All posts by brainwork

In 2013, content marketing has become a very important marketing tool. By now you must have realized how landing pages affect your as well as your clients’ SEO. Landing pages play major part in attracting traffic to your site.

Building strong and competitive landing pages which are solely going to represent your brand image and able to drive more and more traffic to your web is extremely important.

In this presentation we will go through some interesting tactics that will help you in building competitive and strong landing pages:

Captivating content of landing page:

Content on landing pages should be attractive, interesting, concise and informative.
Content should be up-to-date; as the visitor would like to get the latest information.
Reduce ads on landing pages if they are distracting or lacking the essence of content.
Keep a close eye on the metrics of your webpage and comments, feedback of your visitors, they will determine the engagement capacity of content.

Architecture of landing page:

Make user friendly architecture of landing pages.
Make effective use of diagrams, charts, screenshots, pictograms and videos in the content.
Basic structural changes of landing pages should match the content and content layout.

Identical keywords of landing pages:

Arrange the landing pages corresponding to keywords.
For main keyword, landing page should be the home page; but for other keywords position other concerned pages of your website accordingly.
Identical arrangement of landing pages to keywords will help to rank better in search results.

Keep an eye on rank of landing pages:

Use Google analytics to track ranking of your landing pages. You might lose the visitor/s of your site because of inappropriate keywords; so be alert.

Knowledge driven landing pages:

At given point of time you won’t know the knowledge level of your visitor regarding your product and business. Therefore build landing pages keeping in mind the view point of all visitors.
Content should be able to answer almost all the questions of your visitor.

Analysis:

Now after taking all necessary steps analyze the metrics of your landing pages in the form of bounce rate, average time per page, % exit etc.
After analyzing find out if still there are any irrelevant landing pages coming in search results and fix them.

Work along with the above guidelines and capture the SEO market…

SEO

Metadata & You Best Practices, Benefits & Implementation Made Easy

November 1, 2013 brainwork Leave a comment

To put it simply, Metadata is “Data about data”. Traditionally it was used in card catalogs of libraries; but with the increase in use of digital data, it is also being used to describe digital data. Getting exact metadata in your code is extremely important as it will help in brand engagement and SEO. There are different elements of metadata which are beneficial for you.

Titles and Descriptions:

These days’ title and descriptions have gained a lot of importance because of many social media platforms. Keywords, user-targeted copy, humble HTML title tag and Meta description Meta tag are the key factors for SEO.

Twitter Card:

This will help you to improve the looks of your tweets. In Twitter Card with URL, you can specify different types of card for summary, summary with an image, video and slideshow. You can specify how you want your tweet to look like after it is tweeted.

If you want to execute these changes in your twitter profile then just put the tag in HTML. After testing it with the Validator tool, apply the changes on twitter into the program with the help of Twitter Developer. It may take couple of weeks to get these tags accepted.

Open Graph:

Open Graph is Facebook’s brainchild. As it is Facebook’s invention, it was only used by Facebook in the beginning; but gradually many other sites started adopting this protocol. This is used to supply semantic information about the webpages, types of content that can be shared like videos, photographs and other types of content. Recently in Google search they have started showing video play icon with the Open Graph tagged videos.

Similar to the Twitter Card protocol, you can specify the viewing options of your content in advance with Open Graph protocol. This is a good tool which assures you brand engagement.

Schema.org:

It is a protocol that includes almost everything. It is the common structured data protocol of a group of different leading search providers. In local search results, events like concerts and movies, recipes, name and addresses, articles, and embedded videos; Schema.org protocol is used.

Due to its complex nature, it may make sense to check the quality of your code with some tools like Google Structured Data Testing Tool.

Google Specific Metadata:

There are bunch of custom made Meta tags used with Google; however publisher Meta tag and authorship Meta tags are the ones that impact SEO the most. Adding authorship Meta tag in combination with the website to the “Contributor to” section of your Google+ profile will help you in getting rich snippet. It will show your content with your picture.

Publisher Meta tags are created for individuals. This helps you to find which Google+ pages are connected to the web.

Implementing metadata in your CMS is a simple task. WordPress also has multiple plug-ins to establish various metadata protocols. In Joomla and Drupal also you can find few plug-ins to create metadata protocols.

As there are many advantages of adding metadata to your content, many bloggers and brands are adopting it as a lifelong partner in their digital life.

Content Writing, SEO

How to Increase the Profitability of Your Content

October 17, 2013 brainwork Leave a comment

You must have noticed that the current SEO trends indicate that social and more appealing content attracts more customers. Therefore more popular your content is, better will be your position in the SEO. Many website owners have mastered this art and have attained better position in SEO; but still there are many who are struggling to find their way. When we talked to the one of the members of SEO team of Brainwork Technologies, he untied few important knots. He said if you are the owner of a website which is more focused on content rather than product or services; it makes more sense to try increase the popularity and thus increase the profitability. At the same time you cannot afford to lose the value of your content. He suggested few methods to increase popularity of your content pages.

Accessible placement of top content:

Firstly you need to find the content pages that are driving the most conversions and their locations on your site. If the traffic is following the organic search result that means the visitors who visit homepage of your site may not come across these content pages. Therefore for increasing the profit by increasing page hits, you should make accessible placement of these content pages on your site. You can add an extra tab or separate link on the homepage to increase page hits.

Shuffling content to accessible pages:

This is the exact opposite of the method discussed above. Either you can place your content on accessible pages or you can make content pages accessible by any way. Shifting your top content to accessible pages will change the structure of your site in positive sense. Now many more readers can read your top content and that will increase page hits.

Internal liking:

Adding internal links of your top content pages will also help you to increase the conversions. You can add internal links wherever it is relevant, at right content and also at right context. Placing irrelevant internal links may also spoil your efforts of increasing profit.

User Tests:

Some website owners may find this method useful; but some may not. You may need to spend some extra money to test users’ behavior and turning their focus to your desired pages is also a tricky task. There are different applications available for such tests.

Using A/B Tool:

This is the most commonly used way to increase the profitability of your content. Here you can try various structures and layouts that are catching more and more traffic and then you can decide the perfect layout, structure and content getting desired conversions.

He concluded saying, you may start trying these various methods to increase the profitability of your content and may end up having creating your own unique method which could be the blend of various methods; so keep trying to develop your own benchmark. All the very best!!!

SEO

You Don't Have to Nofollow Internal Links

October 10, 2013 brainwork Leave a comment

With the emergence of SEO, webmasters are very much concerned about every little change and update that is made, it could be regarding a new tactic or more importantly reads/hits the website generates. Now those of you who are well-versed with the SEO business might be aware of No Follow links; whereas many who are new to SEO might be wondering what this NoFollow link is all about. Is it just not following a link? Well, to understand its meaning, you must understand the underlying chemistry of the SEO world. The SEO world thrives on the inbound traffic that the external websites generate when using hyperlinks pointing to your page. Google monitors such inbound traffic and ranks your page higher in the search results if your website generates more inbound traffic thinking that your page is a popular page. Thus these Follow links give a boost to your page ranking in the search results.

Let’s understand – what is a No Follow link. A No Follow link is a link that does not count towards the page popularity. It is like telling the search engine not to count it for the Page Ranking.

Now, one must wonder why anyone would want to use No Follow link and reduce the page ranking. The answer lies in the fact that as with other useful things this also lets the spammers/hackers exploit the inherent characteristic of this feature. Spammers/Hackers used these Follow links to such a large scale that they turned around the Page rankings upsetting the real idea behind using inbound traffic for Page Ranking. Hence many webmasters started using No Follow links to only get relevant ranking and avoid any spamming.

Having said that, it does not mean you should always use No Follow link. Remember to strike a balance when using Follow and No Follow links. When you place a No Follow within your internal links, the Page Ranking won’t flow though and thus will not rank the other page. This might be okay when you use it with the external websites; however if it’s a link connecting two webpages of your own site, you would want Page Ranking to flow through, you would want Google to be able to find that another page.

Understandably, there would be some exceptions to this. These could be pages like authentication page, account login page etc. You would usually put a No Follow link for a link pointing to pages like these. This might be a good idea; however even if you put a Follow link and let Google walk though these pages, it is not going to create any harmful effects.

NoFollow links are extremely useful when linking external websites. While linking the authentic links of your site to the external sites by using No follow, you should have trust on that site where you can share this genuine information.

In conclusion, there is no need to use No follow in your internal links, let Search Engines move though your webpages as this will give boost to your webpages ranking.

SEO, Web Development

Penalty for invalid HTML – What’s Google’s stance on it?

October 5, 2013 brainwork Leave a comment

Creating perfect and validated HTML code is an important building block for your SEO. Recently in one video Google’s distinguished engineer Matt Cutts explained its importance.

Creating a perfect HTML code for any website is no child’s play. One needs to be very accurate while building the HTML code. As the phrase goes – “To err is human”, you might have taken utmost care while building your website, there is always a possibility that some or the other mistake might creep in and break the webpage. That’s why you can fall back on Google’s Webmaster Tool which allows you to check and validate your HTML code and rectify any errors.

Now a day, the number of HTML purists is increasing, who will not launch your webpage until all the code is validated. But in reality you will still find many terribly coded HTML that ranks well in search result. What could be the reason? Does Google penalize for invalid HTML? Matt Cutts say: “No, Google does not penalize you if you have invalid HTML; because there would be a huge number of web pages like that”. If Google were to penalize each webpage that has poorly coded HTML, the number will go into hundreds of millions and it will result into poor search result. That is the reason why Google doesn’t penalize those poorly coded web pages.

Having perfectly coded HTML will no doubt yield good search results for your webpage. There are many advantages of it. Some of them are:

Validated code is easy to maintain.
It makes up gradation and editing easier.
It helps making proper indentation.
Validated code helps to keep bugs at low level.
In Google’s algorithm, quicker loading pages rank better in search results. Clean code can help you achieve this.
Clean and validated code helps your site to be free from hacks.
Cleanly coded webpage makes it easier to deploy web content across multiple devices.
Poorly coded HTML tables and forms are less accessible to the surfers.

Despite these advantages, we still encounter broken web pages with invalid HTML; this could be because of the laxity of coders to employ these good coding practices.

Currently Google does not penalize anyone for invalid HTML; however should Google change their mind in future and decide to rank web pages accordingly, poorly coded and pages appearing with invalid HTML will surely get punished. Therefore to keep your web page ranking top in Google’s algorithm it is imperative to have validated code. Start your validation today as “Prevention is always better than cure!!!”

Content Writing, SEO

Why is Content Part of a Smart SEO Strategy?

September 25, 2013 brainwork Leave a comment

“To please Google with your SEO, forget about SEO”, said Andre Weyher (an ex-Google Webspam team member). Does it ring bell in your ears?

Smart SEO professionals capture the essence by reading between the lines. A strategic SEO campaign is about maintaining the right balance between conventional and contemporary strategies. Content is key for the success and failure of any strategy. So, you should pay attention to it.

The Age-old Fight: Quality vs. Quantity

Your site should focus on publishing informative posts which add to the knowledge base of visiting audience members. The focus should be to create one post covering all aspects instead of four different ones talking about the same thing, more or less.

The popularity of infographics and video posts has changed the way people used to read online-based content. The bottom line is to make them participate either by asking them to spend some time on the site or share the content with others. There is nothing to talk about quantity as it does not take the discussion in a progressive direction.

We cannot undermine the importance of creating weekly or monthly posts knowing how important it is to promote relevant keywords and link-building strategy consistently. The biggest revelation made in the SEO sector is that you cannot rely on them to drive traffic to your site entirely. They make a part of it and there are other things to be paid attention to.

Social signals coming from multiple sources, and coming from different sections lends a massive appeal factor. It would be foolish to pitch for the idea that social signals are secondary to links.

Optimize Content to Optimize Keywords

You cannot write a blog post based on certain keywords, unless you’re planning to fail. The best practice is that you should look to write a post which presents something new to learn from or talks about the most neglected aspects of it. A post written with a limited purpose to highlight keywords and create links is doomed to fail, sooner or later.

Your site should serve as a platform where visitors can learn or share something based on the quality of information shared with them.

SEO

Check Protected Tweets in Search Results with Twitter’s New Tweaked Policy

September 20, 2013 brainwork Leave a comment

Tweets from protected Twitter accounts would be shown in the search results now. Twitter has made certain adjustments to how protected accounts were handled earlier”.

The company tweeted about the changes made to the existing policy. Now, you may come across some of the tweets posted by protective account-holders in search results. The followers of a specific account would get the opportunity to check certain tweets in search results.

The guidelines mention that there was no such provision to check the tweets published by protective account holders in search results before. You could have been able to check tweets as a follower however there was no possibility of finding the same tweets in search results.

The announcement is again a series of changes brought by Twitter keeping the tradition of making the service interactive and inventive for the users.

SEO

Why Google Will Reject the Data Feed and Steps to Overcome it?

September 17, 2013 brainwork Leave a comment

Proper communication is key when your data feed is rejected or blocked by Google. Some users may complain that they were never informed or there was no interest shown on the part of Google to resolve the situation immediately. It is often witnessed that Google blocks the account at slightest of the failures to follow the guidelines properly. There are chances that you may not be aware of one of the points mentioned in the list however there is no excuse for it.

Remember There are Different Guidelines for Different Products:

A merchant selling unique products need to follow a different set of guidelines to someone who is selling clothes. As an account holder, you need to be aware about Google’s data feed specifications to avoid any confusion later on. There are different categories listed with product-specific instructions differentiating one from another.

Check the List of Restricted Products:

Google Shopping has a list of restricted products. Banned drugs or banned ingredients can cause serious problems by getting the feed disapproved. It does not stop there. There are certain drugs which you may not find on the list and you can still get penalized due to the controversial nature of the substance.

Check other Data Feed Errors:

Google Merchant account holds crucial information. You should check the account to know whether there are other feed errors or not. It provides in-depth information to get into the details. You need to read it thoroughly to get to the bottom of situation. These errors, if not paid attention to, can get some or all products rejected. There are clear instructions mentioned about the content and format to be followed by everyone.

Suggested Optimizations:

You should check suggested optimizations to fix the issue, once and for all. Google would like the account holder to make the suggested changes mentioned in it. The next step is to inform Google about the changes made to build stronger business ties. The secret is to work as a team with Google customer support to find a concrete solution. You should be extra careful and patient to avoid any such incidents happening again in the foreseeable future.

Web Development

Latest Avatar of WordPress – WordPress 3.6 (Oscar Peterson)

September 10, 2013 brainwork Leave a comment

Wordpress 3.6

Some of us often use WordPress for managing content on their websites; but still many people are not much familiar with this CMS (Content Management System). As per the records till August 2013, only 18.9% websites were using WordPress. It is actually a free and open source blogging tool and the Content Management System is powered by PHP and MySQL. Lately there was an announcement of the greatest and newest version of WordPress – WordPress 3.6. This Twenty Thirteen theme has been named to honor Canadian great jazz pianist Oscar Peterson. It is really an important tool that manages blogs, articles and all other types of content. Oscar is inclusive of better auto save and post locking, with native support for audio and video embeds via HTML5 media player, as well as improved integrations with Spotify, Rdio, and SoundCloud. There are various features of Oscar which definitely favor the boost in the use of WordPress.

WordPress offers some bounties to the users in the form of new improved features. They are as follows:

In Twenty Thirteen theme they have focused more on your content with the colorful and single column, media-rich blog design.
Post Locking and Augmented Autosave is a bonus feature which supports simultaneous construction and editing of the content by multiple authors. Augmented Autosave helps each author by offering separate Autosave stream locally as well as in connection with the server.
With the new interface you can easily scroll through the changes and it lets you see what, when and who made the changes line-by-line.
The Menu Editor has become user friendly and is easy to understand with better keyboard / screen reader.
The new built-in HTML5 media player for embedding audio and video is now independent (doesn’t need support of external services). You can simply insert files from media manager into blog posts.
In Oscar, media library gets sorted with the author name.
You can preview / play audio and video anytime directly through the Media Edit Screen.
You can now add font-based icons in the post.

Few tidbits are offered for developers also which are as follows:

Developers get access to media metadata like ID3 tags through new audio / video API.
You can store different amount of history for each type of post with better filters of revision work.
Semantic Markup permits developer to choose HTML5 markups for comment forms, search forms and comment lists.
With has_shortcode() you can search the shortcodes and adjust shortcode attributes with a new filter.

For those who are already using older version of WordPress and for many eager users; the WordPress 3.6 will work like a magic with your hosted website. So don’t waste your precious time in thinking; own your Oscar version today and enjoy the smoother journey!!!

SEO

Increasing trend of Private Browsing

September 4, 2013 brainwork Leave a comment

Many of you would have heard recent news about Google downtime. Although the downtime was very short; according to internet analytics experts this caused a huge fall in online traffic globally. This shows how heavily dependent we are on these recent search engines

When you surf the web, it leaves behind a trace of your internet usage in forms of cache, cookies, browsing history. While this could be helpful for some as it makes it easier to revisit webpages that you already did; it could be pain for others who do not wish to make their browsing history/pattern known to everyone. Thus the concept of ‘Private Browsing’ came into picture. Most popularly referred to as ‘Porn-Mode’, this feature prevents browsers from storing your browsing history, images, videos, and texts within cache. It also stops storing cookies and flash-cookies. In your web browser you can enable private mode for selected sessions. Every time when you open the browser your inclination towards privacy may be different; so activating private browsing mode may give you positive or negative output depending on your inclinations. Private browsing may not protect you from viruses, hackers, or identity thefts; it simply won’t record your browsing content on your device. It cannot stop other sites, networks from tracking your activities because when you enter a search in the browser it usually travels through many other sites and networks, until you get to final result.

When you log on from someone else’s computer, when you handle multiple accounts on same browser, or when you are using public computer; you will opt for private browsing. There could be many reasons that could make you think about using Private Browsing such as planning for a surprise for your family or when you want to surf the web for your personal stuff or access the website that you don’t want to get tracked at your workplace etc.

With increasing inclination of people towards the use of private browsing, many browsers started supporting it. According to some references, earliest instance of private browsing was with Safari browser bundled with Mac OS X_Tiger. The first private browsing came into use in May’05 and from then on with the increasing usage; gradually many other companies have started making this feature available on their browsers. Google Chrome was the next to follow the suit when it launched this feature with the name “Incognito”. Soon other browsers like Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, and Opera jumped on the bandwagon.

At present you will find private browsing with almost every browser available. This feature has not only made its way in the web browsers; but has also entered into modern way of browsing with electronic devices. Initially it was only available on computer for web browsing; but now you can enable it on your iPhone, iPod, Kindle fire, Android phones etc. Even though private browsing is not full-poof security; the purpose of hiding your stuff from others is getting served. Ever-growing use of private browsing indicates the high value in current market share.