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.

What is a Developer Token?

What is a Developer Token?

A Developer Token is a unique combination of letters, numbers and characters that identifies your AdWords API activity. It is your key to talking to the AdWords server and your clients' AdWords accounts. In order for us to identify your activity, you should include the Developer Token in the header of all your API requests.

To protect yourself from fraud, do not share your Developer Token with others. You can find your Developer Token through your AdWords API Center - accessible from your My Client Center's My Account tab.

Please note that developers need both an approved Developer Token and an approved Application Token (associated with each API application) to access the API. Read this FAQ to learn more.

Source : Google AdWords API Support

Eye Tracking - A Behaviour Analysis Tool

If you are not using Eye Tracking as a real time user behaviour analysis tool, surely you are missing one important way to enhance the visitor experience and for an e-commerce site this can be a boon if used effectively.

Sample data collected by using visual location ( screen point) aids of net surfers, users in a lab or measurable observatory, can lead to amazing stats and can just point out what is working and what exactly is not working for you.

Example here from enquiroresearch.com shows the heat maps mechanism for what visitors prefer ( and obviously click) on popular search engines like Google, Yahoo and MSN.

The area which is seen mostly is a triangular shape and also known as "Golden Triangle". Golden Triangle shows why Organic listing is more important for visitors than the paid one !!

The next thing is analysis of the data, using the prime locations of heatmaps and then optimizing the website for the most advantages.

Experience may differ as per demography, season and recognition of websites but more data you collect, more closer you reach to a perfect trouble shooting stance.

Google new Free internal site search !!

Google's gift to small websites!!
Google is ready to offer internal site search solutions for small websites.
There is a slight difference between Google COOP and this new search engine.

According to Reuters.com,

"SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Google Inc., the world's top provider of Web search and online advertising, said on Monday it is offering small business Web sites a service that lets visitors search for information within their sites.

The Mountain View, California-based company said Google Custom Search Business Edition, as the new service is known, is a service hosted on Google computers that starts at $100 per year and does not require businesses to run Google ads.

"If you have a Web site, we already crawl your Web site," Nitin Mangtani, a product manager in Google's Enterprise division, said in a telephone interview. "Now we are saying you don't have to manage search within your site."

The new service marks a middle option between Google's existing Custom Search Engine, a free, ad-supported service, and Google Appliance, a hardware device selling for prices starting around $2,000 which customers manages on themselves.

The free, ad-supported service lets visitors search for information inside a particular Web site but cannot be customized."

Website for Fashion in Braille Tag

First came Text Only Websites.
Then followed by Text + Images Websites.
After that we saw Text + Images + Animation Websites.
After that we saw Text + Images + Animation + Sound Websites.
Then came Text + Images + Animation + Videos Embeded Websites.

Now the latest one is for those who cant see directly but can feel....
Yes Website for Fashion in Braille Tag.

According to Yahoo News,
Two American students are launching a new talking Web site that helps blind people pick and buy trendy clothing that is fitted with braille tags and then sent to their doorstep.
The sound-activated www.whitecanelabel.com Web site, due to go online in the fall, will ask users what their fashion likes and dislikes are and recommend clothes ranging from casual to evening wear based on those preferences.
A braille tag that includes the designer's name, type of clothing such as a "blouse" or a "t-shirt", size, colour and symbols to help in piecing together certain look like "business casual" is attached to the clothes ordered and then mailed out.

Tell me what you think is next to come?

AJAX Web Applications

What is AJAX ?

Ajax is a short form of "Asynchronous JavaScript and XML" used as a web appplication development technique generally for interactive websites.

AJAX applications can send requests to the web server to retrieve only the data that is needed, usually using SOAP. The real time examples included - Personalized Pages of Google/ Rediff / yahoo etc.

Where to Find AJAX Tutorials for Free ?

• http://www.w3schools.com/ajax/default.asp DOM XSL XSLT RSS AJAX ASP ADO PHP SQL tutorials, references, examples for web building. ... AJAX is a type of programming made popular in 2005
• ajaxmatters.com/archive/2007/02/17/ajax-tutorials.aspx Tutorials. A comprehensive list (over 140!) of tutorials on AJAX, JavaScript and other web development topics.
• www.ajaximpact.com/tutorials.php Ajax developers, Its the one stop resource for Ajax ... AJAX ON GOOGLE. FEED: Amazon Secrets. Recommended Books. TUTORIALS.
• www.ajax-tutorials.com/tutorial-list Ajax Tutorial TopList. More than 300 free tutorials, articles and examples sorted by categories ... Create AJAX Dynamic Drop Down List using PHP
• freeajaxscripts.net Ajax Scripts Ajax Tutorials, Understanding the Ajax Framework - free tutorial ... Gaia Ajax Widgets Q2 Released. Web 2.0 is Vulnerable to JavaScript

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.

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/

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.

Google News Bar for Webpages

Put Google News on Your Web Page

Use the copy-and-page script code provided by Google's news bar wizard to show headlines from your selected search engines/topics ( like Google, Yahoo, Msn, apple etc.)

Google Says:
Embed a news bar on your web page and let your users see headlines and previews of Google News Search results that you've selected. Customize how the news bar should be displayed, and this wizard will write the code for you.

Using Google AJAX Search API via

Google Code Home > Google AJAX Search API > Wizards > News Bar Wizard

Options available for vertical and horizontal display for the news bar to occupy the web space available.

For advance users there is more here > GSnewsBar documentation.

Web Page Designing and Browsers

Designing for Web Browsers:

Following is the chart for % share of Web Browsers. Its wise to design a webpage/website to suit all/maximum of those for a maximum reach. A usable site is having better chances of Optimization.

2007	IE7	IE6	IE5	Fx	Moz	S	O
February	16.4%	39.8%	2.5%	31.2%	1.4%	1.7%	1.5%
January	13.3%	42.3%	3.0%	31.0%	1.5%	1.7%	1.5%

IE	Internet Explorer
Fx	Firefox (identified as Mozilla before 2005)
Moz	The Mozilla Suite (Safari, Konqueror, Gecko, Netscape)
S	Safari (identified as Mozilla before 2007)
O	Opera
N	Netscape (identified as Mozilla after 2006)
AOL	America Online (based on both Internet Explorer and Mozilla)

Internet Explorer 6 is the most common browser, XP is the most dominating operating system, and most users are using a display with 1024x768 pixels ( Source : W3Schools.com)

Website Templates and SEO

Advantages of using web-templates:

1. Time saved in setting the patterns, colors, themes and layout of a website.
2. Choose from the variety of options, you will have the glimse of the site in the making or will be for you.If designed by professionals, these are very good in visualization and usability.
3. Save money as templates are cheaper (some are free too) than the total cost of building/developing from scratch.
4. 'Comparatively' easy customization is possible as compared with actual coding.Most of the templates can be customized by anyone having basic HTML/CSS knowledge.Some WYSIWYG software (Editors) runs on any windows computer to help you out.

Disadvantages of using web-templates:

1. Lost identity: Templates are not unique, they are globally distributed and chances are many websites might be using them on the www.
2. High level customization requires proper knowledge of web designing softwares and some coding too.
3. Generally for a small site with static pages on a limited number, templates are fine. Real prob. arises for dnynamic sites with changing the result page structures.
4. Templates generate a lot of useless code, not good for understanding and navigation sometimes.
5. Considering SEO (Search Engine Optimization) point of view, you need to work on many details, such as Meta tags, attributes, urls and usability for each page.