Tips and Tricks

Seven Tips to ensure you hire the Right Consultant

2011-03-29T22:25:00.000-07:00

Seven Tips to ensure you hire the Right Consultant

A successful SAP implementation is determined by a number of factors, and these days it often requires bringing in an outside expert to help achieve your goals. Selecting the right consultant is critical: It can mean the difference between success and failure, and those projects that realize business benefits and ROI – and those that fail miserably. The following seven tips will help ensure you hire the right consultant for your SAP project.

1. Seek the Right Skillsets - The first step in finding a consultant is to understand the specific skill set you are looking for. The SAP product suite is broad, and consultants tend to have very narrow areas of expertise. One of the common traps I see SAP customers fall into is that they always assume that large software integrators or their preferred vendors will have the SAP expertise that they need. While this is typically true in the core areas of SAP, it is not always true when it comes to the newer SAP modules, the latest product releases or for industry-specific modules, when you are typically better off to work with a niche consulting company, independent consultant or SAP directly.

Bottom Line: Ensure you know what you are looking for and don't always assume that your existing vendor has consultants with that skill set.

2. Where to Search - There are many successful, albeit unconventional, methods that I would recommend to help find the right consultant. One example includes tapping your personal network, your company’s network, existing consultants that you trust, ASUG, SAP Community Network, Linkedin, SAP Expert publications authors, industry experts, industry analysts and SAP Mentors. The SAP industry can be small when you are looking for consulting resources, and most of the true industry experts will be very happy to help you find the right consultant if you reach out to them.

Bottom Line: There are a lot of different ways you can find the right consultant, and you should use several of them to ensure a good candidate pool.

3. Review the Resume - An SAP resume should be used only to determine whether an individual is interview worthy. Although it is easy to fall into the trap of finding the perfect candidate “on paper,” you should never base a hiring decision on a resume alone. There are a few basic steps you should follow when reviewing the resume:
• Does the individual have the skill set and experience you are looking for?
• Is there any inaccuracy or inconsistencies within the resume?
• Does the resume match the individual’s LinkedIn or other online profiles?
• What information does searching on individual’s name turn up via search engines?
• Is the individual asking questions on SAP’s Community Network or answering questions and contributing?
• Do you know anyone who has worked with individual in the past and can provide some feedback?

Bottom Line: A basic review of the resume will help ensure that you are only interviewing candidates that are well qualified.

4. Check on the Consulting Experience - Consultants working on your SAP project must have previous implementation experience and the proper skill set you are looking for. Experienced SAP consultants should be able to translate between business language and “SAP speak” in such a way that everyone can easily understand. If they have difficultly doing this, you should be concerned and question their experience.

Bottom Line: It is important that consultants have the experience you are looking for, since the last thing you want is to pay for someone to learn on the job.

5. Set Up a Technical Interview - Doing a technical interview can often be a daunting task, since the reason you are hiring a consultant is because you don’t have internal SAP expertise in the specific area. Here are a few basic steps you should follow:
• Involve business and IT members on your interview team.
• Set up an internal pre-interview meeting, lay out the specifics of the engagement and offer a script for everyone to follow.
• Involve a technical IT resource or consultant that you trust to ask some specific SAP technical/functional questions.
• Only ask questions that you have an understanding of the right answer.
• Ask how they would solve an actual issue that will be part of the scope of work.
• Never use any of the SAP interview questions that are easily found on the internet.

Bottom Line: The goal of the technical interview is to get a comfort level that the consultant has the necessary SAP technical skills and business understanding to be a valuable team member.

6. Look for Good Communication Skills - Communication skills are a critical aspect of any engagement, though they are often overlooked. The consultant should be able to express himself clearly as well as understand what both the business and IT team are saying. You will want to find a consultant who avoids technical jargon, is easy to understand and has good listening skills.

Bottom Line: Good communication skills will be needed during requirement gathering, the implementation, in meetings, presentations, training, knowledge transfer and several other important tasks.

7. Always Check References - It is surprising to me how many consultants get hired without any reference checks. You should always check the references for any new consultant, even from a preferred vendor, as there are too many consultants in the industry who don’t have the necessarily skills to be successful.
If you don’t hear back from the references, then that should be a red flag: In my experience, customers are happy to give references for good consultants.

Bottom Line: Reference checks should always be done to verify the consultant and there’s an added benefit: They can be a great way for you to network with new companies using SAP.

Finding the right consultant is not rocket science, but it does involve some extra work on your part. Make no mistake: Hiring the wrong consultant will ultimately cause a lot more work and trouble for your organization in the long run. If you follow the seven tips above you will greatly improve your odds on finding a good consultant. What do you think are the best ways to ensure that companies hire the right consultant?

JDE Functional Consultant

2011-03-29T05:15:00.000-07:00

JDE Functional

Work Location: Bangalore, Mumbai & Hyderabad
Experience:3-10 Yrs

JD Edwards Functional
Role: Analyst
Job Responsibilities:
• The candidate will participate in business process analysis workshops in client facing roles, understand client's business processes and capture requirements and assist lead in analyzing requirements.
• The candidate will be responsible as a team member for configuring the software for client’s business processes. The candidate should be familiar with software configuration tools and should demonstrate the ability to effectively use them in software configuration.
• The candidate will be responsible for identifying gaps in the standard functionality and suggest alternative options to the client and help the team lead arriving at the best alternative. The candidate will be responsible for initiating change requests for any system/ configuration changes for projects related to remote system maintenance and support.
• The candidate will follow client/firm specific methodologies for process compliance and software quality assurance for software configuration, testing and support.

Skill’s required :
• Should have 3-4 years of total experience.
• Minimum 2-3 years on JDE SCM/Fin/Mfg&Dist
• Should be BE / Btech
• Should possess excellent communication & interpersonal skills

JD Edwards Functional
Role: Senior Analyst
Job Responsibilities:
• The candidate will participate in business process analysis workshops in client facing roles, understand client's business processes and capture requirements and assist lead in analyzing requirements.
• The candidate will be responsible as a team member for configuring the software for client’s business processes. The candidate should be familiar with software configuration tools and should demonstrate the ability to effectively use them in software configuration.
• The candidate will be responsible for identifying gaps in the standard functionality and suggest alternative options to the client and help the team lead arriving at the best alternative. The candidate will be responsible for initiating change requests for any system/ configuration changes for projects related to remote system maintenance and support.
• The candidate will follow client/firm specific methodologies for process compliance and software quality assurance for software configuration, testing and support.

Skill’s required :
• Should have 4-8 years of total experience.
• Minimum 3 – 4 years on JDE SCM/Fin/Mfg&Dist
• Should be BE / Btech
• Exposure to onsite-offshore model will be an added advantage.

Best Regards,
Mohd. Munnawar
Recruitment Consultant
Permanent Recruitment Solutions
Adecco India,
Contact: 040 - 3068 8958
Mobile:09052789244
E-Mail: munawar.md@adecco.co.in

www.adecco.co.in

Good decision comes from Experience But "Experience comes from bad decisions" – Dr.APJ.Abdul Kalam

India Review Channel

2009-03-22T21:23:00.000-07:00

www.indiareviewchannel.com.com
is a complete portal providing reliable and comprehensive reviews and product information on a large variety of products and services in Indian Market.

Make Pocket Money from www.indiareviewchannel.com.com

IndiaReviewChannel.com offers several programs where members can make some pocket money.

Here is the list of currently active payment programs:

Google AdSense revenue sharing program: This program is in association with Google and is approved by Google. Your earnings will be tracked directly by Google and the amount will be sent to you from Google. Remember that this is a slow revenue, but you will get it for long term.

Best Review Contest: You can post product reviews. for the products assigned for that fortnight by the webmaster. There are three prizes assigned. The best review gets a cash credit of Rs. 200, the second best gets a cash credit of Rs.100, and the third best gets Rs. 50.

Member of the Month: Starting from July 2008, we will select the most active member as the Member Of The Month. This comes with a cash reward of Rs 500.

Refer a friend and make money: We will pay you some referral money when you invite your friends and they join IndiaReviewChannel.com using your referral link. Here is the payment details:

Rs 1: When the referred member completes registration
Rs 10: When the referred member reach SILVER level
Rs 100: When the referred member reach GOLD level
Rs 500: When the referred member reach DIAMOND level
Rs 1000: When the referred member reach PLATINUM level

Note that the amount is not cumulative. For example, when your referred friend reach SILVER Level, you will get Rs 10, but at that time, the initial Rs 1 referral bonus will be cancelled.

Make money from Yahoo answers

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Discontinued Programs

Post products and earn revenue: You can post any products or services related to India. Our editors will review it in few days and assign some points. Also, we will give you cash credits equivalent to the points you earned. For example, if you get 5 points for a product submission, we will pay you Rs 5 cash credits.

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We are introducing some games and puzzles to help you tune your brain while you are tired of work and studies!

All the Games we have hosted here are developed using the Microsoft Silverlight technology. None of the games include any Spyware or Malware. They are safe to download to your browser and play. If you do not have the Silverlight pluggin installed on your browser, you will need to click on the Silverlight logo and install it.

Products & Reviews - Music

The Top Ten Job Search Engines on the Web

2009-02-23T23:40:00.000-08:00

If you're in the market for a new job, you'll want to check out my list of the top job search engines out there. All of these job search engines offer unique features and can streamline your job search efforts.
1. Monster.com-Job Search Engine with Lots of Extras
I've been using Monster.com for several years now and have always found it to be one of the best job search engines out there. You can narrow your search by location, keywords, and employer; plus, Monster has plenty of job search extras: networking boards, job search alerts, and online resume posting.

2. Indeed.com- A Meta Search Job Engine
Indeed.com is a very solid job search engine. Unlike Monster, you cannot submit your resume from Indeed.com, but the job search engine more than makes up for that by being a meta search engine of many of the major job search engines and job search boards out there. I've found that Indeed uncovers a lot of jobs that you wouldn't normally find on most job search sites, and they do a good job of making their job search features as easy to use as possible.

3. FedWorld-Find a Federal Government Job
Think of FedWorld as your gateway into the huge world of US government jobs. You can do a detailed federal job search here, and FedWorld also offers the serious federal job searcher the opportunity to search FirstGov, search and view Supreme Court decisions, and view GS pay rate schedules.

4. CareerBuilder- One of the Largest Job Search Engines
CareerBuilder offers job searchers the ability to find a job, post a resume, create job alerts, get job advice and job resources, look up job fairs, and much more. This is a truly massive job search engine that offers a lot of good resources to the job searcher; I especially appreciate the list of job search communities.

5. Dice.com-Technology Job Search Engine
Dice.com is a job search engine dedicated to only finding technology jobs. Dice also offers those job searchers with a security clearance the ability to search on ClearanceJobs.com, "premier Internet job board focused exclusively on candidates with active or current security clearances."

6. America's Job Bank-A Mammoth Job Search Engine
America's Job Bank is one of the largest job search engines on the Web today. With almost two million jobs in its sizable database at the time of this writing and more than fifteen thousand new jobs being posted almost every day, America's Job Bank is a must-have job search engine. Search by job title, keyword, military, or job number.

7. Yahoo Hot Jobs-A Personalized Job Search Engine
Yahoo Hot Jobs is linked to your Yahoo ID (if you have one), so once you're signed into Yahoo, you're signed into Hot Jobs. You can search by location with Hot Jobs, my personal favorite, and you'll be able to see all the jobs in your general area in the column to the left. Any job search can be subscribed to via RSS; you can add it to "My Yahoo" or a personalized RSS reader (such as Bloglines).

8. SimplyHired - Simple Job Search Engine
SimplyHired has been one of my favorite job search engines now for a while; mostly because of their SimplyFired contest. SimplyHired also offers a very unique job search experience; the user "trains" the job search engine by rating jobs he or she is interested in. SimplyHired also gives you the ability to research salaries, add jobs to a job map, and view pretty detailed profiles of various companies. I highly recommend SimplyHired.

9. LinkedIn.com-A Social Networking Job Search Engine
LinkedIn.com combines the best of two worlds: the ability to scour the Internet for jobs with its job search engine, and the opportunity to network with like-minded friends and individuals to deepen your job search. From the site: "With LinkedIn, you find the people, jobs and services you need through the people you know and trust, while you strengthen and extend your existing network." Finding a job all too often is about who you know, and LinkedIn.com does a great job of addressing this.

10. Craigslist - Community Classifieds Job Search
Technically, craigslist.com is not a job search engine, but I would be extremely remiss if I did not include it in my list of Top Ten job search sites. Find your community and find jobs - and the jobs posted on Craigslist tend to be some of the most eclectic, truly interesting jobs around on the Web.

Watch Free Movies

2009-02-23T23:38:00.000-08:00

Free Movie Sites

• Hulu: Hulu is the first place I go online when I want to find quality, free, full length movies.
• Surf The Channel: Surf The Channel has literally hundreds of movies.
• IMDB: IMDB, also known as the Internet Movie Database, has added free full length movies and TV shows to its' already large and informative site.
• Joost: Nicely organized by category and each movie is in very high quality.
• Babelgum: Babelgum has plenty of great free full length movies.
• Google Video: Free full length movies at Google Video can be found simply by going to the Advanced Search and changing the drop-down "Duration" menu to "longer than twenty minutes".
• SearchForVideo: Nicely done video search engine with thousands of video clips available.
• In2TV: Tons of free TV shows, cartoons, and movies here.
• TV4u: Classic online television and movies - some really quality stuff here!
• PublicDomainTorrents: These are all movies that are in the public domain, free to download.
• PeekVid Movies: Lots of popular movies here, anything from Cinderella to Alpha Dog.
• Metacafe: An eclectic collection of videos here; anything from homemade to cartoons and more.
• Joost: From the same folks who made Skype; a video upload and sharing site.
• Free Public Domain Movies and Documentaries: Free movies and more, all available for free download.
• MySpace Videos: MySpace has one of the largest video collections on the Web.
• Flurl: Over two million available videos at the time of this writing.
• DailyMotion: Watch, publish, and share videos here.
• StumbleVideo: Just like StumbleUpon, StumbleVideo allows you to find and share good videos; and since all these videos are given quality ratings, you're almost guaranteed to filter out the junk.
• MotionBox: View and share personal videos; a really interesting site.
• vSocial: Upload your videos in any format, share them, and view other folks' videos.
• Blip.tv: One of the largest video and video sharing sites on the Web; extremely well-done.
• StupidVideos: Pretty much what it sounds like.
• Veoh: thousands of free videos available here.
• Gotuit: tons of high-quality videos here
• VideoSift: Vote and rate your favorite (or least favorite) videos here.
• iFilm: One of my favorite places on the Web for great videos, trailers, etc.
• Revver: Not only can you watch tons of videos here, you can also upload your own and possibly earn some money.
• In2TV: Tons of free TV shows, cartoons, and movies here.
• Cinema Now Free Videos and Movies: Usually this is a pay-per-view site, but they've started putting up freebies.
• TV4u: Classic online television and movies - some really quality stuff here!

Snap - A New Kind of Search Engine

2009-02-23T23:09:00.000-08:00

What is Snap?
Snap is a new kind of search engine; it not only goes out and retrieves results for you, but the more people use it, the smarter it gets. From the Snap About Us page:

"Instead of just relying on computer algorithms to rank search results, Snap also uses click-stream information from a network of one million Internet users. By recording and processing which Web sites users spend time on, and which sites they quickly leave, Snap improves the likelihood that the search results you get will be the results you're really looking for."

How To Search With Snap
Searching with Snap is a (you knew this was coming) snap. Just navigate to the Snap home page and type in a search query.

The home page is a bit different looking than most search engines. Snap displays the most popular searches, with the search count, underneath the main search bar, as well as news results. As you type in your search, let's say xbox, you'll notice that those Popular Search results change instantly to relate to your search. For example, my popular searches now are xbox 360, xbox cheats, xbox games, etc. The news results change as well, reflecting news search results that are in some way related to my original query.

Snap Search Options
Snap has tabbed search options on the top of the search bar; these are Web, Classic, Shopping, News, and Jobs. I'll go through these one by one with my guinea pig search term of "xbox."

Snap Web, Snap Classic
Snap Web and Snap Classic are inter-related; basically, it's just two different ways of viewing the same data. Snap Web view grabs the main page related to your query - in my case it's the Xbox home page- and displays it as a preview on the right hand side of the search results, with text results on the left. You can toggle to the next result or view the site itself by using the navigation buttons on the top of this window.

Snap Classic was my preferred view. The search results are on the right hand side, with small preview thumbnails of each page. To the left were those Popular Searches again - reminiscent of clustering, always a feature I appreciate in search engines, since most of the time these searches are better than what I come up with.

Snap Shopping
Snap's shopping feature is powered by Smarter.com. However, I was really, really surprised that nothing came up shopping-wise for my search query of xBox, not even xBox 360. The only results that came back were sponsored results (ads). A more generic search for socks returned better results. A highly coveted (and highly popular) item such as the xBox should've brought back a ton of targeted results - this is something that Snap, still in beta at the time of this writing, needs to work on.

Snap News
I like the look of Snap News - in fact, I liked the overall design and look of this entire site. Snap News brings back news that feature whatever your search query is, with a preview pane to the right. There are tabbed categories within the News search results that you can use to narrow down your results; these include Top Stories, World, US, Business, and more.

Snap Jobs
Snap's Job search is powered by SimplyHired, an excellent job search engine, and the results are presented in much the same way as Snap News. You can create job alerts within Snap, as well as search within job titles, by date posted, by company,by city, by distance, etc.
Why Should I Use Snap?

While I wasn't completely bowled over by Snap, I found it to be a good, solid search engine that delivered relatively good results. I really liked that Snap displayed the most popular searches for whatever term I typed in - this was a very handy feature. Right now, Snap is still in beta, and I'll be watching to see what kind of features and improvements they roll out next.

Blog Search Engines

2009-02-23T23:07:00.001-08:00

Blog search engines have become more and more sophisticated, and nowadays you can do a blog search on a variety of topics and hit paydirt. Here is a list of some of the best blog search engines out there - take 'em for a blog search test drive and see what you think.
Blog Search Engines
• Search Blogs with Ask.com: There's a new blog search engine in town from Ask.com. The best thing about it? It's wonderfully intertwined with Ask's (in my opinion) best property, Bloglines.
• Opinmind: Opinmind is a unique kind of blog search engine. It not only searches blogs, but it searches those blogs for opinions expressed on whatever subject you might be looking for.
• Sphere: My overall impression of Sphere is that it's a blog search engine with some great features, relevant results, and an excellent overall user experience.
• Technorati: Technorati is a real-time search engine dedicated to the blogosphere. It only searches through blogs to find exactly what you're looking for. At the time of this writing, Technorati was tracking over 22 million sites and over a billion links, a mind-boggling amount.
• Google Blog Search: The sheer simplicity, ease of use, and fast delivery of the service, which is really a hallmark of all Google's offerings, is going to draw a lot of converts who don't want to wait around for clogged databases to finally get through churning results.
• TalkDigger: TalkDigger is a search engine that finds what links are talking about links. Make sense? Well, in a nutshell, TalkDigger lets you enter in a URL, and then goes out and finds what sites (from a variety of different search engines) are linking to it. It's a conversation search engine.
• LJSeek: LjSeek.com is a search engine dedicated to only sifting through the LiveJournal blogging community. If you're a dedicated LiveJournal user or just looking for information, you'll find that LjSeek comes in handy.
• Daypop: With Daypop's blog search engine, the user can "search 59000 news sites, weblogs and RSS feeds for current events and breaking news." Daypop also has a cool Blog Archives feature; see what was buzzworthy in the blogosphere in days past.
• Blogdex:A blog search engine and a "finger on the pulse" kind of deal; Blogdex is put together by MIT and is a service that "tracks the diffusion of information through the weblog community."
• Technorati: Technorati is a blog search engine that is a real-time recorder of what is going on in the blogosphere. At the time of this writing Technorati was tracking a whopping 20.8 million sites and 1.7 billion links.
• Bloogz.com: Search blogs with the Bloogz blog search engine; you can also take a look at which blogs are the most popular at the moment.
• Blogwise.com: "Blogwise is a site about developing a portal to blogs around the world, efficiently, quickly and nicely." More of a blog directory than a blog search engine, but they do have a site search available and an impressive amount of blogs in their directory (over 100,000 at the time of this writing).
• Ice Rocket Blog Search: Excellent blog search engine that includes the option to search by link. Ice Rocket also has a pretty good advanced search page.
• Google Blog Search: Google Blog Search is relatively new to the world of blog search engines and at the time of this writing is still in beta. Doesn't retrieve many results at this time and there are a lot of useability issues, but again, Google Blog Search is still just in beta. I'll update as they work some of these issues out.
• BlogPulse: BlogPulse is a dream of a blog search engine. Includes really cool BlogPulse user tools such as Trend Search and Conversation Tracker.
• Bloglines: Not only can you search the blogosphere with Bloglines blog search engine, you can also subscribe to site feeds and view all your feeds within Bloglines' feed reader. Here's my Bloglines subscriptions.
• Blogdigger: Blogdigger is a solid blog search engine that also gives you the option to search for local blogs, an option I immediately added to my bookmarks.
• Waypath: Waypath bills itself as a "blog discovery engine". This blog search engine features the ability to identify topic streams, which basically means that they pull out the meat of every subject post.
• Findory: Findory is a super-charged blog search engine. Findory not only finds blogs that you're interested in, but "brings you news articles from thousands of worldwide sources...and custom-builds a personalized newspaper for each reader." Very cool service; try building your own Findory page.
• PubSub:"PubSub is a matching service that instantly notifies you when new content is created that matches your subscription." PubSub searches blogs and is technically not a blog search engine, but since it does search blogs I included it here. Think of PubSub as breaking news alerts on steroids - it's an extremely powerful and convenient search service and once you start one, you'll wonder how you ever got along without it.
• Feedster: "17,268,315 feeds indexed and fully searchable." Feedster is a blog search engine with a twist: it searches and indexes anything with a feed, which covers a wide gamut.

Best of all-purpose search engines on the Web

2009-02-23T22:53:00.000-08:00

1. Google
In the last few years, Google has attained the ranking of the #1 search engine on the Net, and consistently stayed there.

2. Yahoo
Yahoo is a search engine,subject directory, and web portal. Yahoo provides good search results powered by their own search engine database, along with many other Yahoo search options.

3. MSN
MSN Search is Microsoft's offering to the search world. Learn about MSN Search: its ease of use, cool search features, and simple advanced search accessibility.

4. AOL
Learn why so many people have chosen AOL Search to be their jumping off point when searching the Web. With its ease of use, simple accessibility, and nifty search features, AOL Search has carved itself a unique niche in the search world.

5. ASK
Ask.com is a very popular crawler-based search engine. Some of the reasons that it has stayed so popular with so many people are its ease of use, cool search features (including Smart Answers), and powerful search interface.

6. AlltheWeb
AlltheWeb is a search engine whose results are powered by Yahoo. AlltheWeb has some very advanced search features that make it a good search destination for those looking for pure search.

7. Altavista
AltaVista has been around in various forms since 1995, and continues to be a viable presence on the Web.

8. Lycos
Lycos has been around for over ten years now (started in September of 1995), and has some interesting search features to offer. Learn more about Lycos Search, Lycos Top 50, Lycos Entertainment, and more.

9. Gigablast
Gigablast is a search engine with some interesting features, good advanced search power, and an excellent user experience.

10. Cuil
Cuil is a slick, minimalist search engine with a magazine look and feel. Cuil claims to have indexed over 121 billion Web pages, so it is quite a large search engine, plus, the search interface returns quite a few related categories and search terms that can potentially launch your search net quite a bit wider.

Duplicate Content Filter: What it is and how it works

2009-02-23T04:32:00.000-08:00

Duplicate Content has become a huge topic of discussion lately, thanks to the new filters that search engines have implemented. This article will help you understand why you might be caught in the filter, and ways to avoid it. We'll also show you how you can determine if your pages have duplicate content, and what to do to fix it.
Search engine spam is any deceitful attempts to deliberately trick the search engine into returning inappropriate, redundant, or poor-quality search results. Many times this behavior is seen in pages that are exact replicas of other pages which are created to receive better results in the search engine. Many people assume that creating multiple or similar copies of the same page will either increase their chances of getting listed in search engines or help them get multiple listings, due to the presence of more keywords.
In order to make a search more relevant to a user, search engines use a filter that removes the duplicate content pages from the search results, and the spam along with it. Unfortunately, good, hardworking webmasters have fallen prey to the filters imposed by the search engines that remove duplicate content. It is those webmasters who unknowingly spam the search engines, when there are some things they can do to avoid being filtered out. In order for you to truly understand the concepts you can implement to avoid the duplicate content filter, you need to know how this filter works.
First, we must understand that the term "duplicate content penalty" is actually a misnomer. When we refer to penalties in search engine rankings, we are actually talking about points that are deducted from a page in order to come to an overall relevancy score. But in reality, duplicate content pages are not penalized. Rather they are simply filtered, the way you would use a sieve to remove unwanted particles. Sometimes, "good particles" are accidentally filtered out.
Knowing the difference between the filter and the penalty, you can now understand how a search engine determines what duplicate content is. There are basically four types of duplicate content that are filtered out:
1. Websites with Identical Pages - These pages are considered duplicate, as well as websites that are identical to another website on the Internet are also considered to be spam. Affiliate sites with the same look and feel which contain identical content, for example, are especially vulnerable to a duplicate content filter. Another example would be a website with doorway pages. Many times, these doorways are skewed versions of landing pages. However, these landing pages are identical to other landing pages. Generally, doorway pages are intended to be used to spam the search engines in order to manipulate search engine results.
2. Scraped Content - Scraped content is taking content from a web site and repackaging it to make it look different, but in essence it is nothing more than a duplicate page. With the popularity of blogs on the internet and the syndication of those blogs, scraping is becoming more of a problem for search engines.
3. E-Commerce Product Descriptions - Many eCommerce sites out there use the manufacturer's descriptions for the products, which hundreds or thousands of other eCommerce stores in the same competitive markets are using too. This duplicate content, while harder to spot, is still considered spam.
4. Distribution of Articles - If you publish an article, and it gets copied and put all over the Internet, this is good, right? Not necessarily for all the sites that feature the same article. This type of duplicate content can be tricky, because even though Yahoo and MSN determine the source of the original article and deems it most relevant in search results, other search engines like Google may not, according to some experts.
So, how does a search engine's duplicate content filter work? Essentially, when a search engine robot crawls a website, it reads the pages, and stores the information in its database. Then, it compares its findings to other information it has in its database. Depending upon a few factors, such as the overall relevancy score of a website, it then determines which are duplicate content, and then filters out the pages or the websites that qualify as spam. Unfortunately, if your pages are not spam, but have enough similar content, they may still be regarded as spam.
There are several things you can do to avoid the duplicate content filter. First, you must be able to check your pages for duplicate content. Using our Similar Page Checker, you will be able to determine similarity between two pages and make them as unique as possible. By entering the URLs of two pages, this tool will compare those pages, and point out how they are similar so that you can make them unique.
Since you need to know which sites might have copied your site or pages, you will need some help. We recommend using a tool that searches for copies of your page on the Internet: www.copyscape.com. Here, you can put in your web page URL to find replicas of your page on the Internet. This can help you create unique content, or even address the issue of someone "borrowing" your content without your permission.
Let's look at the issue regarding some search engines possibly not considering the source of the original content from distributed articles. Remember, some search engines, like Google, use link popularity to determine the most relevant results. Continue to build your link popularity, while using tools like www.copyscape.com to find how many other sites have the same article, and if allowed by the author, you may be able to alter the article as to make the content unique.
If you use distributed articles for your content, consider how relevant the article is to your overall web page and then to the site as a whole. Sometimes, simply adding your own commentary to the articles can be enough to avoid the duplicate content filter; the Similar Page Checker could help you make your content unique. Further, the more relevant articles you can add to compliment the first article, the better. Search engines look at the entire web page and its relationship to the whole site, so as long as you aren't exactly copying someone's pages, you should be fine.
If you have an eCommerce site, you should write original descriptions for your products. This can be hard to do if you have many products, but it really is necessary if you wish to avoid the duplicate content filter. Here's another example why using the Similar Page Checker is a great idea. It can tell you how you can change your descriptions so as to have unique and original content for your site. This also works well for scraped content also. Many scraped content sites offer news. With the Similar Page Checker, you can easily determine where the news content is similar, and then change it to make it unique.
Do not rely on an affiliate site which is identical to other sites or create identical doorway pages. These types of behaviors are not only filtered out immediately as spam, but there is generally no comparison of the page to the site as a whole if another site or page is found as duplicate, and get your entire site in trouble.
The duplicate content filter is sometimes hard on sites that don't intend to spam the search engines. But it is ultimately up to you to help the search engines determine that your site is as unique as possible. By using the tools in this article to eliminate as much duplicate content as you can, you'll help keep your site original and fresh.

Jumping Over the Google Sandbox

2009-02-23T04:31:00.000-08:00

It's never easy for newcomers to enter a market and there are barriers of different kinds. For newcomers to the world of search engines, the barrier is called a sandbox – your site stays there until it gets mature enough to be allowed to the Top Positions club. Although there is no direct confirmation of the existence of a sandbox, Google employees have implied it and SEO experts have seen in practice that new sites, no matter how well optimized, don't rank high on Google, while on MSN and Yahoo they catch quickly. For Google, the jailing in the sandbox for new sites with new domains is on average 6 months, although it can vary from less than a month to over 8 months.
Sandbox and Aging Delay
While it might be considered unfair to stop new sites by artificial means like keeping them at the bottom of search results, there is a fair amount of reasoning why search engines, and above all Google, have resorted to such measures. With blackhat practices like bulk buying of links, creation of duplicate content or simply keyword stuffing to get to the coveted top, it is no surprise that Google chose to penalize new sites, which overnight get tons of backlinks, or which are used as a source of backlinks to support an older site (possibly owned by the same company). Needless to say, when such fake sites are indexed and admitted to top positions, this deteriorates search results, so Google had to take measures for ensuring that such practices will not be tolerated. The sandbox effect works like a probation period for new sites and by making the practice of farming fake sites a long-term, rather than a short-term payoff for site owners, it is supposed to decrease its use.
Sandbox and aging delay are similar in meaning and many SEO experts use them interchangeably. Aging delay is more self-explanatory – sites are “delayed” till they come of age. Well, unlike in legislation, with search engines this age is not defined and it differs. There are cases when several sites were launched in the same day, were indexed within a week from each other but the aging delay for each of them expired in different months. As you see, the sandbox is something beyond your control and you cannot avoid it but still there are steps you can undertake to minimize the damage for new sites with new domains.
Minimizing Sandbox Damages
While Google sandbox is not something you can control, there are certain steps you can take in order to make the sandbox effect less destructive for your new site. As with many aspects of SEO, there are ethical and unethical tips and tricks and unethical tricks can get you additional penalties or a complete ban from Google, so think twice before resorting to them. The unethical approaches will not be discussed in this article because they don comply with our policy.
Before we delve into more detail about particular techniques to minimize sandbox damage, it is necessary to clarify the general rule: you cannot fight the sandbox. The only thing you can do is to adapt to it and patiently wait for time to pass. Any attempts to fool Google – starting from writing melodramatic letters to Google, to using “sandbox tools” to bypass the filter – can only make your situation worse. There are many initiatives you can take, while in the sandbox, for as example:
• Actively gather content and good links – as time passes by, relevant and fresh content and good links will take you to the top. When getting links, have in mind that they need to be from trusted sources – like DMOZ, CNN, Fortune 500 sites, or other reputable places. Also, links from .edu, .gov, and .mil domains might help because these domains are usually exempt from the sandbox filter. Don't get 500 links a month – this will kill your site! Instead, build links slowly and steadily.
• Plan ahead– contrary to the general practice of launching a site when it is absolutely complete, launch a couple of pages, when you have them. This will start the clock and time will be running parallel to your site development efforts.
• Buy old or expired domains – the sandbox effect is more serious for new sites on new domains, so if you buy old or expired domains and launch your new site there, you'll experience less problems.
• Host on a well- established host – another solution is to host your new site on a subdomain of a well-established host (however, free hosts are generally not a good idea in terms of SEO ranking). The sandbox effect is not so severe for new subdomains (unless the domain itself is blacklisted). You can also host the main site on a subdomain and on a separate domain host just some contents, linked with the main site. You can also use redirects from the subdomained site to the new one, although the effect of this practice is also questionable because it can also be viewed as an attempt to fool Google.
• Concentrate on less popular keywords – the fact that your site is sandboxed does not mean that it is not indexed by Google at all. On the contrary, you could be able to top the search results from the very beginning! Looking like a contradiction with the rest of the article? Not at all! You could top the results for less popular keywords – sure, it is better than nothing. And while you wait to get to the top for the most lucrative keywords, you can discover that even less popular keywords are enough to keep the ball rolling, so you may want to make some optimization for them.
• Rely more on non-Google ways to increase traffic – it is often reminded that Google is not the only search engine or marketing tool out there. So if you plan your SEO efforts to include other search engines, which either have no sandbox at all or the period of stay there is relatively short, this will also minimize the damages of the sandbox effect.

Web Directories and Specialized Search Engines

2009-02-23T02:24:00.000-08:00

SEO experts spend most of their time optimizing for Google and occasionally one or two other search engines. There is nothing wrong in it and it is most logical, having in mind that topping Google is the lion's share in Web popularity but very often, no matter what you do, topping Google does not happen. Or sometimes, the price you need to pay (not literally but in terms of effort and time) to top Google and keep there is too high. Maybe we should mention here the ultimate SEO nightmare – being banned from Google, when you simply can't use Google (or not at least until you are readmitted to the club) and no matter if you like it or not, you need to have a look about possible alternatives.

What are Google Alternatives
The first alternative to Google is obvious – optimize for the other major search engines, if you have not done it already. Yahoo! and MSN (to a lesser degree) can bring you enough visitors, though sometimes it is virtually impossible to optimize for the three of them at the same time because of the differences in their algorithms. You could also optimize your site for (or at least submit to) some of the other search engines (Lycos, Excite, Netscape, etc.) but having in mind that they altogether hardly have over 3-5% of the Web search traffic, do not expect much.
Another alternative is to submit to search directories (also known as Web directories) and specialized search engines. Search directories might sound so pre-Google but submitting to the right directories might prove better than optimizing for MSN, for example. Specialized search engines and portals have the advantage that the audience they attract consists of people who are interested in a particular topic and if this is your topic, you can get to your target audience directly. It is true that specialized search engines will not bring you as many visitors, as if you were topping Google but the quality of these visitors is extremely high.
Naming all Google alternatives would be a long list and it is outside the scope of this article but just to be a little more precise about what alternatives exist, we cannot skip SEO instruments like posting to blogs and forums or paid advertisements.

Web Directories

What is a Web Directory?
Web directories (or as they are better known – search directories) existed before the search engines, especially Google, became popular. As the name implies, web directories are directories where different resources are gathered. Similarly to desktop directories, where you gather files in a directory based on some criterion, Web directories are just enormous collections of links to sites, arranged in different categories. The sites in a Web directory are listed in some order (most often alphabetic but it is not necessarily so) and users browse through them.
Although many Web directories offer a search functionality of some kind (otherwise it will be impossible to browse thousands of pages for let's say Computers), search directories are fundamentally different from search engines in the two ways – most directories are edited by humans and URLs are not gathered automatically by spiders but submitted by site owners. The main advantage of Web directories is that no matter how clever spiders become, when there is a human to view and check the pages, there is a lesser chance that pages will be classified in the wrong categories. The disadvantages of the first difference are that the lists in web directories are sometimes outdated, if no human was available to do the editing and checking for some time (but this is not that bad because search engines also deliver pages that do not exist anymore) and that sometimes you might have to wait half an year before being included in a search directory.
The second difference – no spiders – means that you must go and submit your URL to the search directory, rather than sit and wait for the spider to come to your site. Fortunately, this is done only once for each directory, so it is not that bad.
Once you are included in a particular directory, in most cases you can stay there as long as you wish to and wait for people (and search engines) to find you. The fact that a link to your site appears in a respectable Web directory is good because first, it is a backlink and second, you increase your visibility for spiders, which in turn raises your chance to be indexed by them.

Examples of Web Directories
There are hundreds and thousands of search directories but undoubtedly the most popular one is DMOZ. It is a general purpose search directory and it accepts links to all kinds of sites. Other popular general-purpose search directories are Google Directory and Yahoo! Directory. The Best of the Web is one of the oldest Web directories and it still keeps to high standards in selecting sites.
Besides general-purpose Web directories, there are incredibly many topical ones. For instance, the The Environment Directory lists links to environmental sites only, while The Radio Directory lists thousands of radio stations worldwide, arranged by country, format, etc. There are also many local and national Web directories, which accept links to sites about a particular region or country only and which can be great if your site is targeted at local and national audience only. You see, it is not possible to mention even the topics of specialized search directories only because the list will get incredibly long. Using Google and specialized search resources like The Search Engines Directory, you can find on your own many directories that are related to your area of interest.

Specialized Search Engines

What is a Specialized Search Engine?
Specialized search engines are one more tool to include in your SEO arsenal. Unlike general-purpose search engines, specialized search engines index pages for particular topics only and very often there are many pages that cannot be found in general-purpose search engines but only in specialized ones. Some of the specialized search engines are huge sites that actually host the resources they link to, or used to be search directories but have evolved to include links not only to sites that were submitted to them. There are many specialized search engines for every imaginable topic and it is always wise to be aware of the specialized search engines for your niche. The examples in the next section are by no means a full list of specialized search engines but are aimed to give you the idea of what is available. If you search harder on the Web, you will find many more resources.

Examples of Specialized Search Engines
Probably specialized search engines are not that numeric as Web directories but still certainly there is no shortage of them either, especially if one counts password-protected sites with database accessible only from within the site as a specialized search engine. As with Web directories, if there were a list of specialized search engines it would be really, really long (and constantly changing), so instead, here are some links to lists of search engines: Pandia Powersearch, Webquest, Virtual Search Engines, the already mentioned The Search Engines Directory, etc. What is common for these lists is that they offer a selection of specialized search engines, arranged by topic, so it is a good starting point for the hunt of specialized search engines.

SEO - The next battleground for Web marketers

2009-02-18T03:21:00.000-08:00

Search, once considered a commodity service, has moved centrestage with more and more users tracking websites through search engines. A host of small Indian firms have sensed this rapidly emerging opportunity and are using specialised search engine optimisation (SEO) techniques to boost their client’s rankings on search engines. Srikanth R P has the details on this new trend
Imagine if you are given the task of finding out a particular fish in the ocean with only a tiny fishing net, without even knowing the location of the fish. Impossible, right? Now extend this analogy to the information available on the Net. What are the chances of an average user finding out about your company’s website? Almost zilch, if you consider the statistics.
With close to 407.1 million users, 33,942,187 domains, 25,675,581 websites and over one billion pages, the Internet is nothing short of an ocean when it comes to information. So, hoping that a user would find relevant information about your company by just putting up a Web presence is way too ambitious. But unlike the ocean, the Internet has got helpful guides in the form of search engines like Google and Altavista, that scan and index millions of pages to fine tune a query and get relevant information.
Search, once considered a commodity service extra by online sites, has today become an important and strategic tool in acquiring prospective customers. Hence, if you find that your company is not even listed in the top three results pages of a top search engine like a Google or Altavista, maybe it is time to talk to some search engine optimisation (SEO) firms, for your competitor must have already done so. SEO firms are specialist firms which tweak Web pages, content and also make a host of submissions to search engines so that the next time a user types a keyword search on Google, your company will appear on the top of the rankings for the specified words used.

Stll not convinced? Consider the example of a leading handicraft manufacturer in India. Despite being the best in the business with rates no other competitor in the country could match, the manufacturer found himself losing business to his more-expensive rival. Upon investigating, he found out that his rival had sought out the services of a search engine optimisation firm. Whenever an user from anywhere in the world used to type in the words ‘handicraft manufacturer India’ on Google, the rival’s site was listed on the first page of the results. Serious buyers who wanted to procure handicrafts from India sought out the services of his rival’s firm. His own site, despite having competitive rates and more categories, was ranked on the fourth page of Google. It takes no whizkid to figure out why he was losing business. Today, he is eagerly talking to SEO firms to help make his company appear in topmost search engine rankings.

Importance

The importance of optimising your site for search engines becomes more relevant when you consider the fact that only a serious user would consider coming to your site through a search engine. Says Binoy Pillai, CEO, Brandtrix, "At the end of the day, what counts for any website or companies that operate online is the serious/relevant traffic it generates. And search engines are the most cost effective way to drive serious visitors to your website. Whoever is coming to your website through search engines is spending his time and energy to find the product or services you offer. Hence, if your website is not placed in the top 20 search engine results, you are undoubtedly losing prospective clients." These facts are corroborated by market statistics.

For instance, a report by Jupiter Media Metrix states that 28 percent of Internet users type a product/service name into a search engine, 9 percent type a brand name, 5 percent type a company name and 5 percent go to a search engine shopping channel. The report also states that a majority of online traffic is generated through Google, Yahoo, Inktomi and FAST search engines. Also as 90 percent of users generally do not go beyond the third page of search results, it is of utmost importance that a website or product gets listed within the top three pages for the relevant keywords for it to get any traffic.

Cost effectiveness

Unlike traditional forms of advertising, running a targeted SEO campaign can help your company not only get serious buyers, but more importantly do it cost effectively. Explains Prashant Deorah, CEO, Puretech Internet, "The RoI for SEO is excellent when compared to any other form of advertising as one gets better conversion rates, lower cost per click and lower acquisition costs. A study by market research intelligence firm NPD group says that "consumers are more likely to purchase products after seeing search engine listings versus online banner advertisements." The same market report states that high search engine listings drive the highest awareness or branding for a site, with consumers recalling websites 60 percent of the time from search engine listings and roughly 20 percent from online banner advertisements. Companies are also gradually realising that their customers did not stumble upon their site by accident. They were actively searching for a particular product through search engines. That’s exactly the type of audience most companies would like to cultivate.
Sponsored links vs. SEO
Though search engines like Google have the concept of sponsored links, wherein an advertiser’s services or product name gets thrown up the moment the user types in a particular set of keywords, SEO players believe that their concept is more cost effective and promising. Since a normal search engine optimisation programme takes almost 90 days to achieve results, advertisers who want to go live quickly prefer sponsored links but in the longer run, a SEO campaign is more cost effective and strategic.
Says Vishal Sampat, director, Convonix Inc, "Sponsored links and pay-per-click programmess (the green boxes on the right-hand side of Google) work on the bidding model. You select a keyword and bid on it. The highest bidder gets his ad displayed on the top. Each time a user clicks on your advertisement, the search engine will charge you your bid amount. While initially it is a good idea to go in for a pay-per-click program for immediate exposure, this works to be expensive in the long term."

In terms of cost effectiveness too, there is a huge difference between using SEO techniques and sponsored links. Explains Pushpendra Singh, webmaster, IndiaInternetmarketing.com, "The average per-click rate for sponsored links on Google is around $1.72, while through the SEO techniques you get top placement with an average click-rate of 50 cents only. It is been proved that you get around 30 times more traffic in SEO links than in sponsored links by investing the same amount."
Additionally, SEO companies believe that a listing achieved through an SEO campaign gives a psychological advantage over sponsored links. Says Pillai, "When a person sees the sponsored listings, he knows that the link is there because the company paid money to the search engine to advertise there. But when he sees a site within the normal search result page he thinks it is because of the quality of the site. This gives a psychological branding advantage to the company over the sponsored listings."

Current scenario

Though the market is still nascent, awareness about the SEO concept is increasing gradually and business is looking up for specialist SEO firms. And going by the experience of the magic the SEO wizards have worked, business is certainly looking up. There are numerous examples in both the domestic and international market, where SEO firms have tweaked sites and increased the number of visitors.
Take the example of CCAvenue.com, one of India’s leading payment gateway providers. CCAvenue’s SEO consultants, Brandtrix, made sure that whenever one typed ‘payment gateway India’ or any related keywords, the CCAvenue site showed up in the top 10 results. Another example is Mumbai-based Rhombus Technologies, where the number of visitors to the site has increased after it optimised its website using the help of Puretech.
Tech companies are not the only ones swinging to the SEO tune. Mumbai-based Bombay City Eye Institute wanted to create brand awareness and promote its various eye care and ophthalmology services like cornea transplant and surgery, cataract surgery and glaucome treatment to both the local and international market. In came SEO specialist firm, Puretech who fine tuned content and tweaked its website structure. The result—whenever anyone entered the words ‘retina surgery’, ‘Glaucoma treatment Bombay’, ‘Cataract surgery Bombay’ or ‘Cornea surgery’—the institute’s site got listed in the top rankings on major search engines. Not surprisingly, today all these companies have seen an increased number of serious visitors to their sites.
While enquiries from the domestic market are picking up, the real big potential for Indian SEO firms could be in the international market, where the familiar cost advantage can be leveraged. Indian firms roughly do the same job at only 50 percent of the cost that a SEO firm in the US or Europe charges.
Says Pillai, "India has started making its mark in the global SEO outsourcing industry. Currently, development companies in the US and Europe are approaching us for partnerships to provide SEO services to their clients. We have also started dealing with major SEO companies in the US and Europe, wherein they outsource their work to us. Another market which is proving to be lucrative is the small business segment in New Zealand and Australia, from where the number of projects coming in is on the rise. Currently, over 50 percent of our business comes from the overseas markets. We have clients from over 15 countries, mainly the US, Europe, Australia and New Zealand." Looking at the quality of services Indian SEO companies provide, international firms are gradually increasing their SEO requirements to Indian firms.
For instance, BrandTrix has just done a SEO optimisation campaign for the New Zealand School of Travel & Tourism, an organisation offering IATA training in Auckland, New Zealand. The result—whenever one searches for ‘IATA training institute’ in Google, the organisation is positioned above the official IATA website. Not surprisingly, more and more organisations prefer Indian SEO firms for their SEO campaigns. Firms like Puretech have seen an increase in business coming from abroad while Convonix derives around 80 percent of its business from overseas markets.

Challenges

Being a nascent trend, there is a still a lot of misconception in the market about the benefits of search engine optimisation techniques. Says Sampat of Convonix, "A lot of people come to us expecting to either see an overnight increase in traffic or asking us to submit sites to 5,000 search engines. This is because they themselves have received a mail saying that a software does that. The truth is that there are 20 top engines that account for over 95 percent of search engine traffic. Most of the other 4,980 search engines get less traffic than a personal website does. Also, SEO is not an overnight process. The results take 8-16 weeks to show, but if properly implemented and persisted with, SEO shows substantial savings over any other method within a few months of tweaking and optimisation."
Additionally, there are numerous fly-by-night operators in the country who charge clients extremely low fees without taking into account the quality of the rankings. Says Deorah of Puretech, "SEO is no trifle task. It is an art and science of applying the knowledge and experience gained over the years researching the search engine’s distinct algorithm and unique indexing parameters. But this industry is plagued by numerous small time players who promise clients submissions by just purchasing a software that automatically submits your site to numerous search engines."
Naturally, the quality of rankings such firms promise is never achieved and it gives a bad name to the entire industry. There have also been numerous instances where search engines like Google have banned certain sites because their SEO firms have been indulging in spamming search engine submissions. Additionally, many firms convince clients that increasing the density of keywords to the amount of text on a page guarantees top listings in Google. This is far from true. For instance, if you were a handicraft manufacturer in India and you repeat the keywords ‘handicraft manufacturer India’ about 50 times in your Web page, Google is likely to treat this as spam and it could well result in your site being banned.

Conclusion

Till last year, Indian SEO companies had to approach clients and convince them that search engines are important marketing tools, but now companies have started approaching firms specialising in SEO. SEO players claim that business has grown at least three times compared to the amount of deals done the last year. While awareness has yet not reached its full potential, the industry is certainly getting more aware of the importance of SEO techniques. The next time you type in an innocuous word in Google, remember that an Indian SEO firm could be tweaking the pages behind the scenes for the rankings you see.

What smart HR managers do.............

2009-02-18T03:10:00.000-08:00

Faiz Askari analyses the need for a structured approach to sourcing, assessment, onboarding, training and retention.

HR departments in most organisations have to constantly face the pressure of an expanding workforce. Smart HR managers adopt a structured approach for making their life easy while hiring new people and retaining the existing ones. This structured approach to talent management involves systematic processes at each stage of human resource management, ranging from sourcing to assessment, reference checks and to onboarding and retaining.

In the initial stage of sourcing, it is important to tap into the right and varied set of talent sources such as online job boards, Web-based communities, target companies to headhunt from, and universities/schools that nurture the right skills.

Veena Gundavelli, CEO, SITI Corporation says, “Depending on the level of position, the sourcing strategy varies and it is important for recruiters to know that the success of closing a position with the right talent largely depends on the sourcing strategy and the execution. Assessment is a very objective evaluation step and needs to be predefined to shortlist the right talent. “An analysis of the current workforce demographics would give the HR manager information about the organisation’s recruitment successes and failures. Identifying the best ways to recruit and the pitfalls/failures are a smart way to approach sourcing.”

"An analysis of workforce demographics would give the HR manager information about the company’s recruitment successes and failures"
- Rahul Mulay
General Manager, Operations Harbinger Group

Further analysis of the exiting employees, about their age/experience distribution, tenure in the job and reasons for leaving are used to find ways to manage attrition within the current workforce. “If enough data is available, it may actually end up in a mathematical equation which can predict the attrition,” says Mulay.
HR managers clearly define systems and processes for the success of HR strategy. Once they are in place, the next step is to ensure that these systems are well complied. Vishal Chhiber, Head-HR, Kelly Services India states, “It starts from defining the job description, structuring the search accordingly and then assessing the short-listed candidates on their competence, experience and qualifications vis-a-vis the job description. Post that, the candidate is absorbed and trained within the system.”
Correct assessment

"It is important for recruiters to know that the success of closing a position with the right talent largely depends on the sourcing strategy and the execution"
- Veena Gundavelli
CEO
SITI Corporation

Develop battery of tests to assess the technical competence and assess personality traits which would include behavioural patterns in a given situation.
Assessment can be divided into several steps such as basic aptitude tests, technical assessments and HR assessments. These steps form the basic gates to pass over to reference checking, hiring and on boarding steps.
Gundavelli adds, “Successful on-boarding results into better retention rates. As part of retention, several companies adopt techniques such as assigning seniors to be mentors to the new employees, having specific people development managers to take care of new employee development, knowledge management and training, etc.”
Group discussions assess communication skills and aptitude to take a lead and participate. These are also pointers to ownership traits of an individual when assigned certain key responsibilities.

DG Subramanian, Vice-president-HR, CSM Software states, “Validate past performance with data and evaluate the consistency of those performances. Institute a detailed background check to validate evaluation judgment. By these practices the assessment process can become more comprehensive.”

In the current scenario all employees look at a career path within the organisation. Chhiber points out, “We endeavour to give a realistic career path to an employee at the time of joining so that the employees should look at learning on the job, upgrading his skill sets and then deliver consistent performance in the current role before looking on to move to the next level within the organisation. The appraisal process includes specific discussions on the career path which acts as a tool in the process.”

Understanding expectations

Ensure that the “feel good factor” is infused when the candidate is inducted as an employee. It is critical that the new entrant feels important in the new environment.

Subramanian adds, “Assign tasks which is close to the new entrants’ key competency to instill confidence. Define performance parameters to arrest ambiguity and take them through the career options as they move forward.”
Any new employee joins an organisation with certain set of expectations. Understanding these expectations on day one is essential to ensure a long-term relationship. And that can play a very vital role in controlling the attrition rate.
Mulay believes that when an employee joins and looks for a quick change, there are certain areas of expectations which are not met, “A one-on-one discussion helps to identify the reasons why an employee is looking for the change. These could be simple things which can be addressed after discussing with the employee’s manager while there are some which need more time.” But once the employee understands that the company is serious about its commitment, he generally continues.
The Indian economy is growing at a never before pace leading to lot of opportunities for the current working generation to choose from. Chhiber feels that with such growth, the biggest challenge, apart from attracting is retaining key talent. Across industries and skill-levels employee attrition is common and organisations are groping for the solutions. “Probably the right solutions would be to hire the right-fit of talent, offering meaningful and transparent reward and recognition strategies, pre-defined career paths to the extent possible and last but not the least work-life balance,” adds Chhiber.

Career growth

The role of a clear and well-defined on-boarding policy and assessment cannot be over emphasised, more so in the current scenario. The knowledge worker of today is vibrant to the environment around him and expects transparency in terms of his interaction with his employer.

“Herein projecting the true image of the organisation and the business at the time of joining, training (both technical and behavioural), as an investment in employee’s growth and free and fair performance assessment, does go a long way in increasing the belonging of the employee to the organisation, thereby checking the attrition rates,” states Chhiber.

Every employee looks for interesting work, good income, opportunity to learn, career growth and a healthy and fair work environment in any job, though the order may change for different people. Emphasising the importance of training, Mulay adds, “Training ensures that the employee gets the opportunity to learn and prepare for handling new opportunities /responsibilities. A well-designed appraisal system and periodic assessments are necessary to evaluate the performance. This also helps to plan the career growth of the employee.”

It’s important to identify the training needs of the employees in a formal process and ensure that it is executed within defined time parameters. It’s also important to nominate employees to identified training programmes, either at customer location or recognised technical bodies.

Subramanian states, “By and large employees look for acquiring additional skills, enhance their existing ones and they look forward to organisational support to fulfill their aspirations. It’s important that a balance is struck between employee aspiration and organisational requirement from the business perspective.” Given the right kind of exposure and training, it is believed that attrition levels can be sustained at moderate levels.

Key challenges

Organisations need to proactively motivate the critical employees by assigning them key responsibilities, including their leadership roles. Employee engagement is also very important as it can ensure employee’s participation and it can also take ownership on responsibilities assigned to them. Subramanian states, “Keeping open communication channels with employees and facilitate interaction with top management on a defined frequency is important.”

Growing job rates coupled with tightening labour pool is the biggest contributor to high attrition rate. “Companies are forced to think out-of-the box to create more value to the employees in three areas—career growth, financial growth and job satisfaction. Companies are also forced to think about talent pools that are from rural areas that are still not caught in the job hopping culture,” concludes Gundavelli.

Starting Up a Link Marketing Campaign

2009-02-17T05:07:00.002-08:00

Link Building SEO Humor
Starting up a link marketing campaign is easy. Thorough preparation before starting up a link marketing campaign is often neglected, however. By thinking everything well through in a structured way, you dramatically improve the chances of your link marketing campaign being successful.

Make a snapshot of the start
You’ll never know what you’ve achieved if you don’t know where you came from. Capturing your starting situation is very important for an evaluation of how successful (or not) specific strategies or actions have been in a later stage.
Think about your goals
Try to think as ambitiously as you can. Don’t limit yourself to anything just yet, but try to picture where you want to be in an X amount of time. I usually refer to these goals as the ‘wish-goals’. The real goals will be determined later on, but it’s important to think about this early as well. It not only gets you thinking about what you want, but will make sure that the research you’ll perform is more targeted.
Investigate the competition
Look at the keywords you want to rank for and determine who your online competitors are. Don’t limit this to organic competition only, but look at the paid results as well. Check out what the overall quality of the competing sites is, what the most important features of these sites are, what kind of content they carry, where they’re listed, and so on.
Evaluate what you have
Now that you know where you’re at right now, where you want to be in the future, and who you’ll have to compete with, you can start evaluating what you have. Is your current situation enough to reach your goals?
If not, try to determine what you’ll have to adjust. Your internal link structure, the amount (and quality) of your content and your website’s design are easier to adjust than your external links. After all, you’re in control.
Of course, it could also turn out that the goals you’ve set can’t be reached with what you have right now and a few additions or adjustments. In that case, adjust your goals to something more acceptable and try to aim for those higher goals at a later stage.
If it turns out that you can easily reach your goals with what you have right now, adjust your goals and start being a little bit ambitious, dammit! You won’t get anywhere if you don’t push yourself.
Determine your goals & strategy
Now it’s time to rethink the goals you’ve thought about earlier, but keep them SMART. You know what you want to reach, you know which companies you’ll have to compete with and you know what you’re current situation is like. Try to calculate where these three lines meet, put the bar just a little higher and there: you’ve determined your goals.
Because you’ve done your homework, it’s also a lot easier to create the perfect strategy for your campaign. Whether it’s building links to specific pages, creating link targeted content or any other strategy; write it down before you start. This makes sure that you don’t forget certain tactics and that the overall campaign will be a well-structured one.
Find the influencers
Although there are tons of link building strategies that you can use during a campaign, there is a specific group of influencers for any campaign that you just have to target. These influencers not only reach your target audience spot on, but may be able to boost your website to top rankings with just a few links. Connect with them, but don’t harass them with link requests or whatsoever. People are much more willing to link to you if they’ve known you for a (short) while. Networking is a process, not an action.
Plan moments of evaluation
This is a very important step in the process of starting up a link marketing campaign. Compare your achievements with your snapshot of the start and the goals you’ve set regularly. Plan these moments in advance, in order to being able to adjust your strategy in time, if things don’t seem to work out like you’ve planned.
Start your campaign
Finally, it’s time to start the campaign. First, there are several link marketing tactics that you can use that don’t envolve hunting, cold calling, or any other mind numbing activities. After picking the low hanging fruit, you can move on to the next part of your strategy. Contact the influencers you’ve been chatting with for the past few weeks or months, leverage your existing network, go after those .edu’s, or whatever you have to do to reach your goals.
Don’t be afraid to adjust your strategy during a campaign, by the way. Things change, and so do your competitors, your online environment, search engines and their algorithms. Follow your results, link building news and your overall campaign very closely, and you’ll probably be safe.

7 Internal link building strategies...

2009-02-17T05:07:00.001-08:00

1. Make sure that your navigation is spider able. Either use (anchor text carrying) text based navigation, or an image based navigation with relevant alt attributes attached to each image link.
2. Breadcrumbs are a great internal linking tool. Use them for usability and anchor text differentiation.
3. In-content links not only tend to have a higher click through rate and perceived trust, but are also able to add more relevance to a link because of the surrounding text.
4. Use a sitemap. A good sitemap is useful for visitors, useful for search engines and, therefore, useful for you.
5. Link to topically relevant pages on important pages of your website. Link to important pages on every (or most) topically relevant page of your website.
6. Be consistent in linking behavior. If you link to homepage.com, always link to homepage.com, and not to homepage.com, homepage.com/index.php and homepage.com/index.php&id=123.
7. Identify your most linked-to pages, and make sure that the link juice flows to your most important pages from there, in a well-optimized way.

10 Easy link building starters...

2009-02-17T05:06:00.001-08:00

1. Optimize your existing links. Contact the webmasters of prominent websites that link to you and ask them to change ‘click here’ to an anchor text that contains relevant keywords, an anchor text that encourages clicking through, or -ideally- a combination of both.
2. Monitor your 404 statistics. Keep track of whoever links to old pages or misspelled URLs, which is data that Google provides as well. Contact those webmasters and provide them a good URL which they can link to.
3. Create a ‘link to us’ page, where you provide information about how people can link to you and which URL(s), logo and/ or anchor text they can use. Update this page regularly in order to diversify the anchor text.
4. Contact family, friends, colleagues and other people you know and let them know about your website. Some will send you useful feedback, others -who happen to have a website of their own- might link to you.
5. Do you block search engine bots from indexing certain parts of your website via robots.txt or meta-noindex? Find out if people link to this section of your site. If so, contact the webmasters of these sites and kindly ask them to link to an other page of your website.
6. Use your spell check. People will more likely link to correctly spelled articles than to content that’s full of grammatical errors.
7. Search for websites that already mention your business name or URL, but haven’t linked to your website. This works excellently in Yahoo!.
8. Look for websites that mention your personal name, but currently don’t link to your site. Use Yahoo! for this as well.
9. Leave comments on the blogs you visit every day. Hey, you’re visiting them anyway, so why don’t leave a (relevant, useful!) comment?
10. Find out which website your company owns. If you work for a small company, there may possibly be several. If you work for a large company, the number will probably knock you off your shoes. Link these websites (carefully!) together, or redirect the most important and/ or relevant ones to your main website.

Here is an interesting history of Valentine day started in Inidia

2009-02-12T02:57:00.000-08:00

The Gujarati Story of Valentine's Day.
In spite of what you have been told by everyone, the truth is that
Valentine's Day originated hundreds of years ago, in India, and to top it
all, in Gujarat!!

It is a well-known fact that Gujarati men, specially the Patels, continually
mistreat and disrespect their
wives (Patelianis). One fine day, it happened to be the 14th day of February,
one brave Pateliani, having had enough "torture" by her husband,
finally chose to rebel by beating him up with a Velan (rolling pin).

Yes...the same Velan, which she used daily, to make chapattis for him...only
this time, instead of the dough, it was the husband who was flattened.
This was a momentous occasion for all Gujarati women and a revolt soon spread,
like wild fire, with thousands of housewives beating up their husbands with the
Velan.

There was an outburst of moaning "chapatti-ed" husbands all over
Anand and Amdavad. The Patel men-folk quickly learnt their lesson and started to
behave more respectfully with their Patelianis.

Thereafter, on 14 February, every year, the womenfolk of Gujarat would beat up
their husbands, to commemorate that eventful day. The wives having the
satisfaction of beating up their husbands
with the Velan and the men having the supreme joy of submitting to the will of
the women they loved.

Soon The Gujju men realized that in order to avoid the ordeal they need to
present gifts to their wives...they brought flowers and sweetmeats.

As Gujarat fell under the influence of Western culture, that day was called
'Velan time' day.
The ritual soon spread to Britain and many other Western countries,
specifically, the catchwords
'Velan time!' Of course in their foreign tongues, it was first
anglicized to 'Velantime' and then to 'Valentine'.

Thereafter, 14th of February, came to be known as Valentine's Day

Valentine day!

2009-02-12T02:52:00.000-08:00

In the West, Valentine's Day, also called St. Valentine's Day is the traditional day on which lovers express their feelings to each other by sending Valentine's cards and giving flowers or candy but how did the practice of giving Valentine's Day gifts come about? This is the history of Valentine's Day dating back to 270 AD. The holiday itself is named after two of numerous early Christian martyrs named Valentine. Until 1969, the Catholic Church formally recognized eleven Valentine's Days but the the Valentines honored on February 14 are Valentine of Rome and Valentine of Terni.

Valentine of Rome was a priest who served during the reign of Emperor Claudius II. Legend has it that the emperor felt that single men made better soldiers so he declared it was unlawful for young men to get married. Valentine disagreed with the new law and considered it cruel so he continued to perform marriages for young lovers in secret.

According to this version of the legend, Valentine was arrested and interrogated by Roman Emperor Claudius II in person. Claudius was impressed by Valentine and attempted to get him to convert to Roman paganism in order to save his life but Valentine refused and tried to convert Claudius to Christianity instead. Because of this, he was executed on February 14, 270 AD.

On the evening before his execution, he wrote the first "valentine" himself, addressed to the jailer's young daughter, identified as his beloved, whom he had befriended and healed. The note read "From your Valentine." Valentine of Rome thus became a Patron Saint, and spiritual overseer of an annual festival. The festival involved young Romans offering women they admired, and wished to court, handwritten greetings of affection on February 14. The greeting cards acquired St.Valentine's name.

Valentine of Terni became bishop of Interamna about AD 197 and is said to have been killed during the persecution of Emperor Aurelian. One of the most intriguing stories of the history of Valentine's Day was the discovery of a sarcophagus which held the bodies of two young people, Sabino, a Roman soldier and Serapia, a girl from Terni. Legend has it that she was a Christian and he a pagan. The two were married by Saint Valentine in defiance of the Emperor of Aurelian.

This legend is the centerpiece of the tradition of Saint Valentine of Terni. It is a story of the triumph of love over cultural differences. Today, couples from all over the world travel to Terni every February 14 to take or renew their marriage vows.

Another legend involving the history of Valentine's Day claims that the Christian Church may have decided to celebrate Valentine's feast day in the middle of February in an effort to "christianize" celebrations of the pagan Lupercalia festival. In ancient Rome, February was the official beginning of spring and was considered a time for purification. Lupercalia was a fertility festival dedicated to Faunus, the Roman god of agriculture, and began at the ides of February - on the 15th. Lupercalia was also dedicated to the Roman founders, Romulus and Remus who were believed to have been cared for by a she-wolf or lupa.

The festival began with members of the Luperci, an order of Roman priests, gathering at the sacred cave of Romulus and Remus. The priests would then sacrifice a goat for fertility and a dog for purification. They would slice the hides into strips and dip them in the sacrificial blood. The priests would walk along a path marked with rocks where women would line up to be touched with the strips. Roman women welcomed the touch of the hides because they believed the strips would make them more fertile in the coming year and ease the pain of childbirth.

Later in the day, according to legend, young women would place their names in a big urn. The city's bachelors would then each choose a name from the urn and pair with their chosen woman for the next week. The young bachelors would wear the strip of paper with their chosen's name on their sleeve for that time hence the old saying, "He wears his heart on his sleeve." Some of the matches often resulted in marriage. Pope Gelasius declared February 14 to be St. Valentine's Day around 498 A.D. The Roman lottery system for romantic pairing was later deemed un-christian and was outlawed.

Valentine's Day became associated with romantic love in the circle of Geoffrey Chaucer, the most famous author of the Middle Ages, when the tradition of courtly love flourished. There were strict rules of courtly love and the art of courtly love was practised by the members of the courts across Europe during the Middle Ages. The rules of courtly love allowed knights and ladies to show their admiration regardless of their marital state. It was a common occurrence for a married lady to give a token to a knight of her choice to be worn during a Medieval tournament. There were rules which governed courtly love but sometimes the parties, who started their relationship with such elements of courtly love, would become deeply involved. A famous example of a relationship which was stirred by romantic courtly love and romance is described in the Legend of King Arthur, where his Queen, Guinevere fell in love with Sir Lancelot.

The earliest surviving valentine is a fifteenth-century rondeau written by Charles, Duke of Orleans to his "valentined" wife. At the time, the duke was being held in the Tower of London following his capture at the Battle of Agincourt in 1415.

In Great Britain, Valentine's Day began to be popularly celebrated around the seventeenth century. By the middle of the eighteenth century, it was common for friends and lovers to exchange small tokens of affection or handwritten notes as Valentine's Day Gifts.

In the United States, the first mass-produced Valentines of embossed paper lace were produced and sold shortly after 1847 by Esther Howland of Worcester, Massachusetts. Her father operated a large book and stationary store, but Esther took her inspiration from an English valentine that she had received. By the end of the century, due to printing technology improvements, printed cards began to replace written letters.

According to the Greeting Card Association, an estimated one billion Valentine's cards are sent each year, making Valentine's Day the second largest card-sending holiday of the year, second only to Christmas. It is approximated that 85% of all valentines cards are purchased by women.

In the second half of the twentieth century, the practice of exchanging cards was extended to all manner of gifts in the United States, usually from a man to a woman. Typical Valentine's Day gifts include roses and chocolates packed in a red satin, heart-shaped box. In the 1980s, the diamond industry began to promote Valentine's Day as an occasion for giving jewelry.

As you can see, a large portion of the history of Valentine's Day is based on romance between man and woman. That is still the case, lovers exchange gifts to show their feelings for each other but Valentine's Day has also evolved to include exchange of gifts between friends and family.

Boolean Search to Find Resume Online

2009-01-31T04:15:00.000-08:00

What is a Boolean Operator?
Boolean Operators (AND, OR, NOT, NEAR) are the language of search engines
Describe which key words may, must, or must not appear on a web page

Example: Go buy me a latte

English: “Purchase a tall or grande latte with nonfat milk and vanilla or raspberry syrup and no foam.”

Boolean Search: (tall OR grande) AND nonfat AND (vanilla OR raspberry) AND NOT foam.

Boolean Operators

Operator Description Example
AND Links 2 or more terms together “c++” AND sql
OR Collects all documents that includes either of the terms (vb OR “visual basic”)
NOT Collects documents that have the keyword that precedes it, but not the term that follows it. dhtml NOT html
NEAR Finds documents with both specified terms that are within close proximity to each other Operations NEAR manager

Note that different search engines support different operators (e.g., of the major free search engines, only Exalead.com currently supports NEAR). Also, the syntax may differ (e.g., put the minus sign - immediately in front of a keyword to represent NOT on Google, Live and Yahoo). Also see the special commands common among search engines (e.g., intitle: or inurl:) and unique to others (e.g., prefer: on Live) which are not covered in this doc. Visit the search Help page on each desired search engine for specifics.

Boolean Modifiers
Make Search more powerful and efficient

Modifier Description Example
“” Quotation Marks Used to denote an exact phrase to be found “visual basic”
* Wildcard Retrieves keywords with the same root manag*, develop*, test*, strateg*
() Parentheses Defines a subset of a search (CRM OR “customer relationship management”)
NOTE: Some search engines use the wildcard * as a full word substitute instead (e.g., “senior * engineer” will find senior software development engineer, senior database engineer, etc., on Google).

Synonyms – Sourcer’s Best Friends!

Think like your candidate – what variations might exist in the way people write keywords on their resumes?
Tip! Harvest keywords from resumes you find in your searches and add into your Boolean string as you go
Example: Windows 2000
Synonyms in Boolean format: (“Windows 2000” OR “win 2k” OR win2k) *this list could also include the technologies which are a part of Windows 2000
Example: Evangelize
Synonyms: evangelize, evangelist, evangelized, evangelizing, presenter, presented, presentation, demo, demonstrate, keynote, speaker, pre-sales, presales, pre sales, technical specialist, author
Synonyms in Boolean format: (evangeli* OR present* OR demo* OR keynote OR speaker OR pre-sales OR presales OR “pre sales" OR “technical specialist” OR author)

You Can reach me @ the following networking sites:

http://www.linkedin.com/in/mdmunawar

http://www.konnects.com/profiles.jspf?MemberId=638318

http://twitter.com/mdmunawar

sourcing,"Resumes Online",Recruiter Help,Recruiter Guide,Jobs

2009-01-31T03:48:00.000-08:00

TOP TEN WAYS TO SOURCING / RECRUITING - FREELY
1) Diigo

Stop adding your favorite links to your browsers.. thats soooo archaic.
From the words of my friend Michael Marlatt " With the massive amount of information available or for surfing the web, sourcing for resumes or conducting competitive intelligence, the question is: How do you capture all this wonderful data, create online sticky-notes (reminders), keep it all organized, easily retrievable, simultaneously share (real-time) content with peers or an entire community, and oh by the way do this without your personal computer from anywhere in the world? One answer: Diigo.

By accessing ANY available computer, Diigo can offer its users all this functionality and much more. Yeah, I suppose someone out there could quickly argue that there are easily hundreds of other book-marking sites, online clipping services, etc. that offer similar functionality-right? That’s true to some extent; however, you will not find one that currently offers the full suite of solutions and rich functionality that Diigo offers and is still (free). Or, you might say, there's always book-marking favorites in your browser (old-school) and creating "bookmarklets" so why use Diigo? Hey, let’s be honest, setting up bookmarklets are helpful but the on-going filing and maintenance can be exhaustive especially if you have 100's (if not 1000's) of favorite sites stored in your browser.
Diigo will simply your web surfing, data collection, content management, and group-collaboration experience in a way that no other social bookmarking application can right now. " I need not say anymore.
2) Search Engines

The major engines Google, Yahoo(I prefer), Live , ASk, Exalead & Altavista.

For all the engines the two best commands are site: and inurl/intitle: The two/three commands will give you
enough resumes or contacts to work for many hours.

You can find resumes,associations, people working in specific companies

(i.work.for | working.at) deloitte -why

Or for resumes

inurl:resume | intitle:resume auditor cpa -sample -submit -template -you
3) Zipcode and Numrange

You can use these commands for finding phone numbers of a specific co in a specific location instead of dialing the reception. You can also use a range of zip codes for pinpointing a geographic area or a range of years with a resume search
For Example I am trying to find Java developers with year range 1990-2008

~cv j2ee developer 1990..2008 -job

4) Linkedin

Even though I am rethinking a lot about effectiveness of linkedin as a recruiting tool especially after using Linkedin recruiter but its still a great tool for networking, branding (your self /your co)
One of the foremost thing you could do would be to get
-)Get connected to super connectors
MyLink500.com and TopLinked.com have names & links to the highest-connected LI members. Their profiles typically list their email addresses and are very open to new connections.
-)Join Linkedin groups
-) The search commands with in Linkedin are very straight forward but have to keep in mind that most don't have there profiles completed so try avoid search with keywords and I rather prefer Title search for many of my searches.
-)Forget searching with in linkedin and look for profile in Google or other search engines using site command.

For Ex:-
site:linkedin.com (ccna OR ccie OR ccnp) “New york” -inurl:jobid -inurl:find -intitle:directory -inurl:answers
5) Jigsaw & XING

Use Site command- See above.
6) Metasearch Engines
Did you check ixquick.com ,mamma.com, clusty,Intelways,zuula,dogpile
7) Blog Search

Ocourse Google,Tecnorati,iceRocket, bloglines, Ask Blog

8) RSS & Alerts
RSS - get a Reader -
I use Google Alerts to monitor brands, clients or competitors. You can explicitly choose to receive e-mail alerts from blogs that match your search criteria, or choose the comprehensive option that includes blogs, news, groups and the Web.
You can track layoffs, associations, seminars . . . you get my point.
Create a simple string/alert like:
(Pfizer|"Abbott Labs"|Amgen |Bayer|Bristol|"Eli Lilly"|GlaxoSmithKline|Merck|"Abbott Labs"|Novartis)
and try adding " resume|profile"
You can have maximum of 1000 alerts . . . do you need more?
See what others are talking about you; go -http://www.google.com/alerts

9) People Search

Zabasearch, Pipl, Nexis,Argali or just plain Google
lets find me
rithesh.nair (inurl:contact | intitle:contact | intext:contact | email | phone)

10) The others Zoominfo, Hoovers - free versions & have to mention Wink

You Can reach me @ the following networking sites:

http://www.linkedin.com/in/mdmunawar

http://www.konnects.com/profiles.jspf?MemberId=638318

http://twitter.com/mdmunawar

seo,'search engine optimization'

2009-01-31T03:09:00.000-08:00

Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of improving the volume and quality of traffic to a website from search engines via "natural" ("organic" or "algorithmic")search results . Typically, the higher a site's "page rank" (i.e, the earlier it comes in the search results list), the more visitors it will receive from the search engine. SEO can also target different kinds of search, including image searc, local search, and industry-specific vertical search engines.

SEO Tips - 10 Do's Of SEO

1) Thoroughly research potential keywords. The main purpose of organic SEO is to get increase relevant and targeted traffic for all the right keywords. As SEO can take lots of effort, and sometimes money, you should have a clear idea right from the start as to what keywords you want to target. For more information logon to www.offline-promotion.com
there are many services available, such as Word Tracker and Google Ad Words Keyword Tool but I recommend you use your own discretion. This tool will enable you to find the most popular pages and just as importantly the pages with the least competition.

2) Target long tail keywords. These keywords have lower volumes of traffic, but in total add up to a sizable amount of business. By their very nature they will also have low levels of completion making it easier and quicker for you to achieve higher search engine rankings and get your SEO campaign of to a good start.

3) Relevant content. Relevant content makes your website information-rich; increases your keyword density; it makes your website link-worthy and fetches you high-value inbound links. Updating your website with new relevant content should form part of any good long term SEO strategy.

4) Unique titles for every page. Titles are used by the search engines to both rank and display pages. Leveraging your page titles will increase your rankings and search engine traffic.

5) Unique description for each page. Your description Meta tag should describe your page in one or two sentences, and of course include your keywords. For more details go to www.sitemap-makers.com .Like the title your description also appears on the search engine results pages and as searchers often click links after reading the description your page description should obviously be as compelling as possible.

6) Keep the important content near the top. Content at the top of the page is considered more important than the content below, so ensure your keywords are near the top.

7) Use semantic HTML where possible. Ensure you use semantic HTML and that your keywords appear within the heading tags H1 through to H8, although personally I rarely get to H8.).

8) Use search engine friendly URLs. Try not to use dynamically generated URLs, instead use search engine friendly URLs.

9) Create a site map and keep it up to date. A site map should be a separate webpage containing links to all your web pages you want indexed by the search engine crawlers.

10) Online directories. Having entries in directories like DMOZ and Yahoo! (it's the original directory) can enhance your search engine rankings if your link gets included in them.

* Source:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Search_engine_optimization

http://www.seochat.com/

http://www.articlesbase.com/seo-articles/10-top-tips-about-seo-667840.html

You Can reach me @ the following networking sites:

http://www.linkedin.com/in/mdmunawar

http://www.konnects.com/profiles.jspf?MemberId=638318

http://twitter.com/mdmunawar