A paradigm shift
In the famous words of Thomas L Friedman – the world is flat. Business and commerce globally has seen a paradigm shift with the advent of global networking metaphorically represented by the internet. The use of social networking is characteristic of this shift which has taken the world by storm with sites like Facebook and Twitter becoming the modern day lexicon.

Managing perceptions
Business today depends far more on modern methods like social networking to reach and service its customers. From firms to film stars – it is now common practice to interact with your target audience for getting a feel about what they think about you, and propagate your thoughts and views on them. But mere conversation is not enough. It is imperative that you selectively leverage your interaction with the target audience to make a perceptible yet subtle change in the way you are perceived. Take the case of what Comcast has done on Twitter. Without making any significant change in the way they service their customers, they have been able to make a change in the way their clients perceive them.

Selecting what works
Social networking is more predominant among young ITES organizations, yet conventional manufacturing organizations have also tried to delve into its business benefits. These firms sometimes experiment internally with their business associates through tested options like SharePoint or Web 2.0. This has seen the genesis of a collaborative approach towards innovation on the web. The most revolutionary use of this approach has been the development and use of Linux as a freeware. The choice is yours – see what benefits you most.

Core business benefits
You can create and improve your brand image online through social networking. For e.g. in Facebook, you can create a pointer to your website which provides promotional data and introduces clients to your client or website. Similarly, in LinkedIn, you could put up a showcase event or roadshow which your company is sponsoring. Even in audio visual networking sites like YouTube, you could upload a video showing an award your company has won or a prominent speaker delivering an address at a marquee event supported by your organization. The options are seemingly boundless.

In a time and age where b2b and b2c opportunities are endless, social networking is a vital cog in the wheel of corporate brand building, managing stakeholder perceptions and attracting & retaining clients. But given the intellectual property driven business realities, it would be wise to take time to decide the path you would be most comfortable with. So choose wisely and enjoy the plethora of benefits which social networking can bestow on your business.

Ethical SEO Companies – (Part 2) – How to identity them?

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.”

Like any other year for a web development company, 2010 went with lot of learning. Not even a single day left without the impact of technology advancements and new techniques to learn. At Macronimous, we always try to let our clients know what we learnt: jQuery/HTML 5 instead of Flash, Ajax driven forms, Mobile and Tablet interfaces for websites, Security for WordPress blogs & sites and social networking integration are some of the key considerations for improving the deliverables. Few things were challenging and few attempts didn’t turned up well. At the end of the year, it’s a summary of things will help any business to focus or rethink to make 2011 better for us and most importantly for our clients.

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

Not all the web clients are tech or web savvies. Many times you should pave them their success path online. Here are few a list of 4 important things which you should let your client know, if they trust your web development skills.

1. Flash: When they ask for a fully flashed website, let them know the adversity it might make. By doing this you are helping them to establish the right online presence. Unless your client is Coca cola or Burger King ( I mean,  :-), an establish brand), they will really want to establish better Visibility to the Search Engines.

2. SEO – If a client just wants a website, let them know what SEO is and how it is going to help them. Make the site SEO friendly within the design scope (Eg. Image tags, XHTML validations, designing without tables, etc). Most of the clients will not say NO to make their site ready for SEO.

3. CMS – Ask how frequently they want to change the content, and if they do, let them do know how to do it themselves with a CMS. You may also need to let them know the advantages of fresh content. I believe instead of providing them a static site of 20 pages, you can introduce them Joomla and how to use it, for some additional but onetime investments.

4. Advantages of Opensource - Do they need a CMS or Ecommerce, You can justify why you charge less. Let them know that you can cut cost by using WordPress or Magento and still make their site professional. By doing this you are introducing standards – if your client goes to some other developers, it would not be difficult for them to take up the work.

I recommend you to keep a short write up (with some references) or articles on the above mentioned (you may keep that under your client section of your website) and ask the client to refer them. It also helps them to understand that you know what you tell them.

What is Keyword cloud?

Keyword cloud represents most used keywords in a site visually, by showing it in different font sizes and it is known to be a Search Engine Marketing (SEM) term. It differs from larger to smaller in font sizes. Keyword that has been used more around the site and blog, which we call as keyword density, are shown in larger fonts. According to the keyword density the font size varies from larger to smaller. On looking at the keyword cloud size variation, users can see the importance of the keywords that relates to web site or a blog.

Benefits of keyword cloud

Keyword cloud is benefited to find relevant and useful web pages for user who looks for certain information. 

By using the keyword cloud, popular words (density rich words) are shown and it is as well clickable for users. When users find a keyword listed in keyword cloud useful then he will be going for a click on the particular keyword and he will be taken to the category search results page were all pages or blog posts will be listed related to the tagged keyword.

Make sure the keywords in the cloud section are not overlapped and ugly. Have it in a place were users could find it easily. The better option is to have it in the side bar of a site or blog. 

Keyword cloud generators

Here is a site that helps to generate a keyword cloud by mentioning your web link.

http://www.seochat.com/seo-tools/keyword-cloud/

WordPress Keyword Cloud generator plugin

The below WordPress plugin helps you to install keyword cloud to your blog or site

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/resize-tag-cloud/
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/keywords-cloud-for-wordpress/
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/simple-tagging-plugin/screenshots/

How Keyword cloud will look like?

If you find any other interesting information about Keyword cloud, you may share through comments.

There  1.4 million free and paid applications already exists in the iTunes app store. Though this count is very high, there is still plenty of scope for more applications to be developed and it will only stop when we humans quench our thirst for creativity.

More than a mobile phone, iPhone is looked upon as a lifestyle accessory, which is fun and exciting to use. The main strength of iPhone would be its retaining capability. Similar to most MAC users who would find it difficult to work in other platforms like Windows, most iPhone users will find it difficult to use other mobile phones. This will make the device and its applications to grow for a long time.

iPhone application development is unique in a way that it is not mandatory to have a group of people working under an organization to create iPhone applications. It is also well suited for individuals to unleash their creativity and earn a handful of money and fame too. There are applications like tossing a coin, which has attracted a lot of downloads- Kudos to the thought.

Why not you be a part of this revolution? All you need to do is a MAC machine, an iPod or iPhone preferably, Internet connection and Click here to view our first part of the article – “Getting Started with iPhone Development”

Presume you have worked on site SEO and now you have got Good/desired SEO results with your website – you are on the top of your business competitors with your targeted business keywords.

Thinking of what’s next? Do you want to leave the site with the results that you have attained and be forget SEO since you have got your results? Nope. You shouldn’t.

If your targeted keywords generates enough revenue then think of how much competitive your keywords should be and how many of your competitors will be using those keywords and working for good number of quality links for their site

Search engine algorithm gives better value for frequently updated site with keywords around the content and for site that continuously gets quality backlinks.

Watch closely you’re competitor and find out what they do to compete your site. Here are the factors that needs to be frequently monitored

(1) Content update - It is always recommended to fine-tune and update your content at least once in a month or two with keywords around meeting keyword density and keyword prominence.
(2) Brushing up your Keywords  - As always monitor your top ranking keywords and fine-tune it according to the number of total search results and compare with your competitors activity on those keywords of your target. Check out the areas in your content to know where you can focus your top keywords and build quality backlinks for those keywords as anchor text. Be sure to meet keyword density and do not stuff keywords.
(3) External site link juice - Check whether all the links build exits with time period, since some may be removed or moved out to some inner folder level and the algorithm might not identity those backlinks. So build equal and relevant links as an alternative to those links that had been masked and improve or retain the position with good number of quality links.
(4) Monitory traffic - Analyzing your traffic is one of the essential factor were you need to know how site performs with search engine organic clicks and directories or sites referrals. If you notice any drops in traffic, identify those area and work on them to set your goal.

And also here are the checklists that can help you to maintain SEO results and withstand the competition

(1) Check how your competitors rank in Google, Yahoo and Bing for your keywords?
(2) Have you updated your content that meets current target market and information?
(3) Are you tweaking your web site structure for search engine friendliness that meets current algorithm?
(4) Are you working on building quality links regularly?
(5) Are you optimizing your site with the current popular keywords?
(6) Are you analyzing you traffic to know from which location your visitors are coming from and optimize the site for those location based search engines?

These important factors and checklist will help you to measure the site strength and weakness of your site. Now you should have known that search engine optimization is not one time activity and search engine algorithm gets updated often and competitors fight for your top keywords position. Keep in mind, your website needs continues SEO in order to retain and improve your good SEO results.

Maintaining the SERPs (result/Postion) are equally important as your SEO process. Continuous SEO is within the process of SEO to generate continuous business queries to make. So keep up the good SEO, Always, do not think about stopping your activities.

Google as a search giant knows how to help site owners and webmasters on search index. Time to Time Google team has been updating Google Webmaster Tools list and now its has come to a good form. All over, these tools provide reports on your site visibility, diagnose problems, and as well helps to share information about your site to Google.

To start, here is the list

1. Google Webmaster Tools are free and easy to set up through site owner verification process by adding a Google code Meta tag to the page or by creating and uploading a file with Google code. Once you are verified you can access the tools dashboard.
2. Sitemap tool allows you to submit XML Sitemap with details on pages to index and priority to crawl pages. If you don’t have a site map create one and submit to site configuration sitemap section.
3. Crawler access tool helps to generate and test robots.txt to specify how search engines should crawl and index site content.
4. When you Google for information you can see Sitelinks. Sitelinks displays inner links generated by Google algorithm depends on how related and useful for users queries. You have no control to add but you can block / remove the link from displaying the site links if you don’t want to list.
5. Change of address is a special tool to tell Google about your new domain and helps to move your old site users to you new domain easily. This process has 4 simple steps to follow like content link verification, 301 redirect from old to new domain, adding and verifying new site to Google webmaster tool and submitting the change of address
6. Geographic target tool helps to target users in specific location. You can select the country based on the users you target and it would help for .com, .org and other top-level domains. Country specific domains like .in, co.uk and so are already associated with Country based listing.
7. Preferred domain allows you to select the domain format you like to display. You have options to select http://www.yourdomain.com and http://yourdomain.com. If you have selected http://www.yourdomain.com and the site inner page links with http://yourdomain.com then search results display URL’s takes as http://www.yourdomain.com
8. Crawl rate can be changed depending on the site root level depth and default crawl rate is recommended to avoid increase server’s bandwidth. This Crawl rate has no connection with how often Googlebot crawls your site.
9. Top search queries tool has information on your site search keywords impressions and clickthrogh ratio along with keywords position.
10. Links to your site tool provides information on inbound links with anchor text for your site pages.
11. Keywords and internal links tool shows the common keywords Googlebot sees when it crawl’s the site and internal links shows the total number of pages linked by other pages in your site.
12. Crawl errors is another special tool that lists issues Google encountered when crawling your site. The list includes HTTP, error in sitemaps, not followed pages, not found pages, pages restricted by robots.txt, timed out / unreachable pages for Web, Mobile CHTML and Mobile WML / XHTML?
13. Crawl stats tool shows statistics on Googlebot activity on pages crawled per day, kilobytes downloaded per day, time spent downloading a page and PageRank distribution.
14. HTML suggestions are provided when Googlebot crawls your site and find issues with your site content. Working on these issues will help your site in better listing and users experience. Here you can find details on Meta description, Title tag and Non-indexable content in your site.

Now ask a question yourself why don’t I use Google Webmaster tools, if I have as many tools and information from Google for free. Sign in to Google Webmaster Tools with your Google account today!

Many of our customers who look for Ecommerce solutions find Opensource solutions to build it cost effectively and they like what we recommended, Cubecart!There are reasons:1. Easy to customize (skin based), and this keeps the cost low.
2. You can bring great look and feel with skins, you can make the site like complete custom design. No footsteps of Cubecart would be visible.
3. PHP programmers likes it. – Clean code structure, easy to manage. Our PHP programmers have a great feel about it.
4. Designers like it. Clean XHTML interface and CSS driven.
5. SEO guys like it. Search Engine Friendly URLs, Custom URLs, Meta Tags, Robots.txt & PHP Session Killer etc
6. Good support from Cubecart team apart from forum support (Like http://www.cubecartforums.org/)
7. Low cost, $180 only.
8. Good number of alternate payment solutions, Shipping modules (http://www.cubecart.com/modules)
9. Web2.0 interface, But I am yet to see any Mashups.We strongly recommend and teach the importance of SEO for customers who wants us to build Ecommerce sites, as any online business should consider SEO as their primary marketing channel – Not just news paper ads, for long term business through online. Cubecart is one good choice to build SEO friendly Ecommerce sites that supports online marketing.

If you are an SEO analyst or specialist here are few techniques which are used widely these days. I am not going to explain the boredom basics, which could turn off you  However, if you need to refresh basic and regular tips / techniques you can go to these below topics:

(1) Search Engine Optimization for Beginners
(2) Increasing Link Popularity
(3) Practical SEO Techniques (Free E book)
(4) SEO for Ecommerce sites
(5) Understanding site visitors
(6) Developing SEO friendly URLs
(7) SEO for Flash sites

Now comes the few important SEO tips that might be useful for the year 2009. Some are bit simple but I am sure the post will certainly a good list to use.

(1) First and foremost is regular update of content. Absolutely unique and fresh content with target business and resource keywords
(2) Video Content with product or service link and adding to You Tube videos and related sites
(3) Regular update on website page in RRS Feed and submit to feed directories
(4) Audio content for Pod casting, a new target of Google
(5) Optimizing photos and images with alternative (ALT) attributes and image name with related keywords or theme
(6) Add tags to your site or blog
(7) Add and set your site maps to authenticate your feeds in Google, Yahoo, and MSN
(8) Get high-quality Backlinks on a local and regional directories, yellow pages, classified apart from general directories so that you can get high priority in local search engines too like Google.co.uk, Google.in so on
(9) Get listed in Google Local Business Center
(10) Get socially informed listing in Twitter and related sites
(11) Press release and News submission so that you wont miss chance betting listed in Google news
(12) Regular update of you blog minimum one post a week and submitting to blog directories
(13) Work on measures to reduce your website bounce rate
(14) Modify and update your existing website comparing with SEO checklist and also update your checklist frequently to current SEO industry
(15) Keep checking your competitor’s progress. Learn what they do to target your customers.

So work on these tips apart from your regular SEO practices and techniques and become an SEO ruler of 2009