, and much more
• Managing multiple projects and tasks, files with forum support 

So if project management is what is stealing your night’s sleep, then relax! dotProject is the solution!

Everyone at Macronimous wishing you a very Happy Christmas and a Prosperous New year 2009!

Last week there came a surprise from Microsoft, an Opensource CMS. While there are plenty of Opensource CMS applications are available, we may not need another one in the line. However, I really appreciate this step from Microsoft. Microsoft named as Oxite, and ASP.NET Model-view-Controller based CMS. This bold open source attempt from Microsoft, contains a blog engine kick-started basically to help with certain complex functionalities involved like RSS, trackbacks and other social networking wonders including comments, allowing Open search format as well.
 
Being an open source sample code, Oxite also takes aim at affording a real-life ASP.NET MVC. It also supports multi-blogs within a website and allows you to create as many sub pages as possible, under one special page. If you are writing about your family in your personal blog in one special page, and want to add sub pages into it about each member of your family, then Lo and Behold! This is possible as simple as it can be! What’s more?! And in case you are not very happy with the in-built features and want to change few, then you have the codes with you, don’t you? 
 
I would consider it as a standard web blogging application that works the Microsoft way. With excellent data patterns and adequate extensibility Oxite also has good SoC (Separation of Concerns), With its initial release in the first week of December, Oxite can be run in any version of Windows XP, Server 2003, Vista or Server 2008.
 
Though an alpha release, which you can download now, this is definitely something worth checking out.  It does have few glitches in it, but after all it is in its alpha version. Our team is checking the code if it is really opensource or something DLLed.

We all face competition everywhere. Especially in this fast paced life where everyone is expecting speed and efficiency, we ought to give them the best. Offshore outsourcing not only help in managing your organization’s work better, but also help in effective and timely completion of tasks. We have heard it from many of our clients that our offshore team of professionals has been of great help in finishing the tasks faster, along with the help from the Onsite team, as the task is worked upon, almost round the clock, by both the onsite and offshore teams. Thanks to the time zone difference and the experient professionals that makes this easier and quicker completion of tasks a reality! In my experience, I have realized that time zone difference not only helps in the quicker completion of the task, but also brings in a good rapport amongst the two teams.

Read our article titled “Effective time difference management with offshore teams” wherein we have analyzed the importance of time difference management and how useful it proves to be for an organization that has an offshore team employed

What is Social bookmarking? It’s an easy way to save and share the websites/pages you like, with tags, for better classifications, so that you can revisit them easily. You can also share the URLs you like with your friends, site visitors and networks.

Unlike your browser-based book marking, social bookmarking sites help your sites, resources and blogs to reach more, in social media; be it people, group or network of similar interest. This is another way to increase your web page popularity.

Why do we call Social Bookmarking as a tool for SEO and how it helps SEO: When visitors search for information in search engines using keyword phrases and find your site in Google, Yahoo or MSN, if they find the information in your site to be useful, they pass it over to their friends, by bookmarking your site.

Here is a simple tool, which helps you create a social bookmarking button of your own http://www.toprankblog.com/tools/social-bookmarks/ 

Do you think this acts as a tool for SEO? Definitely! Bookmarking the searched pages will bring back the new visitor again as returning visitors and there is a possibility for the searched pages to get popular in your network as well as your friends network to people with similar interest.

So go ahead! Start social bookmarking with this blog

Also feel free to download our Practical SEO Techniques EBook