Learn SEO for Free : Site Structure & Meta Tags

I get enormous requests about " How to learn SEO ?" and feel guilty of not getting enough time to teach personally to each and everyone.

For a quick Fast Track SEO Course , we can start with these online video tutorials:
Always feel free to post replies , feedbacks and mail me in case of any specific issues :)

SEO, Site Structure, Meta Tag Optimization


SEO Video - Meta Tag SEO Tips


If you dont have a website , Get a website here

Top 4 Traps by Fake SEO's and Search Marketers

Checkout the Fake SEO case studies, its very common to lose money when you dont know where to put your faith and trust in...

1. Guaranteed inclusion in Google
The most killer line you can observe in most of the so-called Great SEO's in any part of the world.
Some say we will make your site listed in Google's Search engine ( some go beyond and say we will do it for Yahoo! and MSN too.+ 100000000 other search engines)

Remember the term inclusion ( means your site is there in the search engine's index) and ranking ( get top positions for targetted keywords) are totally different and used to confuse the potential client.

The fact is if you have a site , Google will be crawling it as per DNS (Domain Name Server) Updates. Most of the webmasters or net surfers dont know the fact that Google is also an Authorized Domain Registrar, meaning that it has the power to search and crawl the WHOIS database as per wish.
There is a concept of "Sandbox" with search engine (can assure for Google), which may delay the indexing of the site for some time, a new site therefore does not show the instant it is registered.
If your site is still not indexed you can submit a Google Sitemap via Google Webmaster tools.

2. Top 10 Ranking in 24 Hours
Is it a magic trick? well read the complete story first before following these SEO gurus. They have some "special" terminology for that and also have some "conditions", which you will come to know only after you pay.
I have checked with some sites:
One says, the top ranking you will get is for the keyword " Pravin Shivarkar is the best SEO in India". When asked about 24 hours ... well they say, they will submit the site and then "influence" the search engines to rank me for the keyword ; well is it a keyword anyway ;)
One site goes beyond the logical ( Sorry....) imagination limit to say that, they are not talking about the organic ranking, they mean the top ranking is for the Sponsored results ( generally we get on the right hand bar in google) and they will rank your site ( here the really mean a paid advertisement)

3. Do you want guaranteed search engine ranking on Google, Yahoo , MSN?
Who will say no, unless and until he dont know why it is all about ...
The advertisement copy DO NOT Say which ranking, what rank to be exact.
We might have seen for years that if you link a particular site via n number of backlinks ( one way linking) then it is considered that the site is important by Trust vote, which some Black Hat SEO's do try to experiment or spam.

4. Guaranteed 100000000 visitors !!!
If you dont want to know who is coming from which site, or you want to show your client the sudden "Growth" that has incurred because of your "Magical" SEO techniques yesterday , this can be an ideal situation to be in with your money running out of your pocket...........
There are many "businessmen" who buy 1000+ domains and put some "engine" to show some data on each of those "websites". So do employ people (Data entry operators) to add ( copy and paste) content on these sites. Now most of them are directories with whatever subject in this world you can imagine of. So if you are selling for a washing soap and are getting visits from college library sites ( well can be good no doubt) are you expecting any sales after that?

Its all about asking exact questions in life and while dealing with Online Search Optimizers and Marketers!

Low cost Promotion - great advertising idea - Viral Marketing

Viral Marketing Ads:

The tool which is of once create-then let it go.... it creates a brand impression + Promotion + Advertising + Learning - Awareness on every bounce and everyone who is related, anyone who receives, forwards, views or interacts is helping the brand awareness grow. I'm referring to Viral Marketing. A powerful tool, much under-utilized by Search Marketers till date.

Wikipedia defines viral marketing as
Viral marketing and viral advertising refer to marketing techniques that use pre-existing social networks to produce increases in brand awareness or to achieve other marketing objectives (such as product sales) through self-replicating viral processes, analogous to the spread of pathological and computer viruses. It can be word-of-mouth delivered or enhanced by the network effects of the Internet.Viral marketing is a marketing phenomenon that facilitates and encourages people to pass along a marketing message voluntarily.Viral promotions may take the form of video clips, interactive Flash games, advergames, ebooks, brandable software, images, or even text messages. The basic form of viral marketing is not infinitely sustainable.

Indian Case Study :
a) Case 1.
an example of Gradual Brand / Event Promotion via series of Viral Ad Spots:

In indian perspective, here are some killer viral ads, though provoking and creating interest about GoaFest 2007.
Viral AD 1


Viral AD 2


Viral AD 3


Viral AD 4


Viral AD 5


Viral AD 6


Viral AD 7



b) Case 2
Company ads for Products / Services
A company has a distinctive edge when it comes to Viral Marketing Ads in India, Yes its WebChutney
Some of the killer brand promotion ads ( Funny Stuff) created by webchutney are here:

Thakur Ka Inteqam
A viral for wrigley's. ... animation thakur ka inteqam , Theme : bollywood sholay



Bade dino ke baad
Another Viral advertisment created for Microsoft outlook. ... Theme : Bollywood Chitti aayi hai... pankaj udhas ...


Arey baba chalis chor
Airtel , KBC showcase.....



Vikram Betaal:
For CenterFresh


Before viewing the ideas and ads, the interest and awareness is a normal one, but after all this stuff, an excitement factor creates curiosity and the viewer will think, lets give a try !! Success.....

Browse the most popular sites on the web.

Here are some of the most popular sites on the web , India specific.
1. Google India

Indian version of this popular search engine. Search the whole web or only webpages from India. Interfaces offered in English, Hindi, Bengali, Telugu, Marathi and Tamil.
google.co.in

2. Yahoo!

Personalized content and search options. Chatrooms, free e-mail, clubs, and pager.
yahoo.com

3. Google

Enables users to search the Web, Usenet, and images. Features include PageRank, caching and translation of results, and an option to find similar pages. The company's focus is developing search technology.
google.com

4.Orkut.co.in
Social networking and discussion site operated by Google for India.

5. Rediff.com India Ltd.
Online portal with free e-mail and many other services.
rediff.com

6.YouTube

YouTube is a way to get your videos to the people who matter to you. Upload, tag and share your videos worldwide!
youtube.com

7.Blogger.com

Free, automated weblog publishing tool that sends updates to a site via FTP.
blogger.com

8.RapidShare

Users can upload up to 100 meg files for sharing. Provides downloads of 100 megs per hour on the free service. Premium service also available.
rapidshare.com

9.Windows Live

Live Search , MSN , Windows Live · United States |Search engine from Microsoft.
live.com



10.Microsoft Network (MSN)

Dialup access and content provider.
msn.com

11.Wikipedia

An online collaborative encyclopedia.
wikipedia.org





12.Facebook

A social utility that connects people, to keep up with friends, upload photos, share links and videos.
facebook.com

13.Microsoft Corporation

Main site for product information, support, and news.
microsoft.com



14.Naukri.com

Search Jobs in India - Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore, Kolkata. Find career openings in top companies.
naukri.com

15. Orkut
Social networking and discussion site operated by Google.
orkut.com

16. Indiatimes

Portal site; includes news stories under subject headings, and links to other information sources.
indiatimes.com

17.Bharatstudent.com

India's Largest Free Social Community Networking Site for Indian friends & Indian student.Friends,Gangs,Film News,Gossips,Photo Galleries,Wallpapers
bharatstudent.com

19.Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation

Offers online rail ticket booking, and checking of ticket reservation status. Includes train schedules, availability of tickets, and a travel planner.
irctc.co.in

20.Sify.com

India s leading portal for news, business, shopping, sports, movies, vedic astrology, food, and bollywood videos for Indians and NRIs. The largest Indian Community
sify.com

21.Cricinfo

International cricket news, live scores, photos, columns and player profiles. Provides archive scorecards, statistics database, ratings and email newsletter. Part of ESPN International. UK.
cricinfo.com

23.WordPress.com

Free blogs managed by the developers of the WordPress software. Includes custom design templates, integrated stats, automatic spam protection and many more features.
wordpress.com

24.Fastclick

An online advertising agent that provides products, such as Ad Network and AdServer, to ensure optimal output and performance for its clients.
fastclick.com

25.The Internet Movie Database

Features plot summaries, reviews, cast lists, and theatre schedules.
imdb.com



26.MoneyControl.com

MoneyControl.com is India s leading financial information source. It s the official site for CNBC TV18, and provides news, views, and analysis on equity / stock markets, commodities, personal finance, mutual funds, insurance and loans.
moneycontrol.com

27.Googlesyndication.com
Those who advertisers who are from Adwords ( online advertising / publishing wing of Google) know how it works!

28.ICICI Bank

Offers a wide range of banking products and financial services to corporate and retail customers.
icicibank.com

29. Monsterindia.com
Find Jobs in India, Delhi, Bangalore, Mumbai, Chennai, Hyderabad. Apply For Jobs in IT,Sales, Call Center at Monster.com

Source : Alexa

What Search engines think of your site's unavailable page?

Response Codes and website optimization:

Sometimes we find expected pages, that may or may not be advertised , but shown as links on part or even at the Index page of the site.
With sheer excitement and an urge to learn more or to buy something the user clicks and what does he find ( not so often for professional webmasters!)

Error 404
Page Not Found!

This happens due to improper link navigation or due to spelling ( sometimes spaces can be a killer for a website linking)

Now question comes what is the Error 404?
This is one of the HTTP status code (server's response code, which provides information about the status of the request) for the availability of the "said" page name (URL).
for example:
If there is a link "Guaranteed Top 10 Ranking" to your SEO page, the user wants to get to the top and ultimately clicks that. Then if the page is giving a 404 ( page not found) error, do you think you will get the client??
The answer is simply NO , unless you are too lucky or the visitor is very optimistic to contact you further.
Here comes the role of the webmaster to check the incoming and outgoing links via "broken link analysis". There are many FREE web based softwares who do that including Xenu and W3C Link Checker among others.

HTTP status codes
When a request is made to your server for a page on your site (for instance, when a user accesses your page in a browser or when Googlebot crawls the page), your server returns an HTTP status code in response to the request.

some popular codes are:
200 for "OK"
404 File not found
301 "Moved Permanently"
302 "Moved temporarily"


What is the dis-advantage of non-available web pages or in other words from SEO point of view, how to utilize the error code for better optimization of a website?

From an end user's point of view, the impression gets bad, he / she "may not" return to your site again or will have an assumption that the site is either incomplete or not being managed properly. Which will lead to brand awareness confusion. You need a professional company to manage your website if you want it done properly.

How it works?
Let's say that in the link to "Visit Google Apps" above, the link is broken because of a typing error when coding the page.

More info from Google Webmaster Central Blog

From the search engine crawler's view, a 404 status code is a link end or the search for deep crawl stops there itself , limiting your link indexing.

According to Google's Adwords guidelines, if you are a adwords publisher, the target / landing page should not be one with a 404 code.

From adsense publisher point of view, definately the potential income is at risk, if not detected those pages and optimized properly as per "real" theme.

How to use 301 / 302 redirect for outdated URLs or website address for maximum SEO advantage?

Well if you dont ever want the site / webpage URL to restore again in the sitemap or the website navigation, use 301 "Moved Permanently" option while if the change or URL forwarding is a temporary one, go for 302 "Moved temporarily" This lets the search engine bots to understand the navigation type and aim.

How to do a 301 / 302 redirect ?

This can be done from your website's control panel, under http headers option. Contact your webmaster for more details how to do it.

According to the observations, Google really cares for the sites having no broken links as it will help in easy navigation of the search bots as well as the visitors.

Latest news about Search Engines | GYM

Blogger lands Google India in courtroom for defamation

The search firm Google India may trigger some new developments in the cyber law of India. The Mumbai based Gremach Infrastructure Equipments & Projects, which provides construction machineries to medium and large construction companies, has filed a defamation case against Google India for hosting a series of articles on its blogging site, campaigning against its mines in Mozambique. The Bombay High Court has asked the search firm to furnish information about the blogger in an interim order, reported The Economic Times.

Gremach, in its petition, said that a series of articles that amounted to a 'hate campaign' against the company were posted on Google's blogging site with a title 'Toxic Writer' between January and February.

read the full story here : SiliconIndia

T-Mobile to launch Google phone in October

San Francisco: T-Mobile is to launch the first phone based on Google's Android design Sep 17, in hopes that the new device will compete with Apple's iPhone, Wired magazine reported Friday.

The smartphone will be manufactured by Taiwan-based High Tech Computer, and will have a large touch screen that slides out to reveal a five-row QWERTY keyboard. The device, which will be called the G1, will sell for $150 to T-Mobile customers in the first week of launch before it is offered to other customers at a higher price.

Google developed the Android design to help it expand its successful advertising business into the increasingly lucrative mobile market. It released the parameters to an alliance of mobile phone carriers, developers and manufacturers earlier in the year.


read the full story here : SiliconIndia


Microsoft, Google and Yahoo sued for foetus sex selection ads
Published Friday 15th August 2008 09:02 GMT

The Supreme Court of India has issued notices against Google, Microsoft and Yahoo! for advertising products to select the sex of foetuses.

Sabu Mathew George filed the complaint against the three firms. He told the New York Times that the ads deliberately targeted Indian users. He told the paper 900,000 female foetuses are aborted every year in India. Modern techniques for checking the sex of foetuses, like ultrasound, are increasingly available to all classes in India.

read the full story here : TheRegister UK

Yahoo! Fire Eagle (Beta)

Its time for Yahoo! to launch a new product on the www.

Its Yahoo! Fire Eagle (Beta)
Fire eagle is a location-aware platform, can be used by users on internet and mobile. The API can be used to develop location specific mobile applications.

What is Fire Eagle?

According to Yahoo! The tool is of great use if you ( developer) Want to make your website or mobile application more relevant or responsive to a user's location? Or maybe you've found a way to capture user location and want to find cool uses for this info? By doing the heavy lifting for you and connecting you to a community of geo-developers, Fire Eagle makes it easier to build location-aware services.

The Open API tool (Fire Eagle) is of great help to the developers or publishers to gain location information about the end user.
Fire Eagle and the Fire Eagle Developer APIs:

Fire Eagle is a new service designed to make it safe and easy to build and use location-aware applications and services. It's a place where users can store and manage information about their current location that trusted apps and sites can update or access.

Fire Eagle exposes a rich set of web services that allow developers to write location-aware applications.

Update anywhere:
- Send updates from your phone
- Update from your favorite sites
- Do it automatically or manually

Choose what to share:
- You control your data
- You choose who to share with

Have fun on the web:
- Show your location on your blog
- Share it with your friends
- Discover cool stuff around you
- You choose how much to share

Fire Eagle is a mobile search application in the making and its upto the creativity of the developers to make a good use of it!

Popular and not recommended SEO (Spamming) techniques

Cloaking , creatively (?) manipulated webpage display technique by cloaking softwares, is defined as showing some page to the human visitor and a different "keyword rich" and "fully optimized" page to the search engine spiders or bots for the same url.

According to Matt Cutts ( Google engineer and authority on Spam Issues) says:

Cloaking is serving different content to users than to search engines. It’s interesting that you don’t see all that much cloaking to deliver spam these days. If you see people doing spam, they tend to rely on sneaky redirects (often via JavaScript) more than cloaking. For example, a blackhat might make a doorway or keyword stuffed/gibberish page plus something like a JavaScript redirect to go to a completely different page.

Is this bad ? Can I get banned for using Cloaking?
If the two pages which are being shown to the user and the search bot are totally different and are meant to do the different intentionally in order to gain more search engine ranking advantage. The fooling attempt will be returned bye a minus penalty and even banning the website is definately a possibility.

One special case is of Flash Files (.swf) which "were" previously not able to get "read" by the search engine ( now also its Google who claims to read the flash), a div with the alternate text data can be placed.

Trying to fool the search engines is begging to get banned!!

Link Baiting :
Engage into a contraversy un-necessarily just to put a focus on yourself :
How ?
Well, you can write on the latest burning issues, comment on the current happening, if you still have more daring , go challenge someone and prove him wrong ...

People will reply in anger, support, disgust and thus it will be in the book marking sites with a lot of interactive posts and fight will begin.

Some people try throwing their opinions and views without giving any troubles to the grey matter, whats amazing is they claim success too..

After all every publicity is a good publicity ( this is not my thought !!)

How to earn from a blog or website?

Want to earn online via your website or blog?

Beside many link advertising and banner advertising options , one reliable solution is Google Adsense.
No doubt other online marketing solutions from Search Engines like Yahoo Search Marketing, MSN Adcenter and Ask Sponsored search are effective, the market share of these companies is one issue where most of the online brand building and marketing money is flowing for a deep and volummetic market reach with effective ROI ( Return on Investment)
Yes the same one which I'm using on my blog here.
Whats the funda?

Its just allowing some space to display ads on your site or blog to Google by placing some script/code.
Once approved, your site starts showing ads "relevant" to the page content, relevance will get more accurate as page gets older and the content gets reliable via more text, links and headers. The ads can be text, images and/or videos too.
You can earn via :
1. Page impressions ( number of times your page gets downloaded or viewed) : You get per thousand earnings via PPM score.
2. PPC ( Pay-Per-Click) : You earn if any of the visitor clicks on any ad
3. Referals ( Now they are being / been taken out)

But first you need to have an adsense account. Get it now, its FREE

Whats new with Google Adsense ?

Google has recently rolled out its "New Ad Management" feature in adsense console.
Those who already have their adsense logins, must have observed some new additions in terms of "code storing" details such as ad size, colors and channel settings etc. The code details are being saved on Google's servers and not elsewhere, so the appeared advantage is the webmaster can make changes to the adsense units from within the account itself.

Now, How do I create an AdSense unit?

To create a new AdSense unit that you can manage within your account, follow the steps below. (
1. Sign in to your account at http://www.google.com/adsense.
2. Under the AdSense Setup tab, choose the Get Ads link.
3. Select AdSense for content as the product. The new AdSense units are only available for AdSense for content at this time.
4. Choose your ad type, format, colors, and channels just as you have in the past.
5. Give your AdSense unit a name that you can remember. We recommend including the site(s), page(s), or location(s) that the AdSense unit will be placed on, so you can easily identify it in the future should you wish to make updates.
6. Click Submit and Get Code.
7. Copy and paste the newly generated code onto your site.

You are done.
So start earning money NOW !!!

Google selling Performics to Publicis

Google is selling off its much controversial buy Performics ( the search marketing arm of $3.1 billion acquisition of DoubleClick) . This is a well expected yet essential more to confirm the trust of the online marketing firms as with doubleclick buy, some feared that their personal data and budgets were at stake.


Google was in a process to integrate planning for each of their products and business units. they recently said to have completed the process for the DoubleClick Performics Businesses, and then splitted into separate BU's ( Business Units) viz Affiliate Marketing and Search Marketing.

As they plan to sell the Search Marketing BU, Google still consider to integrate the affiliate marketing business into their existing operations, providing enhanced value and reach for affiliate advertisers. The main intention is to provide additional tools and monetization opportunities for ad-network publishers.


Now about the buyer, its the Publicis Groupe, a French advertising outfit, is the buyer of Chicago-based Performics SEM business. The deal is expected to close sometime in the third quarter of the year.Publicis is planning to strengthen its new VivaKi Nerve Center ad technology platform by purchasing Google's Performics search marketing division.

Google Search Insights Evolution !

Lets welcome, the latest offering from Google. Yes I'm talking about the Google Search Insights, a search tool which would be of immense help in Keyword research from the search marketers point of view.

Google insights for search provide deep dive statistics for keyword searches via volumes, countries drilling to seasonal and geographic trends and not to forget its a category wise option.

Previously only Google Trends was available to get a "hint" of the keyword competition which was to get a general guessing idea, as 100% reliability was not assured, and cant be :)

Lets check the difference with both the tools :

Searching for : search engine optimization , search marketing

Google Trends gives a nice "crossing" graph, showing the trend of search engine optimization is giving up to search marketing over the years.


Search on Google Insights :
Now when the same keywords are searched for the "interest" in several years, a similar but simple graph is observed giving the output and winning to search marketing (keyword)


Drilled down to India + Maharashtra + 90 days span


Shows a wide graph, here the more you categorize and drill, you will get a deeper insight, as the name suggests and when used with commonsense, can be an effective tool in keyword analysis and research.

Us is facing Biggest Identity theft in the world!!

US was rocked with the biggest Identity theft ( Credit Card Scam) till date where credit and debit card details of about 40 million people were allegedly stolen for mis-use.

The biggest source of the information was from Shops and Bank computer systems, and the information was hacked using softwares.

This did not stop there, the stolen numbers were sold on the internet, making a mockery of the IT security and online surveillence mechanism. Showing some stringent control over personal data security and anonymity. There is a high need to educate the credit card holders who use un-secure ways to transact ( online or offline). Some guidlines issued by the government and the public displays would certainly help in this regard.

11 people in connection with the theft are been charged till now by the US autorities.

CNN reports :
An international group of hackers is accused of breaking into nine retailers' networks and stealing more than 40 million credit and debit card numbers.

Eleven people, including three U.S. citizens, were indicted Tuesday on a number of charges in connection with the hacking of nine major U.S. retailers and the theft and sale of more than 40 million credit and debit card numbers, federal authorities said.

How Offline Website Optimization help Online Sales?

Most of the online business analyst and strategist under-estimate the power of offline channels which influence on the online buying behavior of the user.

A study conducted by iProspect partnered with JupiterResearch ( June 2007) to develop and field a survey to U.S. search engine users to gain a better understanding of how exposure to offline channels influences their search and purchase behaviour.

The study and the approach must be considered as a serious metric in judging how the online buying activities perform and webmasters and Search engine marketers who are now mostly dependent on online marketing should raise their view towards offline promotions. That is how a complete marketing action would take place resulting in sure shot success formula.

Here are some of the statistics :






Source : IProspect

Comparing Online Marketing (SEM) with Organic Search Optimization (SEO) with Stats

Most of the startup online marketers and webmasters which are given additional responsibility to promote the designed website along the internet ( may or may not be a niche market), get confused with the balance to keep in SEO ( search engine Optimization) and SEM ( Search Engine Marketing) .

The one who takes a right decision, defers case to case basic, wins!!

Here is some data to help you in decision making about organic and paid website promotions.

The year on year data (2004 - 2008) with Google Trends (GT) suggests, SEO or organic search has never been so keen to compete with the online marketing, if we rely on the available results with us via the GT Interface for the searches on SEO and SEM

Regionwise India holds most of the searches with SEO and SEM, interestingly Japan ranks second and philippines the third. The searches and the Outsourcing SEO work, has its footprints in this countries, as most of the back-end IT / ITES work is done in India and Philippines with quality.
Language wise classification shows Japanese topping the list for Search Terms. Strange enough English comes to sixth place !

As per the latest data available on Comscore , the search engine shares are as follows which shows why people around the world are running after Google Adwords (for Advertisers) and Adsense ( for Web Publishers)



* Based on the five major search engines including partner searches and cross-channel searches. Searches for mapping, local directory, and user-generated video sites that are not on the core domain of the five search engines are not included in the core search numbers.

New Search Engines for you!

I can bet you have not heard of these search engines, even if you know about them ( don't tell me :)

Omgili - Israel based Omgili is a vertical search engine can be called as a web2.0 search engine, has a powerful and automated crawler to index the web,whats unique about the search engine is that unlike top search engines like Google , Yahoo and MSN,which use their content relevancy and linking formulas, Omgili scans millions of online discussions worldwide in over 100,000 boards, forums and other discussion based resources. Now isnt that great?

Viewzi a special search engine, special in the sense it does a visual search , so if you go and search for "search engine optimization", "seo" or "seo india" you will not find the text results but the snaps of various sites and images. Some of them taken from Flickr and SmugMug.

The site search engine ( still showing in beta) says
"Viewzi is a new and highly visual way, to search that brings all your favorite stuff, together in one place "



Now its time to search for some bio-diversity:


E-Species - A search engine for bugs and stuff
About e-Species: This is a pure Python CGI-based implementation of a taxonomically intelligent species search engine. It searches biological databases for a taxonomic name.



iSpecies , also a species search engine, uses web services to talk to source databases, extract data, and assemble a page for each species. The code makes extensive use of XML. Essentially, each web service returns XML in one form or another, and then they use XSL style sheets to transform the result into HTML.