Here are few tips and observations;

1. Send email to the cart abandoners.
   
   • Send a series of three or more shopping cart abandonment messages, and see upwards of 60% of recovered revenue coming from the second and third mails.
2. Content of the emails;
   
   • Personalize – Include name of the buyer
   • Product – show the products in the abandoned cart. Include price of these products.
   • Including recommended products in shopping cart abandonment messages will help increase sales and AOV (Average Order Value)
   • A call to action – all the mails must have a visible call to action. e.g. 'buy now' 'checkout now and get 5% off', 'take your cart home'
3. Right frequency of emails;
   
   • Sending the first message one hour after abandonment has the highest conversion rates, but waiting three to six hours results in higher average order value.
     
   • The second message should be sent within 24 hours of abandonment.
   • and the third one should be sent within 72 hours of abandonment.
4. Show urgency;
   
   • inform that the product is running out, that products in cart will be deleted within so many hours, that the offer will expire soon.
   • Don't offer any discounts in the first message.
   • Offer incremental discounts in the following mails. Remember, these are time bound discounts.
   • Last message to inform that the cart will be deleted within such time if no action is taken.

Do write back on to inform me the % increase in sales you got after following these practices. Happy emailing!!

Mobile goes social: It is a known fact that most Indians browse the Internet via mobile, and 2012 will see even more fondness to pocket devices. A large percentage of Indians are spending time on social networks using their mobiles, with the biggest chunk comes from non-metros. Expect mobile to add some extra zing to the Indian social media market in 2012. $100 mobiles powered with Android have already made it possible for Indians to browse the Internet quite cheaply. Are we going to witness brands now focusing more on mobile apps rather than web apps? This was a thought also expressed by Preetham Venkky in a recent chat.

B2B and corporate gear up: The B2B arena will gear up, and we will see not only professional networks opening up but also see large enterprises will walk the extra mile to embrace Enterprise 2.0. I have always felt that LinkedIn has been inside a shell, as its more of a corporate network. But this year, I think it will be more social and allow its API to be used by more developers. This would be great news for the Indian market considering how many people use Linkedin here. We are already seeing companies such as Standard Chartered opting for Enterprise 2.0 with the help of Kreeo. I think in 2012, we will see more companies being social, dropping their logos, and providing a platform for employees, stakeholders, and customers to engage.

Social commerce: New e-commerce sites are popping up all over the place in India, and they’re being funded pretty quickly too. Some pundits assert that it is a bubble but for the time being, there is money in that bubble. We have also seen the growing fondness towards Facebook, so a gradual evolution of e-commerce to social commerce seems like a logical next step. We have already seen lot of e-commerce brands such as Fashion and You, Flipkart, Fetise, and MyGrahak, doing an amazing job on social media. However brands will also have to understand that social commerce means far more than creating a Facebook fan page. They will have to provide fans with a positive experience, keeping the social aspect in focus, evolving from just liking and commenting on products.

Blogs and brands: Brands have kept their distance from blogs in the past, but 2011 saw some brands testing the waters more. Red Bull started a blogger hunt contest for F1, and we also saw the Snexy.in campaign that used blogs very effectively. IndiBlogger, India’s biggest blog network, made sure that it kept running contests all year round. Brands such as Tata, Dove, KFC, Samsung, and HP also tried creating a relationship with bloggers via contests. I have always believed that bloggers can be your best brand evangelists. Blogging is far from dead, and it will evolve further in 2012.

Forums will be back: I think social media is cluttered right now, and the content overload often detracts from the experience. Could it be that 2012 will see a resurgence of forums. We recently saw Pluggd.in launching its forum for the startup and entrepreneur community. I have engaged a couple of times and found some very interesting discussions. Forums have like-minded people and are moderated; they have more focused discussions and less spam. I hope PO is planning one too!

Video consumption increases: In 2011 we saw the launch of both BoxOffice and then Movieplex, from Internet giant’s Google and Yahoo respectively. After the Kolaveri di [2] snowball I am sure every artist and Bollywood personality would want to make his or her video viral. India is a market that is not going to be behind in 2012 even though we have infrastructure problems in the country, so expect video to be the next big thing.

The idiot box goes social: Television channels connecting to fans via social media is a common trend, but 2011 saw television serials being telecasted on social media. In December, we saw the rebirth of the movie review show Chicks on Flicks, aired on Facebook. Sony PIX had stopped airing it on TV, and from now on it will show movie reviews on the day of the release. I believe this will be followed by others in 2012.

Social media outsourcing: Last time when I spoke to Adhvith Dhuddu, he predicted that 2012 would see lot of social media outsourcing work coming to India. I think many bigger brands will opt for social media outsourcing as this will also allow them to scale. But how exactly can social media work be outsourced? Certainly there is some risk in some areas, but at the same time there are many mundane tasks that can be outsourced.

ORM becomes important: With more and more brands opting for social, brands will need to be more careful about their online reputation. 2011 saw Vodafone Dhaval Valia fail in this area. Having witnessed such catastrophes, other companies will be trying to avoid these kinds of mistakes in 2012.

SMEs become more social: I have always believed that social media can be a game changer for SMEs. In 2011 we saw some amazing social media work from Faasos, Shopo and more which may become case studies for their competitors. SME’s will be more open and innovative on social media over the coming year.

Source: www.penn-olson.com

A payment gateway facilitates the transfer of information among a payment portal and the Front End Processor or obtaining bank. When a customer orders a product from a payment gateway-enabled merchant, the payment gateway achieves a variety of tasks to process the transaction such as a customer places order on website by pressing the 'Checkout' or equivalent button, the merchant then forwards the transaction details to their payment gateway.

Business People or Customers can receive the payment from the following methods

1. Website
   
2. Mobile
   
3. Automatic IVR System
   

Magento is the most power packed Open Source shopping cart software that is most convenient for both the shop owner as well as customers. 

Now come across at the major advantages that Magento has over the other open source software. 

• Magento is e-commerce software that offers with numerous options and supports covered one page checkout. The users of Magento can hoard time while making the option of their products by merely using the dropdown menus in Magento. With dropdown menus, a user can usually pick a product alternative, prices alternative, and colors alternative and so on easily from one page itself.
• Magento allows the users to create fair assessment between the products and thereby, select the one that is best appropriate for their needs. Not only this, but all the clientele can also make an evaluation of the products that is bought is from here. A review helps the expectations purchasers to know about a particular product in a appropriate way and hence, guide them in buying the right product.
• Magento also supports various shipping addresses for the online shopper’s convenience within a single transaction. Hence, it is most well-matched way for shopping bringing in good profit to the store owners as they can make available these kinds of unique advantages while making the purchase. This also makes sure that the international clients are satisfied too.

1. Focus on Customer Service: By providing a world class customer service you can stand out from your competitors.  You can give the ultimate in customer service by understand their needs, wants, desires and of course by always always being friendly.

2. Be Customer Focused: It isn’t enough to give the best customer service, you have to have a team which eats, sleeps and breathes an ethos of putting the customer first. The team should never be about profit or time keeping (though someone should be responsible for this) they should always be driven by the customers – after all without customers you have no business.

3. In Retail, the key is Detail: Oh, so corny. But you will probably remember it for that reason. What I am trying to say is dot your i’s and cross your t’s. Make sure product details and specifications are correct and upto date, the same with your images and any feeds you have. Detail will enhance your websites rankings naturally (it’s great content), put you above your competitors (better descriptions than them) and ultimately increase revenue (GOAL!!!).

4. Establish your Brand and your company Values: Sounds a little odd to mention values, but it really isn’t. Most companies have a natural ethos, some have a mission statement, others just float on by with values in their heads – either way they all have a set way of working and idea of what they want to achieve, these are their values. In E-commerce your first value should be “the customer comes first” then maybe “quality of products” is second etc … make a list of your 10 key values. By clearly defining them you are defining your business and how it operates, this can make you stand out from the crowd.

5. Put Quality in everything you do: Make sure everything that you do, your team does and you supply is the best it possibly can be. Do testing on everything your team does and you supply. You and your company should always strive to provide the best service everyday and each & every time your team interacts with a person (your website counts as part of your team).

6. Get the best from your team: You should now begin to understand that you need to get the best out of everything, and this could mean lots more training of staff to ensure they give their best. But what else can you do to ensure they always give their best? One of the best ways to incentivise a team is to reward them with a bonus for reaching a target or a commission on each sale. But be careful this kind of thing can lead to pressure sales tactics and this is a big “no no!”.

7. Do Not Procrastinate!: Sitting on your hands humming and ahh-ing gives your competitors an advantage because you are not moving forward, you become a spectator sat on the fence. So get down before you give your backside some splinters, make a decision and go with it – if it doesn’t work try another way. What ever you do, the world is moving fast, so don’t stop moving!

8. It isn’t quantum physics: Selling things has been happening since the dawn of man, well it started with bartering as we see it today. Anyway to be blunt, people buy an item from you, you are selling it at cost+margin make sure you do the maths and you are making a profit. There is nothing like a business loosing money to bring team spirit down with a bump.

9. Get and Use, Facts and Information: Basically this means analyse any data about your site you can get your hands on, and your competitors if you can. Use the information to define and refine the shopping experience for the user. By analysing the information you can diagnose potential problems and fix them before it becomes a problem. You can also see “hotspots” and replicate them to make the most of your site’s real estate.

10. Enjoy Yourself!: The journey that is SEO is one that means you have to work hard, but you should also play hard. Take yourself and your team out whenever you can, there is nothing like a few drinks down the local (pub) to get colleagues nattering and increase team spirit and it will help your team to bond and grow together. It also means you will end up with a team that is well rounded and loves their boss, because they respect their staff and treat them well.

Source: www.seoandy.com

Other parts of this strategy include Google Wallet to make payments by cellphone, Google Offers for daily deals, apps that show location-based mobile ads and product search for local stores. The idea behind the new delivery service is that people searching for products online or on their phones could buy something from a retailer beginning with the local branches of nationwide chains, and could then take the next step – delivery – through Google. 

Google does not intend to build stores or warehouses or become a retailer itself, two of the people briefed on the delivery service said. Instead, it is talking with potential partners, including retailers and possibly couriers. The service is the latest example of how the biggest tech companies – including Google, Apple and Amazon – are trying to branch out and, in the process, blurring the lines between their businesses. 

For example, Apple's iTunes business is formidable, and much of its success in selling phones and tablets, which compete with Google's Android and Chrome devices, comes from its retail stores. And shoppers increasingly search Amazon directly, instead of looking first for products on Google, in part because of Amazon's Prime program, which offers free two-day shipping for a $79 annual fee. Amazon also operates AmazonFresh, a local delivery service focused on groceries, in Seattle. 

"Google is arguably at a competitive disadvantage because consumers view Amazon and maybe eBay as guaranteeing overall a higher-quality shopping experience, and retail ads are almost half of Google's business," said Eric Best, chief executive of Mercent, which does online advertising and e-commerce on Google, Amazon and other sites for 400 brands. 

Google wants to use mobile phones and the Web to connect shoppers with merchants, both online and offline, and benefit by selling ads to merchants, one of the people briefed on the project said. Eventually, Google hopes, the delivery service would be integrated into Android mobile devices and Google(PLUS), another person said. 

If Google decides to move forward with it, the service would start in a few cities, including San Francisco and New York, one person said. It is unclear whether Google would take a cut of the revenue from sales or make money only on merchant ads. Google does not take a portion of payments with the Google Wallet mobile app, but it does earn money from sales of Google Offers. 

Source: www.techgig.com

Whether they think of it as magnetic content or advertising, marketers are increasingly focused on creating video assets. This type of media reproduces the richness consumers associate with TV, often at a lower cost. And if online venues tend to fall short of TV when it comes to reach, they make up the difference by engaging viewers in an active, lean-forward mode.

The virtuous circle of content and technology adoption that consumers are experiencing is also fueling this trend. eMarketer estimates that US online video ad spending will grow by a compound annual rate of 38% in a five-year span ending in 2015, making this by far the fastest-rising category of online spending.

By 2015, video ad spending will reach $7.11 billion, up from $2.16 billion in 2011. In the past year alone, growth was 52.1%.

Similarly, in the UK video advertising will lead the pack, growing by a compound annual rate of 65% over five years. By 2015, UK video online ad spending will reach $850 million, compared with $150 million in 2011. As a percentage of total online advertising, video will grow to 8.2% in 2015 from 2.1% in 2011.

Still, challenges remain, including the high price of online video adsand the need for better reach and measurement. Several factors will mitigate these problems, making the upward course for video ad spending strong in 2012 and beyond. These factors include better filtering technologies for user-generated content, so publishers can better monetize it with ads; the emergence of cost per view and cost per engagement pricing structures; the increased use of interactive ad units and magnetic content; and personalization and targeting of video ads.

Source: www.emarketer.com

A Facebook spokesperson confirmed that ecommerce sites are increasingly adding social features. She shared with us a new statistic: 88% of Internet Retailer Top 200 retail sites are integrated with Facebook.

Sociable Labs’ founder and CEO Nisan Gabbay explained that the target age market for an ecommerce site has surprisingly little influence on the percentage of visitors that were logged in to Facebook. Those aimed at college students were closer to 60%, but even those with middle aged saw at least 40% of visitors logged in.

The data was collected using the FB.getLoginStatus() API call from sites of Sociable Labs’ analytics and eCommerce integration customers. Gabbay tells me that while some of the studied sites attract early adopters, he has discussed the data with Facebook and the company validated it. Also, despite the fact that his company could benefit from more sites adopting social, the sample size is large enough to decrease the likelihood of bias.

“People look at Facebook’s active user count but don’t quite get how pervasive the service is in people’s lives. It’s there all the time in any activity they do online”, Gabbay says. The stats indicate that there may be less risk of sites offending non-Facebook users by adding social functionality than one might expect, because there just aren’t that many hold-outs any more. There’s also technical ways to detect if a user is logged in, and hide those big blue social plugins if they’re not.

As we enter the holiday season, there will be a critical mass of shoppers taking actions on ecommerce sites. Those willing to develop or license Facebook integrations can use social data to point visitors to the products most relevant to them. This can produce a lot more sales than leaving visitors them to browse aimlessly.

Source: Techgig

For advertisers that didn’t purchase any video ads so far this year, 84% say they will include digital video in their campaigns in Q4 2011 or 2012.

Advertisers say they are most likely to shift spending away from display and print ads to fund the increased online video spending. While some have feared online video might start replacing TV ad spending, the report claims television ad budgets, especially for cable, are safe for now. A majority of advertisers say online video ads are a direct compliment to TV, not a replacement for TV ads.

The report, which surveyed nearly 600 advertisers, publishers, and video technology providers, says rates for interactive video ads are up an average of 19 percent over last year.

Some other key findings:

1. Brand engagement is the top online video campaign objective.
2. Sharing video via social networks is an important return-on-investment metric for buyers.
3. Rich media overlays, pre-rolls, and content integration are the favorite ad formats.
4. Page-roll, expanding video banners, and post-rolls are the least favorite.
5. Video ad spending on the iPad is up 18%, the highest among all devices.
6. Average CPM for Premium content, broadcast content online: $21-$30
7. Average CPM for Mid-Tier, professionally produced content: $11-$20
8. Average CPM for User Generated Content: $0 – $5

A webcast about the findings will be streaming at Noon ET at www.digidayvideo.com. There will also be a Twitter-based Q&A at 1pm ET via @Adap.tv with the hashtag #StateofVideo. When the webcast ends, the report will be available online at www.adap.tv.

The business and technology of online video will also be the big topic today when the Streaming Media West conference kicks off in Los Angeles.

Source: Techcrunch.com

Click Here for Registration @ https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/976506490

Webinar Agenda:

1. Basic Understanding of Current Challenges

2. Why? Where? How? Successful use Cases of Personalization

3. Case Study for Implementing Personalized Landing Pages

4. Overview of Solution Approaches and how to Choose a Solution

5. Future of Personalization in the Web

About Speaker: Mr. Daniel Rebhorn

1. Founder, dmc GmbH Germany and Chairman, Embitel India

2. Industry expert with more than 16 years of experience in Retail e-Commerce and e-Marketing

Click Here for Registration @ https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/976506490

Date and Time of Webinar

Date: Thursday 1st December 2011

Time: 4 PM to 5PM (IST)

Venue: Just stay in front of your PC

Cost: Free Webinar

Google has announced a new option to bid differently for phone calls versus clicks to your web site with Bid To Call charged on a cost-per-phone call (CPP) basis.

So if you are willing to pay $5 for a phone call but only $1 for a click to your web site, you can now specify so.

The ad position for these are are based on the quality score and CPP price. The algorithm is Ad rank = (max CPC bid x click quality score) + (max CPP x phone call quality score).

How do you set this up?

You need to select the option to use a Google forwarding number when you set up Call Extensions. Then you must enter a Max CPP bid in order to activate bid-per-call.

Then when someone sees your ad and calls you, Google will charge you the CPP price:

• Money Transfer

• Location-Based Services

• Mobile Search

• Mobile Browsing

• Mobile Health Monitoring

• Mobile Payment

• Near Field Communication Services

• Mobile Advertising

• Mobile Instant Messaging

• Mobile Music

1. Carefully research your own favorite e-commerce sites. Creatively adapt the most compelling marketing and design techniques to enhance your site's effectiveness.

2. Your home page is your site's – and your business’ – online front door. It's essential that it make a good first impression on visitors. Make sure it clearly presents the following basic elements that customers are always likely to look for:

• Your company name, logo, and tagline prominently displayed.Take full advantage of the opportunity to showcase your brand identity.
  
• Contact information. Don't make it difficult for visitors to find your phone number, e-mail address, mailing address, and fax number.
  
• A link to an "About the Company" page for customers to quickly learn who you are and what your business offers.
  
• A site menu listing the basic subsections of your site. Keep this menu in the same place on every page throughout your site to make it easy to navigate.
  
• A "What's New" section for news, announcements, and product promotions. Frequently updating this area will encourage customers to return often.
  
• Your privacy statement, clearly describing your business's policy for protecting customer's personal information.

3. Make it easy for customers to navigate your site. As you build your site, try to minimize the number of clicks it takes the customer to go from your home page to actually being able to make a purchase. Four to six clicks is a useful rule of thumb. Make sure links make sense, so customers know what to click to find what they're looking for. Don't make your navigation buttons or links too dominant an element in your site design: instead, focus on product information.

Where to Find the Right Web Host VeriSign's Secure Site ISP Program's Premier Partners include the industry's leading ISPs and Web hosting companies, such as:

• Interland
  
• Digital Insight
  
• Rackspace
  
• Affinity
  
• Digex

4. Keep things simple. Don't fill up your site with graphics, animations, and other visual bells and whistles. Stick to the same basic color palette and fonts your company uses in other communications, like your logo, brochures, and signage. Ensure that images and graphics serve to enhance, not distract from, your marketing goals. Make sure the text is easy to read – black letters on a white ground may not be terribly original, but they are easier on the eyes than orange type on a purple background.

5. Keep download times short. Test pages to make sure they're not too heavy with graphics that will slow load times – and minimize the size of your images when possible. Zona Research estimates that most Web pages take anywhere from three to eleven seconds to load, depending on the user's modem and Internet connection (remember: many e-commerce customers shop from home using slower connections). Most users click away to another site or log off if a page takes more than eight seconds to load, costing e-commerce businesses billions in lost potential revenue.

It need not be told that designing an e-commerce website is a bit different as well as demanding. It is required to be designed keeping in mind the target audience. In fact, it is very important to ensure the success of the site. The prerequisites for the success of an e-commerce website are high productivity, usability, and functionality. Visual impact is highly significant and productivity and convenience comes after that. There is no dearth of web development services offering different types of web design services. However, not all that glistens is gold. One has to be extremely careful while selecting a web development company.

So how can you make sure that your e-commerce web page design becomes a success? Discussed below are some of the dos and don’t s of e-commerce web page design.

Dos

1. Do make the design simple and concise.  It is important to realize that simplicity and concision are the stepping stones towards success. These two factors help to give you an edge. Instead of stuffing too much and irrelevant information, which visitors find really annoying, simply provide the required information in a nice manner. Keep the site structure neat and simple. The focus should be on providing only the relevant content and information.
   
2. Navigation plays an important role. Make it convenient for the visitors to navigate through the site. A complex design results in difficult navigation that confuses the visitor. When confused, the visitor will switch to some other site. Ensure that the navigation of your site is highly user friendly. One of the good ways to turn your visitor into a customer, place a ‘buy now’ link that helps a visitor to close the deal right there. This really helps and researches have also proved it.
   
3. Make sure that you have the working links. One of the biggest frustrations for the visitors for an e-commerce website is the broken or wrongly directed links. It is highly imperative to ensure that each and every link placed on your site leads to the right place.
   
4. Keep the language simple. There is no point trying to impress customers using bombastic language. They are there to buy products not to review the quality of content. E-commerce website is all about providing lucid and required information to visitors that helps them to make instant purchases. Therefore, keep the language simple and clear.
   

Don’t s

1. Do not develop a site that takes time to load. Most of the times, people end up stuffing too much of images, audios and videos to make the site attractive. But they only contribute in making a website really slow. A slow loading website annoys the customers. Hence, avoid using unnecessary and irrelevant audios and videos.
   
2. Do not make the interaction a challenge for your visitors. When it comes to shopping online, visitors love to make purchases from an interactive site. You should provide your contact information to them. It would encourage them to make the purchase.
   
3. Do not install unnecessary software. Keep the things simple. Do not make customers download and install software for viewing your site. This makes them run away.
   

All the above mentioned points will definitely do the trick for you. Follow them in the right manner and it will help you come up with a perfect ecommerce web  design that will definitely bring success for your website.

Source: pixelcrayons.com

1. Easily accept online payments
   
2. Immediate and convenient.
   
3. Payment is deposited directly into the seller's account.
   
4. No need for customer to have a PayPal account
   
5. Send money to anyone with an email address.
   
6. No separate hosting, shopping cart, payment gateway or merchant account required.
   
7. Inexpensive set-up and processing fees
   
8. You can pay directly from the item listing page.
   
9. No requirement that you use your credit card (you can transfer money directly from your bank account).
   
10. Sellers don't see your credit card number (it is safely encrypted through PayPal's server), which limits the risk of unauthorized use.
    
11. Automatic payment tracking.
    
12. Easy set-up on the shopping cart websites
    
13. PayPal Buyer Protection offered on qualifying items – up to $1,000 in free coverage. 
    
14. Include your own logo or background in Paypal
    
15. Additional limited protection offered through PayPal's Money Back Guarantee.
    

Payment gateway service providers in India provide you a comprehensive ecommerce website package or only payment gateway integration service according to the choice of your payment gateway. With our extensive experience with payment gateway services and implementations we can easily help you out with various payment gateway services and payment gateway integrations for numerous payment gateway service providers in India or abroad. List of payment gateways already implemented.

• PaySeal, ICICI ePayments Ltd., India
• CCAvenue
• HDFC Bank India
• Secure-e-pay, Global Tele-Systems Ltd., India
• American Express
• Paysignet 
• E-Billing Solutions (EBS)
• ABC Payments
• Cell Pay
• 2checkout.com
• Paypal
• CitiBank India, India

"4 out of 5 internet users ‘shop’ online, translating into a 50 million strong online consumer base. 17 million of these ‘online shoppers’ (or 29 per cent of all internet users), also ‘buy’ online recording a growth of 70 per cent from 10 million last year. Online buyers of ‘non-travel’ products stand at 13.5 million outnumbering 8.6 million travel buyers," the study quoted.

Most bought ‘non-travel’ products were mobile phones and accessories recording 56 per cent responses, computer hardware and consumer electronics contribute 35 per cent each and movie tickets stand at 30 per cent. Most bought ‘travel’ products were train tickets at 83 per cent and air tickets at 58 per cent.

“The growth is largely ‘PC’ driven as access on mobile phones is still only among 1 in 4 internet user. Mobile is adding ‘depth of usage’ and 8 out of 10 mobile internet users are ‘dual’ users. Only mobile based usage is low at 3 per cent with 1.8 million users,” the study said. Home is the single largest place of access recording 58 per cent, and the most preferred place of access recording 43 per cent responses. Only ‘Home’ and ‘transit’ show growth in usage on ‘preferred place’ basis.

The study further states that internet reaches 29 million Indian households (avg. users per household up marginally at 2.23) and covers 11.3 per cent of all Indian households and 5.4 per cent of all Indians with 13 per cent urban and 2 per cent rural. Over 4 in 5 are ‘daily’ users. Daily users’ base grew at 33 per cent.

Almost 2/3rd of all internet users are employed and 71 per cent of the employed ones ‘head’ of their households. 2/3rd of online Indians belong to SEC A,B and C, with claimed ‘average’ monthly family income of `18,720; 1 in 4 have a credit card. Female user-ship ‘inch’ up further at 27 per cent but ‘housewives’ segment declines.

Connection speeds of internet usage has picked up noticeably from all places of access, which indicated that a good proportion of existing users have been ‘upgrading’ their connection speeds.

Online search for products (especially non-travel products) has been up significantly, making ‘shopping’ the 2nd most popular online activity (at 85 per cent) after emailing. Social and professional networking also gained usership further reaching 61 per cent and 48 per cent usage. Usage of all ‘social media’ platforms put together inched up to 86 per cent.

Job search, cinema ticket booking and reading product reviews are other activities that gained users. Downloading screensavers/wallpapers, online trading in shares and watching videos showed the most declines in usage. Usership of ‘local language’ content gained only marginally recording 2 per cent growth to reach 29 per cent.

Google continues to dominate the online landscape with Google, Gmail, Gtalk and YouTube being the most used websites for 19 distinct online activities (compared to 24 activities last year). Facebook emerges as the leader in 6 distinct verticals including online games and even professional networking. For the rest of the verticals, it is the ‘specialized’ players who lead or dominate user preferences like Naukri, IRCTC, EBay, 99Acres, MoneyControl, ShareKhan, BharatMatrimony, Toorentz, Songs.pk, ESPNStar.

“25 to 35 years’ user segment grows further as the ‘single largest’ online age group. 9 out of 10 ‘home’ and ‘office’ based online Indians log on to the net ‘daily’ and almost half of all ‘home based’ net users are ‘heavy users’ of internet (spending >2 hours a day on weekdays). Less than 1 in 3 of them spend that kind time on other media. Net surfing is among top 3 favorite ‘indoor entertainment’ for 3 out of 4 of them and 9 out of 10 of them (86 per cent) use some ‘social media’ (networking, communities, blogs, tweets, reviews).

The India Online Landscape 2011 studies the online Indians and their net usage behavior and preferences. This year’s annual land survey was conducted between April 2011 to Mid June 2011 to profile and estimate ‘internet users’ in India.  The survey covered ‘towns’ and ‘villages’ of all population strata in all the mainland states and union territories in India (covering all the key, and 80 of the total 88 regions in India as per latest classification by NSSO). Net usage dynamics, usage behavior and website preferences were captured from the ‘actual’ internet users in an online survey using Juxt’s own 180,000+ member Internet User Panel.

Source: http://www.techgig.com

Google’s new social product Google+ launched to great fanfare a few weeks ago, and since then many have been speculating about how quickly the site has grown and whether or not it’s the fastest growing site in history. It’s fair to say the initial market response has been very positive overall, with accolades going to its design, usability and approach to group networking with Circles.

To get a better understanding of how Google+ is performing to date and who is using it, comScore pulled together some figures based on the first 21 days of its public existence (June 29, 2011 – July 19, 2011). Importantly, these data are based on unique visitors (which is different than “users” in that people who never sign up may visit Google+ pages) from home and work computers (which excludes usage via mobile devices). In addition, comScore is measuring behavior from people who visit plus.google.com pages, which may not include usage that occurs through the Google+ bar at the top of most Google pages.

As of July 19, comScore showed Google+ at just about 20 million visitors worldwide, an extraordinary number in just its first three weeks. That number represents an increase of 82% from the previous week and 561% vs. two weeks prior. The U.S. audience recently surpassed 5 million visitors, up 81% from the previous week and 723% from two weeks earlier.

It would be difficult to think of many sites that reached such a large number in such a short period of time. That said, Google does have a built-in visitor base of more than 1 billion to work with, so there is clearly potential to convert a high number of users to its new social tool – even if it is still invite-only.

What is also interesting about the rapid growth of Google+ is its proliferation on a global basis. While the U.S. leads in Google+ audience, it currently accounts for 27% of the total worldwide audience. Interestingly, India holds a strong #2 position with 2.8 million visitors. The UK (867,000 visitors), Canada (859,000 visitors) and Germany (706,000 visitors) round out the top five.

Time will ultimately tell if Google+ can leverage its early momentum to reach critical mass among users and capture a firm foothold in the well-established social networking market.

Source: bestmediainfo.com

An H1 heading is a prominent piece of text on a web page. It's like the headline of a newspaper or magazine article – it helps readers quickly understand what the web page is about. For example, if this email were a web page, "Search Engines Notice H1 Headings" would be its H1 heading.

An H1 heading is plain text that lives between these HTML tags: <h1> and </h1>

How can H1 headings help my search engine rankings?

Because headings are defined with HTML code, search engines understand that these pieces of text are of particular importance. You should include important keywords for a page in its H1 heading to tell search engines what the page is about, and help it rank higher in results for searches on those words.

Do my website's pages have H1 headings?

You can find out by looking at the HTML source code for every page on your site. When you're viewing the page, look for this option in your web browser. For example, in Firefox, you would click "View" at the top of the page, and then "Page Source." You'll see a page of code, and you can search for <h1> tags.

Because H1 headings are important and it's tedious to check them manually, we analyze these – and many other SEO elements – in our Site Report.  We'll alert you to any pages that don't have an H1 heading, and also any pages that have two or more (you should have one per page). We show you what your H1 headings say, and alert you if they're too long, or include anything other than plain text (they shouldn't). 

How can I add or change my H1 headings?

Your content management system should have a simple way to add an H1 heading to each page. Look for an option like "heading".  If you don't see it, consult the Help pages of the tool you use, or contact their support people.

If you can edit the HTML code for your website, you can add an H1 heading where you want it to show up, like this: <h1>What you want the heading to say</h1> You can also look for an existing H1 heading, and change the text between the tags.

Some website editors don't allow you to add an H1 heading or edit the HTML code for web pages. If this is the case, you won't be able to add an H1 heading. But you can emphasize a piece of text to make it look like a heading by making the font bigger or by making it bold. This will help your visitors, and it will be a signal to search engines that this piece of text is important, much like an H1 heading.

Rick Rusch who is a senior leader in business and marketing.predicting that 2012 will be the year of the mobile payment movement.

Mobile payment, if you’re unfamiliar with the concept, is when consumers use their phones, like a credit card, with the help of a special near-field communication (NFC) microchip. Consumers could conceivably leave their wallets at home and pay with the tap of a phone instead.  While mobile commerce (buying stuff from online websites was nearly a $5 billion business in 2010, according to ABI Research estimates…their forecast for 2015 is jaw dropping. Shoppers around the world are expected to spend about $119 billion on goods and services purchased via  mobile phones. That number represents about 8% of the total e-commerce market.

But back to mobile payment, which is yet to take off in the USA.

Not surprisingly Apple has their eye on a “bigger” use for NFC technology.

The maker of the best-selling smartphone in the world—the iPhone 4—and the fourth largest cell phone manufacturer in the world, Apple Inc. reportedly wants to use NFC technology in future iPhone models to allow Apple’s computers to be able to act as terminals for information stored on iPhones. Users would essentially sync their iPhones with their Macintosh computers and then be able to use other Macs as their own after quickly scanning their iPhone via NFC and temporarily transferring their user data to the Mac acting as a terminal. You would be able to login to your computer from anywhere as long as you have the proper iPhone and can find access to a Mac with the ability turned on.

Be prepared for your smartphone to be even more hardworking in the next few months. Once your phone becomes the gateway to purchases and the remote key to your computer you’ll never want to “leave home without it.”

The Google Network is a large group of websites and other products, such as email programs and blogs, who have partnered with Google to display AdWords ads. Advertisers have the option of running their ads on Google as well as the Google Network for no extra cost.

AdWords ads are placed based either on searches or website content, so the Google Network has two components: the Search Network and the Display Network.

Who's part of the Google Network?

We are always expanding the number of sites and products in our network through our premium services, our online Google AdSense program, and Double Click Ad Exchange. Participating websites must adhere to Google AdSense standards.

Keyword-targeted ads

Besides appearing on search results on Google, AdWords advertisers are automatically eligible to have their campaigns with keywords appear on the Google Network.

The Google Search Network

Ads are targeted based on a user's search terms. For example, if you search for "Italian coffee" on a search engine powered by Google, such as AOL.com, you'll see related coffee ads next to the search results.

The Google Display Network

Text, image, video, or rich media ads are targeted based on themes in your keyword list, rather than specific keywords. You can target websites that have partnered with Google (display partners), YouTube, and specific Google properties.

• Placement-targeted ads on the Display Network: Placements are another way of targeting ad groups. By adding placements to ad groups, advertisers can choose the sites where they would like their ad to appear, or bid more for those sites when they're a match for the ad group's keywords. 
• Adding audiences to your Display Network campaign: Use remarketing to reach people who previously visited your website, and match the right people with the right message. You can show users these messages as they browse sites across the Google Display Network. Remarketing is a feature of interest-based advertising available on the Audiences tab.
• Display Network bids: You may also choose to enable the Display Network bids feature. This lets AdWords advertisers set one price when their ads run on Google and Search Network sites, and a different price when their ads run on the Google Display Network.

Setting where you want your ads to show

New campaigns that start with keywords are automatically opted in to distribution on the Google Network, so if you want your ads to appear on Search and Display Network sites and products, you don't need to do a thing. We recommend targeting both the Search and Display Networks. You can adjust your campaign settings to show only on the Search Network or only on the Display Network. 

Source: Google

Let us have a look at some of the recent investments by Global Venture Funds in Indian e-commerce ventures

Online Apparel retailers – Myntra.com, Zovi.com, Exclusively.In, Yebhi.com (primarily shoes)

Deals and Group discounting – Snapdeal, Deals and you, Fashion & You.

Books to Electronics: Flipkart, Indiaplaza, Letsbuy, BuyThePrice

Baby and Maternity wear: Babyoye.com, Firstcry.com

Closed group exclusive discounting: Fashion & You. 99labels

Some Acquisitions: Chaupaati Bazaar by Future Group, SoSasta by Groupon, PicSquare by Infibeam

Newspapers, blogs and other media forms are talking endlessly about e-commerce being the next big thing. We have humungous numbers being spelt out daily, projecting the industry to grow @70% Y-o-Y to reach $ 10 Billion this financial year. The growth and revenue targets might really sound a tall order to the cynics, but let us compare the figures with some other regions of the world.

USA: $ 210 Billion (Amazon reached $32 Billion)

Western Europe: $120 Billion

Japan: No clear figure but clearly more than $ 100 Billion

China: $ 80 Billion (Taobao.com did $61 Billion and did $150 Million in a single promotional day)

Compared to these numbers, the $ 10 Billion suddenly looks very small. Especially considering that the size of internet users in India has crossed 100 Million, we are only talking about $100 per person in a year. This is less than the online payment it’d generate if it is assumed that half the internet users have broadband connection and they pay their monthly rental online. Or, everyone buys one electronic item a year. Or, only 10% buy their grocery online. Or, only 1% buy their grocery, apparel, tickets, electronics online. Now this number suddenly is dwarfed by the possibilities that the remaining 99% of the market presents.

So, it is very safe to assume that the next gold rush is in Indian E-commerce market. The earlier you jump onto it, the better prospects you have of making a fortune!

Facebooks growth is slowing down and this is true specially in its US core market. This is to be expected as Facebook stabilizes and becomes a mainstream site in US market. In May Facebook lost almost 1 percentage point of visits dropping from 64.35% to 63.46%. But do not fear for Facebook as it still commands more than half of all US population. 

YouTube gained 0.56 percentage points moving to 20.50 percent of visits from 19.94 in April.

In May we got a new number three and four. After agonizing decline MySpace finally dropped from third place to fifth with only 1.06 percent remaining from its once dominant market share. This “once” was mere two years ago In May 2009.

Drum roll please, the new number three is Twitter with 1.15 percent by market share of visits. To get to this position Twitter had to pass Yahoo! Answers which lost ground in May.

Now the top 3 social networking sites by market share of visits match our perception:

1. Facebook
2. YouTube
3. Twitter

Last month LinkedIn’s marketshare moved slightly upto 0.39 percent as its stock price dropped about 25% from the first day of public trading.

The chart below is in logarithmic scale so that the smaller sites wouldn’t just a single line around 1% of social network market share. Every month in the chart lists the top 10 sites of that time by the market share of visits. Please note that it is just a percentage and 30% in January 2009 is a lot less than 30% in September 2010. The gaps in the the lines mean that the site wasn’t in the top 10 at that time.

Source: dreamgrow.com/top-10-social-networking-sites-by-market-share-of-visits-may-2011/

The Social networking sites trend does not show any type of slowdown in the foreseeable future as many entrepreneurs are now using social media as a tool to market their business. Whether someone considers this paradigm shift a good thing or a bad thing, it does not reflect just how fast social networking is growing. Businesses and companies today are fully aware of the power of social networking and are putting resources behind it. This only enhances the future of this new genre and will continue to be a major force in any type of internet business strategy.

A web host is the server where your web site is stored. Generally Search Engine Optimization efforts overlook hosting features. But hosting affects SEO both directly and indirectly. The primary aim of Search Engine Optimization is to generate more revenues for your online business. Hosting servers affect user experience to a great extent thereby affecting the profitability of the web site. 

Effects of Hosting on Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and how to minimize them:

• Spiders crawl web sites to index them. If your hosting server is down at the time the crawler visits your web page, it leaves your page without crawling. Consequently, no indexing happens and you lose an opportunity to get your site optimized. Check the reliability of your Hosting server.
• Generally small to medium sized web sites are hosted on shared servers. The server hosts other sites which you are unaware of. If any of these sites is blocked as a spammer and is de- indexed by search engines, your web site also stands a chance to go down in ranking on SERPs. Ensure that you do not share a server with a potential spammer. For e-commerce and other larger web sites opt for a dedicated server.
• Link Building is an important aspect of SEO. One common feature of Link Building is to have a network of web sites that link to your main web site. When spiders crawl a web site, they index all aspects of a web page including IP addresses. It is recommended to have different IP addresses for all your network web sites.
• Robot.txt file plays a crucial role in directing the robots/ spiders on your web page. If robot.txt file is set to disallow robots, no indexing happens. Most hosting companies leave this blank or does not include robot.txt.  Verify the status of your robot.txt file from your hosting service provider.
• Now coming to the actual user of your web site-the visitor.  If your server speed is slow, web page loading time increases and it is a big put off for visitors. Visitors bounce off your site in no time. Recently major search engines like Google have also started considering page loading time as a determinant of PageRank.
• Once you have zeroed in on your Hosting service provider, ensure that your subscription is for a minimum period of 1 year or more. This assures search spiders that your web site is genuine and not built for spamming purposes.

Source: SEO Pandit

Google generates these links automatically, but you can remove sitelinks you don't want.

Google claimed the number-one spot in U.S. display advertising in the first quarter, with 14.7% of the market ($396 million), up from 13.3% in Q4 2010. Yahoo’s hold on the market declined from 13.6% to 12.3%, or $330 million, in that same period.

Facebook, meanwhile, had 8.8% of the display market, or $238 million. Karsten Weide, IDC vice president and the author of the report, says he expects Facebook‘s share to overtake Yahoo’s in the third or fourth quarter.

Weide says the latest numbers reflect Google’s strength rather than Yahoo’s weakness. “They have a huge search network,” Weide says, “And anything you offer based on that is likely to work well.”

Google got into the display ad arena in earnest in September 2009, after its acquisition of DoubleClick. Since then, the business has grown rapidly and is now estimated to be worth $2.5 billion a year, including YouTube.

Other findings of the IDC report:

• Global online ad spending grew 14.3% to $18.2 billion in the first quarter.
• U.S. spending was up 14.2% to $8.1 billion.
• For the ninth quarter in a row, display is growing faster than search advertising. Display’s share is now at 33.3% vs. 29% two years ago.
• Google’s share of search advertising rose to 59.6% (vs. 59.1% in Q4 2010). Microsoft’s share was 7.9%. Yahoo’s was 7%.

Source: linkedin.com

Video Marketing: Getting a marketing campaign to go viral can take one of two things: hard work or luck. Regardless of whether your company becomes the next top video on YouTube, more consumers are finding out about great companies through video marketing.

SEO for Best Results: SEO is no longer a static field (although it never was as such). SEO is changing in tandem with changes in search engines (such as Google introducing Google Instant) and with more and more optimization focused on social media.

Mobile Ecommerce: Mobile ecommerce is on the rise – 2011 will show an increase in the number of solely mobile (dedicated) ecommerce websites than in 2010. This is because smartphone usage has increased by 48.7% in the UK only with 54.3 Million units in 2010.

eMail Marketing: No longer are email marketers just sending out standard emails to everyone on their list. Segmentation is just a middleman: if full personalization is possible, you should grab it by the neck. More than just targeting previous purchasers, our Personal Merchant email add-on enables each email to be personalized based upon buy, browse and click behavior.

Increased importance of Analytics: In 2011, merchants will increasingly rely on Analytics in their ecommerce – an aspect of ecommerce that was previously neglected. This is after a decrease in online search for products and an increase in other search terms such as getting discounts. As such, ecommerce merchants will rely more on analytics.

Tweets and Social Networking: With the explosion of social networking, most ecommerce companies are creating social network profiles of their own. Through sites like Twitter and Facebook, companies are able to offer promotions to fans, get feedback on products, and connect with the people buying their products and services. Some companies are even using social networking as one component of their customer service. Have a complaint? Tweet about it and see how quickly you get a response.

Embitel announcing our 8th webinar of the Retail e-Commerce Series which is titled: “Bridging the gap between Offline and Online Retailing: Multi-Channel Retailing” on May 19th, 2011 at 4:00 PM IST. We are sure that you would be interested to participate in this webinar and also will nominate your colleagues in our programs. 

Growth of Multi Channel Retailing

Retailers are increasingly leveraging their presence across channels like catalog, web, store, call centers and kiosks to increase their share of the customer’s wallet and expand across consumer segment.  Recent studies of consumer shopping behavior indicate that multi-channel shoppers show a significantly higher value and frequency of purchase than single channel shoppers. Over 65% of online shoppers use catalogs and 60% of retailers found multi-channel customers more profitable than single channel customers.

In this webinar, Mr. Daniel Rebhorn will share his knowledge about Multi-channel retailing with following agenda:

Webinar Agenda:

• Idea of Multi-Channel Retailing?
  
• Is Indian customer ready for Multi Channel Retailing?
  
• Does Multi – Channel Retailing leads to cannibalization of your existing sales channel?
  
• Channel Integration in Multi-Channel Retailing
  
• Worldwide Case Studies
  
• Suggested approach for Multi Channel Retailing in India
  
• Multi – Channel Retailing Outlook
  

You're very welcome to JOIN THIS WEBINAR @ FREE and learn more about the possibilities in “Multi-Channel Retailing”

CLICK HERE FOR REGISTRATION

About Speaker: Mr. Daniel Rebhorn

- Founder, dmc GmbH Germany and Chairman, Embitel India
- Industry expert with more than 16 years of experience in Retail e-Commerce and e-Marketing

When: Thursday, 19th May 2011

Time: 4:00pm to 5:00pm IST

Venue: Just stay in front of your PC

Cost: Free

We can define twitter as social medium, money earning medium, social communication medium, entertaining medium and so on.  These all definition suites only for who knows the tactics and secrets of twitter for business promotion. I would like to share some of the twitter promotion tips for your business.

Twitter Promotion Ideas:

• Create a twitter account with URL related to your business. Make sure that your business or website name included in it. For example http://www.twitter.com/embitel
• Upload image for your twitter profile and optimize the image using free twitter tools.
• Add your corporate business website URL in profile, so that visitors come to know your website presence.
• Promote your twitter presence by adding twitter link on websites, email signatures, customers newsletter and so on.
• Do not forget to include your brand name as the title of your profile.
• Use Free Google keyword tool to select keywords related to your business and add it with your tweets using the “#” symbol before it.
• Use your keyword in first 30 characters of your tweet which will be easily track by google real time search engine.
• Select some important keywords of your business and include in your “bio” section.
• Find your targeted audience based on their interest and this is the most important part of twitter business promotion.
• Use Twitter directories like twellow, Justtweetit to find your targeted audience in category wise and start follow them.
• Start follow the influencers related to your business or industry which makes you up to date with industry updates.
• Use twitter profile management tool like Hoot suite to manage your multiple twitter account, in case of various business.
• Use collaborative tweeting tool cotweet.com – Make conversation using this tool. It will bring more exposure to your business.
• Post tweets about useful links, resources, images, info graphs related to your business.
• Search the topic related to your business and talk to influencer.
• Send direct message to the people about your product or service. (People who is need of your business related service)
• Post new product screen shots on twitpic.com portal.
• Increase sales using twitter by giving special offers and coupons to your followers. (Use twtqpon app to distribute your coupon via twitter)
• Send your offers to your followers using twitter bulk message sending application.  Before sending direct messages analyze the interest of your followers
• Security is necessary for your business twitter profile and user strong password to protect your twitter account from hackers.  If you find any security issues, change your password immediately without fail. Do not link links send via direct messaged from anonymous.

Complete Your LinkedIn Profile: Before doing anything else, make sure your LinkedIn profile is complete and up to date. There is absolutely no point in improving your search engine rank if the end destination does not represent you accurately. I wouldn’t go too overboard trying to game the system, but search engines do scan the information in your profile, so make sure you are including the keywords you want associated with your name.

Customize Your URL: You can customise the URL associated with your profile to include your name, rather than the random sequence of numbers LinkedIn generates for you. URLs are incredibly important component of SEO, so this is a no brainer. 

Pay Special Attention to Your Job Title and Location: Your location and job title are the only personalised pieces of information provided on a generic search for your name on LinkedIn. There is not often a lot of flexibility in job roles, but perhaps think about how you can present your title in the most effective way to include desired keywords.

Include Your Entire Job History: People may be looking for you by searching for previous companies you have worked for. If these are not included in your profile then you may not be found. This is particularly important for people with more common names.

Specialities: Make sure you fill out all the sections. A particularly good section for including keywords is the Specialities section. Google does index this section, so make good use of it.

Join Related Groups: There is an enormous value in joining LinkedIn groups beyond SEO. From an SEO perspective they help by associating the name of the group with your search profile. Search for Groups that are aligned with your professional interests. The Group names will typically include relevant keywords for you.

Customize Your Links: Rather than the generic, blog, company website or Twitter links that LinkedIn generates you can customise your personal URLs to generate more potential Google Juice. This is a little bit involved, so check out this handy video created by Mike Volpe of HubSpot.

Answer Questions: I have heard it suggested that you can improve your search rankings by responding to questions on LinkedIn, thus creating link backs to your profile. I would imagine Google is clever enough to ignore this, but perhaps I am wrong? Irrespective, answering questions does raise your profile generally and is a good idea, so I have included.

Google has opened up Google MapMaker to all Google Account users to edit any spot in the United States. With the philosophy of "you know your neighborhood best," Google wants everyone to jump online to tag their favorite bike paths, coffee shops, college buildings and more.

Google Mapmaker is a product where Google allows the general public to draw shapes to tag buildings, parks, paths, rivers and more inside a Google map product. Mapmaker has been around since 2008.

To prevent spam and verify accuracy of the information, each of the edits made need to be verified by other Google users before they are made live. To get people to assist in editing, Google states that if you review some edits, your edits will get reviewed faster. If you don't want to edit, using Google Earth you can watch others as they edit live.

How To Edit

To make edits in Google Mapmaker, navigate to the location you want to edit and click one of the icons in the "add" toolbox. You can add a point, a line or a polygon shape. When you do, Google presents you with a series of fields with which to label your new location. These labels include name, street address, categories, web address, email, and many more context-specific tags.

Reference: searchenginewatch.com

Is the Indian consumers still not matured for e Commerce and m Commerce retailing ? Well, the debate continues as the more traditional players still have a mindset that the Indian consumer is not ready but the people in second school of thought, believes they are ready.

It is definitely true to a certain extent, that Indian customer is willing to indulge for guaranteed supply like e-tickets, movie tickets etc. But he is wary, when it comes to delivery of products, as retailers have no clear policy and guarantee mechanism regarding fulfillment.

This can be resolved, if the retailers offer consumer with option of ordering it online and picking his packed items in stores would help to overcome this initial block in the mindset and would give them the needed confidence. Already this has started working, as consumers have the choice to buy on line and pick at the store using tenders like m-coupons etc.

As a consumer, this saves me time and gives me the convenience of filling my cart without the hassles of moving around in a crowed store, at my convenient time, may be in the night when the store is not even open. It saves me the time of waiting in queue at the billing counter.

The Indian consumer is a smart consumer and is ready to adopt new channel looking for more convenience, if he is given a safe try. The option of Order Online and Pick in store has all.

Indian retailers need to change their attitude to succeed, Indian consumer is ready to take risk once and give opportunity to online retailer.

301 Redirect: 301 redirect is the most efficient and Search Engine Friendly method for webpage redirection. It's not that hard to implement and it should preserve your search engine rankings for that particular page. If you have to change file names or move pages around, it's the safest option. The code "301" is interpreted as "moved permanently".

Below are a Couple of methods to implement URL Redirection

IIS Redirect

• In internet services manager, right click on the file or folder you wish to redirect

• Select the radio titled "a redirection to a URL"

• Enter the redirection page

• Check "The exact url entered above" and the "A permanent redirection for this resource"

• Click on 'Apply'

ColdFusion Redirect

<.cfheader statuscode="301" statustext="Moved permanently">
<.cfheader name="Location" value="http://www.new-url.com"> 

PHP Redirect

<?
Header( "HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently" ); 
Header( "Location: http://www.new-url.com" ); 
?> 

ASP Redirect

<%@ Language=VBScript %>
<%
Response.Status="301 Moved Permanently"
Response.AddHeader "Location","http://www.new-url.com/"
%> 

ASP.NET Redirect

<script runat="server">
private void Page_Load(object sender, System.EventArgs e)
{
Response.Status = "301 Moved Permanently";
Response.AddHeader("Location","http://www.new-url.com");
}
</script> 

JSP (Java) Redirect

<%
response.setStatus(301);
response.setHeader( "Location", "http://www.new-url.com/" );
response.setHeader( "Connection", "close" );
%> 

CGI PERL Redirect

$q = new CGI;
print $q->redirect("http://www.new-url.com/"); 

Ruby on Rails Redirect

def old_action
headers["Status"] = "301 Moved Permanently"
redirect_to "http://www.new-url.com/"
end 

Redirect Old domain to New domain (htaccess redirect)

Create a .htaccess file with the below code, it will ensure that all your directories and pages of your old domain will get correctly redirected to your new domain.
The .htaccess file needs to be placed in the root directory of your old website (i.e the same directory where your index file is placed)

Options +FollowSymLinks
RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule (.*) http://www.newdomain.com/$1 [R=301,L]

Please REPLACE www.newdomain.com in the above code with your actual domain name.

In addition to the redirect I would suggest that you contact every backlinking site to modify their backlink to point to your new website.

Note* This .htaccess method of redirection works ONLY on Linux servers having the Apache Mod-Rewrite moduled enabled.

Redirect to www (htaccess redirect)

Create a .htaccess file with the below code, it will ensure that all requests coming in to domain.com will get redirected to www.domain.com 
The .htaccess file needs to be placed in the root directory of your old website (i.e the same directory where your index file is placed)

Options +FollowSymlinks
RewriteEngine on
rewritecond %{http_host} ^domain.com [nc]
rewriterule ^(.*)$ http://www.domain.com/$1 [r=301,nc]

Please REPLACE domain.com and www.newdomain.com with your actual domain name.

Note* This .htaccess method of redirection works ONLY on Linux servers having the Apache Mod-Rewrite moduled enabled.

How to Redirect HTML

Please refer to section titled 'How to Redirect with htaccess', if your site is hosted on a Linux Server and 'IIS Redirect', if your site is hosted on a Windows Server.

Source: webconfs.com

Yes, I mean it!!! Don’t play dirty SEO tricks (AKA black hat techniques) with the big G to capture those sweet top spots. If you do so, then you’ll be nowhere on Google’s search result again. I can substantiate my statement with a recent SEO scam that was published in NY Times. I am sure all of you must be aware of it. 

For those who are not aware of the news, here is a glimpse of it…

The retail giant JCPenney was identified for implementing black hat SEO techniques that ideally dominated the top spots for most of the umbrella phrases like dresses, bedding, area rugs, and more. So, how did they make their way to the top? The company was getting its SEO done through a third-party vendor who allegedly topped the Google results by getting backlinks from websites which were irrelevant to JCPenney or any of its pages. Though JCpenney said that they did not authorize this campaign as this is against their natural search policies, at the end of the day it was they (JCPenney) who had to suffer. 

Generally speaking, to gain top position on Google a site must have…

• Good site architecture – Crawler friendly site for easy crawling and indexing

• Relevant content – Information rich and useful content fortified with words, users type to find sites/pages

• Quality backlinks – A link from a site is considered as a vote for a linked site. Ideally, it has to be relevant and trustworthy. 

These techniques are obvious white hat practices and an ethical way of conducting search engine optimization, and it definitely takes time to yield result. While on the other hand, the so called black hat techniques will get you a quick result, but only for a short time. Black hat techniques involve paid links, page cloaking, keyword spamming, doorway pages, content spamming, hidden text, etc. These techniques are illegitimate and are regarded as dirty tricks which basically spam the search result and violate the search engine guidelines. 

Remember, Google is very much concerned about its search result because they want to display the most relevant sites/pages when their users use their service.  They will never tolerate if a site is found employing questionable SEO tactics that have spoiled their search result. 

If you or your SEO vendor is using any of the black hat techniques that I mentioned above, then be on high alert, who knows you could be the next victim of Google. 

How to identify black hat SEO techniques?

• Ask your SEO vendor to disclose their monthly SEO activities/strategies. Don’t get fooled by SEO companies that claim to bring you on top in short time, get xx no. of backlinks for x$, etc.

• Check your website’s backlink profile. To do this, you can use opensiteexplorer 

• Check if your site has been loaded with hidden content

• Check if a page has been created solely for targeting a specific search phrase 

• Check if a page is getting redirected 

• Check for excessive link exchanging from irrelevant sites 

Reference: retail-ecommerce.com

Here I have listed some strategies for developing a profitable AdWords Campaign

Make use of a Number of Market and Keyword Research Tools: Rather than while using AdWords Keyword Tool that everybody else uses includes other tools for example Word Tracker, Keyword Discovery, Word Pot and Thesaurus. Search for related keywords and misspellings.  You will find keywords that nobody else is applying for his or her AdWords campaigns.

Make use of the Best Keywords Inside your Ad: When bidding on the particular keyword is sure you include it within the title and the body of the ad. It’ll get bolded which makes it stick out amongst competing ads.

Create Different Ad Groups: Don’t place all of your keywords in a single ad group unless they all are closely related. Your ad group ought to be tightly targeted together with your ad. For instance “Italian red shoes” ought to be put into one ad group and “fashionable red shoes” put into another.

Test your Ads: Write 2 ads for the ad group and also have them rotate evenly to determine what one receives probably the most clicks. If a person ad isn’t performing well, delete or pause it and write a rather different one. Training to improve your CTR (click through rate). A higher CTR increases your conversions which mean you make more sales.

Switch off Content Targeting: Only show your ads on the internet search, Search Partners, Desktop and laptops unless you’re an AdWords expert. Switch off another options for example content targeting. This can prevent you spending lots of money and generate specific data associated with your ads.

Set a Regular Plan for Keywords: Calculate just how much you intend to spend daily and monthly. This can prevent you over spending. For instance should you set your everyday budget at $5.00 you’ll spend $150/month.

Set the Most Cost Per Click (CPC) for the Keywords: Make use of the Google Keyword Tool to see the typical CPC for the keywords. Bid above it if you wish to be indexed by the most important position about the page. Bid lower if you prefer a lower position. Remember you could adjust your bids after establishing your campaign. Also don’t think what Google suggests as frequently their suggestions are incorrect. Take control of the campaign.

Track Keywords: You should know what keywords triggered your conversions. I personally use Ad Trackz to trace my keywords. It takes only a couple of minutes to set-up and you will observe the recent results for each campaign. For tracking your squeeze pages or site use Google Analytics. It is a free tool provided by Google that tracks traffic, conversions and ROI.

Track Conversions: The conventional conversion minute rates are 1%. What this means is one sale per100 clicks. For instance in case your CPC is 30 cents, 100 clicks can cost you$30.00. Always work to enhance your conversion rate.

Analyze and Tweak Campaigns for Optimum Conversions: After letting your campaign run for any day or 2, analyze the information, then adjust your bids, write a brand new ad or try alternative keywords to enhance your click through rate (CTR) and conversions.

Over 75% of consumers use social media in some form, so if you're not using it you may be missing out on a big opportunity. Getting involved doesn't have to be complicated. Here are three things you can do to get in the game.  

Create a Blog and Post it With Relevant Content:

Blogs are easy to create and easy to maintain – with tools like wordpress or blogspot, you don't even need to consult a webmaster. The key is to create high-quality content that is relevant to your target audience. Keep it consistent and keep it real. Other than that, just have fun with it! Some suggestions for blog posts include:  

1. Industry-specific tips and insights 
   
2. Special offers or give-aways 
   
3. Analysis of recent news items 
   
4. Product tutorials 
   
5. Humorous anecdotes 
   
6. Interviews with employees, customers or partners 
   

Start a Facebook Fan Page & Update it With Relevant Content:

Facebook is one of the most popular sites in the world (along with Google). To get started, simply create a Facebook page where you can post updates, link to your blog articles, and receive feedback from your customers. As you post relevant content and interact with customers on your Facebook page, your fan base and your revenue will grow. 

Post Videos on YouTube and Post the Relevant Videos:

If a picture is worth a 1,000 words, a video must be worth 1,000 pictures (and 1,000,000 words)! Plus videos get priority in search engine results and allow you to show a little personality. Start with a company overview or a product demonstration and build your video library from there. 

As Facebook has entered the mainstream marketing mix, marketers are having to decide how much of their budget to divert from other channels into social campaigns.

Because search gets the lion's share of a digital marketing budget, it might seem like the most likely candidate for a cutback — after all, there's usually so much of it. But marketers might want to think twice before jumping to that conclusion, because it may very well be a blind leap of faith.

In the last year alone, the only thing more impressive than Facebook's growth has been the buzz around it. Users, page views, estimated value, and a Hollywood blockbuster all seem to point to "the next big thing" – something that all marketers should want to be part of.

In reality, Facebook marketing offers a very different value proposition from search marketing, and results-driven marketers can still get a much better return our of search than they can out of social.

Facebook: The Prodigal Channel

The last year has been nothing short of a series of achievements for Facebook — both as a social network, but also as marketing platform. Indeed, some of its marketing milestones have included:

• Pushing out Like Buttons

• Launching LBS product Facebook Places

• Launching Facebook Deals

• Generating nearly 25 percent of all page views in the U.S. — more than double that of Google and YouTube combined

• Launching Sponsored Stories

• Not to mention all the publicity from "The Social Network" ($96.4 million box office and numerous awards) and Mark Zuckerberg being named TIME's Person of the Year.

With Facebook also boasting close to 600 million users (or more, depending on who you believe), no one can deny that Facebook has become an attractive marketing platform. But there are different kinds of marketing platforms. As much reach as Facebook can provide, it doesn't offer the same kind of impact as search.

To that extent, Facebook and search offer very different value propositions. Indeed, comparing search and social is like comparing apples and oranges.

Search vs. Social

Despite Facebook's phenomenal growth and all the speculation about Facebook displacing Google and taking over search, Google (and search, in general) can still offer marketers a better ROI on their ad spend.

Granted, Americans might spend more than six times as much time on social networks as they do searching. But while Facebook's 2010 ad revenues are estimated at $1.86 billion, Google posted $6.77 billion in revenue in Q1 2010 alone.

Why is Google still raking so much more than Facebook? Well, part of it has to do with Google having already hit critical mass, but part of it has to do with the value that Google offers marketers over Facebook.

Search and Intentional Targeting

Google listings (paid or organic) are keyword driven (i.e., results are served up by keywords that are either typed into a search bar or exist on a page alongside AdSense ads).

As a result, Google listings leverage intent. Basically, when a user is searching for something, they are actively interested in it. They are already in a mindset where they want to know or have more.

And because these users are already interested in the keyword at the moment the listing/ad is served, this makes them a much more qualified and targeted prospect from a marketer's point of view.

Admittedly, keywords are one of the variables that Facebook relies on to serve up ads. More specifically, the Facebook algorithm looks at keyword themes that occur throughout users' social graph and therefore reflect their interests.

And as a targeting metric, interests do tell advertisers a lot about a user's personality. But they tell marketers nothing of a user's intent — their mood and what they're doing at that time.

Just because someone is interested in certain kinds of products in general, that doesn't mean that they are interested in buying any at any given time. For example, I might be a hot-rod enthusiast. But that doesn't mean that I'm looking to buy another hot rod, or can even afford one for that matter.

Social Intent vs. Search Intent

More importantly, Facebook ads not only fail to gauge what a user's current intent might be, but they fail to acknowledge what Facebook know a user's intent is.

Essentially, most Facebook users log on to socialize, not buy. In this respect, Facebook ads can make you look a lot like the guy who goes around a cocktail party trying to sell insurance.

Social intent is probably one of the main reasons that Facebook's average CPM ranges somewhere between 13 and 53 percent below the industry standard. Indeed, as ClickZ reported, Facebook ads get half the clicks of network banners and the average click-through rate (CTR) for Facebook ads in 2009 was 0.063 percent and 0.051 percent in 2010.

Conversely, the average CTR on AdWords is around 2 percent. That's 20 times the industry standard and almost 40 times that for Facebook ads.

This is probably because many search sessions revolve specifically around making a purchasing decision — maybe not buying right then and there, but deciding how the user will buy when they're ready. And when they are ready, there's a decent chance they'll return to Google to recall that product or purchasing decision they arrived at during previous sessions.

Context is Everything

Given Facebook's position in the marketplace, this isn't to say that Facebook ads should be ignored by marketers. Indeed, Facebook has become such mainstream channel, that it can't be ignored by certain advertisers. As this Webtrends study points out:

… industries that are fun to discuss with our network are seeing higher CTR. … Brands that are social get a higher CTR, which translates into better engagement metrics: Post Quality Score, EdgeRank, Feedback Rate, and others. In turn, Facebook rewards such behavior with a lower cost-per-click and greater visibility in the News Feed.

It's the marketers and/or campaigns that are driven by results, however, that should think twice before investing too much into Facebook — especially if investing in social means diverting resources from search. Search offers marketers a degree of intentional targeting that social cannot.

Social users are (possibly 40 times) less likely to be in a purchasing mindset. While Facebook might represent a great opportunity for brand-advertisers, search (whether it's paid or SEO) still offers a much better return for marketers who are focused on their bottom line.

Source: searchenginewatch.com

#2 Incoming Links : A link is a link is a link, but without the simplest form you aren’t going to do well in search engines. The more links you have the more often you are going to be crawled. It is also important to make sure that you have the proper anchor text for your incoming links. The easiest way to gain quality links from other sites is to link to sites to let them know your site is there and hope for a reciprocal link. It is also important to make sure that you have content that is worth linking to on your site.

#3 Website Title : Making sure that you have the right web site titles for your pages is extremely important. The keywords you place in your title are important in order to ensure that your topic is understood by Google. One of the primary factors for ranking is if the title is on-topic with the search results. Not only is it important for robots to index and understand the topic of the page either. It is important for click-through rates in the search results. Pay attention to what you click on when you are searching in Google, I know that I don’t always click the first results. Using great titles and topics on your site will bring you more traffic than a number one listing. Most of the time it is within the first page, but I skim through the titles to see which looks to be more on-topic for my search query.

#4 Heading Tags : When you are laying out your site’s content you have to be sure that you are creating the content flow in such a way that the heading tags are based on prominence. The most prominent of course being the h1 tag, which says “this is what this block of copy is about.” Making sure you understand heading tag structure is very important. You only want to have one (or two) h1 tags per a page. It is important to not just throw anything into an h1 tag and hope you rank for it.

#5 Internal Linking : Making sure that your internal linking helps robots (and visitors!) to find the content on your site is huge. Using relevant copy throughout your site will tell the robots (and visitors!) more effectively what to expect on the corresponding page. You do want to make sure that on pages you don’t want to rank in Google that you add a nofollow tag to ensure that the ranking flow of your site corresponds with your site’s topic and interests. No one is going to be searching Google to find out what your terms of service or privacy policy are.

#6 Keyword Density : Ensuring that you have the right keyword density for your page and sites topic is paramount. You don’t want to go overboard and use the keyword every 5th word but making sure it comes up often is going to help you rank better in search engines. The unspoken rule is no more then 5% of the total copy per a page. Anymore then this and it can start to look a little spammy. Granted, you aren’t shooting for 5% every time. It is really all about context and relevance” just make sure it is good, quality copy.

#7 Sitemaps : It is always a good idea to give search engines a helping hand to find the content that is on your site. Making sure that you create and maintain a sitemap for all of the pages on your site will help the search robots to find all of the pages in your site and index them. Google, Yahoo, MSN and Ask all support sitemaps and most of them offer a great way to ensure that it is finding your sitemap. Most of the time you can simply name it sitemap.xml and the search robot will find the file effectively.

#8 Meta Tags : Everyone will tell you that meta tags don’t matter, they do. The biggest thing they matter for is click-through though. There will be a lot of times when Google will use your meta description as the copy that gets pulled with your search listing. This can help to attract the visitor to visit your web site if it is related to their search query. Definitely a much overlooked (as of late) ranking factor. Getting indexed by search engines and ranking well is just the first step. The next, and biggest, step is getting that visitor that searched for your keywords to want to click on your search listing.

#9 URL Structure : Ensuring that your URL structure compliments the content that is on the corresponding page is pretty important. There are various methods to make this work, such as modrewrite on apache.

#10 Domain : It can help to have keywords you are interested in ranking for within your domain, but only as much as the title, heading and content matters. One very important factor that is coming to light is that domain age is important. The older the site or domain, the better it is not spam and can do well in search results. The domain age definitely isn’t a make or break factor but it does help quite a bit.

Article Taken from dustinbrewer.com

Embitel has successfully completed the Webinar on Online Retailing using Facebook on January 20^th at 4:00 PM IST .

For Recorded Presentation File, Please Mail us at e.seminar@embitel.com or Visit @ http://www.embitel.com/Download_Webinars_on_eCommerce.79.0.html

The description tag should be a useful, compelling summary of your page content. This tag is often used to display a summary of your page in the search results, so it's worth making it keyword-rich and including a call to action.

Most search engines ignore the keywords tag these days; however it doesn't hurt to create one (if nothing else it's another chance to insert your keywords in the page). Some directories also use the keywords tag to classify sites.

Ensure that each page has unique description and keywords tags. If a search engine finds many pages with the same description and keywords, it can see those pages as less important.

"Recent industry reports from InMobi and Synovate have revealed that consumers are showing a greater inclination towards receiving mobile advertising and marketing messages," said Rohit Dadwal, managing director, MMA Asia Pacific Pte Ltd in Singapore.

"The global mobile advertising market is expected to grow to $13 to $14 billion in 2011 and Asia Pacific is expected to bring in the majority of this revenue followed by North America and Europe. As the market continues to grow, we hope to continue to provide insights that we believe should to be on the radar screen of every organization when deciding on their mobile spends for the region."

1. Personalization and privacy will increase effectiveness and credibility of the mobile media as a marketing channel

As mobile technology continues to evolve, mobile marketing messages will become increasingly personalized / relevant. Additionally, the adoption of transparent, permission-based marketing along with the introduction of regulations and applications for blocking unwanted content will help overcome the perception that mobile advertising is nothing but spam. Mobile will be the only truly conversational and measurable medium that can lead to an actual, real-time increase in business-to-consumer transactions.

2. Over the top services will drive data usage

On-deck operator ad revenues will be overshadowed by over the top application-based value-added services revenues. These services will help create mobile inventory and enable greater mobile ad spend. Operators should take a step back from establishing their own app stores and concentrate on enabling more converged devices like tablets. Telecom service providers will be forced to review their publishing business investments and plans.

3. Free SMS/free video/free phone calls will be available across devices.

Applications like WhatsApp and Viber are already allowing free SMS and calls from mobile devices. More such applications will be entering the market making these basic mobile features available free of cost across devices. We will also keep seeing an increase in mobile video consumption. The introduction of new ad units, including interactive and partial screen, will subsidize free content.

4. The re-birth of Windows 7 mobile

The new and relatively strict hardware specifications introduced by Microsoft are geared towards providing a universal user experience much like Research In Motion (RIM) and Apple. Based on prior experience with the availability of too many phones variants, Microsoft is focused on restricting the use of its new operating system by phones that are not compatible. The re-birth of the Windows 7 mobile will further fuel the growth of mobile Internet and advertising.

5. New winner in the HTML5 vs. Apps war

A lot has been said about how apps are expected to peak in 2013 and have already shown signs of slowing down. Though the new HTML offers great opportunities, apps and app stores continue to rule mobile content. The availability of basic functions of an app even without an active or stable data connection combined with the high level of usability and engagement offered by app stores make it a much more appealing option for customers. However, the fact that apps are device specific and limit penetration offers opportunities for experimentation that might lead to a decline in their popularity over the coming years.

6. Location-Based Services (LBS) + Augmented Reality (AR) will be the leading integrated mobile technology in the market

The proliferation of GPS phones with digital compasses has already given rise to a series of location-based AR software platforms and applications. The combination of AR with LBS allows for graphic content related to the position of the user to be overlaid in real-time onto camera images taken by the phone. This makes for one of the most intuitive user interface currently available on mobile and also makes the consumption of location-based information a lot more fun. Such specific targeting will not only fuel ad spend but also transactions.

7. Mobile micropayments will allow customers to pay from their 'electronic wallets' rather than ATM cards

The electronic payment industry is growing rapidly and provides significant opportunities for all electronic payment channels including those on mobile platforms. In developing countries, mobile banking services can address a service gap that is critical to their development. The key advantage of the introduction of mobile payment will be quick transactions. There are no credit card readers, no paper slips and more security than written forms. It will be like an electronic wallet that a customer will always have access to and will provide them with relevant purchase opportunities while they're on-the-go.

8. The re-emergence of mobile blogging

As mobile phones become more sophisticated and feature-rich, they are increasingly being used as a replacement for computers. With the introduction and adoption of tablet devices, the consumers now have greater speed, connectivity and battery life in their mobile devices. Several writers/bloggers are already using these devices to pen down their thoughts. With processing power that allows for editing and upload of content in various formats, these mobile devices are fast becoming the preferred travel gadget for professionals and have created opportunities for the development of a whole new set of user applications.

9. Continued proliferation of smartphones and mobile Internet advertising

It is expected that by 2011 over 85% of handsets shipped globally will have browser capabilities. The relatively large growth in smartphones combined with their superior user interface will continue to encourage more people to access conventional websites on their mobile handsets. Business-to-consumer applications can be delivered using conventional Web tools as well as Web adaptation tools. As smartphone penetration increases, more users will possess the technology to view richer content on their mobile devices making the medium extremely useful for marketers.

10. Mobiles will jump onto the 3D bandwagon

3D technology is being incorporated in any and every gadget available in the market today. Mobile manufacturers have also experimented with the technology and Spice Mobility in India has already introduced a phone with 3D capabilities. Manufacturers still have a long way to go in terms of creating a sophisticated 3D mobile device but the market will see a lot more experimentation in 3D phones in the coming year. The technology will lead to the development of new content and advertising avenues.

Article Taken from rediff news

Even keywords change as new phrases enter the lexicon and may begin to outpace the ones you were initially targeting. And if your corporate strategy changes, don't you think the optimization efforts on your site may need to change?

Someone needs to be in charge of monitoring your site. That includes an analytics solution and other monitoring tools, such as Google Webmaster Tools.

It's amazing how many sites haven't implemented an analytics solution or at least don't have one implemented correctly. Does your analytics solution track your entire sales funnel? Do you know where in the sales process you lose the majority of your prospects?

With those tools at hand, problems and potential opportunities on your site can be identified.

Embitel Conducting 7th webinar on “Online Retailing using Facebook: More than Just Marketing” On Thursday, 20th January 2011 from 4PM to 5PM.

Retailers face many challenges to increase sales & brand awareness and Internet in one such medium which is result oriented and cost effective when used in the right way. Social media platforms are used not only for networking & marketing but more than that. 

According to the Facebook Statistics, more than 500 million active users available on Facebook and 50% of users log on to Facebook in any given day. At an average each user has 130 friends and people spending over 700 billion minutes per month on Facebook activities. Every month, more than 250 million people engage with Facebook on external websites. 

There are more than 200 million active users currently accessing Facebook through their mobile devices. People using Facebook on their mobile devices is twice more active on Facebook than non-mobile users. 

"There are many ways how retailers can benefit from this. You're very welcome to join this webinar and learn more about the possibilities: Online retailing using Facebook: More than just marketing!" 

Topics of the Presentation: 

1. The 6 dimensions of social commerce
2. Shop where you meet & meet where you shop
3.  Facebook and its integration methodologies
4. Case Studies
5. Outlook into "Facebook as a marketplace?" & Suggestions

When: Thursday, 20th January 2011

Time: 4:00pm to 5:00pm IST

Venue: Just stay in front of your PC

Cost: Free 

Click here to Register Now

Sincerely, 

Daniel Rebhorn

Anatomy of Google: How the Search Engine Works

Design and layout made from a description provided by the founders of Google, Lawrence (Larry) Page and Sergey Brin.

Dating from 2008, this paper presents a simplified view and in particular, the unit of PageRank should be developed into several units to take into account multiple criteria, including for example the user behavior.

The components

Crawlers : There are several distributed crawlers, they parse the pages and extract links and keywords.

URL Server : Provides to crawlers a list of URLs to scan.

Server Store : The crawlers send collected data to a store serve. It compresses the pages and places them in the repository. Each page is stored with an identifier, a docID.

Repository : Contains a copy of the pages and images, allowing comparisons and caching.

Indexer : It indexes pages to ber provided to SERPs (results). It decompresses documents and converts them into sets of words called "hits". It distributes hits among a set of "barrels". This provides an index partially sorted. It also creates a list of URLs on each page. A hit contains the following information: the word, its position in the document, font size, capitalization.

Barrels  : These "barrels" are databases that classify documents by docID. They are created by the indexer and used by the sorter.

Anchors : The bank of anchors created by the indexer contains internal links and text associated with each link.

URL Resolver : It takes the contents of anchors, converts relative URLs into absolute addresses and finds or creates a docID. It builds an index of documents and a database of links.

Doc Index : Contains the text relative to each URL.

Links : The database of links associates each one with a docID (and so to a real document on the Web).

PageRank : The software uses the database of links to define the PageRank of each page.

Sorter : It interacts with barrels. It includes documents classified by docID and creates an inverted list sorted by wordID.

Lexicon : A software called DumpLexicon takes the list provided by the sorter (classified by wordID), and also includes the lexicon created by the indexer (the sets of keywords in each page), and produces a new lexicon to the searcher.

Searcher : It runs on a web server in a datacenter, uses the lexicon built by DumpLexicon in combination with the index classified by wordID, taking into account the PageRank, and produces a results page

Source:  scriptol.com

1. Keyword as the link text
2. Link popularity
3. Domain Popularity
4. Keywords in Title
5. Trust a domain

Ranking factors for local results 

• Right (claim) for a Record
• Local reference of the address
• Relevance of the categories
• Keywords in Title
• Keywords in Description

Ranking factors for images 

• Uniqueness of the image
• Description (Alt-Text)
• External link an image
• Internal linking an image
• Image size / quality

Ranking factors for videos 

• Keywords in Title
• Relevance of the tags
• Link to YouTube
• Keywords in Description
• Ratings / Comments

Ranking factors for products 

• Keywords in Title / description
• Amount of price
• Size of the product
• Timeliness of the product
• Product Reviews

Ranking Factors for Blogs 

• Keyword in Title / Description
• Links to blog post
• Links to the blog
• Trust blog of a (subscribers etc.)
• Number of keywords in the text

Ranking factors in News 

• Number / quality of a news source
• News Article
• Uniqueness / links to the article
• Quality / length of the article
• Visitor/Clicking behavior

Ranking factors for Tweets 

• Keyword in the text / Hashtag
• Number of Tweets to keyword
• News of Tweets
• Number Retweet
• Trust (follower, etc.) of the account

Reference: vineetwaldia.com

Of link: In adding together to words and text passages should be regularly link other elements (images, etc.).

Link text: The link text should be from only relevant keywords, but also always fire terms, fillers and so on.

Link Decoration: The decoration of a text link (bold, etc.) the text flow of the linked page should be accustomed.

Destination URL: The link building should not only be a few pages (Home, etc.) but always sub-pages or other elements (images, etc.) are linked.

Link Position: Typical positions for buying and exchanging links (footer, etc.) should be avoided if possible.

LINK Environment: The environment of a link (text, images, etc.) should if possible meet the theme of the left / the linked page.

Link Title / Alt: The title / alt text of a link / linked image should nielmals only relevant keywords, but also always fire terms, fillers and so on.

Link Source: The nature of the sources (websites, blogs, etc.) should be in natural proportion to one another.

Link Triggers: As part of the social web is a reasonable number of links from user generated content (Facebook, Twitter, etc.) must be ensured.

Link Timeliness: Links from the defunct content with a temporal reference (news article, etc.) should be avoided if possible.

Link Distribution: The distribution of links (Domains, IPs, etc.) should be the natural environment of each page to be adjusted.

Link Equity: Too many reciprocal links (exchange links) may indicate a manipulative link building.

Page Rank: almost exclusively with a high Page Rank links can point to a manipulative link building.

No Follow: Please link building should be respected links into a natural relationship of follow and no follow.

Today, I’m pleased to announce that we’re making an important development tool – Google Code, the documentation on which developers depend to create these applications – available in five additional languages: Brazilian Portuguese, Chinese (Simplified), Japanese, Russian, and Spanish. We’ve identified these languages as ones especially useful to users wanting in-language, technically involved documentation about Analytics.

Whether you are a long-time Analytics partner/developer in Brazil, a systems integrator in China, or an applications developer in Japan, you can now use Google Code in your native language.

To view the language of your choice, just go to http://code.google.com/apis/analytics and click on the language selector to the left of the Sign out link.

Source: Google Analytics Blog

Attract more visitors. Visitors bring along friends from social networks like Facebook, Orkut, and others to interact on your site.

Enrich your site with social features. Choose engaging social features from a catalog of gadgets provided by Google and the Open Social developer community.

No programming whatsoever, Just copy and paste snippets of code into your site, and Google Friend Connect do the rest.

Know more about Google Friend Connect

The name "Google Dance" is often used to describe the index update of the Google search engine. Google's index update occurs on average once per month. It can be identified by significant movement in search results and especially by Google's cache of all indexed pages reflecting the status of Google's last spidering. But the update does not proceed as a switch from one index to another at one point in time. In fact, it takes several days to complete the index update. During this period, the old and the new index alternate on www.google.com. At an early stage, the results from the new index occur sporadically. But later on, they appear more frequently. Google dances.

Technical Background on Google

The Google search engine pulls its results from more than 10,000 servers which are simple Linux PCs that are used by Google for reasons of cost. Naturally, an index update cannot be proceeded on all those servers at the same time. One server after the other has to be updated with the new index.

Many webmasters think that, during the Google Dance, Google is in some way able to control if a server with the new index or a server with an old index responds to a search query. But, since Google's index is inverse, this would be very complicated. As we will show below, there is no such control within the system. In fact, the reason for the Google Dance is Google's way of using the Domain Name System (DNS).

Google Dance and DNS

Not only Google's index is spread over more than 10,000 servers, but also these servers are, as of now, placed in eight different data centers. These data centers are mainly located in the US (i.e. Santa Clara, California and Herndon, Virginia), indeed, in June 2002 Google's first European data center in Zurich, Switzerland went online. Very likely, there are more data centers to come, which will perhaps be spread over the whole world. However, in January and April 2003 Google has put two data centers on stream which are again located in the US.

In order to direct traffic to all these data centers, Google could thoeretically record all queries centrally and then send them to the data centers. But this would obviously be inefficient. In fact, each data center has its own IP address (numerical address on the internet) and the way these IP addresses are accessed is managed by the Domain Name System.

Basically, the DNS works like this: On the Internet, data transfers always take place in-between IP addresses. The information about which domain resolves to which IP address is provided by the name servers of the DNS. When a user enters a domain into his browser, a locally configured name server gets him the IP address for that domain by contacting the name server which is responsible for that domain. (The DNS is structured hierarchically. Illustrating the whole process would go beyond the scope of this paper.) The IP address is then cached by the name server, so that it is not necessary to contact the responsible name server each time a connection is built up to a domain.

The records for a domain at the responsible name server constitute for how long the record may be cached by a caching name server. This is the Time To Live (TTL) of a domain. As soon as the TTL expires, the caching name server has to fetch the record for a domain again from the responsible name server. Quite often, the TTL is set to one or more days. In contrast, the Time To Live of the domain www.google.com is only five minutes. So, a name server may only cache Google's IP address for five minutes and has then to look up the IP address again.

Each time, Google's name server is contacted, it sends back the IP address of only one data center. In this way, Google queries are always directed to different data centers by changing DNS records. On the one hand, the DNS records may be based on the load of the single data centers. In this way, Google would conduct a simple form of load balancing by its use of the DNS. On the other hand, the geographical location of a caching name server may influence how often it receives the single data centers' IP addresses. So, the distance for data transmissions can be reduced. In order to show the DNS records of the domain www.google.com, we present them here by the example of one caching name server.

How data centers, DNS and Google Dance are related, is easily answered. During the Google Dance, the data centers do not receive the new index at the same time. In fact, the new index is transferred to one data center after the other. When a user queries Google during the Google Dance, he may get the results from a data center which still has the old index at one point im time and from a data center which has the new index a few minutes later. From the users perspective, the index update took place within some minutes. But of course, this procedure may reverse, so that Google switches seemingly between the old and the new index.

The Google Dance Test Domains www2 & www3

The beginning of a Google Dance can always be watched at the test domains www2.google.com and www3.google.com. Those domains normally have stable DNS records which make the domains resolve to only one (often the same) IP address. Before the Google Dance begins, at least one of the test domains is assigned the IP address of the data center that receives the new index first.

Building up a completely new index once per month can cause quite some trouble. After all, Google has to spider some billion documents an then to process many TeraBytes of data. Therefore, testing the new index is inevitable. Of course, the folks at Google don't need the test domains themselves. Most certainly, they have many options to check a new index internally, but they do not have a lot of time to conduct the tests.

So, the reason for having www2 and www3 is rather to show the new index to webmasters which are interested in their upcoming rankings. Many of these webmasters discuss the new index at the Google forums out on the web. These discussions can be observed by Google employees. At that time, the general public cannot see the new index yet, because the DNS records for www.google.com normally do not point to the IP address of the data center that is updated first when the update begins.

As soon as Google's test community of forums members does not find any severe malfunctions caused by the new index, Google's DNS records are ready to make www.google.com resolve the the data center that is updated first. This is the time when the Google Dance begins. But if severe malfunctions become obvious during this test phase, there is still the possibility to cancel the update at the other data centers. The domain www.google.com would not resolve to the data center which has the flawed index and the general public could not take any notice about it. In this case, the index could be rebuilt or the web could be spidered again.

So, the search results which are to be seen on www2.google.com and www3.google.com will always appear on www.google.com later on, as long as there is a regular index update. However, there may be minor fluctuations. On the one hand, the index at one data center never absolutely equals the index at another data center. We can easily check this by watching the number of results for the same query at the data center domains listed above, which often differ from each other. On the other hand, it is often assumed that the iterative PageRank calculation is not finished yet, when the Google Dance begins so that preliminary values exert influence on rankings at that point in time.

Source: Google

The most obvious change is that you get to the right content much faster than before because you don’t have to finish typing your full search term, or even press “search.” Another shift is that seeing results as you type helps you formulate a better search term by providing instant feedback. You can now adapt your search on the fly until the results match exactly what you want. In time, we may wonder how search ever worked in any other way.

Benefits

Faster Searches: By predicting your search and showing results before you finish typing, Google Instant can save 2-5 seconds per search.

Smarter Predictions: Even when you don’t know exactly what you’re looking for, predictions help guide your search. The top prediction is shown in grey text directly in the search box, so you can stop typing as soon as you see what you need.

Instant Results: Start typing and results appear right before your eyes. Until now, you had to type a full search term, hit return, and hope for the right results. Now results appear instantly as you type, helping you see where you’re headed, every step of the way.

Source: google.com/instant/

Type of M-Commerce

1. Premium content
this is where special or expensive content is offered to the phone subscriber on his phone. It depends a lot on the phone technology that is 3g (third generation) or 4g (4th generation). 3G phones are available in almost every country however there are only a few countries like Japan and South Korea with 4G technologies enabled. These services include like video and music. Mobile phone companies also offer premium content like stock exchange information.

2. Remote payment
this is largely similar to ecommerce on the web. It basically refers to the online payment of money whereby the one paying is in a different location from the one receiving. This is supported in m-commerce through secure payment connections.

3. Point-of-sale
this refers to commerce in which the mobile device is used as a point of sale. This is possible if the device can access the online store. These devices are not the typical mobile devices but are capable of accessing higher content. They are usually WAP enabled and can access xml and java components as well.

Advantages of M-Commerce

• Any transaction with a monetary value that is conducted over a wireless telephone network
• M-Commerce increases customer satisfaction, cost savings, and new business opportunities
• M-commerce is available anywhere with relatively small devices that are mobile phones and PDA’s
• Mobile commerce can be highly personalized and user has control over data. Personally owned smart phones reduce IT training and help desk resources.
• Enhance customer seller relationships because communication is easier.

Limitations of M-Commerce

• Less functionality for mobile Internet over mobile phones and existing generation of handhelds than for mobile computers (laptops and next generation handhelds).
• Small screens of most devices still limit types of file and data transfer (i.e. streaming videos, etc.)
• No real standards in M-commerce.  There is a lot differentiation in M-commerce solutions offered.
• Technology constraints of mobile devices (memory, processing power, display capabilities, input methods)

Applications of M-Commerce

1) Finance and Applications

Many applications in the service industry, such as banking, travel, stocks, and more can be conducted with wireless devices. Shopping can be done from mobile devices, too.

2) Intra business Applications

Large number of Intra business applications, including inventory management, sales force automation, wireless voice, job dispatching, wireless office, and more are evident inside organizations.

As per the study by IMRB and IAMAI, 27% mobile phones are Internet ready (127 million mobile subscribers out of 471 million total subscribers) and out of these 127 million subscribers, only 12 million have used Mobile Internet and this number further reduces down to 2 million or 17% when it comes to active users.

This is quite in line with what we published earlier (Urban Mobile Users in India – What do they access Internet For?), i.e. around 2.7million active unique users while the total number was around 12 million

Why the People Using Mobile Internet?

For Checking emails and searching for information are the two most popular reasons for accessing net over mobile phones. 2.8% of Urban Indian mobile population used the Internet over their phones to check emails while 2.5% used the net to search for information.

2. Use a Unique Title Tag: Every product page should have a unique title. An Ecommerce site can contain any number of web pages. You can ask the programmer to code the title from the page content and product name. This makes your SEO more dynamic.

3. Select an Appropriate Keyword: The keywords must be unique for every webpage. They must reflect the important phrases within the webpage content. For an Ecommerce site, you can ask the programmer to select keywords from the content and product name.

4. Create a Relevant Description Per Web Page: The description of a web page is the snippet which appears in the SERPS. Every visitor reads the snippet and then clicks on the search result. It is very important to include a description relevant to the webpage content.

5. Include Breadcrumbs for All Inner Pages: A breadcrumb is like a secondary navigation structure. It helps the visitor to navigate back to the main product category page. A breadcrumb also helps in the internal linking of the website. Overall, including a breadcrumb makes the website SEO friendly. 

6. Use a Heading Tag: Searchbots assign a lot of importance to the heading tag. The heading tag is SEO friendly and can be used to format the title of the web page content.

7. Avoid Usage of Flash: Avoid using flash on every web page of your Ecommerce website. This will expand the site loading time. If the use of flash is inevitable, include textual content in the flash. Search engines are capable of reading the text in the flash file.

8. Optimize Images: Add the Alt tag to all the images of your website. Search engines cannot read images. The Alt tag is a means of ensuring that the search engines read the alternate text for images.

9. Optimize Anchor Text: Anchor text appears between the anchor opening and closing tag. It is good practice to use keywords as the anchor text.

10. Create an SEO Friendly URL Structure: The default URL structure of a dynamic website contains parameters. Search engines are not capable of understanding these parameters. A good URL structure must contain words separated by hyphens. 

11. Generate a XML Sitemap: A XML sitemap contains all the URLs present in the website and makes it easy for searchbots to find and index all web pages. If the number of web pages on a site is large, you can create a number of XML sitemaps and then submit these sitemaps to Google via Webmaster Tools. E.g. sitemap1.xml, sitemap2.xml.

12. Limit the Number of Outbound Links: Always link to a safe and secure website. If you are not sure about the quality of the website you are linking out to, use the no follow attribute.

13. Submít to Search Directories: Forward your website URL to good quality search directories. Most of the search directories take a few weeks to link back to a site. Fill in the details of the submission form carefully, so that the administrator accepts the submission.

14. Submít to Article Directories and Social Bookmarking Sites: Article submission is the quickest way of obtaining high quality backlinks. You need to select the do follow bookmarking sites and submit the URL to them. Growth in traffic is a plus point of submitting to social bookmarking sites.

15. Integrate a Secure Payment Gateway: A secure payment gateway is the heart of an Ecommerce website. Get a trust seal from Verisign, TrustE, etc. Visitors will be more likely to trust your site and to make an online payment.

16. Track User Behavior with a Good Analytics Tool: You can track and analyze visitor behavior with a good analytics tool. You need to select an analytics tool based on your requirements. If your Ecommerce website operates on a large scale, you can opt for a paid analytics tool. Otherwise you can use a variety of free tools to obtain the best results.

Author: Debbie A. Everson

With this kind of growth it is hardly a surprise that India’s largest mobile service provider – Bharti Airtel – is all set to join the M-Commerce bandwagon in a big way.

According to the latest news, Bharti will launch host of value-added services, primarily related to M-commerce applications.

The application includes a platform that allows both its prepaid and postpaid users to link their credit card, debit card or bank accounts to their mobile connection. (This facility has already been thrown open to its pre-paid users and Bharti subscriber can use this facility to top up or pay the bill of other cellular users also). Also on the cards is an extension of these M-commerce applications to allow customers pays their utility bills and also pay for their railway tickets and hotel rooms via their handsets.

Paymate is another mobile payment gateway that offer similar service to what Bharti plans to offer.Very recently, Magicbricks, one of the leading real estate portals came up with their mobile real estate portal.

There are also host of other M-Commerce application providers in India. However, with entry of Bharti in this arena, M-Commerce in India will take much bigger proportions. Remember, they already have more than 50 million strong subscriber base who are readymade customers for M-Commerce applications.

Source: trak.in

Embitel Technologies India Pvt Ltd believes in staying in sync with time with sight set on future trends. This Webinar on Mobile Commerce for Retailers - Channel with a new way to reach consumer is a step where we will be sharing our knowledge with participants on potential of Mobile Commerce, approach to it, market trends, etc.

Reasons to attend this Webinar:

• The market for mobile payments is expected to quadruple by 2014, reaching $630bn in value, which equates to 5% of total e-commerce sales. (Source: Juniper Research)
• The mobile payments market is worth $170bn so far this year. (Source: Juniper Research)
• ABI Research predicts that in 2015, $119bn worth of goods and services will be purchased via a mobile phone. (Source: ABI Research) 
• In US alone 20% of all consumers and 32% of 18-34 year olds are researching purchases via mobile at least monthly.
• India has a mobile phone subscriber base of 500 million, which is expected to reach 700 million by 2012 (Source: Department of Telecommunications). The country can easily expect mobile commerce or m-commerce to take off faster than online or e-commerce.
• Currently there are about 5 million m-commerce users in the country. Industry estimates put the number of users at 25 million by 2012, and 100 million in the next five years.
  

Who should attend this webinar?
Marketing professionals, Retailers, Telecom service providers, Ecommerce professionals, etc

Webinar Agenda

• Mobile Ecommerce, Hype or reality?
• Market trends
• Opportunities and threats
• Mobile Commerce and Ecommerce compatibility
• Case studies
• What can be the approach?
• Our vision of Mobile Commerce

Reserve Your Seat @ https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/444168659

Presenter: Mr. Daniel Rebhorn

• Founder, dmc GmbH Germany and Chairman, Embitel India
• Industry expert with more than 14 years of experience in retail e-Commerce and e-Marketing
  

When: 16th-Sep-2010
Time:  India: 04:00:00 p.m. Thursday September 16, 2010
           UK: 11:30:00 a.m. Thursday September 16, 2010
           Australia: 08:30:00 p.m. Thursday September 16, 2010
Venue: Just stay in front of your PC
Cost: Complementary (Free)

To make this easier to understand they have given some examples In their post on the Google Analytics Blog.

When you have a lot of data within an normal account, you tend to get given a lot of information like the image below. We have all seen it, the single visits that have 100% bounce rate. A lot of the times, this does not help you gather the information that you need.

With the new weighted sort option, Analytics took into consideration the number of visits for each row bringing to the forefront the items you care about.

Weighted sort is also available on other metrics including Goal Conversion Rate and % New Visits.

AdWords have included a handy video to explain further.

Source: atelier-seo.com

Where is M-Commerce Now?
“The presence of e-retailers with mobile sites is growing; but just like Internet adoption in the mid-‘90s, e-retailers today are taking baby steps toward initiating a mobile presence. At the moment the majority of m-commerce transactions are limited to mobile device add-ons like ringtones, games, wallpapers, and screensavers.”

What is interesting, however, is what these consumers are buying. While the number or consumers utilizing m-commerce platforms has not changed too drastically, the purchases have. Of those that have made purchases via their mobile phones 58% purchased digital content for their phones, 51% purchased consumer electronics, 37% purchased computers/laptops/related equipment, 36% purchased books, 31% purchased apparel, and 20% purchased jewelry. This illustrates that consumers who use their mobile phones to make purchases are now purchasing as if they were in a retail store.

This is a dramatic difference in purchasing patterns is likely a result of increased consumer confidence in the security of m-commerce. A recent poll found that approximately 71% of consumers believe it is “very safe” or “fairly safe” to make a purchase via cell phone.

Where is M-Commerce Going?
M-commerce may not explode in the next few years, but it is likely to continue growing steadily as more advanced wireless handheld accessories become available, more applications are released to facilitate “anywhere shopping,” and retailers get on board with the technology. The biggest challenges we will see with m-commerce over the next few years will be a continuation of the struggles that retailers have faced thus far: user experience barriers, security concerns, and negative perceptions about the value of m-commerce investment.

(May 24, 2010) –  MarketResearch.com has announced the addition of Ovum Plc 's new report "M-Commerce: Seizing the Immediate Opportunity to Build for the Future (Strategic Focus)," to their collection of E-Financial Services market reports. For more information, visit http://www.marketresearch.com/redirect.asp?progid=67618&productid=2659324

Areas / Uses of M-Commerce

In the current commerce industry, mobile commerce or M-Commerce has been entered in finance, services, retails, tele-communication and information technology services. In these sectors, M-Commerce is not only being widely accepted but also it is being more used as a popular way of business/ commerce.

M-Commerce Advice
Moving forward ecommerce companies should do two things: get educated about m-commerce, and leave room for m-commerce in their marketing plans. First of all, find out as much as you can about m-commerce now and stay briefed on the latest news as advancements are made so that when m-commerce starts to become vital to your business you are ready with strategy and insight. Secondly, begin developing a marketing strategy that will leverage your m-commerce website when it is time to invest in it.

Feature of M-Commerce

Ubiquity - It means that the user can avail of services and carry out transactions largely independent of his current geographic location.

Immediacy - It provides real-time availability of services.

Localization – Location based services such as GPS, allow companies to offer goods and services to the user specific to his current location.

Instant Connectivity – This feature brings convenience to the user, due to introduction of services like GPRS which keeps users always in touch and connected. 

Simple Authentication – Mobile telecommunication devices function with an electronic Chip called SIM, which is easily identifiable. This in combination with an individual

Personal Identification Number (PIN) makes the authentication process simple.

Creating a press release for a campaign or assignment requires thought and preparation, without the core fundamentals your release may end up right in the trash folder of your recipients email.  A well-written press release can be an invaluable asset to your company and the success of the content within the release you're trying to help generate attention for.  Here are 7 mistakes most commonly made when writing a press release that you can easily avoid to become more successful at pushing your product, website or idea.

1.  Lack of proper research.  Spend the time to read and subscribe to press releases not only in the niche you work within, but from some of the larger and more successful companies in the world.  Look to see how they are laid out, worded and put together and pick the best parts from each to incorporate into your own releases.

2.  Don't assume anything.  Your reader may not know what it is they are getting, and since your goal is to have your reader generate buzz to their readers or media outlet, lay out the specifics for them.

3.  Don't belittle or talk down to anyone.  While number 2 says to be specific with what you are writing, don't write in a condescending manner, which almost always ends in a delete from the reader.  Assume they are not a total idiot.

4.  Don't oversell your product or service.  The purpose of a press release is to put it into the hands of those who have influence and a crowd to share it with.  They are not the ones who will be buying or using whatever is in the contents of your press release.  Don't try to make them the buyer, rather look at them as yourreseller and present the information in the same way you would teach a sales associate how to sell to a customer in a store.

5.  Don't over-write or bloat the release.  A press release is not an article, it's meant to be informative and easily digestible; keep the fluff to a minimum and focus on the details that pertain to the service or product

6.  Do write a clever subject line.  Log into your email and check the messages you have deleted but never opened.  Chances are the subject line didn't entice you to open it.  Be creative and to the point with the subject line, the difference here can be a success or total failure and most new press release writers skip the importance to this small but invaluable part of content delivery.

7.  Don't jump the gun with sending your release.  Wait until you have all the facts, specifics and proper information for the contents within, then send it.  Don't send the release announcing a forthcoming release, which will break the trust and relationship with the readers you have.  You're better off sitting on a release for a few days then sending it out missing crucial information.

These simple mistakes can all be easily avoided, in turn you will have a higher success rate across the board, from emails being opened to media outlets picking up your content.  As with all writing, reread, proof and then read it again to ensure it flows smoothly and covers the exact message across that is needed for each assignment.

Google penalizes Adwords ads with poor click through rates.  If your ad is not generating clicks, it's making it more expensive for you to advertise.  Discover how to improve the click through rate of your ads.

Your Adwords ad is sales copy. You are attempting to persuade a potential consumer to make a decision based on your ad text. This is the art a science of sales copy. Sales copy can be defined as salesmanship in print.

The trick in Adwords is that you only have 95 characters to do it in (25 character headline + 2 lines of 35 character description). That is daunting task for any professional salesman.

The following tips can improve the sales copy in both your Adwords ads and in your landing page or sales letter.

Speak to the customer: A general rule of sales copy is that you want to appeal directly to the consumer. By using the word you, you address the consumer in a direct personal way, as if you were speaking to them. Use you in your sales copy instead of your product name or I.

Solutions: People buy solutions, not products or services Another general rule of sales copy is that a customer is looking to find a solution, not buy a product. A customer doesn't want to buy a drill, instead they need a way to make a hole. You need to sell a solution. A perfect example of this are Billy Mays TV commercials for Hercules hooks, Oxyclean, OrangeClean or any of his products. Did you ever notice the commercial starts by describing or creating a problem? The commercial then proceeds to persuade you that they have the solution to the problem. The commercials are like that because the method works.

Feature versus Benefit: You may be tempted to list a prominent feature of your product. Don't. Instead, make a list of every feature you can think of. Then write down the corresponding reason the customer would want that feature. You can often move from feature to benefit by using "what that means to you, Mr. Customer is". That becomes a benefit. Then don't describe a feature in your ad, but describe a benefit.

Use a Call to Action: A Call to Action is a sentence instructing the consumer to perform a task. The consumer will often be subconsciously persuaded to do it. A call to Action generally begins with a verb (the action). Here are some examples.

    * Click here.
    * Download your copy now.
    * Call now.
    * Get help.

Keyword or Phrase: Your ad will be more attractive to the customer if your ad text contains the keyword or phrase they searched on. Right away your customer will view your ad has highly relevant, because the keyword is right there. The headline is a particularly good place to have the keyword since your customer sees it first. This tactic is done automatically if you use the Adwords strategy from adwords-marketing-tool,com

Use Free if applicable: Using the word free is likely to increase your CTR. Make sure your landing page does freely give away what you promised.

Hype words: Hype words like amazing or incredible may help you attract attention. But be careful, overuse them and you sound like a snake oil salesman.  

Sense of urgency: You can create a sense of urgency with a phrase like limited offer. This encourages a customer to make a purchase on the spot. If you have the space available, you can describe the consequences of failing to act.

No risk: Consumers are cautious of being taken advantage of.  A money back guarantee or a no risk free trial helps persuade you consumers.

Test your ads: The only way you'll know if your sales copy is working is to test it. Split testing is the accepted method of testing your ads. You run two ads simultaneously. After the proper amount of time, you compare CTR or ROI and declare a winner and remove the lesser ad.

The personal details of 100 million users of social networking website Facebook are now available for download after they were leaked online.

Ron Bowles, an online security consultant, used a code to scan Facebook profiles, collected data not hidden by users' privacy settings, and compiled a list, which is now available as a downloadable file, containing the URL of every 'searchable' Facebook user's profile, their name and unique ID, the BBC reported Thursday.

Bowles said he published the data to highlight privacy issues, but Facebook retorted by saying the information was already public.

'People who use Facebook own their information and have the right to share only what they want, with whom they want, and when they want,' the website said. 'In this case, information that people have agreed to make public was collected by a single researcher and already exists in Google, Bing, other search engines, as well as on Facebook.'

'No private data is available or has been compromised,' Facebook said. The list has already been downloaded by over 1,000 people on Pirate Bay, the world's biggest file-sharing website.

One user, going by the name of 'lusifer69', said the list was 'awesome and a little terrifying'. But internet watchdog Privacy International said Facebook had been given ample warning that something like this would happen.

'Facebook should have anticipated this attack and put measures in place to prevent it,' Simon Davies, an official of Privacy International, said. 'It is inconceivable that a firm with hundreds of engineers couldn't have imagined a trawl of this magnitude and there's an argument to be heard that Facebook have acted with negligence, he said.

Facebook hit 500 million users in June this year.

Sorce: Yahoo News

Deliverability is getting the email into the inbox. Unfortunately not, there is a lot more to it than that. However there's no reason why you can’t have a deliverability rate above 95%. Your email service provider (ESP) should be able to provide this statistic for you as well as do the following:

• Warm up dedicated IP addresses
• Set up feedback loops for Hotmail, Yahoo! and Gmail                                                         
• Have your IP address white-listed
• Give you (as the client of the ESP) the option to move shared IPs if a bad sender is affecting deliverability for all

Email Open Rate:

An email open is tracked by a 1×1 hidden GIF image your ESP automatically adds when an email is sent. When this image is downloaded an open is tracked. Therefore, if images are automatically disabled then no open is tracked.

However, the open rate is an ambiguous reporting measure and is not always indicative of a good email marketing campaign. For instance, if your HTML email is designed with a good text-to-image ratio people can still read your email without downloading the images. In this situation opens are NOT tracked.

Email Click-Through Rate (CTR):

An email click-through is tracked using a redirect to the ESP server. This redirect passes information about the member id, mailing id and URL id which allows the ESP to record who clicked on the email, which email it was and what link was clicked on. Thus, the CTR is a stronger indicator of email success because it is a more reliable tracking method.

Email Subject Lines:

This is normally the first thing someone receiving your email will see – so make it good. One of the questions I get asked a lot is, “You have done a lot of testing … what subject line works best?” The answer: it depends on whom, maturity, how they got there, day, date, sector, and it also changes every time you send. The solutions… live testing:

• Select two subject lines
• Open a book on which one is going to generate the best open rate (not for money of course, sweats maybe)
• Send those two subject lines to 20% of your database (10% per subject line)
• Wait an hour
• See which subject line generates the best open rate
• Send that subject line to the remaining 80% of your database
• LIVE split testing, done

Email Frequency & Timing:

What day of the week, time of day, and how many times a week to send email is very important? The old school view was to send Tuesday morning … however that really is old school.

It will depend on many factors (as mentioned above – who, maturity, how they got there, day, date, and sector) and also requires testing.

The method that works well for me is to consider people’s behavior rather than focusing on the day of the week. Think about events that may change behavior. A great example of this is sending an email on pay day – this always generates excellent response rates for obvious reasons.

One of the main reasons for such vulnerabilities is the fact that web application developers are often not very well versed with secure programming techniques. Every developer when working with the projects looks for completing the project in the given deadlines and thinks to implement the security later. There is no security model implemented before starting the project which is the main cause.

The website losing its importance even though it has the good look and feel and good modules in an website because of proper vulnerabilities techniques not implemented in the website. Another reason why security vulnerabilities appear is because of the inherent complexity in most online systems.

Nowadays, users are placing very demanding requirements on their e-commerce providers, and this requires complex designs and programming logic below are some of the security vulnerabilities that have been discovered in shopping cart and online payment systems.

SQL Injection

SQL injection refers to the insertion of SQL meta-characters in user input, which allows attacker's queries, are executed by the back-end database. Attackers will first determine if a site is vulnerable to such an attack by sending in the single-quote (') character. The results from an SQL injection attack on a vulnerable site may range from a detailed error message, which discloses the back-end technology being used, or allowing the attacker to access restricted areas of the site because he manipulated the query to an always-true Boolean value, or it may even allow the execution of operating system commands.

SQL injection varies from database to database, for example in Oracle database, this  is done by using the UNION keyword and is much more difficult than on the MS SQL Server, where multiple queries can be executed by separating them with the semi-colon.

In its default configuration, MS SQL server runs with Local System privileges and has the 'xp_cmdshell' extended procedure, which allows execution of operating system commands.

Manipulating price at Run Time

This is one of the most unique vulnerabilities seen in the online shopping carts and payment gateways. In this vulnerability the total payable price of the purchased goods is stored in a hidden HTML field of a dynamically generated web page.

An attacker can use a web application proxy such as Achilles to simply modify the amount that is payable, when this information flows from the user's browser to the web server The final payable price  can be manipulated by the attacker to a value of his choice.

This information is eventually sent to the payment gateway with whom the online merchant has partnered. If the number of transactions is very high, the price manipulation may go completely unnoticed. Repeated attacks of this nature could destroy the number of users to the website

Cross-site scripting

The Cross-site Scripting (XSS) attack are targeted against the end user and leverages two factors: 1.The lack of input and output validation being done by the web application 2.The trust placed by the end-user in a URL that carries the vulnerable web site's name. The XSS attack requires a web form that takes in user input, processes it, and prints out the results on a web page, which also contains the user's original input. It is most commonly found in 'search' features, where the search logic will print out the results along with a line such as 'Results for user_supplied_input'.

Suppose if we write the JavaScript function also with the search elements then the result page of the search will the output of the search results along with the JavaScript result, which is not good in any website.

In another scenario we can use JavaScript to redirect the user to a site that looks similar to the original web site and requests the user to enter sensitive information such as his authentication details for that web site, or his credit card number or social security number which should not happen in the real time scenarios.

Weak Authentication and Authorization

Since HTTP is a stateless protocol, web applications commonly maintain state using session IDs or transaction IDs stored in a cookie on the user's system. Thus session ID is the only way that the web application can determine the online identity of the user.

If the session ID is stolen (say through XSS), or it can be predicted, then an attacker can take over a genuine user's online identity. Hence we need to take care of the session id by providing the necessary algorithms.

The other cause is providing the week passwords, which can be broken very easily. When providing the password option to the user we need to have some passwords policy like in the given passwords we need to have a 1 capital letters, 1 numeric and passwords length should be 4 – 10 characters. Such policies will strength the user passwords.

Basic Meta Rules for SEO
 
Title Tag: Title Tag is the most important part of a Web page to optimize. It appears at the top (title bar) area of the Web browser and as the first line in the search engine results page. On most search results pages the title tag is used as the main link to the site in the listing. Most importantly search engines use them to determine the theme of the website.

1. Place the TITLE tag within the <HEAD> tag
2. Should contain the most important keyword that appears on the Web page
3. Limit to 60-70 characters including spaces between <TITLE> and </TITLE>
4. Place the most relevant keyword phrase at the beginning of the text
5. Don’t blatantly repeat the keyword.
6. Don’t use stop words such as “the”, “a”, “as”, “of”
7. Should read well and contain a marketing message
8. Remember to keep your TITLE tag short and to the point.

Description Tag: Meta Description Tag is a significant part of a Web page to optimize and appears as the second line in the search engine results pages. Essentially it provides a brief description to the visitor about your webpage and sets their potential. Place your Meta Description Tag directly below the TITLE tag. The difficult part is optimizing this tag for both the spiders and your site visitors.
 
1. Limit the number of characters to 150 – 180
2. Blend keywords that appear on the Web page with a strong marketing message and call to action
3. Limit the use of stop words and don’t repeat words
4. Keep keywords unique to the Web page
5. Write in complete sentences and keep important keywords at the beginning of the description
6. Place tag within the <head> section of the HTML code 

Header (H) Tags: H tags are built-in purpose of HTML that shows the text within this tag as a header. They are assigned a importance (1 being the most important) and repeated on the same page. The most common use of the H tag is the title or top line of text that appears on the web page, the header.

1. Use H1 tags for the header or most important text of the page
2. Use CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) to control the color and size of the tag
3. H tags give some extra importance to the words within it
4. The format looks like this: <h1> Search Engine Optimization Techniques</h1> 

Alt (Image) Tags: Most of the People will like to include some images of the website. Alt text can usually be seen by hovering over a picture with the cursor in a browser. A helpful way to boost your search engine ranking is to include the ALT attribute, which means alternative text. This tag is read by search engines and they also contribute to the on-page optimization.

1. Use the alt tag on product pictures
2. Good place to strategically place keywords and boost results
3. Use the alt tag on the site logo – it should contain the company name
4. The alt tag is part of 508 compliance (accessible to people with disabilities)
5. Search engines cannot read pictures, they read the alternative text
6. Do not over use the alt tag
7. Do not stuff it with keywords 

The new system officially rolls out today for anyone using Google.com and searching in English. Not everyone will see it at first, but over the course of the next several days, Universal Search should be more, well, universal.

The move potentially should be a huge boon for searchers, while search marketers who have paid attention to the importance of specialized or vertical search will see new opportunities. To fully explain the importance to both groups, I’m going to work step-by-step through the concept of vertical search engines, how they’re often ignored by searchers and search marketers alike, and then how Google is going to make this content more visible through Universal Search.

In fact, if you are competing against other vendors in your market who are trying to do SEO effectively and they do not use Flash on the specific page in question for a specific keyword, I will beat you one hundred zillion dollars (That's a lot of Austin Power money…) that your Flash-based page will be significantly beaten by straight HTML pages on Google. Google can but Google doesn't. So that first annoying distinction is out of the way.

One other thing… You might be advised to alter your HTML so that non-Flash users (a.k.a., Google) can see your non-Flash content, and Flash users (a.k.a., most humans) see your Flash. This is technically possible, but – again – technically possible does not make it desirable. Google hates to see any website (potentially) show one set of content to a user, and one set to Google and in this scenario Google isn't sure that you aren't playing that game. After all, it struggles to index flash. So this scenario – while technically feasible – has some risk to it. It can work, and it may work, but in a competitive area, Google will probably choose sites that are more reliable / straightforward.

All those techies just keep getting confused between something that is technically feasible but not desirable from Google's perspective in this game called Search Engine Optimization. So what is to be done? 
 

Solution No.1: Below the Fold

Ultimately, flash is largely about images and in that sense, Flash isn't really conceptually different to Google than images: it can't really read them. So the humans need images / Flash for a website to be fun, exciting, and engaging, but Google can't really interpret them.

The Solution: use images or Flash for the humans, ABOVE the fold, and place keyword heavy text below the fold. This is an especially good solution for your home page, which has the most SEO power on your website. You simply cannot have a 100% image or 100% Flash home page – that is a disaster. So here is an example of a good design –

• Geico – notice how the Gecko image is at the top, and then below the fold is a ton of keyword heavy text about their business.
• Fillmore Florist – notice how their flowers and cool images are at the top, and below the fold is a ton of keyword text about San Francisco, Flowers, Floral delivery etc.

This sort of Images / Adobe Flash above-the-fold and text below-the-fold caters to both humans AND Google and avoids the Google no-no of showing one content to humans and another to the search engines. 
 

Solution No. 2: Gateway Pages

Another solution to the idea of having your Adobe Flash and having Google / SEO too is to have different pages serve different masters. The important exception here is your home page which must serve both, as discussed above. But beyond your home page, you can conceptualize some pages on your website as being flash with cool graphics and interactivity, but not very SEO-friendly… and other pages being keyword-rich text with little or no flash. Or perhaps the above the fold / Flash – below the fold / text distinction.

Either way, you conceptualize different pages on your website to serve different purposes, and bring in traffic from Google via the textual pages. That works too.

What doesn't work is to wait for Google to prioritize Adobe Flash as an SEO technique. That just isn't going to happen, as the busy search engine has just so many more keyword-rich textual pages to choose from. In a competitive market, Flash – at best – doesn't hurt you, nor help you with SEO. 

Author: Jason McDonald

The benefits can be recapitulated as:

• Chance to reduce costs of production by reducing overheads
• Chance to increase sales
• Chance to access new markets across the globe
• Chance to target market segments more effectively
• Provide more perfect information and improve customer service familiarity
• Improves the efficiency of the supply chain
• Improve employee motivation through more flexible working methods
• Allowing 24/7 access to the firm's products and services
• Provides convenience and comfort for customers

Video Marketing:

• Create videos that research proves will do well on the sites you are marketing to. Usually funny videos and tutorials tend to do well.
• Decide what video marketing stance you are going to approach with your video marketing: Cut the video and add branding before amazing comical or interesting happens to redirect the viewer to your site. Or allow the entire video shown to allow for more viewers and impressions.
• Initiate streaming rich media ads on videos.
• Distribute your video across the multiple free & paid video sharing sites.
• Optimize the Video with specific Keywords and Description.
• Give a Good Title to the video which you are distributing.

Conversational Marketing

• Influence the sites like Sponsored Reviews in order to generate a viral buzz online regarding your brand.
• Join as many forums as you can sufficiently maintain an excellence contributor.
• Get to know who the business voice is for your niche and post comments on their blogs.
• Contribute to online groups like Google groups and MySpace groups.
• Market yourself by adding a blog.
• Use highly developed techniques to gain RSS subscribers for utmost exposure.

Pay Per Click Marketing

• If you have a larger budget creates an account on the top tier pay per click networks, Google, MSN and Yahoo!
• If you have a smaller ad budget go with Google and some tier 2 and tier 3 networks.
• A great way to get branding is to get those impressions. Try giving 3^rd tier networks a try but know that conversions may be lower on 3^rd tier networks.
• Make use of key fight to get a good base on competitor PPC advertising.
• Do extensive keywords research to find best possible experience and converting keywords.
• Try to find niches and keyword markets to target that are not as a great deal competitive but are highly traffic, so your cost per click will be way down.
• Mind your ad quality.

Social Media Marketing

• Stay as principled as you possibly can.
• To successfully leverage your social media for online marketing you need to really be active in your communities, ergo is best to have power accounts on a few social media sites rather than trying to manage many of them across multiple networks. Find your niche.
• Start social bookmarking campaigns online.
• Create content to sustain edits in Wikipedia.

Email Marketing

• Team with companies with double opt in lists
• Sponsor mailing lists with companies who have a wide subscriber base.
• Try to leverage DBA lists
• Setup a network of sites geared towards lead generation. By capturing these leads you can use them for yourself or sell them to leading lead brokers.

Search Engine Optimization

• Optimize all title tags and meta data according to your rev mix.
• If you are having problems ranking internal pages for their given keyword terms consider developing an effective silo.
• Develop search engine friendly html sitemap.
• Develop quality internal linking structure.
• Create optimized html source code.
• Create optimized robots.txt
• Create optimized XML sitemap.

Affiliate Marketing

• Create accounts in the 2 major affiliate networks, link share and commission junction.
• Evaluate your opposition affiliate program
• If you do not have an affiliate selection for your services or products then think about creating one because the chance to have others advertise your products and services is a great way to get exposure and build your branding.
• Incentivize your affiliate deals to attract the affiliate and the consumers.

Banner Advertising

• Scrutinize potential sites demographics.
• Get media break outs
• Think Portal Advertising
• Weight your cost per acquisition model between the cost of CPM and CPC banner advertising.

Email marketing is the most reliable and profitable method for generating leads and achieves the targeted visitors.  There is no wonder that this platform has become a very popular as well as valuable for Internet marketers especially for small business owners as we all know that our economy is going through the recession. This is directly affecting our marketing budgets. In this crucial time email marketing is the best option for all Internet marketers.

Consider the Following things when you are going to startsEmail Marketing:

• First start making list of customer for email marketing. You can start by first including your existing customers on your email marketing list later on you can add new customer to the list.
• It is always suggested to use a template. Create a template for your emails and use it consistently. Your template should guide you in developing each email's layout and design.
• Always try to keep your emails short and snappy.
• You should follow data protection act. It is very important to respect customer’s privacy. As customer privacy is the prime concern. 
• Do send quality marketing emails. Nothing is worse for your brand if you send poorly design emails to your customer.
• Give your email a personalize touch. Not to forget that people don’t like mails who is nothing to do with them.
• Always put attention grabbing subject line. Attractive subject line gets the attention of reader.
• Always monitor the performance of your email marketing campaign. And based on the performance of previous campaign improvise and plan the future campaign.
• Always make sure that your subscription procedure must be simple, the form is always visible on website. In short make the registration procedure user friendly.
• Always send relevant information to your customer. Remember then only you can target your audience and get the proper response from them.

Email marketing is one of the most powerful techniques. It is a proven tool for success. It will not only help you achieve your sales objectives but also enhance your reputation online, build a rapport with your subscribers, and establish yourself as an expert within your community.

Search Engine Statistics 2009

Figures are Taken from www.hitwise.com

If you consistently add new content you will not only attract regular readers but also the search engines. Try to add new content to your blog at least 3 times a week.

Optimize Your Content

Make sure you optimize the titles, paragraphs and links within your content. This means you must first do keyword research to incorporate keywords related to your content.

Include keywords in your tags

WordPress allows you to include tags below each post. Place your most popular keywords in these tags separated by commas.

Add Meta tags

Use the headspace or seopack plugin to add title and description meta tags to each post. Search engines place great emphasis on title tags that contain your keyword at the beginning.