Most of the small businesses don’t understand SEO, that doesn’t mean they can’t be helped by it.  There are a few quick fixes that small businesses can take to help improve their Google rankings. The best part is they are free and simple.

Word Press – SEO Friendly Blogging Platform

It is also one of, if not the best, content management systems when it comes to SEO. Optimizing your site using Word Press, instead of the outdated website platforms which most local businesses use will help your optimization efforts.”

Keyword Research – Heart of SEO

It’s increasing your ranking on Google and the major search engines. Once you created or switched over your site to Word Press, you want to do some keyword research. Look for at least three keywords you want to target per page. It should be high search and most relevant to that target page.

On the site Optimization

Once you finish Keyword Research, Use these keywords in web site including Meta tag and index able content on the web site. Don’t stuff them everywhere, since this will be considered as a spamming by Google.

Claim Your Google Local Listing

After you have your website properly and effectively optimized for the search engines, you want to claim your Google Places business listing. You do this adding basic information about your business and being as detailed as possible in each section. For example, give your complete phone number, address, business description, keywords, hours of operation, etc.  You can further improve rankings by adding photos and asking for reviews of your business.

Local Listing has been integrated into the system, such as Google Places; help customers find specific location of the business establishment making Local Listing Optimization a popular choice.

Back linking

Finally, once you’ve optimized your Google local listing, you should be ranking within a few days to a week, those rankings occur within the local listings (the top portion of Google where you see the red tabs: A, B, C, D, etc.)

The job, however, doesn’t end there. Small businesses can also boost their ranking in the natural Google search results by back linking.

My Best methods of back linking for local business keywords range from social bookmarking to profile submissions on high page rank sites among several others. Each of these methods will allow you to create a valuable link back to your site, which will increase its value and relevancy in the eyes Google.

Summary:-

No online business reached the top without hard work and dedication. So put your 100% effect and improve your small business ranking on Google and other search engine.

The main purpose and goal for all business sites will be ultimately the leads for their business. The question arises here like how can I generate more leads through my website. Here comes the importance of Contact form for lead generation of any business websites.

Find here some tips to increase the conversion rate by optimizing the contact page.

1) Placement

Placement of your contact form matters a lot. Keep your form “contact us” on top right corner of the site. The higher on your page, more visible it is. Keep contact form as many page as possible.

2) Simple Form

Don’t keep unnecessary fields. The users don’t have time to fill all fields. Contact forms should be short and sweet. Make a strong demarcation between required fields and non required fields by using asterisks next to the required fields. If the non required fields are not necessary, remove it to make short forms.

3) Contact form with Purpose

Users will land on your contact form for a number of different reasons. To serve them better, make sure you’re giving them the opportunity to share why they’re there.

The different purposes for users to contact you are:

•        Get in touch with you about services

•        Contact you about complaints/issues

•        Talk to you about media/press opportunities

•        Suggest new features/products/ideas, etc.

•        Offer feedback

Make sure you have contact which serves their purpose of contacting.

4) Call to Action

Don’t try to use the generic term “submit”, instead offer a ‘call to action’ stating the actions visitors are about to take.  Effective colors and shades make the button show up clearly and encourage people to click it. After filling and clicked the button, intimate them how and when you will contact them. Another best way is to state in one or two lines how and when you will contact them below the contact form.

Break longer forms into smaller sections. Also place page breaks if you need to.  Displaying page breaks indicates the visitors how much of the form has been completed and how many to go.  Have check boxes or appointment scheduling?  Be creative.

5) Contact form with Social media

Contact form should list all the ways that a customer can use to get in touch with you or your brand. Give them your Twitter username, the URL for your Facebook brand page, your company LinkedIn account, etc. Let them know how you prefer to be contacted, but also show them where else the brand is so that they can follow along and get to know your company better.

6) Provide E-mail address and Phone number

If someone is hoping to contact you for a media opportunity or with a quick customer support question, they may not feel comfortable filling out the contact form on your site. Perhaps it seems too impersonal or the information the form is asking for just doesn’t align with what they want to talk about. For these cases, consider also listing an email address and phone number on your website that customers can use when they’re not contacting you about services and simply need to get in touch.

So finally, a search engine goes human being! Google rolls out their latest feature to the search results. It’s nothing but a “Knowledge Graph”. What is knowledge graph? How it affect upcoming searches?

Google can realize what you are searching for, what kind of results that you are expecting from it, what other information that you like to know etc. You might be wondering how it could be, correct? That’s what a ‘Knowledge Graph does’.

Google introduces a new concept – ‘a graph’ that populate as a panel on the right side of your search results soon after you type your query string. It displays related information of your search query with a set of small images. This makes you more convenient to choose what you are looking for.

Knowledge graph will collect the information about objects. These objects can be a person, animal or anything else that can have a mass. For example: if you type “education”, then it’s an object in terms of Google, but not a simple text or a query string. Word “education” has a meaning. Google was trying to find the meaning of these kinds of search terms. According to the ‘knowledge graph’, Google will show you types of education, history, types of education, top universities, various types of education courses and related things one by one. All you have to do is just a click on the related information that displayed on the graph and hence you can move to that particular information. Therefore, once you click on the ‘universities’, you can see all the universities and a new knowledge graph of term ‘universities’. Here term ‘universities’ is another object that connected to object ‘education’.   It contains more related information to it with images. This is how information connects to each other. By doing so, you can discover new related information that you never known before. That’s why this ‘graph’ called ‘knowledge graph’.

Please go through the video for deep thoughts here:

What Next?

All we have to do is, just wait and watch how Google will succeed in implementing this in normal searches. How successfully they will match or relate things to the search system, what kind of relationship they will introduce to connect between information etc.

At present, this new search hit only in Google US, smart phones and tablets. Google will slowly rolls out this project across the world soon. Google says it has compiled over 3.5 billion facts that include information about the relationship between 50 million entities or things across the globe.

Summary:

Hence, if I search for “TITANIC”, Google will show me a set of options to decide myself whether I am looking for ‘a ship’ or our ‘Oscar winning movie’. How cool this stuff hah  J

So what if I type “Me” or “I” ???? That’s Google’s Problem!!!!!!

Penguin Update:

In the last week we have seen lot of speculation about the Google Penguin Update. Google’s Matt Cutts said during the announcement of the Penguin update that lot of websites indulge in web spam tactics instead of focusing on creating high quality sites with rich user experience. The focuses is on getting quality sites with good content on top and avoid web spam sites and as said Google Penguin update was bang on removing almost 80% of the spam sites from the SERPs.

Penguin Attack

I feel there is much more on the plate with this update from Big G; it is not just a web spam remover which removes sites which are created focusing on Ads with low quality content and more of stuffing the keywords. Google Penguin update is also for Big Websites and Portals which play around with Sub Domains or Multiple Pages with Duplicate Content. In many cases especially with big portals content is manipulated and duplicated for increase in number of pages indexed which will in-turn increase the organic traffic for the website.

Penguin Recovery

• Use 301 Redirects – Use 301 Permanent redirect update in your website so that Search Engines/ users understand the pages has been permanently moved from this location to the mentioned location. 301 Redirects comes handy when you look for revamping your website, the old URLs has to be mapped to corresponding new pages.
• Country Specific Domains – Use Country Specific Domains for differentiating content for a particular Geo. For Eg: www.digicliff.in is the best way to represent Digicliff India Website than www.digicliff.com/in or http://in.digicliff.com
• Use Webmaster Tools – Use Webmaster tools to specify the url path for eg: which one to use  for indexing www.digicliff.com or http://digicliff.com
• Avoid Content Stuffing in the footer – Try to avoid stuffing the content with more keywords in the footer of the page which gets displayed in every page.
• Avoid Duplicate Pages – Understand your CMS better this is only solution for avoiding creation of multiple duplicate pages. For eg: a blog entry can appear on the home page, archive page, site map page, search results page with the same label.
• Avoid Similar Content – Try to avoid creating pages with similar content, for eg: consider you have a Travel Portal and you create pages for every city with same content this will lead to spam. Instead try to create a page with content for all the cities. If you still feel you need pages for every city – create unique content for every city J
• Avoid Canonical Issues: URL Canonicalization plays a vital role in avoiding content duplication in the website. Use a particular path for structuring your URLs                                                                                                                                        http://www.digicliff.com and http://www.digicliff.com/index.htm actually follows different paths, try to keep the internal linking of the website consistent by following one path.                                                                                                                                           

              Use Canonical Link to differentiate 2 URLs with same content: 

             Canonical link element (rel=”canonical”)

Penguin Conclusion

On the whole create site with quality content and follow white hat SEO techniques no Ps (Penguin Or Panda) will not attack you

Google’s recent updates such as Panda and Penguin were all about the user engagement in a web page. Yes, through this recent updates Google is trying to found how a typical visitor has been engaged in a website so that higher user engagement results at higher ranking in the search results.

However, how shall I make my site more engaging?? Through this article, I mentioned some easy thinks that you can do to engage your users.

1.Speed It Up

If it did nothing for a few seconds, when someone lands into your web page, it is the first failure to engage your user.  About 50% of the web users will hit the BACK button if your site has not loaded in two seconds. It jumps to 80% if it took 4 secs. However, it is very simple by removing images from your background and using only color. Try eliminating rich media ads that are loaded from other websites.

2.Make it easy to navigate

When it comes to navigation, do not make your user to search for menu/links. Put the main navigation either across the top or left side, which is more convenient for your users. Use normal words that are easily understood by your target visitors. Use colors that contrast enough so that your text can be read without straining the eyes. Put your content near the top of the page, above the first scroll. Let your visitors know immediately that they have come to the right place

3.Format your content for easy viewing

Long paras of text simply do not work well on the web. Use images, break your text into short paragraphs to keep the reader interested, and engaged. Break medium and longer paras into smaller pieces separated by sub-headings. Do not place ads in the main body of the text. Remove all obstacles that interfere with the ability to read your content.

4.Use images to convey the message.

If you have a complex message to convey, try to use a diagram, infographic, or clever image to tell the story for you.  Web users may not take much time to read your para but they will spend some time on viewing your images.

5.Respond to Analytics

Once you have put all these social tools into place, you need to monitor and respond to the activity on your site. See what users are searching for most and focus on that topic. This ongoing process should be maintained and monitored weekly.

All these tools are focused on ways to give visitors what they want, what you want out of them: engagement.

Conclusion

I hope that this has given you some good ideas on how to make your own site or service more engaging.

Obviously some of these points would be harder to implement on some sites than others, but there is sure to one or two points would work for you.

HTML5 is the recent boom in internet medium. Through this article, I wish to provide a small introduction about HTML5.

What’s HTML5?

HTML5 is the next generation HTML that will be the future for internet. Until now, we are using the web as paged document environment. In order to break this culture and to enhance our browsing experience, HTML5 is introduced. It will lead to a rich, interactive and forward thoughts presence to the web through its application centered language.

How did HTML5 get started?

HTML5 is a co-operation between the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) and the Web Hypertext Application Technology Working Group (WHATWG).

WHATWG was working with web forms and applications, and W3C was working with XHTML 2.0. In 2006, they decided to cooperate and create a new version of HTML.

Why HTML5 is introduced?

1. To replace everything that come before HTML 4, HTML 1.0 & DOM
2. To simplify HTML by preventing users turning to plug-in like flash, silverlight, etc.
3. For better error handling.
4. Using more markups instead of scripts.
5. It should be device independent.
6. The development process should be visible to the public

What are the new features in HTML5?

1. The <canvas> element for 2D drawing
2. The <video> and <audio> elements for media playback
3. Support for local storage
4. New content-specific elements, like <article>, <footer>, <header>, <nav>, <section>
5. New form controls, like calendar, date, time, email, url, search

What about its browser support?

HTML5 is not yet an official standard, and no browsers have full HTML5 support.

But all major browsers (Safari, Chrome, Firefox, Opera and Internet Explorer) continue to add new HTML5 features to their latest versions.

In the next article, we shall discuss more about the advantages and disadvantages of using HTML5 today.

We all know the importance of Blog. Many of us believe that, Blog is one of the important factors to bring traffic to a website. It’s 100% true. However, many blog owners forget to do one thing. That is ‘promotion’. Still many of the blog owners desperately think about the ways to promote their blogs. If there is no traffic to blog site, then no use of keeping a blog online.

I had found difficulties during my earlier time of blogging due to zero traffic. I posted almost 20-25 articles on it to get my first visitor. At present, my website has traffic of 10k-15k visitors every day.

Even still many of the bloggers fail to promote it online, here are some tips:

1.Use proper keywords on your title of the posts.

In order to optimize your blogs on search engines, use all the keywords and phrases which people use to look for information under your niche. When your website becomes more popular on search engines, you will also improve your page ranking to increase traffic to your website.

2. Social Bookmarking:

It’s a very powerful tool that you can rely to get some good amount of traffic from various parts of the world.

3. RSS Feeds:

It helps bloggers to keep in touch with readers forever. Once they subscribe it, they get updates continuously. This means that you will be bringing readers back to your blog every time you make a new blog post.

4. Article Submission:

Convert some Blog posts into articles and submit it to various article submission sites. All you have to do is to add more content to your blog posts if necessary, add a catchy article heading and convert it into an article. Writing and submitting articles is one of the most excellent strategies for traffic generation.

5. Inter Linking:

This is also a very effective strategy. This keeps your readers to stay for a long time on the site and more chances to read your other article (interlinked) as well. Even search crawlers can index all of your articles without failure.

6. Signature Links:

Put your blog home page link in signature field while sending mails or participating in forums.

7. Use Tynt Tool:

This free service allows websites to boost traffic and improve Search Engine Optimization (SEO) using detailed analytics on track copy/paste actions of their visitors. With Tynt, publishers can monitor how and where content is being shared from their website. Copying any part of your content while sharing to their friends, it leaves a link to original site automatically.

8. Guest Posting:

Write some guest posts on other popular blogs. This helps to get back links as well as popularity to your blog.

9. Integrate Facebook Commenting Facility:

It helps user feel more comfort and chances are there to get some comments on your article. This also helps publishers to get the relevant information about these users and can keep in touch with them in future.

10. Standard & Quality Content:

It’s the last but not least point that every publisher should follow strictly. If no quality content, then all the above mentioned points are useless.

Since quality content is concerned by not only users, but also mighty Panda…! So build your blog with solid rocks!!!

LinkedIn is relatively new player in the PPC space but they are making improvements to their product and offering more options for advertisers to connect with potential leads.
LinkedIn have added wonderful free feature called Lead Collection for advertisers who are running LinkedIn ads. This new feature gives users that click to your site an easy way to contact your company by showing a “Request Contact” button above your website.

When a user clicks on your LinkedIn ad, is directed to your website, they will see a lead collection bar above your site which gives the user the option to be contacted by your company. For each lead you will receive the member’s name, headline and a link to their LinkedIn Profile.

You can also view your leads in the Ads Dashboard under the leads tab. Here you can filter out leads by time frame, contact status and you can even see which campaign the lead came from. You will also see a Lead count in the Ads Dashboard in the Ad Campaign Tab.

Setting up this feature is very simple. Go to your campaign settings and check yes for Collect Leads option. No tracking or back-end coding needs to be set up as everything is tracked in LinkedIn interface.

Online Search Pattern – Indian Auto Segment

Google India released an Online Search trend analysis report for Indian Auto industry. The report clearly demonstrates consumer Search Behavior in the last 2 years (2009 & 2010) in the auto segment (Cars & Bikes). Google India Auto Report emphasizes that Indian Consumers are increasingly using online medium / search to make Auto purchase decisions.

Key Highlights of the report:

• Auto Vertical is growing faster than other key verticals like Travel & Finance
• Entry & Mid Segment Cars – price ranging 2Lakhs to 6 Lakhs are vastly searched Online in India
• Diesel Cars are the deal for the day; demand for the diesel cars has increased 3 times in the last 2 years.

Most Searched Car Launches/Variants:

From Jan 2010 to May 2011

• Maruti Alto K10
• Ford Figo
• Hyundai i10 – next gen
• Maruti Kizashi
• Chevrolet Beat
• Nissan Micra
• New Hyundai Verna -Fluidic
• VW Polo
• Toyota Etios
• Maruti SX4 Diesel

Note: Data compiled on basis of search query volumes for car models 5 weeks prior and 5 weeks after the launch
The list again reflects price sensitive nature of the Indian market with newer brands and launches capturing user’s attention.

Most Searched Car OEM’s Brands

• Maruti
• Honda
• Hyundai
• General Motors
• Tata Motors
• Toyota
• Ford
• VW
• Fiat

Most Searched Bike Brands

• Hero Honda
• Bajaj
• Yamaha
• TVS

Most of you folks would be aware of the PR update from Google last month June’2011 which had drastic changes in the Page Rank of most of the prominent websites.

Even Google’s PR was pushed down from 10 to 9 unusually. There is an other PR update this month – July’2011 where Google has got back its PR to 10 again.