Do I need a SEO?

First I would like to emphasize, if you have an online business you need a SEO. Business which have survived without SEO have been the one which have spent millions on branding or offering services like no1 else. But we do not have such amount of money, do we? (hire me if you do :P)

some Ignorant person "No, I don't need my site to be optimized!", you mind having looking at before-after effect.
I optimized this site in May, look at the difference in 4 months. Visitors have gone up 4 times approx.

May:
Last Month:

Yea, it works much better than any wonder cream ;). Off the topic, if you convince an ignorant person that the problem does exist, you done with 70% of your work.


Doest matter if you're selling content, services, products you need your site to be optimized. Lets take an example, Dell Desktop page

they are selling computers and other peripherals and not delivering information, but look at their keyword density. Look at the keyword density of the keyword "desktops", phew approx. 7%, thats considered to be pretty good. I am not going to into details on what is keyword density and all, someother day ;).

Now search Google for desktops, top 10 ranking, not bad, but I would have preferred top 5 positions, but thats me, always wanting more :P. But, besides Amazon and BestBuy others are just giving reviews and not selling desktops. So Dells got just one competitor above it which not exactly famous for selling desktops, books maybe but naah!! not desktops, I wouldn't buy it from them.

Now lets look at a website belonging to a smaller company,a newly launched website purplewarp.com - online corporate gifting. I don't know what are they thinking, no thought process, no execution. I don't know much about html/css but as the page was loading I knew they were using tables, its so freaking slow. The coding is so messed up, the crawler is not able to get the small bit of content available on the page.

There's the logo, on the top right, but where the message of the company, what they are and what they are trying to do. H1 tag is one of the most important tag for optimization.

Have a look at this, "Welcome!" + Date. Are they welcoming me or the day, gosh!!! The welcome should have been anywhere on the top but there. Oh God! I am stopping half way through, they are so ugly, they turned me off so badly that I wouldn't wanna strip them more. Cause I bet they wouldn't have a single person who knows about running a business online, forget search engine optimization.

To wrap it up, would you want to Dell's way or purplewrap's way. Although they don't match each other in capabilities and man-power but atleast you can learn and get your basic right.

My 2 Clicks
(cause the didnt deserve more than that)

Search Engine Optimization - The Right Way

If Search Engine Optimization isn't done the right way, it can be waste of huge amount of resources. Why do I say so?

Ask yourself 2 questions,
1. Am I optimizing for the keyword that identifies with my website?
2. How many people are searching for that keyword?

Just like the gurus say, you need to understand the purpose of life, in the similar manner you need to identify the purpose of your website. Then you need to identify the keywords which should bring people to your website. Check their frequency on overture.com, google trends, keyword discovery to zero down on your keywords.

The secret lies in your thinking, yes first you need to think like the person who's looking for something. In other words, you need to look for your audience. It doesn't matter if your audience is 500 people. For example: if you're selling sleeveless T-Shirts and there 500 people looking for it in a day, you stand a better chance of conversion if you optimize for the keyword ''sleeveless t shirts" rather than "t shirts" which would be more generic, very competitive , requiring huge amount of resources and less rewarding. Lets look at the visitors perspective, I want to buy a sleeveless t shirt, I will most probably type the word ''sleeveless t shirts" in the search engine(so would many people). I land up on your website, I got what I was looking for, I will check as many sleeveless t shirts, until I get what I want or I get bored.

On an average a person spends less than 3 minutes on a website or just 3 pageview. But suppose if I came to your website through the keyword "t shirts", are you sure, I am looking for sleeveless shirt, although with the physique I have it would look good (are you listening girls?), but I some how don't like wearing them, I prefer polo t shirts (very picky). I will be disappointed not to find that you don't sell polo t shirts and I will not look into other pages so your bounce rate would increase and thats bad!!

Secondly, you need to think like the search engine, why should you be put on no.1 for any keyword if you do not match up to it. No matter what you do if you don't deserve the ranking you wont be on it for long. Yes, search engines have put their check in place to know whether you deserve the position or not (it fails sometimes though, cause we know the checks ;) ).

But if you don't deserve that place but some how you are related to that keyword, like you would be to your maternal aunts second cousin' nephew, and you have some stupid stubborn marketing guy who doesn't know a bit of online marketing but wants to be optimized for a particular keyword. You call me, either I'll get you the ranking or I will give him my piece of mind ;).

PS: Look for the keywords, "t shirts" and "funny t shirts", doesn't seems very competitive but very rewarding

Orkut!! A pain!!

Orkut!! MTv Youth's Icon 2007, WTF!! Ohk, chill, shit happens!!

Here's how the story goes,the competitors,
actor Abhishek Bachchan, Bollywood film Rang De Basanti, multimedia cellphone. Abhishek not liked by many, Rang de the runner up(true winner according to me), multimedia cellphones, how can it win, there was no sensational clip lately, was there, I might have missed it :P.

The competition was to vote by sms or email registration for the person who voted for a particular icon and if he/she gets most no. of votes he/she win. Orkut always had biggest playing field, free registration from Orkut, free workers (members) like you to waste time. For VJ Nikhil, boy, get a life, do what you good at, just talking, I have seen your site and its time for you to look too, piece of friendly advice, don't use firefox ;). Man!! had I not been busy with my project and I had liking for online contest, I would have ripped it apart, so would you, if you had basic online marketing skills. Whats gone is gone, lets move on.

Now, to the topic, how can Orkut be so big, get a reality check, Orkut ain't big online, it just big in India and Brazil (did you the check Brazilian chicks, they are hot!), third world countries, where privacy is distant dream, voyeurism gives people cheap thrill. Coming to the former, "Privacy", if you're an Orkut lover, you would certainly not be knowing what it means (use wiki or merriam-webstet online). In simple terms, Orkut doesn't give me the options to have some privacy, why does it concern you that I love big and chubby girls (love them anyhow) and I am member of some community as such. Why should your friends know who's flirting with you and whom are you flirting with. I delete my scraps, but its a pain, I would have loved to avoid it, Mr. Orkut are you listening. I know part-time stuff aren't that great, good job with that though. But seriously, Orkut doesn't deserve the accolades which we trying to bestow upon it.

Their new feature,Ok, I got a right to know this, but why should anyone else know that I am not as trust worthy and cool as much I am sexy. I could live with that, but, whats more depressing is I got more guys in my list. Ohk, lets be optimistic, maybe all the girls in my list find me sexy.

Lets compare Orkut with myspace and facebook, other social networking sites which are really big. The images were taken from Alexa(dont believe in it myself) for you to avoid the hassles ;), wow! myspace and facebook has over 10 times more people coming from developed countries than Orkut, cause people from develop countries care more about their..., not gonna say that again.





What would make me happy with Orkut,

1. I have all the options of what I want to display my scraps, friendlist, communities. Give me control over myself (now that sounds insane).

2. If I come online on Orkut, my friends should know about it. You can use the Stealth settings of yahoo.

3. If somebody replied to my message in a forum, I get notified.

4. Most importantly if I don't know the person, he/she shouldn't be able to scrap. Aren't you girls tired of stupid guys scrapping you, asking out for date. I got girl power behind me on this one. Keep it optional, maybe friends friend should be able to scrap me.

5. STOP THE SPAMMERS!! GOD!! when a person gets reported, do you guys even check what has he/she been doing. I have reported a guy 10 times and he still scraps people, inviting them to RYZE.

6. I get to customize what I want see, not what you want me to see.

Got lots more. Pay me Mr. Orkut and I 'll tell you. Can you do me a favor though, can you stop your blog, its Lame!!! better go for newsletters.

As usual,
my Click Click.

Precautions to take on a Social Networking Site

This is one post I have been dying to write for long. The first question we should ask ourself "Are we really that naive online?" Don't worry, if you don't understand get an answer. I, myself, have committed worst possible mistakes and lived to tell the tale. So chill, it happens ;). Unfortunately, not many us have not been so lucky. God Bless your Soul, Adnan.

Ohk, you can see me narrowing on 1 site particularly, but I cant help it. Its has become so big that its a Mtvs Youth Icon, doh!! if you knew how the competition worked, you should have know that nobody could have won besides Orkut. The rule was simple you vote and get people to vote, through registration or smses. If you know about online marketing then I can see your smile turning into a big Grin and the famous 4 letter word on the tip your tongue. Say it! God Damn it! its the best stress buster, I too missed the Ford Icon ;).

Coming to the title of the post ( I have a bad habit of drifting away from the topic), "Why do we need to take precaution?"
Nice question! (if the question did come up in your mind, read my post atleast 3 times).
The answer is simple, SNS's (social networking sites, YEA, I just invented it) means interaction of 2 humans and as you know human behavioral pattern can be mapped but you will always find a disclaimer of it being unpredictable. You can never be sure, what the other person might do. So here's what you take care of on any SNS.

1. Try avoiding using your real name, cause the first thing I do with names is Goggling. And most of time it reveals more than you want to tell me ;). Simple trick, isn't it?

2. If you got something to hide, please hide it. Don't be stupid to think that nobody can find it out.

3. On SNS like orkut where people can go through your messages, delete them when their purpose is served. Why should my work colleagues be interested that my mom is irritated cause my house maid didn't come. I usually (yea, not always, I had earlier confessed to committing mistakes too) don't let in my current work colleagues in my friendlist, we spend more than 40 hrs together (yea, I am a hardworking employee, time to ask for a raise). I would be spending more time with you than my girlfriend(if I had one), so why do you want meet me again on SNS. Do you wanna date me? (please say yes :P)

4. If you skip office for no reason (like I do), avoid SNS. Cause the first question people ask is what happened and you if say, I had an headache, they will obviously ask you then what are doing sitting on a computer.

5. Everyone will know you looking for a new job and things might get uncomfortable at work place.

6. Prospective employers will go through your message and find that how you think about your boss. So, don't say that your boss is a pain the ass :D.

7. Never reveal too much, now too much is a relative term, but obvious things include credit card no., password, where you live, your phone nos. Now sharing your personal details depends you, I don't mind telling you if I prefer male thongs or boxers or their brands. So suit yourself.

8. Avoid putting large pictures of yourself which can be copied using print screen. Cause I have seen a person posting morphed picture of girls he got from orkut. Ohk, I do visit not so good sites, but if you're in my dirty business, you will know that we don't go to these sites for sexual gratification. So those all are not rumours which you get in forwarded emails, but yea, orkut closing down is the lamest one;).

9. If you ever decide to meet an online person, make sure you are around so many people that if you fart atleast 100 people should look at you with disgust. Try it out few times, later on you don't need to do this trick.

Ohk, thats enough, I don't want to lose my job, let me keep few secrets to myself. Remember, its only because of these stupid people, people like me are considered smart ;). But, I ain't doing charity by educating you, I only do so, cause you get smarter by playing a smarter opponents. On a serious note, take precautions but don't turn into a paranoid (cause that can be me only) cause you sometimes miss something that turn into something really sweet.

In my next post, I would be stripping Orkut, so be there to have the voyeuristic pleasure.

My 2 clicks.

About Me

Myself a SEO,Web-Usability expert, Programmer, working as a Web Analyst for more than 19 months (at the time of post). I absolutely love good food, working out, movies, musics, UFC and smiles of beautiful girls :P.

My first stint involved working in close interaction with a fortune 50 company. Learned many things, first thing first, in big organizations you don't get to learn much, so when I decided to make a jump, I was valuable for them, but my market value was nothing more than a pizza delivery boy.

At my current place, I get to do a lot which means I am learning a lot. Got wonderful bunch of team-mates & boss, its all cool.

Enough of my personal crap ;), coming to purpose of this place. I see a potential in Indian Internet Market. There's so much to do, lots to earn ;), lots to learn. I don't proclaim myself to be the best voice of Indian Internet Market, just want to share piece of my mind. Take it or leave it. My first observation is that people believe what worked in west would work here too, WRONG! ABSOLUTELY WRONG! (sorry for the caps, but had to..). The Indian Online Community is weird, yea, you read it right, "weird". Why do I say so? As of now we are into a transition phase, many of us are not the same person online as offline which negates all the offline theories. So out here we gonna see theories which failed, which clicked and most importantly which can go big.

Ohk, did your eyes started paining, mine did :P.

Stick around for more!!

Just my 2 clicks.