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Content Writing

Points to Note When Writing Technical Reviews

In a world where technology plays a central role, one can find vast information related to different software platforms, mechanical or electrical appliances, mobile applications, embedded technology, as well as hardware components, available in print media or electronic media. Resources such as manuals, reports, instruction guides, or web pages offer a convenient platform for users to make themselves familiar with the technology, and get a deeper understanding of its concept and application. Technical writing is a specialized form of documenting information that one finds useful in everyday life. Whether purchasing a new mobile phone or an appliance such as printer or optical mouse, users refer to the documentation available in the form of CD or booklet, to look for instructions.

Reviewing content or web pages related to technological subjects or topics is important to ensure that any inaccuracies or mistakes are identified and corrected before they reach the audience. A field of writing that has its distinct style and form; it can be useful to keep a few points in mind, when assessing such technical documents.

  • Understanding the topic or subject discussed

It is essential to have an in-depth understanding of the subject or technology, which can help in evaluating the document in an objective manner. This can help in planning and developing a suitable summary.

  • Be specific in suggesting improvements

It is important to comprehend that reviews are equally important to authors as well as audience. Hence, giving details about the areas which require improvement, as well as clarifying the how it can be enhanced can prove to be helpful.

  • Tone of the review is significant

Presenting the assessment of the technical article or report in a diplomatic manner is extremely important, while giving focus on the ideas and views related to the content.

  • Sharing ideas for improvements

Such reviews can also be used as opportunities for sharing new ideas or concepts about the technology or subject. Including information about the latest version of the software available, or an advanced feature offered by any electronic equipment can make the assessment more comprehensive and interactive.

Evaluation of papers, reports, or documents related to technology can be subjected to different types of analysis, such as peer-to-peer, editorial, as well as technical analysis by field experts or SMEs (Subject Matter Experts). Each category of assessment has its own benefits, and can prove to be beneficial in improving the overall quality of the document.

Peer-to-peer assessment, as the name suggests, are carried out by other writers of the same profile. Editorial evaluations are done by editors and managers, and the process includes analyzing the sentence formation, grammatical and typographical accuracy, and correcting them. The assessment carried out by SMEs or project leads is targeted at ensuring that the information included in the document is correct, and that any product specifications or technological data is accurate.

SEO

How Social Bookmarking Sites Can Boost Traffic?

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Social bookmarking sites can help in transforming the traffic algorithm for your website…

Let’s tell you how…

Social bookmarking helps you save websites that you have browsed, for future use. Don’t, think you have used it, then think again. Have you ever sent a URL to your friend or colleague? Of course yes, isn’t it; it means you have used this tool. Using this tool helps you keep track of all those saved URL’s from any place on the earth and without even using your own machine. What you need is online connectivity, that’s it!

The uses this tool can be put to are many…

When making use of this tool, you get the freedom to categorize, distribute, and administer bookmarks; it in fact helps you to remember pages that you think will prove useful for reference in future. In addition to being a public bookmarking tool, social bookmarking is one of the three most popular ways to create quality backlinks to your website. These backlinks are very important if you wish to rank your website high on foremost search engines and for the success of your SEO efforts.

Want to get quality traffic in high numbers, use this tool…

Some years back getting traffic from the so called social bookmarking sites was no less than rocket science, but with the popularity of link building and more such terms flowing in, it no more remains a miracle. After inculcating their expertise and skills, SEO professionals all over have concluded that using this tool can actually help in gaining quality traffic for any website, which is enough to generate leads and even convert them.

How to get visitors to your website by making use of this popular tool?

Wondering how you can increase traffic to your website by making use of this bookmarking tool? Read through for answers…

  • Headlines are like the first things that reader’s notice, so try making it catchy and impressive. Headlines that leave users craving for more and can motivate them to read through can do the magic.
  • As you know content rules, so try adding content that not just flows with the ongoing, but offers something distinct, yet informative to readers.
  • Believe in keeping it short, crisp, and concise; for being busy as a bee no one has the time to go through long tales.
  • Readability must never be overlooked, try stepping in your reader’s shoes before coming up with any new piece.
  • Try being original; Copying content or just modifying it will do no good.
  • Article submission time is crucial, so try choosing it wisely to rank your site on the first page.
  • The category you choose is imperative; posting articles that don’t fit in any particular place is like doing a blunder.
  • When placing a link, try following ways that can help not just you, but others as well to bookmark and vote easily. Including a bookmarking button at the bottom is good option, this will help all those who like your article, share the same too.
  •  Never overlook fields like RSS feeds, affiliate marketing and newsletters; these can actually get you followers.
  • Correct, up to date information is a must, as nobody likes binging on stale news.
  • Ads placement is also important; place it where your readers can actually view these.
  • Remain active, try participating in discussions; don’t just post and forget the article like it’s a bygone thing.
  • Try using English, as it’s the universal language that most readers understand.

The bottom line…

Social bookmarking sites are one of the most used tools to help in paying off generously for your search engine optimization efforts. Instead of going for anything blatant, try choosing the “tried and tested” ways, as you would never wish to stake something so valuable, ”your websites reputation”, just to save a few bucks!

SEO

Essential Aspects of Optimizing a Page for SEO

With large number of business websites and ecommerce applications, the concept of SEO continues to take higher priority for building the visibility and popularity of any business among target audiences across the world. SEO or Search Engine Optimization can be described as the method of earning traffic by using organic or free listings that are offered by search engines. Web pages, websites, videos, and online documents are presented before the user by search engines, based on ranking that is decided as per the relevance of the page in terms of user’s query.

Two Main Areas of Focus in SEO

  • On-Page SEO

This process includes various optimization techniques that can be done on web pages itself, so that compatibility with search engines is improved. Keyword research and selection, their density, meta description tags, sitemaps, and URL structure are some of the important on-page techniques.

  • Off-Page SEO

As suggested by the name, it includes various techniques involved in optimizing web pages that are beyond the scope of a website. Popular techniques used include link building, and social media marketing.

Expert SEO companies make use of such effective techniques so that organic search results can be improved, thus building popularity and visibility of the website. Some of the steps that are used in optimizing a web page with search engines are mentioned below.

  • Meta Description and Keywords in Meta Tags

Meta description tags play a significant role from the perspective of search engines as well as online users. Used as a means to represent the website, the descriptions are also seen by online users when the site is displayed on the search engine results. Keywords used in the meta tags should have high relevance, and they should also be used in the web page content.

  • Use of Keywords in Image Alt tag

Images are used extensively in websites to make them rich and interactive. However, search engines only understand the Alt tags to comprehend the images, rather than translating them directly. Hence, a proper description of images with relevant keywords is important as a step to optimize the page.

  • Relevant Keywords and Quality Content

When selecting keywords or phrases, it is important to ensure that they are relevant to the website, and they should be used optimally, with strict attention to density. The content should also be unique and well written, as standard in content is an important factor for search engines.

  • Link Building

This process involves building links from other popular, high-traffic sites and blogs that point back to one’s website. The quantity and quality of links are important factors to be noted in the process, to ensure effective optimization.

Using different anchor texts, title tags with keywords, social bookmarking, submission of articles and blogs are also some of the SEO techniques that are used. It is important to make sure that the SEO techniques used are ethical, so that they can have long term benefits for the websites.

Web Development

An Overview of Ten Functional Plugins Offered by WordPress

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CMS or content management system is extremely useful in management and handling of a dynamic website. WordPress is quite popular among web developers as a powerful and versatile CMS that is used for addressing the requirements of diverse web applications from blog sites to corporate websites. Based on PHP, it makes use of MySQL for management of data, and WordPress offers a wide range of features, which are extremely useful. Plugins are one of these essential features that enable developers to utilize WordPress in a convenient manner.

What are Plugins? What is their role in WordPress?

They can be described as instruments that are used to extend and improve the functionality of WordPress. As suggested by the term, these tools offer customized functions and attributes, with which the website constructed with WordPress can be suitably modified to meet business demands. This extensive plugin architecture of WordPress platform is extremely useful to developers in designing the website, alongside central installation. With these plugins, developers can add the desired functionality to websites and improve the efficiency and operation of the site significantly.

  • WP e-commerce- Efficient WordPress Plugin for Shopping Cart

With this plugin, ecommerce stores can be set up conveniently. This WordPress plugin can be installed quite easily and make use of templated tags and shortcodes. Easily customizable, this plugin supports numerous payment modes, and is also SEO compatible. Browsing, arranging, editing, and organizing catalogs are also quite easy with this plugin. It can also be integrated conveniently with other plugins to increase the functionality of online store.

  • WordPress Advanced Ticket System- Easy Submission and Assignment of Tickets

WATS or WordPress Advanced Ticket System plugin offers complete features of a comprehensive ticket system, and it can be used as a useful part of helpdesk or technical assistance systems, or for service requests. The plugin can offer numerous features such as submitting and assigning of tickets, as well as setting the type and priority level of tickets. Additionally, updates about tickets are also available via mail notifications, and this WordPress plugin also allows selecting and sorting of tickets. Extremely scalable, the plugin can be seamlessly integrated with WordPress.

  • Recent Facebook Posts- Listing updates and posts from Facebook is so easy

With this WordPress plugin, the installation is extended to include listings of recent posts or updates from Facebook page. There are numerous benefits of using this plugin, as it reduces the dependency on iframes or JavaScript, and the website can be suitably customized. With validated HTML outputs and SEO compatibility, the plugin also improves speed, with the availability of cached results on server.

  • Bannerspace- Amazing WordPress Plugin for Stylish Slideshows

Supported by powerful jQuery Cycle plugin, Bannerspace generates customized post type with which basic slideshows can be elevated with interactive transition effects such as scroll, zoom, and fade, to mention a few. The transition effects can be suitably chosen, and the slides can be selected by drag and drop movements, thus making this plugin easy to use.

  • Contact form7 – Versatile Yet Convenient Contact Forms

Another useful WordPress plugin, Contact Form7 can be employed to manage and handle numerous contact forms efficiently. The form can also be tailor made as per requirement, and this plugin offers support of Captcha, AJAX, as well as Akismet spam filtering.

  • Nextgen Gallery – Functional Plugin for Managing Numerous Images

As one of the popular WordPress plugins, it offers a sophisticated engine with images can be handled quite conveniently. Uploading, adding, sorting, deleting, or importing metadata is easy with this plugin. The display formats can also be managed with various options for organizing timing, size, and image transitions. The centralized gallery also allows editing of individual images, as well as insertion of watermarks.

  • Firestats – Managing the Statistics with Accuracy

The practical functionality of this WordPress plugin, as it offers statistical data and analysis on a real time basis. With the ability to translate to multiple languages and capacity to work effectively in high traffic sites, it can be used for details related to SEO keywords, and recent hits. Supported by AJAX, this plugin can work effectively on numerous web browsers.

  • WP super cache – Caching Engine for Quick Display of Files

This plugin is extremely useful in case of high traffic, where static HTML files are created from dynamic WordPress site, which are displayed to viewers, thus saving time that is taken in processing heavy PHP WordPress scripts. There is evident slowdown or speed variation, and thus such super cache files can be quite useful in handling the traffic directed towards the site.

  • All in one SEO- Keeping the WordPress Site Search Engine Friendly

Understanding the central role played by search engines in any website, the WordPress plugin facilitates optimization of web pages for the search engines, with automated optimization of titles, as well as creation of Meta tags, which can be overridden by users as per requirement. Thus, even WP e-Commerce applications can be suitably optimized with search engines with the use of this plugin.

  • Profile-builder-pro- Create Favorable Impressions with Stylish Registration and Login Forms

The pages allotted for processes such as registration, login, or viewing the profiles need to be well designed and functional for any website to stand out. Using dedicated WordPress plugin enables users to look beyond basic features of such pages, and add details such as email confirmation with successful registration, additional fields for profiles, as well as choices for redirecting users to suitable pages after login or initial registration.

Such functional plugins in WordPress with assorted functionalities from handling the statistics to maintaining updates in Facebook allows generation of customized websites that can serve the purpose of the business effectively. Such plugins also allow developers to focus on various important aspects of the project, as well as ensure their timely completion.

SEO

Challenges that SEO Consultants face in their Profession

Do you feel that an SEO consultants’ job may not be that demanding? Well, your mindset will change after reading this article.

SEO consultants work synchronously with clients occupied in different spheres of business, and work towards resolving the various website related issues, and requirements put forth by them. The following points describe these challenges, and may help clients in appreciating the work and efforts offered by the consultants.

  • Competing with Sites Which Use Unethical Techniques

Professional SEO consultants are quite responsible, and so make sure that they use white hat strategies. However, their efforts go in vain when they find websites, which use unethical SEO methods, such as poor quality content, occupying top ranks, while hiding successfully from the tough guidelines and algorithms designed by Google. With clients also questioning the effectiveness of their work, by comparing their respectable practices to these sites, consultants are often left speechless.

  • Dealing with Diverse Attitudes of Clients

SEO consultants may have to be at the receiving end of situations where the climate may be impatient, which may even lead to confrontations. Trying to handle such situations diplomatically can be an answer, however, consultants also find it effective to hold one’s stance assertively, as long as they are correct in the SEO services offered. Worst case is that one may lose an account, however extremely unreasonable clients can also leave a negative impact on business.

  • Assuming That SEO Consultants Can Resolve Any Website Related Issue

Some clients may be oblivious to the distinctions in the job descriptions of a web programmer, developer, designer, or an SEO consultant. They expect the professionals to resolve any website issue, and so consultants may have to describe their field of expertise to them, and guide the clients to the suitable solutions.

Another facet of such assumptions is that some SEO consultants even face situations where they are required to increase the rating and online popularity of products or services that are average, or which are rated low due to the low intrinsic qualities. It is essential to understand that SEO can enhance the business, as long as the services or products offer excellent value. SEO can help such professional businesses in extending their visibility among audience, but cannot fix the mediocre value of a product or service.

  • Instant Results and Emphasis on Poor KPIs

It is important to understand that SEO consultants are not magicians who can magically fix the SEO rank and offer benefits immediately. They are often surrounded with urgent requests and mails for delivering faster results. In such situations, it can prove to be effective in explaining the complications of SEO, and that it is a gradual process, which requires many steps, analysis and report studies. Such steps can ensure long-term effects in improvements of rank.

Consultants may often find themselves in situations where they face to answer queries that are based on incorrect information, such as the unnecessary emphasis on poor level key performance indicators or KPIs. It is important to set the facts right by informing that high ranking is just one of the priorities and that various other aspects such as increasing conversion rates, as well as boosting profits are equally important.

  • Delaying SEO Till the Final Web Development Stage

One of the major professional hurdles faced by SEO consultants is when they are handled newly developed websites constructed without attention to SEO, and required to implement SEO techniques. Such changes may prove to be costly, and so it is recommended to include the services of the consultants since the design and development phase, so that the site work cohesively in terms of functionality and SEO compatibility.

They also counter cases wherein the importance of content is assumed to be low, since the role of quality content in SEO is not understood. The focus should be on emphasizing the role of SEO targeted content, and its prominence in boosting the ranking.

  • Tackling the Issues Related to Rates and Payments Per Link

Consultants may often be compared to their competitors for negotiations in rates, and in such situations they can put their thoughts forward by highlighting how much profits the business is going to make with their quality SEO techniques and strategies.

With link building being an important part of SEO, consultants often face offers for purchasing links with payments designed per link. Understanding the risk of such unethical techniques, professional consultants turn down such offers and communicate the importance of implementing ethical techniques.

With many updates and development in the field of SEO, the efforts of these consultants are quite valuable, and experienced consultants face such challenges with optimism and resolve them in a sensible and diplomatic manner. Read more

SEO

Step up the Number of First Page Listings on Google

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Earlier, when one entered a search query in Google, the result pages that were displayed were observed to have a few ads inserted with the relevant results, which gave an overall impression of clean and organized pages. Nowadays, the search pages are viewed as platforms for building rankings and increasing the visibility of the company. With better control over the first search page positions, online businesses can have improved power over their brand image, and make them accessible for more online users. By controlling increased number of organic links associated with its brand one the first search page, companies can market their brand in an efficient manner.

Using Media- Images and Videos

Search results that no longer include just text, image search result extend the playing field, as they are also prominent on the search result pages. This method is highly effective since it is used to fewer websites, and so there is ample opportunities for businesses to stand out. They are also field specific and can be excellent for companies occupied in travel and tourism, and hospitality. Clicking on that image will direct the user to the web page where the image is located. Another form of visual element that is used for increasing the rank is using videos in SERPs. Video clips embedded on the site that are used in search results prove to be effective in building ranks.

Focusing on Domain and Related Aspects

With Google taking effort to reduce domain crowding, it can show more than one listing for a business on the result page. With more number of individual ranks for the same domain, the businesses can have increased visibility. The view of the company’s sitelink on the search result pages can give a great idea about its ranking. With two categories of site links supported by Google, standard and expanded, businesses can plan towards taking hold of more area in the search result page, and thus earn more visibility. They also need to focus on quality alt text and anchor text in terms of original, concise, and relevant content, as the Google Webmaster tool can penalize unused sitelinks.

Additional domains are debatable, however, can be effective in driving the search results. There are various instances that can help catch more listings relevant to the search, such as creating dedicated domains for particular products or services, or geographical regions.

Sites related to newspapers and financial market updates, can take advantage of the opportunities offered by Google News. As long as the content adheres to the technical regulations and quality criteria set by Google News, articles can earn excellent listings. With this platform, current new content and updates are also displayed in the results with the queries that have topics relevant to them. An overview of results related to shopping queries shows that that although they look organic and display as such, they are not really organic. Local information that includes listings relevant to a specific locality of region, and map views is also seamlessly integrated with SERPs. They are most beneficial to companies with retail points, which are relevant to certain regions.

Another popular strategy to earn better listing in SERPs is to focus on third party websites with excellent authority. Blogging as guests on other outstanding blogs that are relevant to the business or updating the social media pages can be useful. Read more

SEO

Google+ Ranking Second among the Largest Social Networking Platforms

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The popularity of social networking sites needs no introduction. The launch of Google+ shows excellent promise and it is proving itself to other major social network sites as a tough competitor. For those who were skeptical about Google+, the data from Global Web Index, a company specializing in internet analytics may come as a surprise. The research shows that Google has moved ahead of Twitter in the 4th quarter in 2012, and has secured the position as the second major social networking platform.

According to the report, Facebook still enjoys a lead ahead of the competition. As one of the largest social networking sites, it has over a billion members totally, with 693 million users who are active. Its growth, with reference to active user accounts was reported to be 33%. Using information compiled from 31 countries, which make up ninety percent of the population globally, Global Web Index established 343 million active users to Google+ and 288 million active users to Twitter. The data also showed that Google+ has earned a growth rate of 33 percent while Twitter has a growth rate of 40 percent.

The data from the report also indicated a comparison of the sites based on the worldwide population who use these social networking sites actively, on a monthly basis, with 25 percent using Google+ actively, 51 percent using Facebook, and around 21 percent using YouTube and Twitter. The video sharing services offered by Google continues to be appreciated, winning it some percentage points. YouTube moved ahead of Twitter to secure a position as the third largest social network. In the top-ten list of largest social networks, LinkedIn made to the 10th spot with over 100 million active usage and ten percent growth rate of active users.

The 5th to 9th positions in the list belonged to social networking sites that are popular in China, where censorship on internet is prominent. Qzone, Sina Weibo, Tencent, Youku, as well as Todou are some of the Chinese social networks noted on the list.

SEO

Looking Back at the Google Highlights 2012

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The year witnessed some standout changes put forth by Google, which had a great influence on SEO. SEO experts and consultants keep themselves informed about the various updates. Google continued to lay emphasis on quality and standards as a means of promoting the websites. The significance to trust, credibility, and reputation was heightened. Google also got assertive with responding to irresponsible web standards and poor quality. This goes to prove the importance and high levels set by Google for the content and design of a website.

The month of April introduced Penguin, which acted as a tool for penalizing websites that were constructed with artificial outbound links. Google made a strong stand to detach poor standard and artificial links. They can be considered as well planned and implemented steps taken by Google to highlight websites with good standards. Giving importance to credibility of links, it also disregards links that are unreliable. This gives an idea about the reaction and response of Google towards websites that make use of untrustworthy links.

Besides penalizing poor quality, Google also spots out and appreciates high quality. This has, certainly proved to be encouraging to the websites, and has shown that high quality is also rewarded. In April, the announcement of a crucial algorithm change issued its importance at reducing the rankings for the sites that has low quality. The algorithm focused on several bad practices, such as overuse of keywords and poor content.

  • The practice of over-optimization also came into light. The misuse of the concept of relevance by using too many keywords on the page, or the use of numerous exchange links.
  • Google has expanded its abilities with which the search engines can execute JavaScript and AJAX.
  • Site-wide back-links were also brought to attention, and were held in comparison to the keyword counting process that Google uses.
  • The increased number in static advertisements placed above the fold was also assessed and those risking content were penalized.
  • Google also sets to identify those topics that offer freshness and quality. This ensures that the algorithm spots recent and updated information.
  • In September, Google brought forth the announcement that exact match domains, which characterized low quality, would be targeted.
  • In the same month, an update was put forth by Google targeted to increase the number of domains shown in the search results.
  • The algorithm, Panda, was designed to focus on websites that made use of poor standard of content. It also witnessed thirteen updates since November 2011. It has been effective in motivating websites to clean up substandard content and take efforts to design and plan well written content.

Websites also need to concentrate on tags and in using them correctly. Google strives to improve the quality of websites and set new benchmarks for them to serve the online users effectively, while building their incomes. Such standards and updates also reflect the high level of quality and efficiency that Google demands.

SEO

Google Clears the Air and Web Space with Disavowing Links Tool

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If you own a website, chances are that you have been plagued by bad links – these could have been placed either by someone who considers you competition, or via automatic malicious links. Such links could create problems with search engines, because your site could very well be blacklisted.

In such a scenario, it is essential that you remove all such links, but sometimes, you find yourself helpless, because you are unable to do so.

With the launch of the new disavow links tool by Google, there was an air of cheer amongst all those people who were being bogged down by bad links on their sites. While some of the bad links were being placed manually, there are those which make their way onto a site, with a malicious intent.

While this tool is meant to remove the bad links that people are finding difficult to delete from their site, it is definitely not meant for making life easier for you.

Googlerepresentatives cleared the air that this tool is not for those people who would just want to make a list of the bad links on their site, and expect all of them to be cleared off. Rather, this was meant only and only for those links, which owners of websites are not able to remove, even after repeated efforts.

So, if you are also facing trouble with non-removable links, then you might want to get in touch with the Google team and try out their disavow links tool.

SEO

Top Heavy 2: Google Updated the Page Layout Algorithm

In association with the updates on Google’s search algorithm, the announcement of its Page Layout filter refresh, which was discussed in January, is also referred to as the ‘Top Heavy’ update. With a brief glance over the last few updates, one can observe that the Panda Update 20 and the EMD Update 1 occurred over the 27th and 28th of September 2012 and the Penguin Update 3 and the Top Heavy 2 rolled out on the 5th and 9th of October 2012.

Described as a ‘minor’ update, it had a significant effect on 0.7% of the queries in English language. It is related to feedbacks from the users who respond that when they click on a search result, they find it difficult to search the actual content, and are dissatisfied with the overall experience. The users prefer to view the content immediately rather than scrolling through the various ads. Thus, the update can affect websites that do not have relevant “above the fold” content. If the click on a website reveals a significant part of the initial web page dedicated to ads, or lack of visible above the fold content, the website may not secure high ranks due to low browsing experience.

Although called as “Page Algorithm” update, it has been aptly described as “Top Heavy” as it targets web pages whose top portions are heavy with the ads. The second refresh associated, the Top Heavy 1 released on the 19th of January, 2012 affected less than 1 percent of the English query searches, while the Top Heavy 2, released on 9th of October 2012 had an impact on 0.7 percent of the same. As suggested by the update statistics, it can be observed that those who make changes recommended by Google are now free from the effects of the Top Heavy updates.

Various services have analyzed the impact of the Google updates like Top Heavy on various search results. One can view these graphs and illustrative charts to get a better idea about the impact of the Top Heavy update.