Are you looking for ebook on SEO techniques, to boost your website’s ranking amongst the search engines? I am sure you can find a lot of them online, but how many do you think are actually reliable in their approach? Hear it from the experts of SEO, who have been in the industry for years together and have a very good theoretical and practical knowledge about the various SEO techniques!

Follow this link “Practical SEO Techniques Ebook”, where we offer a free SEO e-book, which is written by our professionals who have a deeper knowledge about the site optimization industry and have explained it in a simple way that is understandable by anyone. So go ahead, download your copy today and get SEO enlightened

Read our article titled “Effective time difference management with offshore team” 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

Filter Factory 

This site has a huge accumulation of filters and plugins as well, that impart varying levels of effects in photographs and images. With more than 350 filters and plugins available, this site definitely contains a vast and excellent collection to its credit. With detailed explanation of what plugins and filters are and how to download them are clearly explained in the site as well.

http://www.photoshop-filters.com/html/filter_factory.htm 

VanDerLee plugins and filters 

A site with both free and paid versions, VanDerLee has an impressive collection of Photoshop filters and plugins. Along with latest news in the field of website designing and releases of various new versions of plugins and filters, the site also has a dedicated Support section that assists with useful FAQs and a list of Compatible applications that work with the site’s plugins.  

http://www.vanderlee.com/plugins.html  

Richard Rosenman filters and plugins 

This site has separate windows for both freeware and commercial collection that can be downloaded at a specified cost. Wonderful, amazing and varied collections of plugins and filters are available in the freeware section as well. A must checkout site for all Photoshop plugins and filters seeking fans!  

http://www.richardrosenman.com/software/downloads 

Mehdi Plugins 

A great site for Photoshop plugins, this site has a colorful and eye pleasing layout in itself! Not only does the site has a large collection of plugins, but it also has clear explanations as to how to use the particular plugin and also how to customize them in order to make it the way you need it. I have used this site for many of my plugin needs as well. Excellent site indeed! 

http://www.mehdiplugins.com

Apart from these four, I also happened to see a site called Virtual Photographer. A very useful site for creating special effects on photos, downloads are available in zip format as well. A site worth checking out for the photographer in you http://www.optikvervelabs.com/default.asp

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

Wordpress codex has a detailed article on Hardening wordpress, and hence hardening your site. In fact its a guide to help you to find and prevent your PC vulnerabilities, Server Vulnerabilities, Wordpress package issues, Your network issues, Database, Files etc.

Go on here to read further to learn to secure your site.

Forget boring forms. The real difficulty in getting feedback is to push the visitor to leave behind little information.  The fun to use guest book from Macronimous tempts your user to enter and record his visit to your website. The exiting new guest book gives you the feel and effect of real book by allowing you to flip pages. Whatever information the user gives looks cool on the guest book, which automatically inspires him to leave an impression behind.

You can also get the freedom to delete unwanted entries. Change textures and colors with the slightest possible effort. Customise the guest book to your taste and need.

The new flash guest book is easy intergratable with your website. The annoying coding can be done away with. A few clicks will get the new guest book right into your website. You don’t have to be a computer geek to get your guest book fixed.

Please look at flash guest book screenshots below,

Flip to open pages:

The flash powered guest book is totally secure giving you 100% Spam protection. It is XHTML based, so you get the complete guest book on any browser. The coding is minimal , so you can still retain your web page light weight.

Macronimous also goes a step further in making sure you get your feedback precisely by maintain your guest book for you.

Get this cool new flash guest book from Macronimous and send your feedback to us. Download it for free, click here.

(1) Kaltura Video recording and management - http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/kaltura-interactive-video 

This plugin is quite apt to make the videos in your blog more interactive. With facilities like uploading, importing and recording of videos into your blog posts,  modify videos with the help of an online video editor; this plugin is definitely a hit! What I like the best in this is that it this plugin also supports a huge variety of codecs and audio/video file formats along with video sharing options. In short, complete management and administration of videos is possible with this wizard! 

(2) MTR Audio and Podcast Recorder - http://www.podcastingnews.com/2008/09/15/free-podcast-recorder-plugin-for-wordpress
 

I would say a “must-download plugin” for the Podcast freaks; this plugin is called the MTR Podcast recorder that allows all the recordings to be saved in MP3 format. It is saved in the same server as that of Wordpress. The best part that I like in this plugin is that it allows handling the records and musical selection lists from the Wordpress administration itself. This helps in easy playlists management and overall blog site administration. 

(3) NextGEN Photo Gallery - http://alexrabe.boelinger.com/wordpress-plugins/nextgen-gallery

One of my most favorites, this photo gallery plugin is very useful, especially for those interested in creating and sorting their own image collections. This plugin has a tinge of Web 2.0 and jQuery JavaScript library, all packed in one. The users can also upload images that have watermarked text or images. The best thing is that various JavaScript effects like Thickbox, Lightbox and the likes can be used. 

(4) Kimili Embedded Flash - http://kimili.com/plugins/kml_flashembed
 

So you want to embed flash based movies into your blog, then Kimili is the best choice! A very flexible plugin with many features attached to it, the Kimili  also complies with the standards. It is very useful for search engine optimization of blogs, as the plugin itself is search engine friendly. What’s more, this plugin also gels on well with other plugins in its 1.2 version, and hence is definitely the best pick for WordPress.

I have found these plugins to be remarkable and of great use to me. There are many more great plugins from WordPress, and if you feel anyone or more of them have stirred your web designing senses, then do not forget to suggest about them in my comments section.

(i) TouchGraph.com You can try it right away! Enter a URL or a set of keywords and then click on the button ‘Graph it!’ However, the following have to be kept in mind: · It is always advisable to have the latest version of java, minimum Java 1.5. Also popup blockers should be disabled to allow launching websites. · After typing out the URL or the search keywords, hit “Graph It!” Press the “Run” button when the question prompts as, “Do you want to trust the signed applet?” http://www.touchgraph.com/TGGoogleBrowser.html

(ii) Myriadsearch.com This is an excellent tool to view competition rankings across numerous search engines that are available nowadays. http://www.myriadsearch.com/

(iii) Seotoolset.com - competition research tool To show the present ranking of the top competitors across the prominent search engines, use this competition research tool. It gives the topmost 25 rankings across the board and sorts the results as well. The site that has the highest ranking is listed in the beginning. http://www.seotoolset.com/tools/free_tools.html

(iv) Spyfu.com SpyFu allows you to look at the keywords that are purchased by your competitors. It also shows the keywords that they optimize their site for. Once the competition is understood, you can become masters in their own game and at the same time can also tap on their weaknesses as well! http://www.spyfu.com Hope the above quoted sites have helped you with your search for top competitor tools

This video demonstrates explains how effective and easy social bookmarking practices are and comparatively you will know how much it is been complicated when it’s been explained in texts as articles or blog posts

www.youtube.com/watch?v=x66lV7GOcNU

Hopefully people who try to know Web 2.0 design standards should be knowing about normal design, so not much explaining here to bore

Starting, Web 2.0 websites allow visitors to do more than just retrieve information what we see in normal design. They can build on the interactive facilities, allowing users to run software applications altogether through a browser

Below are the attributes that can be followed for Web2.0 

• Clean & simple style
• Pastell colors
• Center aligned with 2 or 3 columns
• Bigger Logo
• Bigger Buttons
• Bigger font size
• Descriptive HTML (XML style)
• Bold text introductions
• Vibrant colors with gradients
• Visible header
• Content as Feeds
• Rich and interactive user interfaces
• Users active participation
• Video sharing
• Social Networking

Get ready to start furnishing a Web2.0 site

We have developed some Web 2.0 sites, for more clarification you can mail us for website names to get a clear picture

So how can one write effective content for their websites? Read it as “effective writing” and not “lengthy writing”. Out of my experience as an SEO consultant and professional content writer, the more crisp and easy to understand the content is, the greater are the chances for it to become a hit among the readers. Also I am of the opinion that regularly updating your website with data that is useful for the visitors would divert more traffic to your site. When do you think one needs to consider re-writing their website content? I have come across the following observations that I have mentioned below: 

• Traffic inflow is good, but the conversion is not as expected, because the visitors are probably not getting what they expected out of the contents.
• When the content is very less and the site is filled with only graphics and Flash designs
• The content in the website is not explaining more about your business and gives irrelevant information to your visitors.  

I have found the following tips highly helpful in maintaining effective SEO web copy for websites: 

• Know your audience: Understand who are your audience and write keeping them in mind. Also write stuff that they can relate themselves to and what is realistic.
• Give a clear picture of your business: The content in your website should give exact details of your business. This helps in your audience getting a better idea of your business, thereby encouraging an inflow of website-relevant traffic.
• Make the content heading more appealing: Now that you know your audience well, next try writing stuff that will appeal to them. For example, if your visitors are going to be more of careful and budget-conscious family ladies, then you could write articles like “Top 8 ways to organize your household budget effectively”(Gosh! Am sure I myself would be interested to read it as well, and am not even married!) The heading has a striking impact to attract readers and wins a main part of the battle of bringing in traffic.
• Give them some useful information: Well you have clearly understood who your visitors are going to be and you have catchy headings as well. But what if the content inside is of no use to the audience. Write stuff that contains utilitarian information to your clients.
• Choose apt keywords: You have got to think from a normal layman’s point of view, who is searching for products. Choose probable keywords that your audience would search in the search engines.
• Use Keyword phrases: Bank on phrases and not single words as keywords, because the probability of searchers using phrases of words is more.
• Keyword phrases in Meta tags, links and headings: Now that you have frozen on the keyword phrases, use them in Meta tags, link them with text links, so that the pages get related to one another. This increases the probability of search engines spotting them out. Also use these phrases in headings as well
• Check and re-check! And more importantly, check and recheck whatever you have written, to overrule any spelling or grammatical errors.  

According to me, these are certain ideal steps that you can follow from the SEO point of view, to optimize your site. I am sure, if written smartly and relevantly, web contents would help give a boost to your website, thereby increasing relevant traffic and sales conversion.

Also feel free to download our Practical SEO Techniques EBook

But when we added articles, and  really wanted to know more about the readers, and what keywords they use. We needed a better tool actually, and found Webstat in 2002. Again we were really happy until we found we reached a number of pages. We also found urchin an interesting tool, and finally settled with Google analytics - which gives everything an SEO company needs.

We do not recommend Google Stats to everyone.  Spending time each day to study your visitors through Google stats might not be easier, unless you have a passion about your site visitors. If you need to know some simple reports to study in 5 minutes use some simple hosted solutions like Webstat or Gostat’s simplified versions. We have also written very simple custom Stat solutions in PHP/mySQL, write us if you need a Demo and a free version. It gives every detail you need to know in 3-5 minutes. We haven’t named it, as we have no intention of selling it until now.

I believe even if you use Google Analytics, you may need a simple analytic tool. 

You just need to spend 10 minutes to review your site with below SEO checklist. If you can mark “yes” to most of the SEO considerations then your site will be having a reasonable traffic which can be developed further by consulting an SEO professional or by going through some good practical SEO techniques

And in addition above simple SEO checklist will be very much helpful for designers who tries to follow best SEO design practices Cheers

You get a bigger screen for websites, unlike the other browsers there is no bottom information bar, the page loading information just comes as an Ajax(?) window, and vanishes after the page gets loads.

Our website menu is not positioned properly; Our CSS team is working on it to fix that soon. I used Chrome for writing this blog, and found it is working very fine. I hope Wordpress team do not have to work hard for these browsers. I noticed on issued in Wordpress editor issue - The format had gone completely, when I saved and opened this blog entry. This has to be fixed in the WYSIWYG plugin in Wordpress.

I am keen to check some of the DHTML sites, probably the scripts from Dynamicdrive.com, as their scripts are widely used for menus and browser side dynamics.

There is no favicon appearing in the address and title tab, no Google chrome Logo and title anywhere. The location of the Tab looks nice, most of the browsers do use this project for Product title. This is a smart move.
No Google toolbar for Chrome yet, hope it is in development, they should launch it any time now. Chrome does import your favourites etc from IE quickly.

Developers and designers have to spend more time for this browser too, as I do not think Chrome is going to be just another Browser, since it has better focus on web applications. Google office documents should perform well with Chrome, But I didn’t notice big difference when I opened Spreadsheets in Chrome. I expected the suggest for work well inside the columns, seems like such features are yet to come.
Overall the Browser is impressive, and I hope it will affect the market Share of IE and Firefox to an extent, especially the later one.

1. Distributed denial of service (DDoS)
2. Website Defacement’ attacks
3. Spreading false information
4. Google bombing
5. Pagerank attack
6. Malware-based attacks

These kind of attacks are called reputation attacks, and primarily they aim to collapse your online business reputation. I recommend reading a detailed article at Reputation Attacks: A Little Known Internet Threat, as the article calls, these threats are little known, But which you must know your enemies to do better actions.

I will make that as few questions to ask yourself or your marketing team.

How important SEO is to your website?
Do you want to make your website as a primary business gateway?
Do you know SEO is a continuous activity as your conventional marketing methods?
Do you know your competitor online?
Have you determined your keywords and targeted visitors?

If you say Yes, you probably know the importance of SEO and now you want to know how the process is going to be priced, and what factors determine your budget.

1. Your present site and its status.
If yours is a simple brand new site or a site which is not visible to any search engine - Your site will need Search engine readiness review and preparation. Commonly called as SEO setup. Your SEO consultant will start from this, and will make your site ready for Search Engine spiders, while they visit the site.

2. Your Industry/Market:

There is a difference between promoting a site which is selling houses and selling antique rocks. You know which segment would be more competitive and costs more to do SEO.

3. Link building efforts:

This is somewhat related to the previous factor, and based on the keyword and its competition determines the volume of link building efforts to be made. Link building will be a continuous activity, and mostly done on fixed monthly costs.

Finally, you should know SEO is not a onetime task, and can not be done for a one time fixed cost as your answer was Yes to the questions asked above.

I have just given those laws, But in the book they are dealt in detail.

22 Immutable Laws of Marketing:

  1. It is better to be first than it is to be better.
  2. If you can’t be first in a category, set up a new category you can be first in.
  3. It is better to be first in the mind than to be first in the marketplace.
  4. Marketing is not a battle of products, it’s a battle of perceptions.
  5. The most powerful concept in marketing is owning a word in the prospect’s mind.
  6. Two companies cannot own the same word in the prospect’s mind.
  7. The strategy to use depends on which rung you occupy on the ladder.
  8. In the long run, every market becomes a two horse race.
  9. If you are shooting for second place, your strategy is determined by the leader.
10. Over time, a category will divide and become two or more categories.
11. Marketing effects take place over an extended period of time.
12. There is an irresistible pressure to extend the equity of the brand.
13. You have to give up something to get something.
14. For every attribute, there is an opposite, effective attribute.
15. When you admit a negative, the prospect will give you a positive.
16. In each situation, only one move will produce substantial results.
17. Unless you write your competitor’s plans, you can’t predict the future.
18. Success often leads to arrogance, and arrogance to failure.
19. Failure is to be expected and accepted.
20. The situation is often the opposite of the way it appears in the press.
21. Successful programs are not built on fads, they’re built on trends.
22. Without adequate funding, an idea won’t get off the ground.

 The 11 Immutable Laws of Internet Branding

1. The Internet can be a business or a medium for your brand, but not both.
2. Interactivity is the single most important ingredient of any Internet site.
3. The kiss of death for an Internet brand is a common name.
4. Being second in a category is tantamount to being nowhere.
5. You have to be fast. You have to be first. You have to be focused.
6. Everyone is talking about convergence while just the opposite is happening.
7. Build a brand that will dominate a category over an extended period of time.
8. Find a proper name (instead of a common one) for your Website.
9. Take your brand into the global marketplace.
10. Avoid the biggest mistake in Internet branding: the belief that you can do everything.
11. Take advantage of the transformations that will occur in all aspects of life, thanks to the power of the Internet.

Also feel free to download our Practical SEO Techniques EBook

When we offer consulting for Opensource CMS selection, it is not an easy job always. Building websites with the CMS our clients like and to make it work with our own custom design might become a nightmare if we aren’t considering and planning the UI design in advance.

We have customers who supply design for their web sites (as Photoshop source files - if they know Photoshop) since they have good sense of designing and they know how their site should look like. We can happily accept it and build HTML/XHTML and CSS based Static pages without any issues or provide a Custom written CMS easily. The real challenge starts when they want to make their site CMS enabled with an Opensource CMS framework such as Joomla, Wordpress or Drupal.

Most of the opensource CMS applications strictly adopt some design standards, and they give clear instructions for UI designing. Your design will not work well with the CMS, if it does not obey their design rules. The primary reason for these strict rules is to help with the CMS applications for design-content separation and for easy user interface maintenance. You can easily change the design without changing the programming sections and vice versa. But can you easily fit your custom design which is created as your mind wishes to an Opensource CMS application? Most of the good CMS applications does not allow you to create an unique site with your own custom design, custom graphics and custom XHTML.

Simply configuring a Opensource CMS application along with a template design (meant for that CMS application) may ease your job, But it will not give your client an user interface, which is unique for them. It will look like one another site made with that particular CMS. I have seen several Ecommerce sites with similar structures; I can easily identify them as “made with osCommerce without added efforts”.

So, how do we deal with this situation?

Take the case of Wordpress. If you start designing a site without keeping Wordpress in mind, and wanted to enable Wordpress CMS at later stage, I am sure you need much experience in XHTML coding  you may have to give up Wordpress in order to keep your look and feel remain unchanged.

Few months earlier, we did an Ecommerce web site design with Cubecart; with the help of Programmers and good HTML scripter, we were able to make the user interface which is very unique and no template look. Yes, good PHP and HTML programmers will have to give hands to change the way the application works and to fit your custom design with the CMS. If you need a decent design which does not offer you a standard template based site look, you need an experienced team’s support to make it possible.

Cost is one key factor why people like to use opensource applications and in most of the cases we almost get a free solution. Installing Drupal or Joomla with a pre-existing design, will only help you to offer a cheaper solution, But to give a unique look and feel to your site, you must be ready to invest in application customization too. Your CMS theme or template will need your programmer’s support to provide coherent CMS driven website, which is exclusive for the customer.

Opensource CMS applications are excellent tools for professional web solutions. No objections!. Opensource CMS applications will not cut the cost of custom development completely and making a design which has an exclusive and aesthetic look to your customer will need the time/cost of your developers and designers.  Don’t leave the CMS application to decide your site user interface by cutting the customization efforts.

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.

There are many such tools available nowadays and with its demand increasing every day, it only makes it more important to have more SERP trackers. While most of them are free services offered by these sites, few of them are also paid services. Below is a detailed description of top four SERP tracker tools.

SEOCase.net

This is a simple and easy to use SERP tracker tool. As usual, the keyword and the URL of the site are given, and this tool fetches results from 6 popular search engines! The results obtained are also accurate. One drawback, however, with this tool is that the search results obtained are only from the first 10 pages of each search engine. So only the top positioned rankings would be obtained from this site. But whatever data is obtained is reliable and accurate as well.

Mike’s Marketing Tools

Another cool site with SERP tools! It provides the rankings of various websites obtained from top search engines and web directories as well. Immediate reports of these rankings are provided in an effective manner. As I have mentioned before, this site is a free one and requires no registration as well. The URL of the main site along with a single keyword or collection of keywords is to be given in the slot provided, and Lo! The details of the search run are in front of you!

SERP Rank

This site is an exciting and reliable site. It asks for the URL and the keyword to be checked for. Checks are done across 5 popular search engines. What more, this site also has facilities to check local sites of Google like Google.de, Google.ca, Google.gr etc! Once the listings come, they can also be checked in with the help of the links provided. Now isn’t that simply superb?! A simple and reliable site!

Digitalpoint.com

This is a cool site and quite a famous one as well. One thing to be noted here is that it the user has to register in this site, before using it. This registration is free of cost. Once you have logged in, you can go ahead with using the SERP tool. Good tool to be used.

With the importance of SEO and its related tools increasing to a greater extent each day, it is only important to have such SERP tools that offer trustworthy and accurate results to find the position of various keywords in a particular URL.

Also feel free to download our Practical SEO Techniques EBook 

It is not enough if your site has many links, it is important to find out what is the quality of these links and who is linking to your site. Links that are positioned in a better manner are definite to achieve continuous traffic. I have given about 4 link popularity tools below. They are free to be used and are also accurate.

Mike’s Marketing Tools

Famous for quite a long time in the SEO tools industry, this site has a tool for link popularity checking as well. It gives immediate reports on the link popularity of a site. The results offered are from 3 major search engines Yahoo, Google and MSN. Here, the URL has to be given in the slot and it results in the number of backlinks available to that site, as per the search engines.

MarketLeap

This is another cool site that is an accuratse checker. It asks for the URL for which the popularity is to be checked. The checker also gives options to compare with 3 other URLs as well. One of the useful features in this site is that it also provides the specific industry that the search has to be performed upon, depending upon the site’s home industry. If there is no necessity to confine the search to a particular industry, then the category “General” can be chosen as well. Once the details are given, it gives the search results under two headings – Google/AOL/HotBot and Yahoo/FAST/AltaVista. Definitely recommended!

SEO Centro

This site is a simple yet effective tool for checking the number of links to your site. It gives search results from 5 popular search engines like Google, Yahoo, Live, AllTheWeb and AltaVista. The total number of links obtained from all the search engines is also given here. This is split up into various bands starting from 0-250 references, 251-1000 references etc. Each band is given a specific color as well, for easy identification. The site also has the links of the searches for you to check out. A cool site indeed!

SEO Book Tools

This is a simple to use, at the same time an efficient site. The URL of the site to be checked is entered, along with URLs of up to three other sites that you want to compare your site with. The result page gives the numbers of the searches in various search engines along with that of the comparison sites as well.

These link popularity check tools are useful in terms of knowing the status of the backlinks linked to your site. Ultimately all this is done for a single fact - the more the site’s traffic and its popularity, the better its rankings in various search engines

There are various keyword tools whose services are both for free and paid as well. I have listed down the top 4 Keyword tools that are free to be used by anyone.

Google Keyword Tool

A wonderful keyword tool from the house of Google, this site offers many keyword ideas even for the driest of words! When we enter a keyword or phrase, it lists out various related keywords along with shaded bars of the number of advertisers who are tendering on a keyword throughout Google, the search volume of that word in the previous month and the average search volume of that keyword in the previous 12 months. Doesn’t that sound wonderful?! I mean, how many other free tools can boast of these many features?!

Spy Fu

From the house of Velocityscape, this is another useful tool for keywords ideas. This site gives you to spy out on the keywords that your competitor is investing on! Available both in free and paid versions, it lists out the Ads for a particular keyword, the search results which is helpful in terms of SEO, the organic competitors involved and the Ad competitors. A sure check-it-out site!

Nichebotclassic.com

This site provides various keyword ideas with details on the particular keyword used in the past 100 days, the predicted number of daily searches done on famous search engines and the competition numbers on Google Yahoo and MSN. Also if you log in then you have the facility to save the searches that you have made. Cool, isn’t it?!

SEO Book Keyword Tool

Another free keyword tool, this site bombards too much of information! Shows the word tracker count, the daily estimate of top search engines separately, the various Google trends and much much more! This site also provides facility to download the content to CSV.

Search Engine keywords have become very important for a business to flourish online. Such tools give various combinations of keywords, along with search count, the costs involved and search results, thus making keyword writing easier and more effortless.

If you are new to the world of SMO, then there are chances that you might be swept over by many SMO sites. Here are four sites that might be of great use to one who is on the lookout of good SMO sites.

Del.icio.us

Del.icio.us is (part of the Yahoo family) one of the most quondam social networking sites and also one of the best among SMO sites. Also very popular in the US, this is a collection of favorites of its members. This site allows saving links of favorite articles, sharing them with others while also discovering new sites and articles of interest.

Digg.com

Being one of the most preferred and famous social bookmarking sites, this site has become one of the predominant names in the field of SMO. The articles in the site have been segregated into two portions called the “Popular” and “Upcoming”. As the names clearly suggest, Popular means the articles that are popular among the members and Upcoming contains articles that are gaining popularity and importance.

StumbleUpon

Another great way to know and share great websites is through this site. Contributing to SMO to a greater extent, StumbleUpon allows rating of various sites, articles etc, which proves useful for the fellow readers. This site allows discovering new sites and also networking between like-minded people.

Technorati.com

This livewire site is an all time-updating part of the web that includes tagging, blogs and anything that is found of use, by its members. The site also allows commenting on topics by other members, thus developing a community of similar minded people. This site also promotes Blog reactions, which are articles or blogs that are connected or linked to your blogs. Your rank or authority in the site is decided, depending on the number of blog reaction links that your blog has.

With the field of SMO enriching and gaining importance very rapidly, these sites go a long way in making one understand what an SMO site is and how useful it can be to promote your business online.

(i) TouchGraph.com

You can try it right away! Enter a URL or a set of keywords and then click on the button ‘Graph it!’ However, the following have to be kept in mind:

* It is always advisable to have the latest version of java, minimum Java 1.5. Also popup blockers should be disabled to allow launching websites.
* After typing out the URL or the search keywords, hit “Graph It!” Press the “Run” button when the question prompts as, “Do you want to trust the signed applet?”

(ii) Myriadsearch.com

This is an excellent tool to view competition rankings across numerous search engines that are available nowadays.

(iii) Seotoolset.com - competition research tool

To show the present ranking of the top competitors across the prominent search engines, use this competition research tool. It gives the topmost 25 rankings across the board and sorts the results as well. The site that has the highest ranking is listed in the beginning.

(iv) Spyfu.com

SpyFu allows you to look at the keywords that are purchased by your competitors. It also shows the keywords that they optimize their site for. Once the competition is understood, you can become masters in their own game and at the same time can also tap on their weaknesses as well!.

Assume John uploads his code using FTP at the at 6PM, and Dave overwrites it by 7PM with his version from USA, Raj downloads the files uploaded by John using FTP from and Kumar downloads a Dave’s version, The next day is going to be the miserable day to everyone after all the hard work from the past day - Kumar has clearly overwritten everyone else’s code.

But CVS can solve this issue. A version control system is client/server software to keep track of the work done, allows several developers to makes changes on a set of files on different versions which is finally integrated - with a server having the current updated version of a project and the client can log in, work on the copy of the project, and sends the updation to the server. I would like to brief out the 4 most commonly used tools in CVS:

WinCVS (CVSGUI)
The general interface of a CVS is command line client but instead a GUI client can be used as a point and click interface to talk to the server. GUI interface allows easy automation, customization of common tasks and gives up a native lookup and feel on Windows, Mac and Unix/Linux due to its frameworks.WinCVS differs from CVS only in the terminology being used. The initial process of a version system is importing the files to CVS terminology where the import operation involves a “clean” directory structure means the files that doesn’t need versioning are removed. Every file is not versioned for certain reasons, in that case it can be removed during importing and moved after the versioning process is over.

I prefer WinCVS, as I was using it while I was programming in a collaborative projects.

SmartCVS
SmartCVS, a multi-platform client with powerful features is easy and productive to use. While working on a project, each person makes a change on the files; a SmartCVS organizes and groups the files of related changes referred through a change report file which helps to easily identify the newly added and modified files. SmartCVS also sets file permissions to specific users inorder to protect the files from unauthorized users.

CVSup
CVSup, a tool used to transfer files across the network has the ability to understand the CVS files & tags and updates the files on the server supporting all types of file. The CVS files are recognized easily and synchronized to balances the data transfer that occurs between the client and the server through algorithms, in turn compressing the number of data bits for easy data transfer.

jCVS
This is a Java based client (written in Swings), I never installed it before or tested, But its a poulataly know CVS, your team may want to try. Try any one or more of them; you need to read the installation manual carefully, as sometimes it may be tricky.

At Macronimous we encourage our clients to use CVS (it need little learning though) if they too are allowing their team to work on the code we produce from India. Start practicing a CVS will need little time, but you will certainly appreciate your decision of using a CVS with your client or team.

Web collaboration tools normally consist of a list web based applications which are capable making people work together via internet. Such suits of set of tools will simplify the communication and information exchange. For example A project team in different locations can work together with Web collaborative tools. Such tools normally consist of shared access to project files, share calendars, schedules and plans. They can have online discussions, share whiteboards and documents.

See my favorite tools below, But I recommend you to evaluate them before you start using them.

1. BaseCamp: Basecamp is a web based project management and collaboration tool, designed for small businesses, lawyers, publishers, manufacturers, and offshore web developers and outsourcing agencies. It has a very clean and interactive web based interface. It presents the clients and projects on one screen, you can make lists, add items, assign responsibility, upload files, categorize, sort and track versions. Message boards keep your communication centralized with no shooting emails back and forth. You can start practicing it with their 30-day free trial.

2. dotproject: This is a opensource application, written by several users, and it has the following features.

• User Management
• Email based trouble Ticket System, (Integrated voxel.net’s ticketsmith)
• Client/Company Management
• Project listings
• Hierarchical Task List
• File Repository
• Contact List
• Calendar
• Discussion Forum
• Resource Based Permissions

3. Twiki: TWiki, a flexible, powerful, and easy to use enterprise wiki, enterprise collaboration platform and knowledge management system. It is a Structured Wiki, typically used to run a project development space, a document management system, a knowledge base, or any other groupware tool, on an intranet or on the internet. Web content can be created collaboratively by using just a browser. Twiki also has several plugins such as, Actiontracker, Calender, Chart etc.

4. Goplan: GoPlan! has number of collaborative features like Track project progress through task management, calendaring, note sharing and issue tracking. Additionally, real-time in-browser chat lets you converse with team members. Goplan also has developer API which allows you to integrate our system to the rest of your infrastructure.

There are number of free, paid script, and paid hosted solutions are available, finding the one for your team and making your client to use it would be bit challenging initially. But once when you start using it, you will make everyone in your team proud of you.

When you plan to outsource to India, or planning to work with a remote development team like us, these tools make make our colloboration easier on information, project details and file sharing.

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!

Tarmo Virki of CNET Says “The market for Internet services is approaching 100 billion Euros, and Nokia is the first big mobile phone manufacturer to embrace the Internet media business. Close rivals Samsung and Sony Ericsson could follow, but are a couple of years behind”. While Forrester Research says mobile Internet users to triple over next five years to 125 million just in the Western Europe, Nokia confirms their wild ideas like Apple and Google succeeded with many such ideas. Nokia now has its global device market share was about 40% in Q4 of 2007, so reaching their customers with innovative products is something they are working hardly now.

Changing new directions is not new to Nokia. They started as wood-pulp manufacturer in 1865 (Nokia wood Mills), after acquired by Finnish Rubber Works, they entered in to telephone and telegraph cables manufacturing. They were also involved in producing telephone and telegraph cables, and finally they entered in 1967 into commercial and military mobile radio communications technology.

Click here to see the official web page to read more on Nokia Marph.

“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 c