Posts in category work

Google Search Update

Apr23
2012 2 Comments Written by Prasad

I had earlier posted about a starters guide to SEO. Back then my understanding of this was also developing and the only way I could add to my understanding of the subject was via experiments … that I carried out on this blog, and also at work.

Finally, we did arrive at a scalable solution. A solution for SEO which could easily be replicated and scaled for almost all my target keywords. Out of a target 5000+ keywords, we managed to get in the top 10 for a decent 3000 of them, and would have proceeded to touch base upon all of them as well (do remind me to release this as well!)

Had it not been for the upcoming Google, I would have went ahead with the plan. However, the new update effectively means that all black hat SEO tactics (which the Indian SEO industry is famous for) will be negatively penalized. So throw your keyword stuffing, badly written English to match your keywords, slightly different versions to match the keyword variants, and link submissions out of the best practices window.

I wonder what would be the extent of the penalty levied by the new algorithm on sites which are already way ahead on their link submissions. Getting those links off the 1000 or so directories is going to be tough!!

Here’s a parting thought, that Google Search is embedded in so many Digital Strategist’s plans, that people are not even considering to optimize their pages for other search engines (such as Bing). Isn’t it great how being a market leader can impact an entire industry?

Note to Self – Learn about Bing optimization and work on generating search traffic from Bing.

Posted in business - Tagged , , , , ,

Rule by Fear

Feb21
2012 2 Comments Written by Prasad

whip

There’s an interesting article available at HBR on Managerial Tyranny. CEOs and executives since long have been utilizing this approach to achieve spectacular growth rates. This is even more true when the manager is expected to show quarter on quarter results. Out goes the nice guy approach and in comes the tyrant – a whip in one hand and measurable metrics in the other.

The Rule by Fear has been used in popular firms … everybody praises Steve Jobs on his design sense, but how many of them would advocate his iron fist approach during the hey days of Apple? Did you forget Jack Welch … he wasn’t called Neutron Jack without any reason.

So when should one crack the whip? Well, if your team is aware of the end outcomes and shares your desires to reach those outcomes. Then the means of cracking the whip and acting the tyrant is justified … until those goals are achieved.

Personally, I think that this approach can only be used to achieve results in the short term. Work culture in India at least is still dependant a lot on personal equations. If the team does not share the passion, then tyranny could be the main reason why they will leave the firm – this brings to mind the quote

You do not leave the job, you leave your boss

I wonder if this can be made sustainable?

Posted in business - Tagged , , ,

Google Analytic’s URL Builder

Jan13
2012 3 Comments Written by Prasad

URL Builder

Aside from being Pristine’s CTO, I also happen to be my company’s webmaster. I really do not mind this task, in fact I think its one of the under-rated jobs out there in the market.

The cool part about this role is how closely you have to work with the Google ecosystem of Analytics, Adwords and Webmaster tools. The thing about Google products is that many people might know about them, but how many of them use it the way they are intended to be?

In my quest to find the right person I have interviewed so many professionals, that its not funny. Almost all of them put everything but the kitchen sink on their resumes. That might be a good idea, but they all of them come down crashing in the interview. A royal waste of time.

In case if you want to differentiate yourself from the horde of wannabes out there, this is one of the things that you have to know!!

URL Builder Tool

Here’s the link to the tool.

* Ta-da! and all the fanfare *

What this tool allows you to do is allow you to track a segment of the visits which are generated on the provided link to be tracked as an individual campaign! The reason why anyone should be excited, is that now you can slice and dice all incoming links to your website (provided you can alter the incoming links).

Some of the ways in which it can be used is -

  • Tracking a segment of your traffic which is coming via an online-ad – For example, I could put a banner ad on Timesjob, or some site. I could also have posted a job posting there with my website’s URL in the job description. Now instead of relying on the simply the data from Referral traffic to measure the ROI of this ad campaign, I can give them a generated URL and track it without worrying about any other source of traffic
  • Email Campaigns clicks can now be tracked as a segment. With a little help of Goals and Conversions, I can calculate the ROI on a per email basis
  • You can even measure the effectiveness of traffic being generated from different properties on your website

Well, this is just the start, you can go pretty much wild with this tool. Just remember folks! Slice and Dice data for better control and tracking.

Posted in Technology - Tagged , , , , ,

Upgrading WordPress

Dec25
2011 Leave a Comment Written by Prasad

With the WordPress 3.3 update coming out, I decided that it was about time that I upgrade the wordpress running on our company’s website from the lowly 2.7.1 to the current version. This has been a thorn in my side from quite some time (about a year now). I had earlier attempted to correct this, however direct update options available in WP always resulted in broken themes or worse, broken functionality. It’s a nightmare when you have to consider the SEO juice you would be loosing because of the change in URLs. Even if I put in 301 redirects, it was too much of an effort to consider the update.

Installation

  • Christmas and New Year is always a slow time for any business, the perfect time to update WordPress. Also, using Google Analytics, I noted the time of the day when we receive the least no. of visitors (2am to 7am IST, when the no. is around 300-400 visitors per hour, else it goes as high as 1700-2000 visitors per hour)
  • The first thing I did was ensure that my hosting environment was compatible with WP 3.3. Turns out that my PHP version was not updated. I found this excellent guide to upgrade PHP from 5.1 to 5.3.
  • Once that was done, I double checked to see if my existing packages were compatible with the updated PHP. Turns out, that a lot of the functions in the previous version were deprecated. My error_log was looking like a battlefield scarred with PHP Fatal Errors, and PHP Warnings. Some quick fixes, I was ready for the WP update.
  • Using the awesome 5-minute WP install, I installed a dummy version on a hidden subdomain. I was sure to disable search engines on this deployment.
  • I then exported all the data from our current system and imported it into this deployment. This was the easiest part!
  • I then copied our theme files, and installed it into this new WP package (you have to check the theme files for deprecated methods)
  • I then copied all the plug-ins from the old to the new WP. These were then updated. The good thing about updated plug-ins is that you get awesome set of functionalities and security updates that you so wanted. Note to New Webmasters: There are a lot of plug-ins out there whose older versions contain backdoors (more on this later), trigger false alarms on search engines, etc which need to be taken care of. Earlier I used to this clean-up using shell scripts, but not anymore :)
  • Now with a bit of tweaking here and there, the site had URLs which were function properly (no more worrying about loosing on our SEO efforts).
  • With adding a fair bit of plug-ins into the system, came a new problem – conflicting jQuery!! Earlier this month, I had asked our intern to hand script a jQuery menu, and that was conflicting with the other jQuery scripts. Fortunately, we have jQuery.noConflict().

A whole new World!

  • WordPress 3.3 is breathtakingly awesome!
  • The custom fields have been nerfed, now you have to do a fair bit of tweaking around to introduce custom fields in pages. But that allows me to have a higher controls on them. Earlier custom fields had this nagging way of getting out of control in a wordpress installation. Not any more!
  • Plug-ins like All-in-one-SEO make for better and simpler SEO efforts. All my worries of duplicate title tags are slowly vanishing away!
  • Better plug-in support! Earlier where I would myself script a small workflow on the WP installation, now I can again rely on the huge set of awesome wordpress plug-ins

The good part of this transition was that it took me a little of 3 hours to completely migrate. Of course for some other media (such as videos, pdfs, etc.) which I did not want to migrate to a new folder, I created softlinks and the task was done. All in all, if you are facing legacy wordpress systems, and are worried about upgrading them to the latest version … dont. The best method is to deploy a new version and migrate all the content (however ginormous the task sounds, its a better approach).

Posted in Technology - Tagged , , , , , , , ,

Starters guide to SEO

Nov30
2011 4 Comments Written by Prasad

One part of my role at Pristine is building up the site traffic, be it via Paid Advertising, Referral traffic or via Search Engines.

Anyone who has indulged in Paid Advertising would know how expensive it can turn out to be if you do not know what you are doing. It can be very effective in the short term, however for long term and more sustainable results, relying on non-paid search results is far better. Hence SEO or Search Engine Optimization.

The problem with SEO is that almost everyone who has a website think that they should do SEO, and SEO is playing around with meta tags. Seems simplistic no? In the past month or so, the amount of people whom I have talked to regarding to SEO has shown how less people know about the workings. Add to it the complexity of the ever-changing algorithm of search engines such as Google, Bing, etc.

The idea behind SEO is to target specific keywords for specific pages on your site, so that when your target audience searches for those keywords, your site shows up in the search results.

Here are some tips which I would have appreciated when I started off. Please do keep in mind, that I am no self-professed expert in SEO, just that like all of us around here, even I am learning, and this post is one such humble attempt to share whatever that I have learned, and what I know works to get results. Having said that, I know it would help all of us if you could point out any errors that i have made, or make suggestions and provide additional tips!

  • Read up on your meta tags, some of them are useful. Make a note of the description and author tags, you would be working with description the most.
  • Do not target more than 2-3 keywords per page, since you have to use that keyword in all the different important sections of the page viz., description tag, title tag, h1 tag, main content, etc. you cannot really target 1-2 keywords without damaging the copy of your page.
  • If you are working with a tight budget, then use a free tool such as Traffic Travis, the demo version is free. If you have a decent sized budget, then I would highly recommend Pro SEO MOz, it not only has a very comprehensive SEO tool, but also it has an extensive knowledge base on SEO
  • Search Engine’s maintain the authority of websites, this is generally a factor of how well you write, and how many sites are linking to your content. Google especially is one search engine which rewards regular content creation, in fact the current search algo (don’t know why its called the panda update) also favors freshness of content. So the same page would rank higher if it were regularly updated.
  • Always look at the different search terms via which people are coming to your site. Those are essentially content creation triggers!
  • Many people swear by backlinking, citing different open directories to publish your site links. However, I am skeptical about this approach. The one thing I use this approach for is to check where are my competitors linking, and get my presence their as well. I think if you can create good quality content, then it will automatically fetch the backlinks that you require.
  • Search engines are also influenced by social behavior, so typically the search results shown in Google would be influenced with what your friends are sharing on your social networks. E.g- If I share this post on say Twitter and if you are following me on Twitter, then you would definitely see this as a search result!
  • SEO is a long drawn game, and it requires patience, practice and discipline. Do not expect magic to happen, it’s a slow and gradual process and does not happen over night. To hope for such miracles, either you need to be Larry Page or Steve Ballmer.
Posted in business, Technology - Tagged , , , , , , , , ,

The Blue Nothing Digest

Sep16
2011 4 Comments Written by Prasad

The internet is virtually an infinite source of inspiration, great news, stupidity and entertainment. I thought that I might share some gems which are either relevant to me, or which I think you might find interesting.

Oh, in case you are wondering what the heck is Blue Nothing, it’s a term I read in one interesting novel on Social Engineering (and it’s evils). The internet is the Blue Nothing!

Posted in business, foo, personal, social - Tagged , , , , , , , , ,

Coffee

Aug22
2011 2 Comments Written by Prasad

When I was a programmer, I  really took a taste to coffee. Nothing beats a good techie discussion with a cuppa.  In fact I was so addicted to it during my first job that I used to consume 6-7 cups in a day on a regular basis.

Even today, coffee is part of the morning ritual where I focus my thoughts on work, on the top things to be done … over a problem. This time around, at Neev I have found fellow coffee lovers and aficionados. People who consume coffee in the same copious amounts (if not more) as me … and who can tell different flavors apart. In fact, I think one of the major cost centers at Neev would be coffee :-)

From the simple Nescafe powder, to the gold flakes of Nescafe to the variety of exotic flavors such as Brazilian, Vanilla beans, the rich aroma wafting through the office makes work such a welcome place. Each flavor having its unique aroma, taste, mix … it’s small things like these which makes life (and work) a better place.

Posted in personal - Tagged , ,

Will you advertise with this site?

Aug12
2011 2 Comments Written by Prasad

olx_adI was checking on my list of target keywords on Google for both SEO and SEM, when I chanced upon “CFA Hyderabad” where we are doing good on both the paid rankings as well as the organic rankings. When I was checking the ad, I noticed that one of the ads was by olx (in case you do not know about this site, do not bother to find out!).

They have recently started advertising in a heavy way (even on TV as well).

Buying advertisements so you could sell your advertising platform? Really? Is that how effective your platform is, that you have to pay to get traffic?

Or are you just trying to siphon off traffic from one of the market leaders?

In fact not quite sure whether they are directly in the advertising space, somewhere between Craigslist and e-Bay. I still wonder, why will anyone pay good money to put advertisements on this site?

Posted in business - Tagged , , , , , , ,

Valuation of Tanishq Gold Harvest Offer

Aug12
2011 4 Comments Written by Prasad

If you are in India and watch Television, then you surely must have watched this ad -

 

 

The ad is targeted towards working women who take charge of their lives and planning their future on their terms. The ad which is timed brilliantly is launched in sync with the India International Jewelry Week, talks to the right sentiments, however the product itself is questionable.

Tanishq Gold Harvest Offer is a scheme where one has to make 11 monthly payments and at the end of the year, you get the same value in jewelry. At a first glance, I thought that the financial returns amount to roughly 8% of the investment. Turns out that I had valuated it in the wrong way from the start itself, the formula to be used should have been XIRR, and it gives a 15% return.

Jyothi, our resident content creator then pointed out that it’s a loss making investment. Consider the inflation of gold (or the Indian Rupee for that matter) over the period of one year, and you end up with a loss-making product. Average Indian Consumer, beware of this product!

Posted in business - Tagged , , , , , ,

We are hiring!

Jul12
2011 Leave a Comment Written by Prasad

At Neev Knowledge Management, the focus is on growth. When the market you are addressing is fragmented with individuals and companies who have yet to make a mark, there is a requirement of good hands on deck who can ensure that the clear market leader is the organization they work for. As their toil brings to fruit, the firm grows and grows, so much that they have to look at bringing in more people who want to make a difference.

Such is the story at Neev, where the hires are not only checked for mettle but also if they gel well with the other people working in the firm. If you think you are a team player and can work well with different teams, then we have some openings that you may apply for -

  1. Account Executive
  2. Digital Marketing Executive
  3. Graphic Designer

To apply, simply drop a mail to the below mentioned email address with a copy of your resume and mention the post for which you are applying for in the subject of the email. We will be shortlisting the applications and will contact you within a week of your mail. If you do not hear from us, then you were not shortlisted for the interview process.

Do note that these openings are listed in the order of urgency. So we would be looking to hire an Account Executive immediately and a Graphic Designer later. For more details, please drop a mail to prasad at edupristine dot com.

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