Content Writing & Copywriting Blog

The Ongoing Microsoft and Yahoo! (or Google?) Merger Things

Feb 05, 2008 No Comments »

Note: According to the latest buzz Google is trying to salvage Yahoo from Microsoft’s hostile overtures by orchestrating a bigger bid than Microsoft’s $44.6 billion. By the time I read this latest update I had already started writing on the previous scenario so I am going ahead and publishing the post.

I have had neutral feelings for Microsoft for many years. Back in the mid-90s I used to admire it for making the PC easier to use. I still remember sitting on my friend’s XT computer and working with DOS, WordStar and dBase. I was doing my computer course and outside of my institute he was the only person who had that big and expensive (Rs. 50,000 plus, in today’s rates more than $1200) computer. Then during the course we were introduced to Windows 3.1 if I remember correctly. As software became easier to use I found more and more people using computers in their day-to-day lives with greater regularity and the credit goes to Microsoft. It followed monopolistic policies but at least the computer moved out of geeky realms  and became a common person’s productivity tool.

But as the new technologies emerged Microsoft became too complacent and got left behind especially by the companies like Google. Now it is just another company. It is able to sell its operating system and other software only because people have gotten too used to  using them and are reluctant — even at the cost of productivity and security — to try out newer, safer and more efficient software. It is just like some companies are still running COBOL applications. Microsoft sat smug on the strength of its operating system being shipped pre-installed with more than 90% PCs. It has hardly ever produced a totally new software; whatever it has produced and marketed so far has either been an improvisation of existing software or various acquisitions. The only aggression it showed towards making forays into the Internet was when it decimated Netscape in order to promote the Internet Explorer and even that now lags behind Firefox in terms of robustness and web compliance.

Easy availability of fast bandwidth is enabling people to access conventional applications like word processors and spreadsheets online. Google’s office applications are already making a dent into Microsoft’s commercial office applications market. There will soon come a time when people will require just a basic operating system — any operating system that can be easily used — and a decently compatible browser to use most of the day-to-day applications. Other than that they won’t need anything. To top it all most of the applications are either going to be available for free (like they are presently) or through very low cost subscription system. So Microsoft will soon have to curtail its dependence on selling desktop applications. It will have to change its business model drastically in order to survive.

Although Yahoo is an old company it changes faster than Microsoft just because by nature it depends on the Internet to survive. Just like Google it depends a lot on advertising revenue sources. With $1.4 billion in advertising revenue Yahoo earned $.20 of every dollar spent on online advertising last year. Compared to this Microsoft’s MSN earned just $423 million (according to OMMA magazine estimates). On top of that with $12.65 per thousand unique visitors Yahoo has the highest  CPM among the top online advertisers.

Hence one can easily make out that for Microsoft the shortest way to securing good, long-term advertising revenues would be acquiring an online company that is already a leader in this field.

In the present state of affairs as far as search is concerned, Microsoft, even when combined with Yahoo, cannot even think of competing with Google. More than 65% of search on the Internet happens on Google. This is more than double even if the searches from both Microsoft and Yahoo added together (according to Hitwise). The online ad exposure of course will get a boost and this is what Microsoft must be aiming for.

How is it going to affect all the services that Yahoo provides to its existing users? For instance what is going to happen to Flickr? Personally I have never used Flickr to host images but I know there are millions of enthusiastic photographers who use Flickr to share their images. I think the accounts will be merged with the existing windows live accounts as discussed on the Read/Write blog.

And what about search? Will you have to change your SEO strategy? I don’t think so unless there is a revolutionary change in the search concepts. My personal experience is that the most significant traffic source for a few years at least is going to be Google. The ranking system at Yahoo at present is quite weird and I prefer MSN results. Basically you should focus upon creating accessible websites with lots of relevant content and your websites and blogs should show up in all major search engines and if they don’t then it’s a problem with the search engines and not with your websites and blogs.

How to Make Your Blog Popular

Jan 31, 2008 26 Comments »

The success of your blog mostly depends on the amount of traffic it gets. This is especially more important if you want your blog to generate some kind of revenue. Frank on Biziki touches upon the topic of how to make your blog popular and I would like to share my version of the topic over here.

In order to receive tons of traffic you need to make your blog popular. The first most step of course is having lots of great content. Your blog content is the backbone of your Blogging success. In fact, personally I feel that getting lots of traffic to your blog is not the big problem; the greater challenge is generating lots of relevant, useful content, because it is only the relevance of your content that brings your readers back to your blog again and again. Your content also decides how many RSS subscribers you have; the more RSS subscribers you can boast of the higher is the value of your content.

That said, in order to make your blog popular there are some other things that you must take care of. Some of them are:

The design and look of your blog

Your blog design doesn’t matter much if you have highly useful content; people will throng to your blog no matter how it looks. but it helps your blog gain some popularity if its design is striking. If nothing else, there are a great many blogs and websites that routinely publish a list of beautiful and striking layouts. Once your blog starts appearing on these lists your blog will quickly get popular. Along with the design you should also make sure that you blog is user-friendly and all the content is easily available to everybody. Your blog design should not be browser-dependent.

The SEO aspect  of your blog

SEO (search engine optimization) of your blog matters a lot. Blog SEO does not mean manipulating the search engine results so that you can get lots of traffic from them; blog SEO means making your blog search-engine-crawler-friendly. The search engines want to index good content and if your blog contains good content then help the search engines index its posts without hiccups and obstructions. Formulate your blog posts in such a manner that the most important points are easily accessible to the search engine crawlers as early as possible, for the right keywords and this also means highlighting your keywords wherever necessary. organize the content of your blog posts using headings and subheadings, lists, and links, wherever needed. The more creatively you center your content around your main keywords and important expressions, the better ranking you achieve for individual blog posts.

Your interaction on other blogs and online forums

Interact on other blogs and online forums as much as possible because it not only gets you lots of incoming links it also helps you establish yourself as an authority in your blog subject. Take care that you don’t leave comments and messages just so that you get the chance to leave your links there; this needlessly annoys both the blog owners and their readers and there is nothing in your message that motivates them to visit your blog. Contribute to the ongoing discussion and if you feel that you have nothing constructive to say then keep mum.

Remember that lots of blog traffic is generated through networking with other bloggers. When you visit the blogs and leave useful comments the bloggers get interested in your opinion and visit your blog. If they think that your blog will add value to their blog they will add your link there. They may also refer to your particular blog posts and this is how you generate incoming links for your blog and your blog posts. Well-meaning incoming links not only send you direct traffic they also help you improve your search engine rankings. Additionally, even the readers of the blogs linking to you visit your blog and if they themselves are active bloggers there is a chance that they will link to your blog.

Guest blogging

Guest blogging is a great way of creating a presence for you all over the Internet. Actually this is not a new concept. Webmasters used to submit free articles to various websites looking for content. These free articles used to carry something called a “resource box” that used to contain information pertaining to the author along with the link to the author’s website. I have generated lots of traffic for my various websites using this tactic. I am gradually approaching other bloggers to write for their blogs but with the scene with my own blog looking so shady I doubt how regular I’m going to be on other blogs. Nonetheless this is one of the greatest ways of generating traffic for your blog and increasing its popularity.

A sense of regularity

A regular blog gradually becomes popular — of course the factor of relevant content being a constant — because the same people visit your blog again and again. When they visit your blog again and again they tend to remember it whenever they need to refer to something that exists on your blog. Regularity, for instance, one or two posts everyday, brings the search engine crawlers to your blog with greater frequency; besides, lots of blog posts, provided they are of good quality and relevant to the subject of your blog, will also increase the density of your keywords and key expressions, further fetching you higher search engine rankings.

Other reasons

You can organize contests and such events on your blog and this draws in lots of traffic, because many bloggers, if they find the events interesting, mention them on their blogs along with links to the concerned posts. Memes are an old method but it has been overused so much that many a time people want to avoid taking active part in them unless they are unavoidably interesting or relevant.

Technorati Tags: blog promotion, blog SEO, blog marketing, blogging

Another Reason You Shouldn’t Get Too Crazy About Your Page Rank

Oct 25, 2007 3 Comments »

According to this link at TechCrunch Google is drastically reducing the page rank of blogs and websites that deal with selling and buying links just to manipulate their page rank. This is the reason you shouldn’t indulge in manipulating your rankings and SEO factors. You should let things work naturally and just focus on generating quality content. People indulge in artificial methods only when they don’t have something real to offer. Just think it this way: what is the use of raising traffic to your blog or website if there is not much there to read or view? If you have quality content then people will come to your blog or website on their own provided you create a positive buzz around your Internet property.

This should also act as a reminder, that don’t make your online business hinge on just a few factors. For example don’t just depend on Google for your traffic; derive traffic from other websites and search engines too. Agreed, that Google can really affect your traffic and the best way of countering it is never to build your blog or website primarily for Google. Consider Google just as an added advantage. Work on ranking higher on other search engines too and list your link in as many relevant online directories as possible. Generate lots of quality content so that other websites and blogs link to you naturally, at their own discretion.

Having said that, Google needs good content to remain in the business. So the search engine company is not doing any favor by sending traffic your way and neither does it want to bully you to follow its guidelines. It just tries to improve its search policy to provide the best results to its users so that its users keep coming back to conduct more searches. Focus on your content, focus on usability, focus on quality, and focus on networking, and let the other things happen naturally.

Incidentally, some blogs like Copyblogger (from PR6 to PR4) and Problogger (from PR6 to PR4) don’t even sell links from their websites and still their PR rankings have been dropped. Search Engine Land has comprehensive information on the topic.

Technorati Tags: page rank, google

Is Anchor Text For External Links Important?

Sep 24, 2007 1 Comment »

What is anchor text?

Anchor text is the text that comes between <a> and </a>; for instance, if you write <a href=”http://www.contentblog.net”>content writing blog</a> then content writing blog is your anchor text and it in the link it looks like content writing blog.

What is the importance of anchor text?

Anchor text helps people understand what the link signifies. In the above example the anchor text clearly says that the link takes you to a content writing blog. This helps both you, the reader, and the search engines. When the search engines are crawling your page and when they come across the link having a particular anchor text, they know what the link signifies. It also tells the search engines that your web page gives so much importance to the words appearing as anchor text that you are using another link to give more information. Anchor text is beneficial for internal linking because you are directing the search engines to other, more specialized parts of your website. They can certainly help you in your SEO efforts.

Talking about SEO, the anchor text is quite valuable when it is coming from external links. If someone links to my blog and as anchor text he or she uses some keywords or expressions relevant to my blog I get SEO benefits for my blog for that anchor text. That’s why you should have meaningful page or blog post titles because people generally use the same title when they are linking to your blog or website. So this leads us to asking

Is anchor text for external links good for your SEO?

Suppose I’m linking to another content writing blog from my blog and I use the same phrase as anchor text; does it contribute something towards my SEO efforts? It doesn’t. But it is surely helping the other content writing blog and in this way, I’m not helping myself but my competing blog. So no, the anchor text that I use for outgoing links doesn’t help me, it helps the website I’m linking to.

Does this mean you shouldn’t use anchor text for external links?

Depends. Personally I don’t mind giving some SEO benefit to a competing blog. If you start manipulating your anchor text such that it doesn’t benefit the external website, it may trigger, justifiably, a reciprocal reaction: everybody will start avoiding meaningful anchor texts. The criteria for using the anchor text shouldn’t depend on what benefit it brings you or the external website; it should depend on the criticality of usability and accessibility.

Technorati Tags: anchor text, external links, interlinking

How To SEO Your Blog

Sep 11, 2007 No Comments »

Blog SEO is natural most of the time as by their nature itself blogs are easy to search engine optimize. Take for instance blogs created with WordPress; provided you are not using some really lousy theme that is full of images, JavaScript and skewed markup, WordPress generates blog posts that are mostly SEO-friendly. Still, there are some steps you can take to make sure your blog posts, for your chosen topics, rank higher than blog posts on similar topics from other blogs.

Steps to SEO your blog

• Put your keywords in your title: Abstract titles sound cool but they make a dent in your rankings. Take for instance this post; I could have titled it something like “Get higher rankings for your blog” but since I’m dealing with blog SEO, I have used the phrase in the title. I’m not sure how well this post is going to rank (lots of factors are responsible for that) but using keywords in the title is a step in the right direction. But make sure the title compliments the subject of your blog as it’s of no use getting traffic for a wrong title.
• Make the most important statement in the beginning: By taking the topic head on you get an opportunity to use your key expressions and keywords in the beginning without sounding spammy. If this post is about blog SEO, then I should better talk about blog SEO in the first paragraph and make my intentions clear why I’m writing this post.
• Use your keywords in the anchor text: When search engines are crawling your blog post, with the help of your anchor text (text between <a> and </a>) they know you are linking to other resources on the same topic. For instance, if I want you to go to my content writing website I’d rather use go to my content writing website and instead of click here to go to my content writing website.
• Use your keywords in the heading tags: Heading tags are very important as they highlight the main points of your blog post. Headings make your post scannable and search engines like them precisely for this reason. When you use your keywords in your headings it helps both the search engines and your human readers.
• Have lots of relevant content: Regularly updated, relevant content helps you build a loyal readership and it gives the search engines lots of pages to index and rank. Remember that it’s not the number, but the quality that matter. Still, if you have lots of quality posts then the chances of being linked to and getting a higher rankings is greater. Less posts of course means limited choice for those who want to link to you, and inbound links definitely improve your search engine rankings.

Technorati Tags: blog seo, seo, blogging