Navtej Kohli

If you wish to commence a major SEO effort, a PPC campaign is your sure shot ticket to success. Navtej Kohli gives some simple yet effective PPC campaign testing tips.

A good PPC campaign is one that not only fetches traffic, but converts shoots to flowers i.e. converts visitors to buyers.

If it doesn’t, you’re in a fix bro!

Use a PPC campaign to test your website on keywords you desire to do optimize in your SEO campaign. This will help you save loads of time and money.

Once you’ve opened your PPC account, do some brainstorming on how to test your keywords. Here are a few tips:

• Don’t pick the ‘broad match’ option.
• Instead use ‘exact phrase’: use [] to designate it.
• Third - test, test and only test can save you!

How you can get your site ranked - Navtej Kohli

1. Crawler Reachability: All the search engines have their crawlers who visit the website hunting for new content. If the site returns an error code when the crawler comes to visit then the site won’t be indexed. Thus, before making the site live make sure all the pages are up and running.

2. Good and Original Content: Internet is all about content. For search engines there is nothing more valuable than proper, well written, relevant and unique content. Just write what is best for your company in your own words.

3. Meta Tags: Though recently search engines have started giving less importance to meta tags (Due to some unethical web practices), they still carry a lot of weight. The title and description tags give a theme to your website and support the content of the page. The title of a page is the heading of what the content on the page is and should be relevant and concise.

4. Keyword Research: Keyword should be selected based on your niche market and selling points. It is very necessary to understand the competition and do effective keyword research that describes your business. After identification of keywords they should be well placed through out the page.

5. Back Link Building: Get good and quality links from reputed sites. The more sites point to your website the more online reputation your site gains.

Read more articles from Navtej Kohli on Navtej Kohli Word Press | Navtej Kohli Careers | Navtej Kohli SeoMoz | Navtej Kohli website | Navtej Kohli LiveJournal | | Navtej Kohli Profile !

Around 9 months ago Apple introduced “Safari for Windows”, calling it the fastest web browser that too twice as fast as IE7 or Firefox 2. Since then, Apple has released couple of minor upgrades for Safari 3 that are mainly bug fixes and the browser is still in beta stage.

After putting up the Safari 3 beta to the test to compare it with Internet Explorer 7 and Firefox 2 on Windows. What I found didn’t impress me very much. Although Safari offers slightly faster page loading, the beta is extremely unstable and suffers from interface deficiencies that make its value on the Windows platform questionable at best.

A few glaring oddities that I have observed are:

1. Stability: The most glaring flaw of Safari 3 on Windows is its utter lack of stability. Safari hangs and freezes frequently, and once it completely locked up the system, it requires a hard reset. Also Unlike Firefox, Safari 3 can’t automatically restore the previous browsing session after a crash.

Note: Because of this reason, I would suggest not to test it on any production system. The Firefox 3 alpha build I reviewed last week is far more stable and robust than the current beta build of Safari 3.

2. Cross Platform Oddities: There are a few other interface problems that further detract from the Safari user experience. When you launch the bookmark manager by clicking the book icon in the bookmarks toolbar or by selecting Show All Bookmarks from the Bookmarks menu, the bookmark manager loads in the currently active tab. When the bookmark manager is closed, the page that was previously displayed in that tab is reloaded. I can’t fathom why anybody would want the bookmark management interface to replace the actively viewed web page. To compensate for this bizarre interface blunder, I frequently find myself opening a new tab or window before using the bookmark manager. The absence of a bookmark sidebar is also really frustrating. In Firefox, I frequently find myself dragging links from a page into my bookmarks hierarchy using the Bookmarks sidebar. In order to do the same thing with Safari, one needs to use two separate windows, which is really inconvenient.

Safari’s built-in RSS support also leaves a lot to be desired. When a web page’s header specifies multiple associated RSS feeds, Safari will automatically show the first one by default when the blue RSS icon is clicked in the URL bar. Unfortunately, Safari doesn’t provide any easy way to access the other feeds. Firefox handles this better, displaying a menu of available feeds when I click the yellow RSS icon in Firefox’s URL bar.

3. Security vulnerabilities: Although the Safari 3 web page claims that Safari was designed to be “secure from day one,” a number of security vulnerabilities have already been found. Although some of these vulnerabilities were discovered by security prima donna David Maynor, who is infamous for his exaggerated Apple WiFi vulnerability claims, other researchers with more credibility (particularly Thor Larholm) have found serious security bugs as well.

In under two hours, Larholm was able to find a URL protocol handler injection vulnerability that facilitates remote command execution. Larholm points out that Safari doesn’t properly handle URL validation in iframes, which can be used to manipulate programs associated with protocol handlers in unpredictable ways. Larholm demonstrates how to exploit this vulnerability by providing a page with an iframe that will crash Safari when loaded and can launch an arbitrary executable if Firefox is set as the default browser. Larholm’s exploit uses the gopher protocol and Firefox XPCOM components for process instantiation, so it won’t be able to launch another executable if Internet Explorer is set as the default browser, but it will still crash Safari.

I never heard of any third-party browser plugins being released specifically for Windows Safari and there’s practically little or no talk among the blogging community about Safari browser on Windows.

So did Safari manage to win any browser market share during the nine month stint ?

Navtej Kohli

Yesterday, I was explaining my new content writer Shaila about the writing style that we ( I mean most of the online community) prefer to get the key information online. I’m sharing my thoughts here so as in turn I can get a few more insights on the style of writing on the web.

How Web Writing is Unique and how can we modify our writing style that suits to web audiences?

Skim-and-Scan Style of Web Readers: Web readers are hungry for instant gratification.
They search for most appealing segments of each page instead of spending time on a single page.

Reading Online is Difficult: Reading speeds are 25% slower on a monitor than on a paper.

1. Text is not easy to read On-Screen : reading on-screen is tiring on the eyes.

2. Monitor Screen Settings/ Quality vary, for example - Monitor displaying graphics at 640 x 480 pixels, 800 x 600 and 1024 x 768 pixels.

Monitor Screens are typically in Landscape orientation, however traditional documents are in portrait orientation.

Web is Three-Dimensional: In the online world there is no beginning, middle or end.

• Content gathering

(CONTENT = RELEVANT TEXT + IMAGERY)

Process: Content gathering –> Compilation –> Analysis – >Development –> Authentication -> Implementation

Plan Navigation First

• Think about who your readers are and what path they will follow to get the key information

• It will help you decide how much information you will actually write and how much readers will access via links to other pages/sites.

Modify your Message Style and Format

Once a Navigational Structure is established, start with composing the gathered content in a style and format suitable for web.

Style
• Be very concise: aim to reduce text by at least 50%
• Use plain English.
• Frontload headlines, paragraphs, links and lists.
• Use short sentences
• Use short paragraphs
• Use “you” and “we” whenever appropriate.

Adopt Inverted Pyramid Style
• Start every page with a unique, precise, explanatory headline.
• Follow with summary, description or key message of the page.
• Use frequent subheadings; write them like headlines.
• Limit page size to the equivalent of 5 A4 pages.
• On long pages, list subheadings at the top and bookmark them.
• On long pages, provide frequent links to the top.
• Restrict every page to a single topic and purpose.

Break Information into theme-related small Chunks

Break Information into independent chunks and connect them with hyperlinks.

USE Lists
Useful Device for presenting key points on a web page

They
• Slow down roving eyes
• Simplify Complex Subjects
• Highlight the Main Point
• Breakup the page Visually
• List items in the logical order for user.
• Limit number of items on a list to 7-10 maximum.
• Subdivide long lists into short lists of related items.
• Provide descriptive headings.

Use Links

Links can be words, graphics, phrases or even complete sentences like Navtej Kohli and Navtej Kohli

They
Help readers easily navigate the web document.
• Make link-text self-explanatory, so people know exactly what they will find when they click.
• Provide Context for the links
• If a link is to a page on another web site, say so.
• If a link opens a different type of file, state the type and size (e.g. PDF, 54 mb,).
• Place the links strategically

Images
• Restrict image size.
• Provide alt-text for all images.
• Provide a long description for all complex images (e.g. charts and graphs).

Navtej Kohli

Navtej Kohli

I’ve been reading a few more SEO blogs lately. I like to be part of the community on these sites, and I usually make a point to create a profile and become part of the discussion. Some subject matters can be found in abundance online, and one that gets more than its fair share of coverage is that of Search Engine Optimization, or SEO. For anyone who doesn’t know what SEO is, it’s basically the practice of “optimizing” websites so that they rank as well as possible in search engines like Yahoo!, Google and Microsoft’s Live Search.

SEO is usually broken down into three different types: white hat, grey had and black hat SEO. These terms refer to the tactics Search Engine Optimizers use in order to better their rankings. White hats engage in Google-approved, above-board tactics. Black hats aren’t concerned with abiding by the rules and often employ tactics that the search engines consider to be wrong. Grey hats play in both areas, using whatever tactics they feel are needed at any one time.

Internet marketing and SEO are different in that SEO focuses mainly on obtaining and building the number of links a website has. Internet marketing often focuses more on traditional advertising, yet the ads appear online. Many SEO firms do a bit of both, however, and the link-building side of the industry has been of particular interest to me lately.

I don’t suppose that a lot of web users know exactly how search engines rank the websites they see when they search for something. Before I had much experience online, I didn’t think about it too much either. I imagine that most people just assume that Google somehow knows which sites are the most relevant. On learning that rankings were largely based upon the number of inlinks to a site, I gained a new perspective on what I see when I search for a particular item.

I honestly think that it would be good for the general public to develop a better understanding of the way search works, especially given the fact that people look for some highly important information online, such as information about political figures and medical issues. Learning about search could help people make more informed decisions and help them interpret what they see on Google’s results page.

Navtej Kohli

Consumer advocacy has always been a part of our commercial landscape. Long before the internet and long before user-generated-content, there were outlets for people to review and discuss their experiences with businesses. Nowadays, however, committing commercial blunders is potentially more dangerous.

More and more often, people are visiting sites such as Yelp in order to make decisions about their lives. Which restaurants should they try, which gyms should they join, where should they live? People are reporting their experiences online and if you are a business-owner, you’d better hope that your web-savvy customers leave your premises with a good taste in their mouths.

Because if they don’t, there’s a good chance your name and reputation will be damaged in the online social landscape. Online, people seem to put a lot of trust in the reviews of others, and if someone has written that your restaurant is home to rude staff, bland food and overpriced drinks, a potential customer is likely to go elsewhere.

Of course, you should not just play nicely in the offline world in order to save your online reputation. Customer service should be on everyone’s mind at all times. However, you should now be wary that now, even one bad experience could negatively effect your business for a long time. So serve the correct food, give correct change and be polite to your clients and customers, because you never know which one of them is carrying his or her laptop and is about to write about you!

Viral marketing depends on a high pass-along rate from person to person. If a large percentage of recipients forward something to a large number of friends, the overall growth snowballs very quickly. If the pass-along numbers get too low, the overall growth quickly fizzles.

At the height of B2C it seemed as if every startup had a viral component to its strategy, or at least claimed to have one. However, relatively few marketing viruses achieve success on a scale similar to Hotmail, widely cited as the first example of viral marketing.

robably the biggest viral marketing success of the year has come not from an advertising agency but from the Royal Dragoon Guards, based at their Al Faw base in Iraq. The squaddies decided to make a spoof video of the Tony Christie song ‘Is this the Way to Amarillo’, which recently went back to the top of the UK charts as a result of the excellent charity video by Peter Kay. The video clip, which features members of the Royal Dragoon Guards mimicking the Peter Kay video, was sent to friends in the UK but so many people tried to downlad it that the MoD server could not cope.

If you’d like to see a short news clip about the video, take a look at the BBC website - ‘Amarillo’ video crashes MoD PCs; though for the full version I’d recommend you go to The Sun newspaper and download it from there (you pay £0.50 but all proceeds go to the Armed Forces Memorial Appeal)

Navtej