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Exclusive SEO advices for Hedir members

I hate to explain people what SEO means as in my opinion SEO is waste of time unless you know what’s next. Reading what is there in public and then applying it is a big risk. I always said (and will continue to say) that best SEO is no SEO.

Hedir has impressed me with its latest Friday 13th releases. Before I get into my offer to Hedir members, let me tell you that Hedir is challenging and threatening digg.com, reddit and similar sites as it has multiple diggs and multiple reddits now. I loved to shill for Hedir and will continue to do so till the world accept it as the best directory.

Do read http://www.hedir.com/cafe/13-thefriday.html, I always knew that Hedir is born of character not of personality, they knew what they were doing. Great work.

Going back to my special SEO section for Hedir. I may (no guarantee but) offer some real secrets for hedir members. I am no expert else I would have been hired by yahoo to make yahoo #1 for keyphrase “search engine” in yahoo :). There are no experts in SEO field only good observants, I am happy to be one but do not want to force you to believe it. Here are some advices you may want to adopt.

Exclusive Hedir Advice : Do not check yahoo backlinks when you are logged in to yahoo account, same for Google. Also do not check backlinks regularly. Do SEO activities and then restart your dialup connection to get a new IP. Uninstall all the toolbars. Clear cookies after every SEO activities. I generally do not offer such depths. This is only for Hedir members.

Complete discussion available at http://www.hedir.com/marketing/about17278.html#47251 and ask questions

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MSN is really sick – See the result yourself

Do Google do SEO or manipulate results? Find it yourself. I asked the same question to 4 search engines, “What is a better search engine?”,

Google says, “Ofcourse I am the best, even my UK version is 3rd. AltaVista is 2nd as they promised me a better ranking. MSN is fourth. Yahoo is 7th. Ask is 8th”. (see the results).

Yahoo says, “Google made me 7th and I made them 8th. I am still behind Google and planning to hire a SEO expert for a better ranking. Something like, ‘ Yahoo looking for a SEO expert who can make Yahoo #1 for ‘ search engine’ keyphrase in Yahoo’. Ask did not give me a top 10 listing so I am going to throw them at #10. MSN is really sick and I do not consider it a search engine so no top 10 ranking”. (see the results)

MSN says, “I am really sick as according to me neither yahoo not Google is a search engine. For me submitexpress, a SEO company, is a search engine. I love spamming and most of my results say that. I know that I am not a good search engine so I have not given myself a ranking. Everyone is giving ask a rank in top 10 so I will give them 2 positions, one at # 3 and another at # 10.” (see the results)

ASK says, “If everyone says I am #1 let myself me #1, ask is #1. Google, yahoo and msn are no search engines as they do a lot of other activities. I have reciprocal linking so I have not given them a place in top 10.” (see the results)

I do not know why I did this post, may be to say that MSN is really sick.

A good experiment – Do not forget to read my post on the GYM experiment for a low valued keyphrase to understand various algorithm.

A paradox here – Is google a good search engine? It says yes, it ranks #1 for “search engine”. The worst search engine as proved above is msn and many will agree with me. If google is a good search engine then why is it ranking msn as fourth.

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Land laws vs Google (GYM) laws

Laws make you behave accordingly. I was reading a topic at webproworld where ignorance (some trick without purpose) could have attracted some penalty. Google (in general GYM, Google Yahoo MSN) laws differ from Land laws.

Land Laws : Let no innocent person be punished. Leave 5 criminals to save one innocent person. Every life is important.

Google Laws : Let no spammer (WWW criminal) go unpunished (or rank in SERPs). Let 5 innocent sites die while punishing a spammer. One site makes no difference.

Understand GYM laws and be careful with any spamming techniques. Ignorance is not innocence here. In case you are about to get a punishment please refer to this document http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/reinclusion-request-howto/

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Marketers should be dumber than customer

While writing my previous post about programmers being lazy and dumb I realized that marketer needs to be dumber than customer.

Recently while designing a mortgage calculator I learned a good lesson as a marketer. Our initial calculator had money in hand, rate, principle amount e.t.c, the very best calculator with print option, syndication features, export and almost the best in the industry. One of our own member who was going through mortgage found another calculator simpler as it asked few questions like “how much money do you need?”, “how much money do you have now?” e.t.c. He could fill it up and get the desired result. The simple calculator he used did not had print option or smart and intelligent calculations, it was dumb and offered the simplicity.

I think one of the ability a marketer should have is to think like a customer, really dumb customer (do read my experiences about blood test and Internet browser with customers).  We will be requiring some 5 to 10 marketers in next month and I think I am going to design a paper to test their ability to think as a dumber. I am seriously going to work with our HR on this test before I go for next campus recruitment.

I want to repeat what I learned as a good lesson.

“Never underestimate the ingenuity of stupidity”

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Why programmers are Lazy and Dumb

It sometimes hurt for sure. I remember an incident when my boss asked me to arrange and check few mysql tables and arrange them in excel. I told myself, “oh God, it will take atleast an hour and such a hectic work. I will do a small program for it”. It just took me almost 3 hours before my boss shouted at me for being lazy and over possessed with programming. I finally did it manually but realized that I am really born lazy and thus an artistic programmer. I love programming and I can spend hours and days to see a final product smiling.

The first paragraph was to say that almost all programmers are Lazy and Dumb. I also want to share an amazing article on this topic (Philipp, this is one my fav blog post), http://blog.outer-court.com/archive/2005-08-24-n14… 

We had some incidents when our programmers were smart and ended up with laugh.

We programmed for IP telephony with Asterisk (the open source PBX) and the set various options, option 1 to talk to consultant and option 2 to something and so on.
One customer shouted at our customer care, “Why the hell do you need to do a blood test for counseling?, bloody option # 5“. We relooked at the option and it said press 5 for podcasting (lol).

Another incident. I asked a customer, “Tell me your Internet browser and then I will be able to help”. Customer, “I have a PC, if you can tell me how does a Internet browser look like then I can tell you”.

A programmer certainly needs to be dumb and ask all the dumb question to make the program really simple. I am lazy but failing to be dumb and working very hard to be dumb.

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WordPress and PHPlist – Jesse heap helps

After finishing my work on wordpress single user 2.0.4 and making it a multi user I wanted to work on phplist. I really like the work that is done and I have forwarded it to all whom I knew for testing. Hedir.com has implemented it and are happy about it. I know I need to make a post for it. You can find some of the features at Hedir.com (including a demo blog). Many could not believe it yet. Few people told me that its not possible as a team of professionals must be working at mu.wordpress.org to make it a multi-user and how could you overtake them in just a day. I have done and am very happy about it. Keeping myself humble I must say that its the experience that helped me do this. I will surely write and show you how it works.

I was very excited to integrate phplist with wordpress. I was studying the code and was not very happy with the standards. I delayed phplist integration and thought of using an existing package. I did a Google to find http://docs.phplist.com/IntegratingPhpListWithOthe… . I thought of trying http://www.jesseheap.com/projects/wordpress-phplis… and applied the plugin within the sidebar. It did not work. I was tired with weeks hectic work and wanted to avoid debugging and I contacted Jesse Heap.

(I am putting the mails in blog as it will only do good to both of us)

Continue reading “WordPress and PHPlist – Jesse heap helps”

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Guruji.com – Indian Google? GYMA Comparison chart

Who should read this: Though it’s title is guruji.com but it is a small analysis of Search engine working. Anyone who is interested in search engine optimization can analyze it and understand SEs working. Small keyphrases and small data sample give bigger clues. Interesting factor is DMOZ listing and Content value. If you want me to do something with the sites let me know I may do it to help you analyse.

I was contacted to review guruji.com supposedly an Indian replacement for Google.

Here is my small analysis for different search engines,

  1. Google.com/search?q=aji+issac
    I searched for “aji issac” and it gave me www.idealwebtools.com/blog/  and idealwebtools.com as first 2 results. It doesn’t have 0catch site in top 10.
  2. Yahoo.com
    www.ajiissac.0catch.com and www.ajiissac.0catch.com/Aji.html followed by idealwebtools.com blog and all my other articles.
  3. MSN
    idealwebtools.com above idealwebtools.com/blog/ and then some forum topics followed by one blog aimk.wordpress.com where my name is only mentioned once. Many other topics where my name is only mentioned once.
  4. Ask
    idealwebtools.com , no blog URL in top 10, followed by ajiissac.0catch.com
  5. guruji.com
    No Trace of idealwebtools.com and have all the blogspot blogs where my name is only mentioned once (blogroll).

What did I expect?
I expected idealwebtools.com/blog/ to be at #1 followed by idealwebtools.com domain and then forums and articles from other sites. Also in between 0catch and ajiissac.blogspot can also be adjusted. I am active on idealwebtools.com blogs for over 1 year and I have not touched 0catch for almost 3 years now. I did some keyword optimization on 0catch as those were my early days of SEO.

Analysis

  1. Google is very intelligent it checks the traffic, activity, content is not than important as that on links, what ever has more links is on top. Active status is also helping it. 0catch a keyword rich site is not in top 20 says it all.
  2. Yahoo believes in Content as it value content over anything else. 0catch is on top which does not have even one visitor in a month and hardly any links.
  3. MSN gives value to main domain over internal pages, idealwebtools.com coming before idealwebtools.com/blog is surprising. Rest is low quality forum pages for me, I do not know why is it ranking.
  4. Ask have no blog URL, very surprising. It does not value links at all, it focuses on content and keywords.
  5. Guruji needs to improve it is just showing all the links from blogspot, is it a blog search. Very surprising, they need to improve a lot.

One big factor
0catch has a DMOZ listing (check Mathew, Aji Issac), I use to love DMOZ before I started helping Hedir to devour it.

I think I should spent some time and do a better analysis as I know what I did with all these sites. Also I know that there is no Aji Issac who has a better online presence. You too can do some analysis and put your expert views here.

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Indian orkut – goyaar.com

There have already been some raised eyebrows over my excessive blogging about orkut, here is some oil to the fire. India has a new version of orkut, goyaar.com (“Yaar” means friend in Hindi).

Also orkut.com is banned in many Indian offices due to excessive misuse of office bandwidth and office time. Goyaar can act as a replacement for orkut for few days before it gets a ban. Orkut helped me study few things about social networking and web 2.0 marketing. Looking forward for goyaar.com.

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You may have to pay more to talk over net

Todays eco times covered the following story which may be some interest to our blog readers,

The government proposes to put its stamp of authority over one chunk of hitherto unregulated cyberspace: internet telephony offered by companies like Yahoo, MSN, Skype, Mediaring, Packet8, Dialpad, Amazon, Impetus, Euro, Net2Phone Bandtel and Euro.

Internet telephony, so far a saviour for millions of Indians with kin abroad, is set to become costlier, once the government finalises a proposal to bring internet companies like those mentioned above under the ambit of the country’s Internet Service Provider license.

For consumers, this simply means a rise in tariffs as a Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) or a net telephony call on Skype or Yahoo will soon attract a service tax of 12.24%, in addition to a revenue share of 6%.

More details at economictimes.indiatimes.com

It covers about a typical orkut problem, a community which says, “I Hate India”. We had already run a campagin against this group, Google should be deleting this community from orkut. Echo times says,

This comes on the heels of similar attempts to regulate the services offered by global online giants in India. Google should know, or it will, once the Maharashtra government follows the Bombay High Court’s order to issue the company a notice on allegedly spreading hatred against India through a community called ‘I hate India’ on its social networking site Orkut.

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A keyphrase document

I wrote a keyphrase analysis document at webmasterworld which is now available in the library, http://www.webmasterworld.com/libraryv4.cgi?viewforum=8 (the first one, a guide to keyphrase analysis) , at webproworld there were discussion about this document.

You can directly access it from http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum8/1560.htm.

This is just another excuse for not writing an useful post today. I am coming late and then GYM session is draining my energy off. Tomorrow I will be coming a little early to compensate for it. I am working on P3P (Privacy Preferences Project) as myblogplanner is getting blocked when used with IE. There is a problem with third party cookies and IE’s medium level privacy (default these days) setting.

I know how to fix it, I will be doing it in a day or two but before that I wanted to read more about P3P and its implications. Also I studied about Microsoft Phishing Filter Add-in for MSN Search Toolbar (which will be a head ache with IE 7). I have done my studies now need some practical checking. Hopefully on Saturday I will spend some time with it.

Good night people.