Ethical practices have no boundaries and the more ethical you are, the more benefits you accrue. Being an ethical SEO company, will not only fetch new clients but also make new clients as long-term clients.  The major advantage with long-term clients is they will help the SEO firm to expertise more about the business and it makes the SEO Company to even go for the domain based SEO service.

Most of the businesses outsource their Internet marketing objectives to specialized SEO companies because the only reason is Internet marketing is as tough as conventional marketing. So it is extremely important to partner Internet marketing companies with strong testimonials and more importantly companies which are ethical.

SEO companies should be considered, as a marketing partner of your business and the SEO firm should carry out the expectations of the business methodically.

Business owners should be wary of certain aspects other than the factors said in part 1 before partnering with an Internet marketing firm.

1. Check the effectiveness of the portfolio:

Many SEO companies claim to have achieved top rankings for ‘x’ number of keywords but the fact that is to be looked out is the competitiveness of keywords. Long tail keywords are generally less competitive and neither are they going to generate traffic to the site. There are many tools, which shows you the competitiveness of keywords and use them to analyze the competency level and the expertise level of the SEO Company. It is highly important for business owners who are in competitive business to check this because there are tons of SEO companies who are projecting these in such a way people are easily carried away.

2. Review the Testimonials:

There is a general adage:-

“A good word of mouth is bag of Gold”

Business owners should beware of companies providing fake testimonials and it is not only vital to check the effectiveness of the portfolio but should make sure the they are true.  The one best thing what you can do is to actually call the company referred in the testimonial and request for a feedback. There is no bigger testimonial required than a good word of mouth for an SEO firm and in that case any company and business.

3. Effective Communication:

Effective communication plays a key role in the success of an Internet marketing campaign and co-ordination between the business owner and the SEO firm is vital to reach the targeted audience. Business owners should be careful in selecting the SEO firms and they should make sure the SEO firm can be contacted anytime by any means in case of urgent needs. The other fact is that, the business owners are ones who are aware of the latest happenings in the line of their business and updating the changes to the SEO firm is the key to success. Also, the SEO Company should be ready to make the changes accordingly in their Internet marketing strategy.

If there is a slack in communication between the SEO firm and the Business then the website is the  “blind man in Amazon!!! “

4. Reporting and Reports

Reports and reporting on the other hand strengthens the relationship between the business owner and the SEO firm and also helps the business owners to assess the performance of the SEO firm. Partner with SEO firms who can provide customized reports based on the requirements of the clients and are also capable of analyzing the performance of the website and should be able to provide with suitable recommendations.

5. Technical support:

SEO not only involves on-page and off-page optimization processes it also involves certain design and development changes to be done in websites. A SEO company, which can help in development as well as in internet marketing, would be an ideal choice for business owners because there is room for flexibility. Search engines nowadays provides importance to loading speed and it is extremely important that your business website is hosted in good servers.

About us: “ Macronimous Web solutions, an offshore search engine optimization company is always proud to offer white hat SEO service for its clients. As we follow white hat SEO technique, we are esteemed to call ourselves as a professional SEO firm. Macronimous considers business of the clients as their own business and foresee the SEO process. This makes Macronimous very special because it acts as  a marketing team to the company indirectly. Macronimous has a team of SEO experts who are working hard to create a benchmark in ethical SEO. Clients can contact Macronimous web solutions for any SEO related aspects and the team are ever ready to serve the client needs. Macronimous updates the clients with the latest changes in search engines periodically and gives suitable solutions time varying.  Macronimous web solutions always feel proud to be a part of clients intellectual business partner.”

To those who have never had their websites’ positioning in top search engines “punished” due to unethical SEO practices, you’re just in time. You’re in much better shape than those who have been victimized by unscrupulous SEO companies that will do anything to get their business – and anything to achieve top results – even if it means violating the major search engines’ acceptable use guidelines. Such methods are known as “black hat” in the SEO universe, and the top search engines rarely give second chances when such practices are employed. Pleading ignorance rarely works, as you, ultimately made the decision to employ such a company. It’s your website after all, right?

How Do I Know If My SEO Company Is Legit?

It’s imperative to screen your prospective SEO partner carefully, check references, confirm physical address and phone number and use any other means to verify credibility. While this still is not 100% foolproof, your chances of falling victim to the “quick strike and run” companies are greatly reduced. How can you further improve your chances of finding an ethical SEO company?

1. Ask questions. While “successful” SEO companies rarely give away the ingredients to their “secret sauce” (and understandably so), they should be able to answer general questions – without hesitation – about their practices. Here’s what we tell our clients: “We use only white-hat SEO techniques, primarily because we’re ethical, but secondarily, because we want you to be our client for years to come. The easiest way to lose clients is to ‘cheat,’ using bait-and-switch techniques or irrelevant content and inbound links to obtain quick results that will “impress” the engines for a few months – only to drop your site like a hot potato because the methods utilized have violated the engines’ acceptable terms of use.
2. Beware of “Guarantees.” In the world of organic SEO, there is no such thing as a guarantee. We don’t own the search engines – so how can we tell you how they will treat your website? How can 10 different companies “guarantee” their clients top placement under the same search term? Sure, we feel very strongly about our methods, but we’d never profess to “speak on behalf” of Google, Yahoo! or Bing. We can; however, assure you that we will do whatever we can, within the acceptable guidelines of “white-hat SEO” to provide the search engines with highly relevant content specific to your website. We can also show you what we’ve done for others, and invite you to speak directly with our clients for an unbiased testimonial of our services. Don’t just take our word for it!
3. Delete “anonymous” emails. Many of our clients receive dozens of emails weekly from “SEO experts” who guarantee No. 1 results. Well, we’ve already discussed “guarantees.” Now it’s time to consider the source and ask yourself more questions:

• If this company is so strong in organic SEO, why does it need to solicit me by email?
• Why is there no phone number?
• Why is there no company name?
• Why is this “expert” sending me an email from a “free” email platform (Gmail, Yahoo, MSN, etc.?) instead of a corporate email?
• How did this person find me? (Many times, it’s because you’re at least moderately positioned in Google already!)

“Cheap” Is Expensive

So many of our clients have fallen victim to the many email scams out there, as touched upon above. Unfortunately, such companies give our industry a bad name, and thousands of dollars – or even tens of thousands of dollars – are lost before clients come to us. If you want quality, LASTING organic SEO, accept the fact that there are no shortcuts and that you usually get exactly what you pay for. Cliché as it sounds, if it sounds too good to be true… It is!

Employing an ethical SEO company like Macronimous to help get you to the top – and keep you there – is the right move not only for companies that have been snake bitten by scammers, but first-timers who want to get it done right the first time. Call or contact us today to see what we’ve done for others – and more importantly, what we can do for you!

1. Social Marketing: Facebook and twitter will rule next year (or next few years too). Every SEO company which helps their client to succeed online, should help them by letting them to consider these technology giants, which might take them to next level. Social media optimization will not replace Search Engine Optimization, but social media optimization should go in parallel with SEO.

2. Cloud applications and hosting: We started using invoice applications first (Freshbooks) and it ended up with cloud hosting. We moved our sites to cloud. Also helped clients to taste the flour of clouds. Web hosting with Amazon web services was a very different service we offered to our clients. Setting up their sites and web applications with EC2 were initially needed some learning with Amazon, but it became an expert service at the year end. In 2011 we will be providing setting up applications in cloud as a key service.

3. Social Media integration: We learnt FBML, Facebook SDK with PHP and started offering business pages and applications with Facebook , which will continue next year. Marketing those pages is another fruit to reap. Similarly Facebook Like button integration and Twitter API integrations are two important promotional services clients will require in 2011.

4. Blogging: Is blogging dead? No, it has come out in different format. Twits and Facebook status updates are micro blogging and People who do not want to write much, or those who like to share instantly use them. But, still business blogging isn’t dead. Macronimous helped serveral clients to start blogging. WordPress helped us much. We provide SEO friendly WordPress blogs by adding SEO plugins and basic SEO readiness setup as a mandatory feature along with every blogs.

5. Search Engine friendly coding: SEO readiness is no more a value addition. Every site we develop should be ready to for Search Engines. It begins with light weight coding and ends with Keyword setup. Making dynamic sites such as CMS driven content, ECommerce sites and Flash sites with PHP and .NET are offered by us as an expert SEO service.

6. HTML5 for Flash: We started offering HTML5 based presentations and sites. Flash was replaced by jQuery for many clients and they were happy too. By 2011, HTML 5 should be the standard, and Flash will move for interactive applications. The test results made at RWW in March 2010 was an eye opener. With full fledged CSS3 and HTML5, easy to create interactive web applications without Flash should be feasible.

7. Rich Internet Application – Flex was used much in few projects this year. We look forward to work on RIA based frameworks, such as Sencha.

8. PHP Frameworks: We used Codeigniter very much. But MVC is still not very popular, and framework based applications are relatively lower then non MVC based solutions like WordPress etc.

9. Smartphone and Tablet applications: We did much with iPhones this year (including 2011 World Cup Cricket app), moving to iPads. Android development for Smartphones and tablets will be our important strategy for 2011. By the end of this year, we see more Tablets, and thanks to iPad, which regenerated the new platform of business. Building portable applications for the mobile and tablet browsers is another channel. By providing mobile friendly websites we help clients become accessible everywhere. Sencha Touch nd dhtmlx’s JavaScript mobile UI APIs will be a part of the development in 2011.

10. Security for Opensource applications: Many of us believe that Opensource application based development cost is almost nil. This is a lie. The initial cost of a WordPress or Joomla based application/site development might be relatively lower than a closed, custom application development. But the real cost of ownership is affected by the security issues that comes with the Open standards, mainly when they are affected by Security attacks. We will work hardly on providing secure web applications when we develop them with open source in 2011. Even at this year end we have an important announcement with a  major security fix from WordPress.

11. Remote project management: Managing projects across the globe was a real challenge a decade ago. Using standards and web based project management tools we provide hassle free project management. Tools like Basecamp, dotproject and Eventum helped us much, and we are working with few cloud based PM and collaboration tools, github etc. Apart from this our agile based PM methods have had some customization. Part of that is a project closure questionnaire.

Overall, many easy and hard ways of learning helped our team to build the next year strategy very much. Leave your comments if you had such learnings to share with others. Looking forward to another technologically challenging year which helps us to help our clients.

Dilbert stripe: © Dilbert.com

1. Download WordPress 3.0 from the URL wordpress.org/download. And before you install make sure you have access to the FTP client and mysql database

2. Create a subfolder in your domain root folder and upload unzipped wordpress 3.0 files to the subfolder. Create a database for new WordPress version on your web server. Rename the wp-config-sample.php file to wp-config.php. Open wp-config.php in a text editor and fill in your database details and upload to the desired folder. Run the WordPress installation script by accessing yourdomain.com/subfolder/wp-admin/install.php.

3. Now you should have done with the installation. Next step is to copy your theme files and paste it to the wp-content folder were you could see the default theme.

4. From now on you need to be very careful, copy you DB tables scripts from your existing blog database and paste it to a notepad. Here you see the links with the original URL yourdomain.com and you need to replace with demo URL yourdomain.com/subfolder/ since you are installing a demo test version in a subfolder. Now you can copy the DB table’s script and execute in your new database that has been created for demo version.

5. Now you are 50% done with wordpress 3.0. All the remaining is plugins and you need to note that all plugins are not compactable for new wordpress 3.0 so do not place all plugin in the wp-content plugin folder if happens then there would be problem in access wp-admin. Through your FTP client you need to create a folder can be named “backup” and place all your existing plugins in the “backup” folder. Then move on your desired plugin one by one to check compatibility by logging into wp-admin. There would be less or more plugins you would have located that are not compactable.

6.  Now you are done with your wordpress 3.0 in your demo version. You should be able to access your demo blog with all the post and as well you would be able to access blog wp-admin.

7. At this instant, you can move your live blog files to a different folder or can move to your local machine just for a support. Through FTP client go to your subfolder were you have wordpress 3.0 file and upload all the files in your root folder were you had the files of your previous word press version. Now download your wp-config.php and open in a text editor and fill in your live database details.

8. Now you need to access your mysql demo database and copy the table’s scripts to a notepad and change the URL from yourdomain.com/subfolder/ to yourdomain.com/ and execute it to your live database.

That’s it, now you can enjoy using wordpress 3.0 for your live blog.

I recently found few directories with a list of web2.0 sites. I was wondering what is the need for this huge list? Are they going to be used by people? How many of us are registered with more than 3 or 4 social networking sites? While I appreciate specific group based social networking sites, what is the need for 200 similar social networking sites for one community? Is that not looking potentiality waste of money. After investing few thousands of dollars what will happen if the site is not promoted due to the fear of its competition it already has? What market can the site catch? 20 registered users in 2 years? How many users will come back to the site after 2-3 visitors?

Here is a list of diretories which has 100s of web2.0 based sites, under different categories. Are they worth visiting and registering?

http://web2.econsultant.com/

http://www.go2web20.net/

http://www.digfoot.com/

I do not say there should be no competition. But uniqueness is needed for any web2.0. Many of them are offering free services, and that can not be the only reason for their success. I beleive the following points should be considered by anyone who wants to develop a Web2.0 application.

1. Does the market or the society need this application?

2. Does the site going to make impact in the market or the society?

3. Can I make money out of this site and this is not just my hobby?

4. Am I offering unique features that will attract used in my web2.0 site?

5. Am I NOT wasting my (or my VC’s) money by making Just another web2.o site?

6. Do I have enough funds to market the site heavily and to overtake my competition?

7. This is not just a trial I want to make since I have few thousand excess money in my Bank A/C, Right?

If you say even single “NO!, you should really think about your stratagy.

alexking.org. Its a simple WordPress plugin, Its called WordPress Mobile edition. Just follow the instructions, activate the plugin, The blog is up for the mobile now, just call blog.macronimous.com from your Mobile browser..and Yes.. you got it!

Alex has written it the Mobile site as a separate theme, with XHTML/CSS with less or no graphics (Logo is not coming up, you need to tweak the code a bit if you need). Otherwise the job is done. We are planning to write some Themes based on Alex, with bit more graphics – optimized for the mobile!

“We cannot live for ourselves alone. Our lives are connected by a thousand invisible threads, and along these sympathetic fibers, our actions run as causes and return to us as results.” – Says Herman Melville.
When you want to link your thoughts with others, when you like others to learn from you or others to make you learn – the good way is blogging. You have a though on personal, business, or social – and you need know what’s others view on it. Blogging helps you to do this – you share your thoughts, and make others to share their thoughts on their thoughts.

Read below, if you need a blog for you:
You need to choose the right blogging tool first, as all are not same, and all doesn’t provide the same. Most of them are Opensource scripts or free services, so you pay a little or nothing.

1. Hosted services:

If you want to start blogging right away, hosted services are the best bet. If you do not have your own hosting space, if you do not know how to install your own blog application, hosted services like blogger, Livejournal or Tyepad would be the right choice. You can straightaway register with them and start with them. Typepad charges a little as monthly fee but the others are free services.

2. Installable scripts:

You need more control with your blog, and want to host under your domain name (eg.blog.yoursitename.com) check with your hosting provider first. Many hosting solutions comes with some default preinstalled blog scripts – with their support manual you should be able to configure it easily.

If you do not like the installed scripts you should evaluate scripts like wordpress (PHP based), Movable type (Perl based), and install them in your server.

I personally recommend wordpress, Reasons:

1. Its free, ever.

2. PHP 4.x based, and most of the hosting supports this.

3. Easy to setup with simple mySQL setup. Again most of the hosting should support mySQL.

4. You do not need to be a big programmer to install, configure or change the designs which you like.

5. Hundreds of free themes are available – You have to just upload and enable/disable them.

6. Easy to configure plug-ins – which are additional features you would like

7. Easy to backup – just back up your database and keep a copy of your data

8. Good SPAM blocking (I like the plug-in akismat)

8. …and many.

We will post regular blogs on blogs, Visit here after some days to learn how a blog can help you to promote your site business.

If you still prefer someone to get your blog ready for you, Just write us. We charge a minimal fee to make your own blog ready under your domain, contact us for more details. In 3 days you will get your blog ready to shout.

Overall WordPress is very easy to install, create the mySQL database and mention the mySQL login credentials in the configuration file, upload them all, Run the setup and you are done! – Hardly 15 minutes, If you are new to any application installation – maximum one hour! Your Blog or CMS driven Site is ready to post content.

Easy to configure Plug-ins from a huge list of Plug-ins Directory – You not need to be a programmer to configure the right plug-ins you want.

Flaws are fixed quickly – Watch for the right version and upgrade it to Quickly. We always research on WordPress security and make any fixes quickly. The fixes are identified quickly by WordPress team and fixed quickly. So I do not think it is something to be worried much – But just keeping you updated will help you some long term smooth running.

Most importantly, our designers said designing a Theme is much simpler than Drupal – We are using Drupal much, and I know how difficult it would be in Drupal. With great experience in XHTML and CSS it’s not difficult to create Themes. Sooner, our guys will come up with nice FREE designs soon for the WordPress to download.

Easy to admin your blog or site. For a simple sites which need a good CMS, you do not need to load your customers with tons of features offered by Drupal or Joomla. If the site doesn’t have continuous, fast growing nature, you can make the site manager’s life easier with WordPress.

For permalinks and comments you can create RSS. Nice feature.

Staticize plugin – to cache the content of the dynamic pages which makes the site fast appearing and I assume it will eat less server bandwidth. I know some of the features are available in other CMS applications too, But I like WordPress allowing you to configure them easily.

Post via email – It is bit tricky to setup and post your blog by the post Post via E-mail feature. Though I am not planning to use it, you may definitely want to give a try! If you want to use WordPress as your corporate private communication tool for information sharing, this would be power feature.

Trackbacks with pingbacks – Just mention the permalink of any post in your blog. This will do the trackback job.
What I didn’t see is versioning and a content approval system. If anyone knows you can reply here in comments.
We are writing a plug-in to post your comments via mobile; I hope sooner it would be available as our Contribution.