Vlog : Video Blogging : Promotions and SEO

Have videos or not, but you can start your own video blog or vblog just in minutes.
Its basically a blog with videos and little or no text at all. Vlogs , the latest hit in online promotion arena, are blogs that mostly feature video shorts and not the text as compared with other blogs.
In short we can say Vlog = Video + Blog

According to mefeedia.com (a major online vlog aggregator) 2,580 vloggers who have created over 100,000 videos since last year.

Why Vlog (or Videoblog)?

Its a great opportunity to show/share some videos for special occasions.
- For Team Events
- Parties / Personal events
- Social Events and social media marketing
- Brand building by sharing and distribution
- Politics and Campaigns
- Advertisements and viral marketing
- Product Promotions

How to start a Video Blog >>
All you have to do is:
- Create a blog
- Upload you video(s)if you have or share using Google video or you tube
- Provide title/descriptions

Vlogs extend the reach of traditional blogs making it more on the interactive audio-visual level of promotion. Although videos cannot be search anyhow for content inside, Social media Marketing and referrals can make it a huge success. This is one form of Indirect Search Engine Optimization with great success ratio!!

Use CAPTCHA : Smart Forms and Stop Spam

How to stop bots/scripts from using your forms?

A lot of unwanted mails you get as spams, previously it was only due to the mailto: format and occured mostly when you have put your mail id directly on the webpage. To avoid flooding of queries by sudden automatic filings and un-solicited subscription requests are the examples of bots/programs using your sites forms.
Now the solution for Webmasters ?
The Answer is CAPTCHA.

What is CAPTCHA ?
A "CAPTCHA" stands for "Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart", trademarked by Carnegie Mellon University, and is a free service. Mellon University Members Luis von Ahn, Manuel Blum, Nicholas J. Hopper along with John Langford of IBM are credited for coining the term CAPTCHA in 2000.

How CAPTCHA work?
The differentiation method between humans and computers (basically programs) is based on the visual and understandable logic. What you will see is a distorted image containing a twisted or random word-characters which are very hard for programs to distinguish. This stops them to move ahead as words don't match in guessing!!So far CAPTCHA has posed a big problem for spammers and a boon to genuine websites.

CAPTCHA For Puzzle Websites?
Created by Vohn Ahm and Blum in 2000 for yahoo, the puzzles website CAPTCHA has come a long way from simple distortion, to adding angled lines, to double puzzling, to bilingual to plain weird.

Use of CAPTCHA and Search Engine Optimization?
Search bots can't read forms, so no program including "Googlebot" can travel beyond your forms. The pages beyond the forms will not be indexed in search engines due to restricted access. Considering the benefits of no-spamming , a CAPTCHA all the way is a good way to use.

Resources:

• The Image Image Verification tutorial shows how to write your own Captcha implementation using PHP.
• Lanap BotDetect is a commercial solution for ASP and ASP.Net

DNS and Search Engine Ranking

What is a DNS ?
According to DNS.net, "The Domain Name System (abbreviated DNS) is an Internet directory service. DNS is how domain names are translated into IP addresses, and DNS also controls email delivery. If your computer cannot access DNS, your web browser will not be able to find web sites, and you will not be able to receive or send email.

What does DNS contains?
The DNS system consists of three components: DNS data (called resource records), servers (called name servers), and Internet protocols for fetching data from the servers.
The billions of resource records in the DNS are split into millions of files called zones. Zones are kept on authoritative servers distributed all over the Internet, which answer queries based on the resource records stored in the zones they have copies of. Caching servers ask other servers for information and cache any replies. Most name servers are authoritative for some zones and perform a caching function for all other DNS information. Large name servers are often authoritative for tens of thousands of zones, but most name servers are authoritative for just a few zones. "

Bill Gates has once termed DNS as Short for digital nervous system while explaining the relationship in a hosting network.

For example, the domain name of India's premium hosting provider http://www.newfunda.com/ might translate to anything like 198.x.x.x and x can be anything depending upon your hosting, shared or dedicated.

Does change in DNS affects Google Ranking?
Its hard to judge in general, but if we consider our experience, then yes it affects (mostly lowers down in number of pages indexed for a particular period of time)
As Google is also a Domain Registrar himself, it has access to all the DNS entries and WHOIS data related to each domain.
Google's Patent Claims as:
"The method of claim 1, wherein the one or more types of history data includes domain-related information corresponding to domains associated with documents; and wherein the generating a score includes: analyzing domain-related information corresponding to adomain associated with the document over time, and scoring the document based, at least in part, on a result of the analyzing."

Static and Dynamic Site : Explained

What is the difference between a Static and Dynamic website?

In general there are two types of web sites viz static and dynamic.
Static Website: A static web site mostly contains simply created and linked webpages . Good option for smaller size websites. Static web sites have very limited flexibility in contents and management perspective and also also relatively hard to maintain if number of pages increase. Examples are Home Pages or Sites of Small firms with less data. Individual page can be optimized to preserve the content and the theme.If you have a basic knowledge about webpage you can create a website using WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) Editor Or HTML editor like Microsoft Frontpage or Dream Weaver.Less Hosting Space is required for a static site as compared with the dynamic and there is no Database needed.

Dynamic web site : as the name suggests, content is created on the fly. Mostly backend database is used to create webpages according to requirements. Best of Portal and Database driven websites having a lot of categories, products, services and webpages. A dynamic website no doubt will appear to cost more because of the customization and complexity, but comparatively its more cost effective solution considering the size and efforts in development. Administration is easy although individual pages cannot be taken care of as per on page optimization is concerned as the data is pulled from database. More Hosting Space is required for a static site as compared with the dynamic and there is no Database needed.Certain limitations such as query parsing and long URL's can be overcomed using Mod-rewrite function to get better chances of competition and visibility in Search Engines like Google, Yahoo and MSN.You/the developer are expected to have a lot of coding knowledge for creating a great dynamic site.

Payment Gateway to Accept Payments via Website

www.authorize.net/
Payment gateway enables internet merchants to accept online payments via credit card and e-check. [Click for more information] Stock quote for ANET


https://www.paypal.com/
Paypal's Payflow Pro is the fully customizable online payment gateway solution to connect your online store with your existing internet merchant account.Send & Receive Payments Online.


www.verisign.com/
Learn how to secure payments can simplify online payment processing by providing you a reliable, secure, and affordable way to accept credit cards online.VeriSign SSL Security® for Securing your web site with the


www.ccavenue.com/
CCAvenue® - Merchant Account, Credit Card Processing & Payment Gateway Offers a payment gateway, credit card transaction and online payment processing services for merchants from India.

Maruti Cars #1 search for automobiles in India

Maruti has out-classed its competitors when it comes to online search race or for the most search automobile portal site.

According to Newswire Press:
Maruti leads the online search hits with over 200% lead over other competitors and - M800 Leads the Model Race.

Maruti cars were searched nearly half a million times over the last year says India's leading automobile portal CarSalesIndia.com. It is well ahead of other competitors by over a quarter million search hits.

The company also said that the number of visitors and used car searches hit a new record high. It has recorded over 2.2 million search hits during April 2006 - March 2007, an increase of over 200% over the same period in the previous year. The company recorded over 1 million search hits for the same period in the previous year.

In the search results announced, Hyundai cars were the second highest with over 1.6 lakhs hits, closely followed by Tata and Ford with Tata vehicles with over 1.29 lakh search hits. Ford cars registered over 1.09 lakh hits.

In the small car segment, Maruti 800 leads with over 90 thousand hits, followed by Hyundai Santro at over 70 thousand hits. From the Maruti stable, Zen has also registered strong demand in the market with its hits over 65 thousand. Tata Indica has recorded over 45 thousand search hits.

In the medium-sized sedan segment, Maruti Esteem and Ford Ikon are competing closely for the top position with Esteem registering over 58 thousand hits, followed by Ikon at 55 thousand hits. Hyundai Accent registered over 44 thousand search hits; Honda City recorded over 41 thousand hits. In the SUV segment Mahindra Scorpio leads the race with over 30 thousand hits followed by Toyota Qualis registering over 20 thousand hits.

Speaking on the topic, the Managing director of the company Ms Preena Sherene said "We have seen an up-surge in the number of people searching for cars and the number of people selling cars. It is a good sign for a matured company like us, as India is still a growing economy and the Internet market is yet to mature".

Its online marketing and ecommerce that has been done effectively by SEO's working for them.
Every company can benefit the same way. Its the competition between the best optimizers around.

Trademarks / Patents Violation in India

Trademarks in Healthcare:
SC restrains Dabur from using trade mark 'Glucose-D'
New Delhi, May. 21 (PTI): Leading ayurvedic products manufacturer Dabur India LTD has been restrained by the Supreme Court from using the trade mark "Glucose-D" for its popular health drink as it was packaged on the lines of Glucon-D owned by rival company M/s Heinz Italia.
Source :The Hindu


Trademarks in Education :
The All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE), India’s technical education regulator, has ordered the CFA Institute “to cease operations in India”. AICTE’s order is the latest chapter in an ongoing fight between the CFA Institute and the Hyderabad-based Institute of Chartered Financial Analysts of India (Icfai) over the use of the terms—CFA and chartered financial analyst.

On 18 May, AICTE issued a notification that said the CFA Institute and its programme were not approved by it.

Source :Live Mint

Patent Exploitation in Yoga:

As has happened in the past with several plant products like turmeric and neem used in traditional Indian medicines, yet another application has been filed in the US for patenting a form of indigenous knowledge from India. An NRI is aggressively claiming patent for a sequence of yoga asanas. And with the US Patent and Trademark Office issuing 150 yoga-related copyrights, 134 patents on yoga accessories, and 2,315 yoga trademarks, any one teaching these patented asanas might have to pay a royalty to the American patent holder.

Source: Times of India

Website Copyrights in India

Ever wondered how websites get their copyright?
How the © mark is legally allowed to put on your website?
How are you sure your website is copy right proof?
How to get a copyright for your site in India?

For all the questions arising please follow these steps:
1. Check your content\creative for which you want to take a copyright.
2. If you have original content, its of-course you have the rights and can claim as an Intellectual Property (IPR)
3. Checkout for a copyright office nearby.

India being a member of the Berne Convention of 1886 (as modified at Paris in 1971), the Universal Copyright Convention of 1951 and the Agreement on Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) Agreement of 1995.

New treaties were signed in 1996 under the auspices of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO). These treaties are called the ‘WIPO Copyrights Treaty (WCT)’ and the ‘WIPO Performances and Phonograms Treaty (WPPT)’

The Copyright Office is currently located at the following address:

B-2/W-3, Curzon Road Barracks
Kasturba Gandhi Marg
New Delhi - 110001

References:
http://copyright.gov.in/

Affiliate Marketing and Web Promotion

Definitions of Affiliate marketing on the Web:

This is a system of revenue sharing between one site (the affiliate merchant) which features an ad or content designed to drive traffic to another site (the advertiser). The affiliate will receive a fee based on the amount of traffic generated.
www.internetworld365.com/Content/Pages/Glossary.aspx

Affiliate marketing is the use by a Web site that sells products of other Web sites, called affiliates, to help market the products. Amazon.com, the book seller, created the first large-scale affiliate programme and hundreds of other companies have since followed.
www.adoofa.com/services/services_glossary.asp

A system of advertising in which site A agrees to feature buttons from site B, and site A gets a percentage of any sales generated for site B. It can also be applied to situations in which an advertiser may be looking for marketing information, rather than a cash sale. Popular among startups with very small marketing budgets.
www.expedite-email-marketing.com/internet_marketing_glossary_internetmarketingtermsdefinition.htm

Revenue sharing between two web sites. Affiliate site normally provide free advertising for an ecommerce site and compensation is based on performance ie sales, clicks, registrations, or a combination of all.
www.positioning-search-engines.com/glossary.htm

A risk-free form of advertising in which a company pays its Affiliate partners a commission for sales and/or leads generated through the Affiliates marketing activities.
www.webbloom.com/Help_Centre/Glossary/

A business relationship with a merchant or other service provider who allows you to link to that business. When a visitor clicks on the link at your site and subsequently makes a purchase from the merchant, you receive a commission based on the amount of the sale, a referral fee or a pay-for-click fee.
www.showtheworld.com/glossary.htm

A system of selling products or services in context over the Internet that allows online merchants to promote their goods or services within the content of tens of thousands of Web sites. Affiliate marketing allows merchants to pay their affiliates based on performance.
www.getrichfree.com/glossary_of_terms.htm

(also partner, pay for performance, performance-based, referral-based or revenue-sharing marketing) a revenue sharing partnership between a merchant and one or more affiliates, where the affiliate is paid a commission for referring clicks, leads or sales to the merchant website.
www.shareresults.com/about_us_glossary.php

Affiliate Marketing is a widespread method of promoting a website, in which an affiliate is rewarded for every visitor, subscriber and/or customer provided through his efforts. It is a modern variation of the practice of paying finder's-fees to individuals who introduce new clients to a business. Compensation may be made based on a certain value for each visit (Pay-per-click), registrant (Pay-per-lead), or a commission for each customer or sale (Pay-per-Sale).
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affiliate_marketing

Best Hosting and Ranking worries!!

Whats is WebHosting and does it affect Search Visibility?

An ISP(Internet Service Provider) provides internet services such as Domain Name Registration, Website Hosting Space etc. Web hosting or simply hosting means storing/uploading your web pages/web site on a server space allocated. Web hosting normally includes control panel, FTP ( File Transfer Protocol) access and email services.

How to choose the best hosting provider?
Reliable website hosting provider should be chosen according to:
- Your requirements
- Years of Service
- Support Type (Telephone Support is preferred)
- Any hidden features
- Competitors
- Try before you buy offer if any

E.g.
Newfunda.com provides all the features for linux and windows hosting for single and multiple domains with or without reselling options.

Shared Hosting does not affect much your rankings if all other things such as domain name, file names and navigation are same. If you have a dedicated ip and the servers are changed including domain,then its obvious you will be facing "sandbox" as the domain will be considered fresh.

DOS Attack on Estonia

First ever incident of Cyber Attack on a Baltic Country of Estonia was witnessed over 3 weeks when a Denial of Service ( DOS) attacks from cyber criminals made surfing impossible. Estonia is a country of 1.4 million people,

NATO has shown seriousness by dispatching cyber-terrorism experts to investigate the incident.According to Jaak Aaviksoo (Estonian Defence Minister) "At present, NATO does not define cyber-attacks as a clear military action" .

Russia's ambassador in Brussels, Vladimir Chizhov, said: "If you are implying [the attacks] came from Russia or the Russian Government, it's a serious allegation that has to be substantiated. Cyberspace is everywhere."

Search Optimization and Spamming

Search Engine Spamming:

Over-stuffing of words/information using illegal means and practices mostly to attain unfair or "instant" advantage for more visibility and to increase the search engine rankings.
Black hat techniques used by webmasters for such spamming make the search engines still vulnerable as those algos find it difficult to differentiate from genuine content and stuffed words.

Examples of Search engine spamming include :
- Too much words placed
- Hidden Text or micro text
- Doorway Pages
- Mirror Pages/ Mirror Sites
- Sites that contain only advertisements and no content at all

Google Spam:

Google Information Guidelines for Webmasters provides information about what techniques to avoid on Google Network.

Yahoo Spam:

Yahoo's information Guidelines for webmasters about what search engine optimization tricks to avoid on Yahoo!

New Google Analytics Report ( BETA)

More Visibility and more Tracking :

Google Analytics is back with its new Dashboard (Beta Version).
Reporting section is new and more on the usability point of view with specific tracking. I hope this comes from customer feedbacks !




Features newly added:
- Email and export reports: Schedule or send ad-hoc
personalized report emails and export reports in PDF format.

- Custom Dashboard: No more digging through reports. Put all
the information you need on a custom dashboard that you can
email to others.

- Trend and Over-time Graph: Compare time periods and select
date ranges without losing sight of long term trends.

- Contextual help tips: Context sensitive Help and Conversion
University tips are available from every report.

Dynamic fonts : Optimizing a site with Dynamic fonts

What is a dynamic font?
The fonts which are downloaded on the fly with each webpage/website using the same and without any manual downloads required by the user are web-fonts or dynamic fonts.
These are browser based display fonts and have nothing to do with the hosting Operating system (Server OS)

Dynamic fonts can be classified as OpenType and TrueDoc fonts depending upon the code and the calling procedures.

Advantages of using a dynamic font?
You can build local language websites using dynamic fonts and can be seen mostly anywhere on the www irrespective of the geography as the fonts are not required to have stored on your browser.

How to build a site with Dynamic Fonts?

Three steps to build a site with dynamic fonts
1. Choose from the available dynamic fonts ( mostly licence is required)
2. Develop your site using the same fonts
3. Upload your site to your hosting space ( in case you dont have buy one!)
4. You are done

Optimizing a site with Dynamic fonts?
My suggestion is to follow the usability point of view, as your target audience is specific and there is always less competition.

Important thing to remember:
Some dynamic fonts dont support versions of Linux Browsers.

Website Analytics for your site

What is Web Analytics?
A tool or a software that collects data on web site using certain scripts to study users behavior and search patterns.Traffic reports and classification done using such analytics softwares help in better ROI (Return on Investment) as users interest and navigation can be interpreted in perfect sense.
More usability in website design and more products can be launched with the analysis of such data.

Popular web analytics softwares are:

- Google Analytics has been re-designed to help you learn even more about where your visitors come from and how they interact with your site

- Onestat.com Offers advanced web site traffic analysis software and a free counter for measuring visitor behaviour.

- ClickTracks.com Analyzer reveals website visitor behavior patterns. It reveals search engine queries and PPC ROI.

- Web Analytics and Web Statistics from WebTrends.com, the worldwide leader in web analytics. Accelerate your conversion rates and web ROI

- Statcounter.com offers a free yet reliable invisible web tracker, highly configurable hit counter and real-time detailed web stats

How to use web based web analytics ?
Its simple, most of these analytics tools use a piece of script (javascript) which you need to put in the body (html tag body) on each page you want to observe. You are done!!

Online Groups and Brand Building

Virtual groups help in developing understanding for various technologies, concepts and even a better online culture. A clean www can be established by alert and honest groups with a social conscious motive. The main aim should be to share correct information and help all understand in a systematic way to avoid confusion and a healthy discussion too.

Having groups can help companies to categories the manpower according to interest and technology. Specific groups can discuss topics and help in finding out a solution.

The communities can discuss any topic on the earth and search optimization is one hot topic for webmasters. A great source for a novice and an update for a busy SEO/SEM professional.

Brand promotion or Individual promotion can be done easily now a days using online groups but its a gradual process and need to develop trust via your active and intelligent performance in discussions.

Famous online groups are :
- Google Groups
- Yahoo Groups
- Linux Groups
- Aol Groups

Data Mining - the next search trend

Data Mining [also referred as Knowledge-Discovery in Databases (KDD) or Knowledge-Discovery] is the process of analyzing huge data mostly from databases from different perspectives and summarizing the patterns into useful information using tools such as clusturing, rules defination and classification.

This powerful tool used in extraction of information is helpful to understand behaviours and patterns for potential leads and better optimization. Analytics and search oriented firms ( such as search engines and web-analytics) use such algos to study patterns for relative data.

Data consists of facts, figures, numbers or text which is stored and processed by powerful multiprocessors with logical algorithms. Data mining allows users to analyze data from many different dimensions , categorize and summarize the relationships identified.

Search Engines, Stock Markets and all consumer related activities can be made intelligent and improve sales based on effective Data Mining techniques.

Second Life - Whats the funda ?

Have you heard about Second life ?

Second Life is a 3-D virtual world entirely built and owned by its residents. Since opening to the public in 2003, it has grown explosively and today is inhabited by a total of 6,147,741 people from around the globe.

* From the moment you enter the World you'll discover a vast digital continent, teeming with people, entertainment, experiences and opportunity. Once you've explored a bit, perhaps you'll find a perfect parcel of land to build your house or business.

* You'll also be surrounded by the Creations of your fellow residents. Because residents retain the rights to their digital creations, they can buy, sell and trade with other residents.

* The Marketplace currently supports millions of US dollars in monthly transactions. This commerce is handled with the in-world unit-of-trade, the Linden dollar, which can be converted to US dollars at several thriving online Linden Dollar exchanges.

This is a virtual reality concept turned to secondlife. Check it out here

World Top Brands !!

Google Tops the list of leading brands worldwide while Microsoft is third.
From Automobile to Electricity , Software to Banking, Retail to Consumers , there is competition everywhere!!

1. Google
Google, with a brand value of $66.434 billion, is the world's most powerful brand.

2. GE
General Electric's brand value has been estimated at $61.880 billion, making it the world's second most powerful brand.

3. Microsoft
Microsoft Corporation is the world's largest software company, with global annual revenue of over $44.28 billion. With a brand value of $54.951 billion, it also is the planet's third most powerful brand.

4. Coca-Cola
Coca-Cola's brand value has been estimated at $44.134 billion, making it the world's foruth most powerful brand.

5. China Mobile
China Mobile is the world's 5th most powerful brand with a value of $41.214 billion. China Mobile Communications Corporation, also known as China Mobile or CMCC, is China's largest mobile phone operator.

6. Marlboro
Marlboro's brand value has been estimated at $39.166 billion, making it the 6th most powerful brand. Marlboro, made by Altria, is the world's best selling cigarette brand. It is famous for its billboard advertisements and magazine ads of the Marlboro Man.

7. Wal-Mart
The world's 7th most powerful brand, Wal-Mart, is estimated to be worth $36.880 billion. Wal-Mart Stores is an American public corporation and the world's largest retailer. It is the largest private employer, the largest grocery retailer, and the largest toy seller in the United States.

8. Citi
Citi is the world's 8th most powerful brand with an estimated value of $33.706 billion. Citigroup Inc was formed following the $140 billion merger of Citicorp and Travelers Group on April 7, 1998 to create the world's largest financial services organisation. The company employs almost 300,000 people around the world.

9. IBM
International Business Machines Corporation, also called IBM or 'Big Blue', is a multinational computer technology corporation headquartered in Armonk, New York, USA. Till 2006 it was the world's largest computer company, but has now ceded the top spot to Hewlett-Packard. With over 350,000 employees worldwide, IBM is the largest information technology employer in the world.

10. Toyota
Toyota with an estimated brand value of $33.427 billion is the 10th most powerful brand in the world. Toyota Motor Corporation is a Japanese multinational corporation and the world's largest auto company that manufactures automobiles, trucks, buses, and robots. The headquarters of Toyota are located in Toyota, Aichi, Japan. It is the world's eighth largest company by revenue of $179 billion as of 2006.

Source : Rediff Business

Microsoft Silverlight (High Defination Video)

Microsoft's newly launched 'Silverlight' is a cross-browser, cross-platform plug-in for delivering the next generation of Microsoft .NET–based media experiences and rich interactive applications for the Web.

This video editing application is useful for the companies providing video remix or fly-in effects. Video based publishing media will get a boose in web world as silverlight supports Web-based social network experience by sharing media.

Features :

1. Compelling cross-platform user experiences
2. Flexible programming model with collaborative tools
3. Efficient, lower cost of delivery, and more capable media solution
4. Connected to Web, servers, and services
   

More info here

Rediff Stock Quotes live

Rediff.com now shows India Live Stock Quotes of BSE and NSE, on the homepage itself.
The display is made prominent while placing just below the login.
Its a good attempt to promote your best offerings and dont forget that the next tab is shopping.
Here is a snap:


Well if you know its already there, then I may be too late.
Please dont let this happen again and do keep me updated for such advancement in technologies and online world.

Indian IT / ITES Growth $100 b in 2011

Reasons to Smile again!

According to reports, the already reining Indian IT industry will cross the $100 billion mark in revenues within the next five years with a growth rate of 18 percent compound annual growth rate (CAGR).
Facts say, the Indian IT/ITeS industry has clocked INR 1,98477 Crore of revenue in 2006, up by an impressive 31% over 2005, which is in line with the gained momentum since 2003, mostly due to balanced domestic IT spending and exports revenue. Growth driven by IT infrastructure, business apps, security products and services, outsourcing and software managed services and digital products/services.

Growth always drive business and vice-versa !!
Long live Internet marketing..

ASP Learning Resources

ASPTutorial.info
Active server pages - asp tutorial for beginners with free script codes.

Codefixer.com
ASP tutorials, resources and articles for the beginner to intermediate ASP developer.

ASPFree.com
ASP Help, ASP Tutorials, ASP Programming, ASP Code - ASP Free.