| Page 6 of Page 8

Google Plus banned my Profile

June 1, 2013May 6, 2018 Prasad Ajinkya8 Comments

I am trying to develop a regular rapport with this Google+ since I believe that over a period of time, this will affect in a big way on how search results are displayed to users. I do not have definitive stats which indicate that a person in higher number of circles result in higher SERPs, but this is a gut feel and more on that later. Visiting Google+ and engaging on the social network is part of my daily agenda. If you are a blogger, you should try it out some time.

However, when I logged onto Google+, this is what I saw on the top of my screen

So I did what any normal person would do.

I raged. Then I calmed down and tried to reason with the system as to why this could be the case. After reading through the myriad of support articles that were linked in the notifications, the only action one could do was delete all content that I had submitted and submit the profile for review.

After submitting my profile and waiting for a day, the good folks at Google decided that my profile was still violating some of their policies.

As a user, it would have been great if they could clearly point that out, however much to my chagrin there has been no actionable point from Google. Big Brother wants to disable my profile and that’s the way it would stay. An automated system is a good thing, but an iron wall is bad … I cannot even question why my account was suspended … the two documents that suggest probable reasons are Google+ User Content and Conduct Policy and Name Policy.

The former suggests that I have uploaded some content which could be hate comment, spam, …. the later suggests that my name does not seem genuine. I don’t know which allegation is more disturbing. I would love to contest these allegations, but there is no committee with whom I can take this up with … there is simply a red notification about the ban.

I have always been a Google Fan-boy, perhaps I still am, but this system makes me question their approach at trying to launch a social network. If you are spurning away your active users, how do you propose to get more users to stick to your social network?

Visual.ly now supports Google Analytics data

May 21, 2013May 6, 2018 Prasad AjinkyaLeave a comment

I love infographics. The way they break out data into beautiful little pictures and help you understand their impact is excellent. However, it can take a fair bit of efforts to create an infographic … believe me, I have tried and used multiple tools to do this. If you are thinking of doing those from the ground up, then you are faced with challenges such as choosing the colours, typography and which data to show in what manner.

If you are design impaired like me, then this steep learning curve is bound to turn you off.

This is where visual.ly really shines through. It provides you with templates for creating infographics. Templates which have been tried and tested and make your job of creating an infographic easy. What’s awesome is that they keep releasing kickass integrations such as this one, where in you simply have to give access to your Google Analytics data and it will create a weekly infographic such as the one above.

If you are a data nerd, then you may not appreciate the findings of this report, but then you should be able to relate to some of these important points. As a webmaster and a data nerd, I am happy that the organic search results have dropped … since now I am slowly looking at other sources of traffic. This drop in organic traffic has come due to a decent rise in social traffic and that makes me a happy webmaster.

Top 5 things you should do after launching a site

May 18, 2013May 6, 2018 Prasad Ajinkya6 Comments

So after toiling on that idea for more than 4 to 5 months, you have finally launched your site … the journey till here was literally blood and tears. Having to either grapple with the content management system (CMS) or even worse, having to convince the developers working on your site that the site needs to be exactly as the way you want it to be and not what they want it to be. You have managed to stick to the deadline that you set for yourself and finally the site is live!

You feel like celebrating … and you should. Fireworks in the sky, Champagne flowing … you have did it. It feels good to have reached here, doesn’t it?

Reality bites

Now time for a reality check.

Your site’s journey has just started, and its completion is not the end, but just the start. You still need traffic to generate revenues, you need growth in that traffic and you need people to talk about your site. Without traffic and sustainable growth in that traffic, your site is simply going to be a liability. If you are betting your website to do your sales, then have I got a thing (or two) to say to you!

A website once built, can only generate huge traffic if you are relying on the secret sauce. That ingredient which will ensure that thousands and thousands of potential customers come flocking to your website looking to buy your product/service.

The Secret Sauce

To generate traffic, you need to be organized. You need to try out different things to see what works, and then do more of that.

Yes. It’s that simple. You need to experiment and see what works for you. This is more work than you actually thought, but trust me … if you like the reason why you started the site, you will love promoting your site! You would love it even more when people reach out to you and seek your help.

If you can Measure, you can Scale

The more help you offer to the good folks who visit your website, the more popular would be. Since people actually start feeling your website useful. It’s a matter of finding out where these people come from and trying to see if you can get more people to visit your site from there. This is easier said than done … and that’s why you need to follow these tips and get to point where you can start doing these experiments.

So buckle up Dorothy, coz Texas is going bye, bye!

To correctly measure the traffic on your websites, you need to have a couple of things setup.

1. Google Analytics (GA)

I would suggest GA because of the ease with which you can generate insightful reports and also the enterprise class features you get to use for free. There are other alternatives to GA such as Clicky, Omniture and even Alexa for that matter. However, trust me and go with Google! We will save Alexa hacking for later.

2. Google Webmaster Tools (GWT)

Using GWT and GA in tandem would be the backbone of your Search Engine Optimization (SEO) operations. I have put up a Starter’s guide for SEO which you definitely need to go through. In case if Bing (Bing Is Not Google) search engine is relatively well known in your country (it’s at 16% market share as we speak in the United States), then go ahead and register on Bing Webmaster Tools (BWT) as well.

3. Start re-writing your content

I know. You have just completed this task two days back. Life is unfair, I should have told you about this before you finished the site! But in reality, be prepared to keep fine tuning the content on your website on a regular basis. I keep doing this for my top content since the post might be old, but the traffic that comes to those posts is brand new!! Do not be afraid or lazy to re-visit the content on your site. It’s a given that you will revisit it. Embracing this helps you quickly write content better for your users and also for your search engines. Here’s a starters guide to writing for search engines using Schemas.

4. You are your website

Remember, at the start. People do not know of your website. Do not expect too many visitors from the word go. In fact you probably will have to ask your friends to visit your website. So start sharing your website link with people … share it with people whom you think will benefit from the advise you are giving on the website. Share it on your social networks asking your friends to visit the site and give you reviews.

You have to pimp out that site and in style! Use your personal equity and get the traffic rolling in … if the site is good, then soon your friends and contacts will start sharing your site without being asked to! The traffic to your site will slowly grow … but at the start, you are your website. It’s a part of you and you have to ask people to come and visit your digital presence … your website. Do not shy away from this. You would be losing out on a very good initial source of traffic if you are shying away from sharing your site on your own social networks.

Are you yourself not convinced about the content you are dishing out on the site? No? Then start sharing those URLs. Have a few social sharing widgets on your site and ask your good friends to share as well!

5. Prepare for the journey ahead

I have already said this before, but I am going to iterate this again and again until this really sinks in.

Driving traffic to your website is a continuous activity.

This does not mean that you need to stop everything else and only keep doing these things. But, this means that you need to allocate some time in your busy week for Measurements and Experiments. You need to play with your website, and see what different things you can do on your site.

If that means learning HTML or hiring a smart guy to do this work, then so be it. It will pay off in the longer run. Also, do note that if you shy away from this activity and rely on someone else to do this for you, then you are pretty much relying on that person for your traffic and the traffic will dwindle the minute he/she goes away.

So pull up your socks, and get ready for a wonderful journey of web analysis, traffic generation and customer engagement! You are going to love it!!

Hacking your Alexa Ranking

May 10, 2013January 3, 2017 Prasad Ajinkya1 Comment

In case if you are working in any web related business based in India, then you would be aware of Alexa. The site which maintains website rankings by traffic. These numbers are indicative, however some people rely on them so much so that they look at a definitive way of increasing the rankings only … instead of actually working on making an awesome site.

I am going to share a little secret with you.

These rankings can be easily hacked.

So, if you have a boss or a reporting manager who fusses over Alexa rankings, then here’s what you need to do –

Convince your team or co-workers (who are most likely bound to keep visiting your site on a regular basis) to install the Alexa browser plug-in. It’s a nifty tool for easily checking rankings of any site. Not only that, but also this is the plugin that Alexa uses to guesstimate traffic numbers on the site. Having more plugin users visit the site reduces your Alexa ranking.
To correctly estimate the figures, Alexa asks you to include a javascript on your site. Using this javascript, a small widget is displayed on your site … now although that might ruin the look of your initial design, the javascript will ensure that all your traffic is correctly accounted for by Alexa. Soon you should see a reduction in your Alexa rank.
Claim your site. Add as much detail as you can and also get some friends to give you good testimonials for the site.

Now I know what you will say … how does this really help your cause?

Well … over a period the person who monitors this false metric will see an improvement and hopefully ask about it. Then you can tell them about the hack. Reckoning will soon follow.
A competitor who is trying to assess your site’s traffic will be overwhelmed

Alexa rankings are an extremely rough and over rated method of traffic estimation. Let me repeat what I said earlier, this is a hack and should be treated as such … ideally you should be focusing on your product/service.

Twitter closes down Posterous

April 30, 2013May 6, 2018 Prasad AjinkyaLeave a comment

Sad to see good products go down and fade to oblivion. I received an email from Posterous, saying that the service was closing down so the staff could focus more on Twitter. Here’s an excerpt from that email –

Posterous launched in 2008. Our mission was to make it easier to share photos and connect with your social networks. Since joining Twitter about one year ago, we’ve been able to continue that journey, building features to help you discover and share what’s happening in the world – on an even larger scale.

On April 30th, we will turn off posterous.com and our mobile apps in order to focus 100% of our efforts on Twitter. This means that as of April 30, Posterous Spaces will no longer be available either to view or to edit.

What this means for the thousands of users on Posterous is a migration process to other publishing platforms. This means researching on other platforms who provide similar service. Fortunately, Sachin Agarwal, the founder of Posterous has moved his personal blog to WordPress and states his reasons for choosing WordPress.

What makes me sad is that a good product which was working and had millions of users is being shut down. Another example of this happening is Google Reader … it was still being used by many and I still have not found a satisfactory replacement for it! I wonder what must have gone through the core team’s mind when they decided (or were told) to pull the plug on this service.

Why do organizations acquire other start-ups only to disband the team and use them for fuelling their own product development? I understand the acquiring company must have clarity on why it is acquiring the other firm … was it ever there when Twitter acquired Posterous?

What is a long tail keyword?

March 11, 2013May 6, 2018 Prasad AjinkyaLeave a comment

I have been writing about the basics of SEO and search based advertising on my blog for quite some time. The common thing in both is that the first interaction in search is always the keyword based search.

Yes, this is the part where our user goes to his favorite search engine (Go Google!) and searches for this keyword. Based on how well this search engine has indexed content, it will display the Search Engine Results Page (SERP).

Search is keyword based

This bit, every other person will tell you. That you need to be listed for your main keyword.

What people do not realize is that normal people like you or me are beings which adapt to a situation. In the heydays of Google, one simple search term used to help me find the right content.

Case of Crappy Content

The problem is that since then a lot of things have changed, and the sheer amount of crappy content on the internet has increased.

What this means, is that I do not find the right page even after searching the right term! So what does the normal user do after this?

Well, he refines his search … he adds a couple of other terms after his original term … that whittles the search results by a few thousands … and he keeps doing that until he finally finds the page he wanted! The user started with one term … and has finally ended up with a series of terms! But this set of terms has helped him reach to the right piece of information. That’s what matters in the end.

This set of terms the user used in the search engine is called a long tail keyword.

The name is because the number of terms keep on growing over a period of time. The longer the tail, the more specific you get about your search.

As content generation and content indexation in a search engine keep on growing … the number of terms required to recall the correct page also grow. Neil Patel discusses this very matter in a very information post on how content length affects conversions.

What does this mean?

So now you know what is a long tail keyword … but what do yo do with this piece of theory?

Well for starters, you get to understand that the longer the keyword, the more niche the audience. This increases the chances of a conversion (if your keyword research and targeting is spot-on). Longer keywords will have lesser impressions, but higher conversions.

This also means that as time goes by, the pressure on publishers (that’s me and you if you are a blogger!) would keep getting higher to write in a much more well defined fashion. I can certainly see this in my writing which has evolved in the past 3-4 years of writing on this blog.

Demystifying (not provided) Keywords

February 14, 2013January 19, 2015 Prasad AjinkyaLeave a comment

Google has started protecting signed in users by not reporting their search terms, instead we see a (not provided). People have written this off saying that the number is insignificant, in fact you can make use of this nifty little Custom Report to check the impact of how many searches are not reported to you. Over a period of time, it has grown to be a huge 39% of the total organic results worldwide.

Blog owners have every right to be concerned; they are missing data and for content driven blogs, this can be painful. I have noticed that for all my games posts, the %age is quite high … 70%!!!

However, there is an alternative. If you are concerned with finding out the keyword data about your site, then you can retrieve this data from Google Webmasters (GWMT). This in combination with the Top Content Report for the Non-Paid search traffic segment should get you any data you require.

Combining the GWMT data with Analytics will help you get a better understanding for the funnel data on each of your individual keywords … all the more so if you have Goals configured.

Do note that there is a slight discrepancy in the data that is reported in GA and the one which is reported in WMT. GA reports visits, WMT reports clicks. GA’s SEO report does not provide the data of the past 2 days, WMT does. So if you are just starting out, using WMT would help you gain more insights on your on-page optimization as compared to simply using Google Analytics.

Edit: I found this great (but a tad tedious) article on SEOMoz on how you can decode the (not provided) keyword. If you are not well versed with Google Analytics and Filters, then I would suggest you skip it.