What impact will Google Instant have on your organic search engine results

by Amrit on 9th September 2010

So have you been using Google’s new feature called Google Instant? It is an Ajax-like effect where the search results are constantly updated as you are typing your query into the search box. This means you don’t have to click the search button or hit the Enter key in order to see the results. By the time you are done with writing the query the search results are already there. It means people immediately start looking at the results even when they have entered partial search queries. It is totally changing the way people use search engines.

It also means that it is more so important to get higher search engine rankings for your relevant keywords because it can really make a big difference if your link appears within the top 5 links. Also your website must rank higher even for partial queries. This is going to be a challenge and the strongest weapon in your arsenal is going to be your content.

Read more.

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WordPress 2.7 "Coltrane"

by Amrit on 11th December 2008

As it always happens when I am trying to update my WordPress installation I almost lost a blog while upgrading to WordPress 2.7. I’m generally one of the last people to upgrade my WordPress installations, it’s just that today when I was going through the various twitter notifications I noticed some body mentioning WordPress 2.7 so I thought, well, this time I shouldn’t get so late.

It is always advised that you take full backup of your existing blog before upgrading to a newer version; anything can go wrong and you can lose years of hard work. But I haven’t taken my backups for more than 3-4 months.

The biggest surprise in WordPress 2.7 was the total overhaul of the dashboard interface. It really looks neat with crisp buttons and a spiffy layout. Here is the image of the dashboard of Writing Cave:

WordPress 2.7

WordPress 2.7

It seems there are still many people who use the default editor of WordPress to publish blog posts. I haven’t used it for years. Even when there was no desktop editor available I used to prepare all my posts in my favorite word processor and then simply copy/paste the content into the editor. If you notice in the image I have encircled the part that lets you quickly post without ever having to leave the dashboard area. They have arranged all the important links at left. Another significant change that I have noticed is that they have brought back the comments to the dashboard as people had been missing this information on the dashboard.

There is a turbo link at the top bar and I wonder what it does. When I clicked on it, it asked me to do something, I did that, it processed a few hundred files on my computer and then I lost track.

I’m still to use all the features present in the latest WordPress 2.7 version. In fact, as usual, I will end up using a very few functions because I rarely log into the admit area; I publish all my blog posts using windows live writer.

Here are some WordPress 2.7 upgrade tips from Lorelle.

Another great overview of WordPress 2.7.

Top 20 WordPress 2.7 features from Mashup.

{ 858 comments }

Blog Action Day – Breaking The Vicious Cycle of Poverty

by Amrit on 15th October 2008

Blog Action Day

Whenever the thoughts of poverty come to my mind I’m hit by the images of emaciated, weak, and small bodies incapable of taking on the challenges of life. There are two fundamental things that keep people poor aside from lack of money and resources:

  • Lack of food
  • Lack of education

Proper nutrition keeps our minds and bodies healthy and these two physical aspects are required in order to live a meaningful and purposeful life. The same goes for education. Education is not just needed to gain employment it is also needed to understand life and the world around us. So if we want to break the vicious cycle of poverty we first have to break the vicious circle of lack of food and lack of education and this requires proactive measures from people who have the resources. I hope campaigns like BLOG ACTION DAY can motivate people and make them take proactive measures in their respective communities.

I think the governments, along with providing employment opportunities and maintaining a sense of equal justice, should also provide food to the poor because I am pretty sure once people start feeling healthy they can work harder and with greater focus. When most of the time they feel hungry and weak how can we expect them to feel motivated. What we eat certainly affects the way we think. If we get just one measly meal everyday than our outlook remains proportionate to that meal and the world doesn’t go beyond that meal.

In India there are many food-for-work schemes but rarely the right people get the right food. Even in schools for the poor the government provides free meals to the children and in fact these meals are one of the greatest attractions that draw them towards the school. More than money and employment people first of all need food and food should not depend on employment. Food should be available to every citizen of the world by default whether he or she works or not. It may sound unfair to many people but just think how much food is wasted in developed and developing countries where economically well-off people can easily afford good food. More than half the population of the world can perhaps be fed by the amount of food that is thrown away. So you can very well make out what’s more unfair.

Besides, if communities are helped to become self-sufficient in producing and consuming nutritious food locally then this problem can be solved forever. Since the poor are uneducated and unaware of their own environment most of the time they don’t know how to eat healthy food that can be easily produced or acquired without spending money.

Similarly access to quality education should be easily available to everybody. Now I am not talking about making every kind of education freely available but at least fundamental education – education that teaches you how to read, how to analyze the world around you, give a head start to your children during their primary school days and carry out day today mathematics. This can be achieved by individual effort and by state-level efforts. Whereas state-level efforts, half-heartedly, are always functioning it is the individual effort that can eventually make a difference.

Lack of nutrition and education are the root causes that keep the vicious circle of poverty rolling and unless these two issues are not tackled we will not be able to alleviate poverty.

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An interesting chat session with HostGator Support

by Amrit on 3rd October 2008

I recently shifted a few of my websites from DreamHost to HostGator and was having some email issues with the new host. Here’s a chat session I just had with one of their support persons.

Gary A.: Welcome to HostGator, My name is Gary. What can I assist you with today?
Amrit: hello Gary.

Amrit: it’s an email related question

Amrit: my contact form, that used to work at dreamhost, is not working now from hostgator and it has a peculiar problem

Amrit: http://amrithallan.com/contact.php

Amrit: it goes to every email accept for amrit AT amrithallan DOT com

Amrit: would you know why?

Amrit: i’m using google as my email server (changed the MX records), but i don’t think that makes a difference

Amrit: are you there?

Gary A.: Well, if it sends elsewhere, but not to the email that you have hosted at google.

Gary A.: Then It would be a gmail issue.

Amrit: yes, but it goes to other gmail accounts

Amrit: and when i forward the message from other emails, then it goes to amrit AT amrithallanDOTcom

Amrit: i mean, emails are coming from other email accounts, but not from the contact form, but the contact form is working with every other email

Amrit: i hope i’m not confusing you :-)

Gary A.: I understand, but that’s not our server that’s having the problem them, it’s googles, considering that it sends fine elsewhere. That email acocunt might need to whitelist the one that’ it’s being sent from

Amrit: but this problem started only when i switched to your server

Amrit: from dreamhost it was working fine

Amrit: i transferred the files as it is

Amrit: dreamhost is another hosting provider

Amrit: since the only thing that has changed is the server, there must be some issue in this fact

Gary A.: If that were the case though, why would it only be that one email address that’s not hosted with us not receive the email?

Amrit: i know

Amrit: i’m puzzled too. could it be that an email cannot be sent from the same domain? something like that?

Amrit: i mean, i’m trying to send an email from http://amrithallan.com/contact.php to amrit AT amrithallan DOT com. could that be the issue?

Amrit: same domain?

Amrit: as i said, the problem was not there with the previous host

Gary A.: Well, as I said, it’s working at other emails, since mail isn’t hosted on our server and the scripti is sending, it’s not the server not sending the message

Gary A.: IT’s the mail server not accepting.

Amrit: can this thing be resolved somehow? is it your IP address that the google server doesn’t like?

Gary A.: Why would it send to other mail accounts at google then? It’s sending the mail, it’s that email address that it’s sending to that has the problem.

Amrit: yes, but the point is, the problem only began when i switched to your host, so THAT must be factoring somewhere

Amrit: found this: http://unix.derkeiler.com/Mailing-Lists/
FreeBSD/questions/2008-06/msg01728.html

Amrit: sorry, it got posted twice

Amrit: got it!

Amrit: the solution is in your control panel where you change the MX records

Amrit: i think you should check that out in case another customer has the same problem

Amrit: this box should be left unchecked: "Always accept mail locally even if the primary mx does not point to this server."

Amrit: I was checking it

Amrit: see…the problem was not with the google mail

Gary A.: Then why did you tell me it sends to other emails accounts configured to the same MX records?

Amrit: i didn’t. i said it was going to other gmail accounts…please check above what i said.

Gary A.: Is there anything else I can help you with?

Amrit: no, thanks :-)

Chat session has been terminated by the site operator.

{ 916 comments }

What matters? Content quality or content quantity?

by Amrit on 9th September 2008

These days I get lots of queries from clients requiring bulk content on various topics, for instance, real estate market or car rental service. They want cheap content, mostly centered around their keywords and key phrases and they aren’t bothered much about the quality. They want plenty of pages having their keywords, and they don’t want to seem spammy to search engine crawlers. They want traffic from search engines, and they’re often sure that once they get lots of traffic, they’ll generate business too.

Why you need content for you website?

You need content on your website to convey ideas, to convince your visitors to buy from you or do business with you, or to describe your products and services. Your website needs to communicate to your visitors. You can use videos, graphics, images or text to convey your message. Since on this blog we mostly deal with written content I would like to talk in terms of textual content on your website.

Why quantity matters sometimes

Quantity does not mean putting all sorts of junk on your website. Even when you talk in terms of quantity content has to be there; maybe the quality is not that good. When you have lots of content talking about your topic it makes your website into a resource – okay, maybe not a quality resource but still there is lots of information on your website that can be derived from the massive quantity of content you publish. Quantity, as long as it is not out and out trash, is also good for your search engine rankings. It gives plenty of pages to the search engine crawlers to crawl and index with a wide selection of keywords and important key phrases.

Why quality always matters

Some top blogs on the Internet have merely 500 blog posts but they still have thousands of comments and great traffic. This could have only been achieved by high quality content. Quantity rarely attracts genuine traffic, but quality does. Quality traffic makes your blog or website into quality resource that people like to visit again and again. Quality content also gets linked to from other websites a lot; this way you get lots of inbound links and this is good for your search engine rankings.

A combination of both is good

Personally I always suggest that one should focus on quality and a little bit of promotion. Junk content is available all over the Internet and it hardly matters how much of it you have on your website. On the other hand quality content is rare to be found and therefore people really like it and treasure it. Quality content, and lots of it, is a killer combination. Add a little bit of promotion and you don’t have to spend on some other kind of promotion.

Given a choice you should always prefer quality over quantity when it comes to your website or blog content. This is not some idealistic sentiment; it really does work.

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