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SEO in Organic and Inorganic Forms

by Akshay Sura on Dec 29, 2008 (0) Comments

Search Engine Optimization or SEO, now days, has become a very important and crucial part of online marketing. Most of the web users depend on these popular search engines in order to have an answer to their queries. In such circumstances, it is very important for the website owners to market their online ventures properly by the help of the search engine marketing services. These marketing services help websites to secure a higher order of ranking in the search results.

Marketing through search engines can be done in usually two ways, namely organic SEO and inorganic SEO. Organic SEO, as the name suggests, is nothing but the natural way for optimizing a website in the search engine pages. Since, this does not involve any sort of monetary transaction, good content of the web page full of creativity and relevance is of utmost importance. Another thing that one should keep in mind while using organic SEO is that, the content should continue to advance according to the need of the people searching the net. Moreover, optimization of this kind helps the websites to achieve a higher order of ranking for a longer period of time. This means that organic SEO has a natural, long-term impact. However, the only shortcoming here is that one might have to wait for over a month or so in order to “see” the desired results i.e. to get one’s website ranked higher in the search engine pages for a particular search criterion.

Now, talking about inorganic SEO, the first thing that I would like to mention here is; this type of optimization involves a substantially larger amount of money from the respective website owners. The website owners, who aim to attain maximum popularity of their website within the shortest time period, are advised to exercise this artificial form of optimization. In this form of SEO, the website owners pay an amount for making their ads appear on a prominent part of the search results page. Consequently, substantial amounts of inbound traffic are drawn to the website. Compared to organic SEO, this is a bit expensive, and hence, inorganic SEO is best suited to those who can afford an enormous “flow of funds” to be paid for the optimization. Unlike the organic way of optimization, inorganic SEO can bring in the desired results much quicker, but the impact or the effect of such optimization is not that enduring.

People have their own reasons and opinions regarding the debate that which one of these two forms of SEO is more effective. On the basis of the evaluation made on search engine marketing services, both Organic and Inorganic SEO have their own shares of advantages and drawbacks. You can choose any of these services, which you feel suits best with your requirements, strategy and budget. In my opinion, I would say that a balanced combination of both the services could bring in the desired results, wherein, your website can be seen at the highest position of the search engine pages for a longer period of time and also, draw inbound traffic faster.

Chrome out of Beta

by Akshay Sura on Dec 22, 2008 (0) Comments

Google’s chrome is officially out of beta. Well, that’s a surprise. Google, who has been famous to keep it’s products in beta status for long like gmail (still running in beta even after 5 years of it’s launch), has released Chrome out of Beta in just 100 days. With the 15th update of the browser, Google officially announced the release of Chrome version 1.0.

Google in their official blog says that they have fixed the bugs that existed in the beta stage of the browser and has also improved the performance of the plug-ins specially video. Chrome also has better book-marking features and a new bookmark manager. Privacy and security too have been the top priority. The browser’s unique sand box technology protects against harmful software and safe browsing features give protection against malware attacks. Chrome is an open source and according to Linus Upson, engineering director at Google “We had the luxury of watching what was happening with exploits and attacks with the other browsers while designing Chrome, so I think our security design is serviced very well during the beta period. By open sourcing everything, we hope all of our security features get adopted in other browsers. We don’t think security is something that should be kept.”

Google has now become a household name and though Chrome is more stable and faster than it’s beta version yet it failed to impress many. It still lacks some basic web-browser features like RSS support and form auto fill.

In spite of such capable browsers like Mozilla Firefox, Internet explorer available to us, I feel Google Chrome deserves a try. Moreover, Google is still in the process of developing extension platforms along with Mac and Linux support. Therefore, without taking the discussions further, I sign off for the day with an expectation to see newer a better versions of chrome in near future.

Latent Symantec Indexing

by Akshay Sura on Dec 18, 2008 (0) Comments

In some of my previous posts, I have discussed about the factors that help in getting a site optimized to the highest rank in the Google search pages. Today we will be discussing about the ranking algorithms that Google uses to find the relevant results for your search query. The latest on the block being Latent Symantec Indexing or LSI. Initially the search engines solely looked at the frequency of the search query text in the web pages but with LSI, the bots ascertain the true theme of the webpage and the particular data segment of the document being accessed.

Have you recently noticed a wide shamble in the relevancy of your search results while you have been Googling around?

Thanks to the powerful Google LSI engine that does all that work for you. Many of you must have come across LSI and its associated mechanism but then for those of you who have not, let us take a look.

Simple indexing is a process where by a keyword is searched in an entire page and the results are presented. Frequency of occurrence of a particular keyword further streamlines the search results in the process. Thus, ensuring a proper syntax or a linear search policy is enough to produce the requested search results. However the question that arises naturally is, “How relevant are they for your search context?”

Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI) technology adds semantics to the existing search mechanism thereby improving the relevance of the search results. During the indexing process, the Google bot not only verifies keywords against the document being indexed, but also takes a holistic approach in determining which other documents can be linked with those keywords. Keywords may be semantically close or distant. The LSI utilizes a knowledge base of related keywords and some intelligent computing to semantically differentiate related words and accordingly improves on its indexing mechanisms. LSI thus allows a search engine to determine the overall information a page wants to project by looking for intelligent patterns in the content thus making the page more available against a particular keyword.

You will be able to leverage the enormous semantic power that LSI has to offer for the website of your organization. Improving the lexical arrangement of keywords and their related tags to an object on your page can now astonishingly reveal more improved page ranks. Not only this, the future looks good with a completely new Web 3.0 in the horizon and Google offering services that is ready to get you started right now.

Meta Tags in Sitecore

by Akshay Sura on Dec 17, 2008 (1) Comments

I know there is a META tag module but based on our SEO requirements we had to implement it differently. We defined attributes in the base template which will hold values for the META tags.

Then in our base layout we retrieved values from the current item in to the meta tag definitions. Here is some sample code:

We are in the final testing stage for releasing www.WebDatamation.com running purely on Sitecore. (Windows 2008 with SQL Server 2008)

Should Google Earth be censored?

by Akshay Sura on Dec 16, 2008 (0) Comments

Should Google earth be censored? This question has been going around for quite a few years and now after the terrorist attacks in Mumbai last month, a petition has been submitted in the country’s high court by legal advocates to blur sensitive areas such as Bhabha Atomic Research Centre in Google Earth.

According to the TIMES report, the petition says that Google Earth “aids terrorists in plotting attacks” and offers “absolutely no control to prevent misuse or limit access” of the services. Investigation to Mumbai terror attacks and interrogation of the only live terrorist reveal that the terrorists used GPS and other high tech tools to plot, execute and then monitor the attacks with ease.

This is not the first time when Google Earth has been asked to blur the satellite images of the sensitive areas. In 2005, Australian officials asked to remove the pictures of their only nuclear reactor Lucas Heights from Google Earth. In 2006, Bahrain officials barred Google Earth, and China too banned websites that sold unapproved images. Some countries like Holland have gone into an agreement to block or censor the sensitive areas especially their military bases. Some countries have even concealed their sensitive military bases by putting them underground. According to a USA Today report, some countries like India can detect when a satellite passes overhead and conduct sensitive military activities accordingly so that the satellites do not capture the images of these activities. Even in USA, google mappers and google street view photographers were banned from accessing Pentagon and other military bases.

Google earth has revolutionized the way the internet works today. However, one should also understand that gifts for some might be curses in disguise for the others. When it comes to sensitive issues like national security and the like, Google should co-operate with the respective authorities.

Websites as Web Services

by Akshay Sura on Dec 15, 2008 (1) Comments

As we step forward into the next generation of computing, the internet is experiencing a major revolution in its domain. The web is slowly morphing from a Web 2.0 to a whole new Web 3.0. However, web 3.0 has still, a long way to go before it can be implemented for real.

“So what is the big deal?”

Web 2.0 had revolutionized the way in which websites present their content to users. Structured layouts, the use of layers in presenting information, the buzzwords that replaced flashy banners, sleazy elements, pop up(s) and so on. The message was loud and clear: if you wanted to increase your website traffic and do business, your design had to be “user friendly”.

Today, Web2.0 has achieved whatever it had set out to achieve. The user now see terabytes of information, laid out on a palate in a precise, structured and presentable manner. Well today, more or less this is what your perspective of the internet is. However, what does this information convey to its machine counterparts?

Of course, we are talking about all sorts of servers and end systems that collectively participate in delivering your requested information to your browser. With an increase of focus towards presentation, the information content has become more abstract for the machines to process. The machine views a web page as simply information stacked between HTML tags and formatted in ways that hide the intrinsic meaning of the information. Thus it is a difficulty to further process and mine this information for the machines.

This is exactly what Web 3.0 is being built on. However, it is not here to replace Web 2.0, but will render a parallel layer in addition to it. The new layer will add semantics to the information that will be transferred over the web. Machine intelligence can then be applied to process as well as mine this information so that web sites are no more dull pages of text and graphics.

Welcome to the world of web services and the domain of a new Web 3.0, where smart and intelligent services revolutionize what simple web sites have to offer. Web sites will now not only present information, but also expose certain methods that will allow you either full or partial access to the information repository of the service. This will assist an organization to offer their services to their B2B (Business to Business) and B2C (Business to Customer) clientele in an open platform or framework. What is ultimately being aimed at here is, structuring information for the machines so that they can communicate themselves and present information to you that will be more customized and relevant. Unstructured information shall pave way for more structured and relevant content. A new open framework would slowly evolve for more intelligent computing.

More on this later. Till then, let us keep an eye on how things are likely to evolve!

Using Blogs for SEO: RSS and Internal Links

by Jeffrey Smith on Dec 14, 2008 (2) Comments

Many businesses wonder, what is the purpose of having a blog? Depending on your stance and marketing objective, blogs (short for web logs) are great open source tools (known as content management systems) that if wielded properly can be instrumental to SEO and organic search engine positioning.

Blogs implement topical pooling of link flow through using a platform of internal linking that makes it crystal clear to search engines what each sub folder is about.

Keep in mind that most sub folders are still viewed by search engines as entirely different sites, so through strategically cross-linking pages or posts from one sub folder to another, the synergy it creates can create spikes of link flow which translate into rankings.

Another great advantage blogs offer to static or legacy (CMS) content management systems that lack SEO prowess is, the ability to ping and promote its own content through RSS feeds and send search engine spiders deeper into a site.

The logic is simple, if you create a relevant page with a specific ranking objective (such as creating another layer to secure a competitive series of keywords, a hub page or a landing page), you can sculpt which page gets the most link weight from other pages based on site architecture and internal linking.

Blogs take the content and make it accessible instantly to search engines and puts your page in the Que for crawling from using RSS feeds. Once the bots arrive, if you have any links on the page, they follow and ping those links as well (which in turn schedule them for crawling).

This chain reaction can bring pages that have tapered off and fallen to less than favorable positions due to neglect or lack of revision or links. Blogs ensure that (a) more link flow is captured from the RSS and activity from syndication as well as (b) that the pages linked to from it have a new opportunity to make a second impression for search engine relevance.

Once a page is in the search engines’ index, it can start aging and maturing. Based on how it is linked to, the value of the content in context to other related information on your site and the authority it creates over time internally, each page is an asset to be eventually leveraged for SERP domination.

Out of site, out of mind applies for search engine spiders. If your content was fresh (way back in 2007) and you really haven’t done anything to stand out or target any additional phrases, then you give them no reason to return to pay attention to your website.

With the constant pressure of competition vying for coveted market share (which is divisible by rankings earmarked by keywords), your pages are either a relevant result or they are not. Part of that relevance is determined by post frequency (how often your site contribute new pages or revise older content), the other part is, how you link to yourself and how others link to you.

Without a solid foundation any links you acquire from other websites only have a limited shelf life. If your pages have a solid site architecture (like a blog) can move that link flow around within the site to the pages that need it most, the potency of each link can be sustained further with less effort.

Two things to consider the waning factor and the tendency for information to get archived in blogs, both can create drops in position. The remedy to this is deep linking (linking to other pages other than the homepage) with specific anchor text, continuity and volume from other areas of the site.

For example, if I have a page tucked away deep in the site (3 sub folders away from the root folder) and I am expecting to drive traffic there and have that page rank well in search engines, the fact that it is so far away from the primary navigation presents a challenge.

Think of it as a pyramid of glasses and pouring champagne in the top glass and having the spillover funnel down from glass to glass so that even the glasses on the bottom are full.

Link flow works in this manor. However, in this application, links are the fluid moving from one vessel (page) to another and if they have more than 50% fluid, then they can garner rankings in search engines (since they now have passed the threshold of internal relevance).

The point being, before you can acquire rankings, your pages need to be indexed. The more pages you have indexed on a topic, the better. Even more important, the number of pages internally linked on a topic, the easier it becomes to have the aggregate collective coherence of those pages appear for multiple keywords.

Pages with stronger internal links require less external links to rank higher. So, to answer the original question posed at the beginning of this post, the purpose of having a blog is to develop an authority website.

By reinforcing your topic (theming and siloing), your site is deemed an authority (which is the real reason to start a blog), in addition to the ease of posting updates or new content.

The short-term benefits will be obvious, the ability to create spikes in rankings for keywords in the titles and topics of the post. The long-term benefits are immeasurable as your site gains more momentum and becomes a market share devouring ranking juggernaut if managed with purpose.

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