Did you Spock?

Do you sometimes Google to find a person, to know more about him or her, to find someone who can offer certain services? If your answer is yes, try using Spock.com - A Great Place for Search (people) (if you haven’t tried it already).

I just added my name out there along with my location and my company name. The most interesting thing is that, I cannot simply write anything about me (chances of self PR goes down); in fact the “about me” section would be written by others, my friends or colleagues - those who actually know me. Cool huh? That’s not all, people can vote to say if the information I am providing out there (location, company) is right or wrong.

I just felt good about the site at the very first glance. They did not try to make things complicated unnecessarily.

And that’s not all; you can use natural tags to search for people associated with it. For example, I tried to search for SEO and it showed me some people who are somewhat associated with this Tag. Now if you use Google to search for SEO, what do you see?

Click to Enlarge

Click To enlargeThe difference is very obvious - Spok.com is typically a people search engine where the primary emphasis is on people associated with those key phrases; and we can not expect similar result from Google as the key phrase (SEO) is too generic to offer any human being. So what would you use next time when you would be searching for someone?

Will people start optimizing for Spock too? No problem; to optimize someone for Spock, you would need a good network and a worthy network is possible only when you provide good service or a talk-able product.

And I must say, Spock.com - a Great Place for Search. And I say it without any bias.

I started my career as a sales man

I don’t believe that I am writing this. A few years back, when I was just a college student, I could not manage my pocket money. I never knew what Internet is or how it can change my life.

What I could do to earn some money?

I used to offer private tuitions, two or three days every week. I used to earn some money but that was not helping me at all. I knew very well that I do not want to do private tuitions for long, that was not my cup of tea and I was simply wasting my time out there.

Who looks for private tuition? I mostly came across those students who could not manage their studies well. I had nothing to take from them and none (yes, none) of them were willing to learn leave alone their interest to learn something new. They just wanted to pass the exam as easily as possible.

I remember, once I wanted to start a small business but I could not even manage 5 thousand. I wish we had something like these college student credit cards so that I could arrange some loan.  It is not that college students didn’t have credit cards at that moment. But the category was missing. I just could not have a credit card as a college student. (Now I have a few… lol)

I even tried a few banks but could not manage anything. At last, I started working as a sales man….

Believe me, those few months as a sales man just changed me and I rediscovered myself as a FIGHTER.

Do you want to know what I used to sell?

Newspaper.

Me and My Office

My friend Arin got married two years back and got a quite little baby. But it is not a solution for my two other friends. They want to get married and they want a baby. But they have a big problem. Both of them works in a MNC and both of them need to spend around 12 to 13 hours at office and in office preparation everyday. They can not even think about leaving the job not for financial reason alone but also for the reason that they are well established in their own career. If anyone of them leaves the job, it would be a sheer wastage of talent and an active and capable manpower.

How to get married

It is really a big problem - when you do not get enough time for your family, you do not have enough time to see your baby grow in front of your eyes. You do not have enough time to listen to its ga ga. And to add to the whole problem, you got a nuclear family.

Do you think a governess is good enough to look after your new born kid like a mom? Why are you earning so much of money if you need a child GPS to track your child! Yupp, I know, it does not cost so much and keeps you free from all worries regarding your child’s safety. But do you think those extra hours you spend at office would earn you those beautiful moments? Yupp, I know you got a few half Sundays, that you want to pass with your family - but did you really make a family of your own? Do you know that family? Did you grow that family where a child needs a GPS tracking?

Is it all about security? What about love and growing together?

I want to get married someday, but how is it possible?

Giving thoughts a thought

Ok everyone, today I had been to Thoughts.com, I registered an account there just to check it out. It offers free blog but got some difference with other free blog platform providers.

Thoughts

What do we see at WordPress or Blogger or other similar platforms? They simply offer you a sub domain and their blog script to run it. You do what ever you want to do out there.

But somewhere Thoughts.com is different from them. What do I call it?

Hmmmm, can we call it a social journalism initiative where “just blogging” takes the side role! You might be wondering, why I am saying this!

They put a clear emphasis on news. For example, think about Yahoo or MSN homepage. If there had been blog section added to them rather than search engines, we could easily compare them with Thoughts.

Rather than being a blog platform, it is more like a community, where members got their own blogs. When WP runs for product development, they run for community development.

What I did not like about it?

  • If you want to comment on any post out there, you would need to be a member of Thoughts.com (as soon as you click on the comment box, the login / register page opens up).
  • When you signup, they ask you to invite your friends. Though it is optional and you can skip it, is it necessary?
  • The design is somewhat poor. Why the Permalink section got such an out of the box black color?

What I liked about it?

  • This is more of a community rather than a blog platform.
  • They have a think tank section (I hope this post would reach them).
  • Chances of less spam
  • It is still in Beta

Welcome to OddSEO

I have an announcement to make today. I have started a new blog on seo and my thoughts on the web development. Please visit Odd SEO - my new web property.

I have been thinking for a long time to book my own domain for a blog. But I was worried that I would not be able to manage enough time to write. And seriously speaking, I have so many things to write but very few minutes to work on.Odd SEO

But I promise to make it big and help you with my understanding.

Anyways, what do you think about the domain name? I did some extensive research to select this domain name. And I have also written a post on “How to select a domain name” at OddSEO. Please let me know your views on that post.

But, the problem occurred, while I was trying to host that blog. I was really worried about where to host it. I read some web hosting news around to get a cheap deal but at the same time I wanted a 99.99% uptime.

At the end of the day I went for ASO. I have been using it for some of my other websites and they have a great customer support. [But I am not at all happy with Sify's service - they are simply poor.]

Ok, leave these things, I would continue writing here, but please do visit OddSEO and please write to me if you have any suggestion. Thanks a lot for staying with me.

Interviewing Saptarshi Roy Chaudhury – Blogger

Saptarshi Roy ChoudhuryHello readers, Here is an Interview of Saptarshi Roy Choudhury from SEO Kolkata:

MrDoubts: Tell us something about your blog:

Saptarshi: I started my blog way back in October 2006. I used to read a lot of SEO blogs and participate in many forums but I felt that there is still some lack in providing the absolute basics of SEO to unsuspecting individuals - I planned to serve that purpose with this blog, however, in course of time, I must admit, that I couldn’t stick to that and written many articles which would actually be of interest to people who are already initiated to the concept of SEO and Internet marketing. Also, another reason for starting my blog was because I wanted to keep my articles together and organised in one place. Given the kind of person I am, I have lost loads of my good articles and research work before, so I thought putting them all on my blog would actually keep them in one place. Today this blog has got some real good articles on various aspects of SEO and Internet marketing.

MrDoubts: How long have you been blogging?

Saptarshi: Since October 2006.

MrDoubts: How do you make your blog different?

Saptarshi: Well, this was my prime concern while starting the blog. I found most blogs actually syndicate news and articles rather than writing something of their own. Definitely; that is the easy thing to do. But I decided to make my blog original and educative. I wanted my readers to feel that they actually had some take away from each of my articles. I have been following this throughout. In some of my recent posts you might find news type articles, which, I really don’t prefer to add but add them to keep my blog active as I don’t get much time to write good post regularly. Though I still try to put in good educative blog posts as often as I can.

MrDoubts: Any special occasion, story or achievement that you would like to share?

Saptarshi: We were discussing my blog, and to speak of special occasion or events… I must say this blog has given me a lot of recognitions. I remember visiting the SearchCamp 2007 in Chennai. I arrived there at the second day and was overwhelmed to see a large section of the crowd recognise me by my blog and they are regular readers. Also, in my present job, at the pre-recruitment stage when my boss (then interviewer) called to speak to me he was not really sure of my skills in the field of paid search. However, after reading one of my articles on Quality Score, he didn’t think twice to offer me the job. Also, it was nice when one of my posts was picked up and reposted at SearchEngineLand.com

MrDoubts: What are some of the common mistakes people make with their blogs (your pick)?

Saptarshi: Umm there are many and am guilty of some of them too. Here are some pointers…

  1. Having their blogs as a sub-domain of their blog platform rather than having their own domain names.
  2. Not making regular posts.
  3. Not mentioning proper credits when a post is copied from some place. It can severely tarnish your credibility. Same thing applies for images and design elements.
  4. Not providing a proper About Us statement or page. When people read you, they would definitely like to know who you are and what is your credibility.
  5. Not providing easy options to subscribe to your blog.
  6. Cluttering your blog with Adsense and other ads. I don’t mean ads should not be there but they should not be intrusive for the user experience.
  7. Grammatically poor English. Can seriously affect your credibility and is often looked at as a disturbing experience by the native English speakers.

MrDoubts: What makes a successful blogger?

Saptarshi:

  • Make Regular posts
  • Make posts that adds value for your readers
  • Connect with your readers. Reply to comments.
  • Learn the basics of SEO and Internet marketing and apply them on your blog.

MrDoubts: What tools to you use to market your blog?

Saptarshi: Well, I am not a big fan of tools. I would say some basic tools that are often used for other Internet marketing ventures would be good enough.. If I am to list a few, I would say,

  1. Technorati (http://www.technorati.com/ ) - not really a tool but use this platform effectively to get exposure for your blog
  2. Use Google Trends and other research tools to figure out which are the most discussed topics and searched keyword in your niche. Make posts based on them. Keyword tools commonly used are Overture ( inventory.overture.com ), WordTracker ( wordtracker.com), Google Keywords tool (https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal )
  3. Use this Social Bookmark tool created by Lee Odden - http://www.toprankblog.com/tools/social-bookmarks/
  4. An analytics tool is a must if you are serious about marketing. Google Analytics does the job pretty well. If you want to track the feed reader stats take help of FeedBurner (http://www.feedburner.com/fb/a/home ).

MrDoubts: What keeps you motivated to blog?

Saptarshi: My readers. I get at least 3-4 emails from my readers every month with various questions besides a few emails every month with offers for SEO consultation. Particularly, I feel greatly inspired when I get mails from newbies asking questions and clarifications - their urge to learn and the thought that I am able to help someone with the blog and am adding some value to the SEO society keeps me motivated.

MrDoubts: Do you earn from blogging?

Saptarshi: To be honest the direct income is not really worthy to mention. A trickling income from Adsense and a few more from one or two paid reviews; However, I do get a lot of consulting offers through my blog. In fact I have landed up one of my biggest Internet business consulting project with one of the leading real estate companies in USA through this blog after their MD read my blog and initiated a discussion with me.

MrDoubts: How many friends have you earned as a blogger?

Saptarshi: Definitely a good number, includes, fellow bloggers, general readers, entrepreneurs and various other people.

MrDoubts: What do you think of the Indian SEO Industry?

Saptarshi: Its growing very fast but unfortunately the growth is mostly caused by the mushrooming “SEO experts” across the country who hardly know anything about SEO. Indian SEO industry has some real good knowledgeable SEO, but this is often overshadowed by the snake oil sellers and people from other countries find it difficult to trust us with their projects. However, this problem is not just in India, SEO being an unorganised industry is full of such people and as it has always happened, empty vessels make the most of sound - so people often try to judge the standard of SEOs in a country by those newbies who tout themselves as “SEO experts”. Its good to see that people are taking increasing interest in SEO in India and it is well on its way to become a distinguished profession by itself, however, my only request to people would be to educate themselves and continue updating themselves with the required knowledge and let others decide their status in the industry rather than claiming themselves to be experts.

MrDoubts: What do you do when you’re not blogging?

Saptarshi: I hardly get time to blog these days as most of my time is consumed by my day job and my consulting projects. However, I prefer to listen to music or read good books whenever I get a little time for leisure.

MrDoubts: Please recommend some posts from your blog:

Saptarshi:

The power of Blogging

Ok I am not dead. I just took a (a bit of a long) from this blog – and now I am back.

Anyways, I was just thinking about the power of blog. I do not want to show any example like that blog has made that change in that section of the world.

Thousands of new blogs are created every other day on the web – some show good potential and some are just an imitation of something good or of a spam or just imitation of common limitations.
Listen to a blogger
But, as a new blogger you need to fight hard to establish yourself among big names within your niche to make your voice heard by common readers. They are already established in the market – and perhaps you are one of their long followers’ lists.

Ok tell me one thing – what is the power of a blogger – is it just about writing great content in his or her blog?

Definitely not! The power of a blogger and the blog depends more on referenceyour presence points on the net. To put the idea simply – it is about networking (not completely). And this is one of the most important reasons why people gather in different blog network sites in great numbers.

But does this really help? Does it really matter if I know Matt or Sam unless I get a recommendation from their blog (a link within a post)? I know about relationship marketing – but you must think about the ROI too.

What do you think?

Do you have the right keywords? Play the game

As a SEO consultant we often find it tough to make clients understand the importance of proper keyword research and strategic implementation of those words.

What happens in the normal course!

In the primary stage of website development, we need to ask them for some primary keywords to get a primary idea on their business and to look for relevant and related keywords. (Our executives have done enough research on their business model by the time and given us the required input.)

Now, in most of the cases, the clients provide us hundreds of words as keywords and most of them are single words. And we say “wow - we got a jooooooob”.

Normal steps follow - we do some extensive keyword research and find out the best keywords which would bring them business and online visibility. We send the file to the clients for approval when we are sure about the perfection of the list.

Now the fight begins. A lot of clients (mostly the inexperienced ones) say that they want to target those words only (the primary list that they sent) as keywords. It becomes very tough to make them understand why they should change the list.

It is not always possible to make them understand why we have selected them as keywords or take them through the entire keyword research process. They are often amazed to hear that people use different words (in different order) to find their product. And it is almost impossible to make them understand that even if their site ranks high for a keyword like ‘perfume’, it will not guarantee more perfume sale.

Now we got a solution. I was reading Matt’s blog (as usual) and found this post ‘New SEO Keyword Game Launched‘. I checked it out and it was interesting. One of our executives used Keyword Game to explain about different keywords people use and he was successful to close the deal.

Keyword Game From Vertical Leap

And we said ‘wow - a big headache is gone’.

Thanks a lot Vertical Leap for making our life easy.

Interviewing Matt Hopkins – CEO Vertical Leap

I am pleased to publish an exclusive interview of Matt Hopkins (CEO; Vertical Leap) here in this blog. If you have anything else to ask, contact him here or post a comment under this post.

Q. What is SEO?

A. SEO or Search Engine Optimisation is a marketing discipline that works with companies to help them achieve high rankings in the search engines. This is done by looking at the various attributes of a website (its structure, its content, who it links to, and who links to it) and then removing any impediments that may exist which are preventing it from achieving the relevant rankings for targeted keywords and phrases.

Q. What is next in SEO?

A. SEO is still a relatively new and growing field, but the major trend that is approaching will be optimising sites for Mobile and Local Search. More than 60% of searches currently conducted on the search engines today have what they call “local intent”. This means that someone is looking for a business that is close to them (even if they didn’t specify a geographical indicator such as the city name). The search engines recognise this and working to improve their technology to understand where the business behind a website is physically located. This, combined with the location of the searcher - will mean that the search engines can produce results that are more relevant to a user. For example, if the searcher types in “dentist” - they are usually looking for a dentist near them and not on the other side of the country or in a different part of the world.

Mobile search is an extension of local search - with the difference being that it will be easier (once GPS phones are more wide spread) for the search engines to know where the searcher is physically, so that it can return results nearest to them.

SEO Company UK

Q. Who needs SEO?

A. The vast majority (more than 85%) of everything that happens on the internet starts from a search engine. So any business that has a website and has a target market that uses the internet can benefit from SEO so that it can be sure to get in the top couple of pages of the search engines.

SEO can also benefit businesses that are purely “brand-oriented”. For example, Coca-cola probably doesn’t need SEO in order to increase its business in anyway. But if it wanted to ensure that its brand (through its website) is always present in the search engine rankings, then it would also benefit from SEO.

Q. Where does SEO stand in web 3.0?

A. Well, I guess it depends on your definition of Web 3.0 - there’s still a lot of debate about the meaning behind Web 2.0. If you are talking about web services becoming more ubiquitous, then I think you have to look at how search engines make their money. Google cannot make money from offering its data in a web service (certainly not for free) and so I can’t really see an impact here. The main issue will be when the search engines move completely to AJAX-based (web 2.0) interfaces and really only as this (along with personalisation) will make it more difficult to monitor the rankings of a particular web site so that you can track progress. But as long as there is a list of results being returned based on a computer’s algorithm, then there will be a need for search engine optimisation to help companies improve their position.

Q. SEO for search engines or better user experience?

A. You should always build a web site for the user - but you have to consider that there are two types of users for every website now. You have humans and machines. A website needs to also take the search engine spiders (the machines) into account when it is being designed and developed.

Q. What is SEM?

A. SEM (Search Engine Marketing) covers all types of marketing involving a search engine. There are primarily two main areas - search engine optimisation (SEO) and pay per click (PPC). PPC is a very powerful marketing channel that allows businesses to advertise on a search engine by bidding on specific keywords that when searched will trigger your ad to show. This was once a very straight forward process - but as with most things involving search engines has become far more complex. It is currently one of the most effective marketing channels available.

Q. What are some of the common mistakes people make in SEO (your pick)?

A. The biggest mistake that people make when it comes to SEO is to think that there are shortcuts or tricks. Everyone is looking for the fast gain - and there just isn’t one. Usually the techniques that people use to “fast track” any optimisation effort will result in a website becoming penalised or potentially banned (de-listed) from the search engine which would be devastating.

Q. SEO market in UK / USA / AU:

A. Its been fascinating for me to work in these three markets. The main difference is with the level of maturity in each market and how “mainstream” SEO is in each country.

The USA is the most advanced of course. Most marketing execs and business owners understand search and see it as an essential part of their marketing mix. The search industry is full of large search-only specialists who are continuously evolving.

The UK is not far behind the US. SEO and search is becoming more widespread and awareness is getting pretty high. The Search market has about a dozen major players and then hundreds of small companies and “one-man” bands.

Australia is still catching up. SEO and search is not yet “main stream” but it is growing in popularity and understanding. The search market has very few major (large) search-specialists but it has hundreds of freelancers.

Q. About your Company?

A. We are great at SEO - but so are several other companies - but we manage search better than anyone else on the planet. We have an approach (called TotalPropulsion) that combines leading-edge decision support technology with first class people.

Every campaign is assigned a team and has a dedicated campaign manager who is an SEO expert and remains involved with the client/campaign for the life of our relationship with a client (i.e. we don’t hand the client off from department to department). We have a well documented process/project plan that we implement with every campaign and the client is informed every step of the way (both in person and via a portal to our technology that is available 24×7).

The main element though is Proactivity. Our campaign managers review every one of their campaigns - every working day (no other company can make this claim) and we take action immediately when we notice something that is not quite going the way we would like.

Our service is always offered at a fixed price and is completely comprehensive (there is never any other fees and we never “up-sell” a client to “larger” packages etc).

Q. Any special occasion, story or achievement that you would like to share?

A. Off the top of my head - we are really pleased with a campaign that we are running for a company called dotmailer. They are an email marketing company and we have taken them from page 10 to #1 in Google UK for “email marketing”. This is a highly competitive phrase and the client is over the moon with the impact this has had to their business.

Blogger Interview - JH from Random Good Stuff

Random Good StuffMrDoubts: About your blog:

JH: My Blog is called Random Good Stuff and this is basically saying it all. But most of the time it’s “Good Stuff” from my point of view. So sometimes people don’t agree or understand why that post about the “Dead Real Mermaid” for example is a good thing. RGS is getting update almost every day. You will find gadgets, weird and bizarre things, videos and online games.

MrDoubts: How long have you been blogging?

JH: I started blogging 2 1/2 years ago. Started off with Bogger, moved to Typepad and now I am with Word Press.

MrDoubts: How do you make your blog different?

JH: To be honest, I am not really sure. It can’t be my spelling or grammar since I am blogging in a second language. LOL

MrDoubts: Any special occasion, story or achievement that you would like to share?

JH: Getting featured on BoingBoing and Gizmodo at the same day was pretty exciting.

MrDoubts: What are some of the common mistakes people make in their blogs ?

JH: Giving up too early. It really takes time to build a readership. I am very close to 3000 subscribers and I am going to celebrate it big time, because this is a magical number. For over a year now my readership was around that frozen number.

MrDoubts: What makes a successful blogger?

JH: Again not giving up. Try to connect with other bloggers and sites. Be dedicated and try to find stories and scoops which haven’t been blogged about yet.

MrDoubts: What tools to you use to market your blog?

JH: Personal connections that proved to be the best traffic driving tool. Best thing about it, it’s free.

MrDoubts: What keeps you motivated to blog?

JH: When a story from RGS get picked up a big site and sends me thousands of visitors. It makes my heart jump.

MrDoubts: Do you earn by blogging?

JH: It’s getting there and I think this years XMas business is going to be huge. But my main income comes from my sites www.criticker.com and www.lastminute-auction.com

MrDoubts: How many friends have you earned as a blogger?

JH: You mean real friends? Well I haven’t met any of my online friends personally, yet. But I’d count 6.

MrDoubts: What do you do when you’re not blogging?

JH: I work on my other sites and I am also a professional photographer www.jhfoto.de, so if I have an assignment I get to leave the office, shave off my blogger beard and exchange my PJs with normal cloth. Which is nice from time to time.

MrDoubts: Please recommend some posts from your blog:

JH: With the help of Google Analytics here some popular posts from this year: Stool for Balls - Posable Hasselhoff - Beating up children Kung Fu Style - Increase your results with Google Fragrance