Reasons Why Your Business Needs an Online Face

When you begin a business, make sure you market it Online, so that you do not miss out on the big crowd.

'This post especially dedicated to those who are unaware of the numerous benefits of Online marketing.'
If you have already set, or are planning to set up a business, I am sure you are planning to get it an Online office too. If you are not, then let me tell you that you are actually missing out on a great opportunity to broadcast your business on a wider platform. I will now give you four simple reasons why it is important that you seek Online marketing assistance for your upcoming business.

Point number one: It is more affordable than your offline office. I am sure you must have already calculated the money that is involved in your offline office. And it definitely is a grand sum. And in comparison to that, it takes nothing to set up an Online office-a website. And it takes equally nothing to market it.

Point number two: When you set up an office in a city or town, your market reach is restricted to the locality, city or town in the initial few months, but with Online marketing you are actually reaching out globally in the first take itself. Bingo!! what else did you want, a global reach a large number of visitors and global clientele! Here you go.

Point number three: apart from having a global reach, you are also having the privilege of targeting your niche audience, which is noway possible in offline business. You can never find your niche audience without talking to them. Whereas, in Online marketing, its not you, it is the visitors who will find you and catch you when they need you.

Point number four: Your office is never closed. It is not important that you be physically present on your table. Your website will do it all on its own. And your Online business is running 24X7 without any surcharges.

What do you think! Isn't Online marketing worth every bit? Then what you waiting for. Get your business and Online opening right away and enjoy the benefits.

YouTube Now In India- Thank You Google

The video sharing site owned by Google was launched in India. The site claims to specifically cater to Indian users.

YouTube the Google owned video sharing website is now in India. The video website was recently launched in India under the URL: YouTube.co.in, the website, according to Google spokesperson is said to be specific to indian viewers only and shall be a treat to those who are passionate about the country. Along with the website the company has also introduced the YouTube.com/blog, a place where you can share your thoughts and ideas about YouTube and its videos freely.

The indian version of YouTube is said to have great connectivity and seems to be a lively and exciting place just as the global YouTube website. The site contains all the videos that are present in the global website, with an addition of an 'indian lens'. This shows the recently viewed videos by the indian audience on YouTube. The company has signed up with dozens of local partners who are going to distribute their content through YouTube.

This move by Google has definitely made all indian internet users in particular extremely happy for the recognition they are getting on a global level. And this recognition is well deserved too, after all India is amongst the leading internet user's countries of the world which also includes, America, China, Britain and Japan.

Blog for Better Search Engine Marketing Results

Blogging is an important search engine marketing tool. Find out how.

Just as I am writing this blog post, I am actually making a way to increase the traffic flow to my website. Yes, blogging dose increase website traffic. All those of you who loved the concept of blogging will now love it even more, since every post that you add will help in increasing traffic and will boost your search engine marketing technique.

The blog posts are set up with a clear navigation ensuring that every page is linked to the main page, so that the traffic on the main page is high. Blogs act as a great means of gathering one-way link to your website. In order to ensure that your blogs is actually acting as great startup to your website, make sure that your blog is optimized properly. Here are some ways in which you can ensure that your website is properly optimized.

Make a wise selection of your blog and SEO keywords. Keywords are an essential requirement of search engine marketing. And it is best to use lucrative keywords which will help generate a steady flow of traffic to your website every time. But remember not to over do this lucrative keyword business. It is not always that the keywords that you use in your blogs will give you sale returns. Many websites suffer from this disease of having visitors but no business. To avoid such incidents, make sure that you are using some of the high demand keywords as well in your blog so that they are able to convert into sale too.

Keep track of your blog web analytics to find out the frequency of search engine spider visits to your blog. This is an important step in search engine marketing. Study the spider frequency and time your blog updation accordingly in order to receive the best of its results.

The Golden Rules of Social Media Optimization

Social Media Optimization or SMO is a unique way in which you can optimize your website in an interactive platform.

Recently, SMO or Social Media Optimization has become an easy and convenient way of optimizing your website. The basic concept behind social media optimization is a very straight and simple one. All it does is do a little bit of here and there in your website so that it is easily optimized and well connected too. The work of social media optimization is to make your website visible on a large social media platform and custom search engines too.

Social Media Optimization usually follows a certain set pattern of rules. These rules are as follows:

• It wants your website to increase the linkability of its content so that it can optimize your website for social communities.
• It prefers tagging buttons like those to Reddit, del.icio.us, Dig etc. Tagging pages to popular social bookmarking sites also increases the credibility of the website.
• Social media optimization too realizes the influence of inbound links in making a website popular and adds a lot of weightage to these inbound links.

Social Media Optimization does mean serious business but in a friendlier manner which, is encouraging and enthusiastic. Some of the most popular social media websites are MySpace, Del.icio.us, Wikipedia, YouTube etc.

Web Applications to become a prime focus of Web 3.0

After Web 2.0 has soaked completely in the internet industry, experts have already started building on road for Web 3.0.

Woops!! The Internet industry just doesn’t seem to take a deep breath. It has hardly been some time that the Web 2.0 has sunk into business, evolutionists have already started channeling their business for scopes in Web 3.0. Web 3.0 is being called the future of World Wide Web. It is being used by experts as an alliteration to term the forthcoming wave in the Internet Industry.

In one of my recent browsing spree, I came across a blog that said “Web 3.0 is something called the Semantic Web.” Semantic Web! Wow!! sounded interesting to me and made me inquisitive to look further into it. My research says, Semantic Web is a term given to those web applications that can read a web page much as a human can. It is a place which shall transform the web in a human which can perform activities better than what it does now.

Semantic Web is believed by many to transform the face of the web when it comes to play in near future. There are other predictions for Web 3.0 too. Experts comment that with Web 3.0 there shall be an increase in internet connection speed, modular web application and also an advance in graphics.

What I feel is that the Semantic Web shall be quite an advantage to the Internet industry especially with the use of advances Web Applications that shall be introduced along with it. Web applications have a popular use in services like mails, online retail stores, auction websites, weblogs, discussion boards and forums and also in CRPGs (computer role playing games) that are run on the virtual web.

There is quite some time I believe when these shall be fully functional, but the effective and implications have already begun as more and more websites all around are gearing up to adapt the latest technologies and web applications as soon as they are being launched.

Cyber Espionage Major Threat to Global Security

A recent cyber security report by McAfee, the computer security firm, has revealed that cyber espionage will be one of the greatest threats to global peace in the year 2008. It has raised concern that essential online services face a security threat from spies who have infiltrated the World Wide Web.

The 'virtual criminology report' states that the number of 'cyber terrorists' is on the rise. These entities are increasingly using the Internet as a weapon against national governments, attacking their infrastructure systems, including electricity, air traffic control, computer networks, finance markets, stock exchanges, et al. Not just this, they are also targeting individual companies that generate revenues in billions.

Industry experts insist that cyber crime has now become a global issue and is no more limited to just individuals. The only probable solution lies in governments joining hands to pursue corrective measures. This will involve development of technologies that can keep a check on cyber espionage, and if possible, control it to an extent.

And the 'Most-Visited Website' Award Goes To...

A recent survey, conducted by the portal Compete.com, has revealed a list of the 'Top 50 Websites' on the basis of their unique visitor numbers. The top ten domain names in this list are:

1. Yahoo.com
2. Google.com
3. eBay.com
4. MSN.com
5. Live.com
6. MySpace.com
7. AOL.com
8. Wikipedia.org
9. Mapquest.com
10. Microsoft.com
    

The survey took into account the period between September 2006 to September 2007 to calculate the visitor count of these sites. YouTube and Flickr are amongst the topmost gainers, as per the survey.

It has also been observed that sites offering peer-to-peer data sharing are gaining prominence in the lives of web users, as evidenced by the rise of YouTube, Facebook, Wikipedia, Digg, et al.

An increasing number of sites are raking in traffic in millions, and are constantly expanding their network by adding new features to existing domains, or creating new domains altogether.

Google Despises Paid Links

Webmasters paying money to garner links will now have a tough time in keeping their link building campaigns on the right track. Google, the biggest player in the search marketing industry, has announced latest webmaster guidelines that clearly state its disposition on this matter.

Google analyses both quality and quantity of links pointing to a site during the process of indexing. However, it'll now take a tougher stand on links that have been paid for. This is because an increasing number of webmasters are simply trying to consolidate their optimisation campaign by paying money to irrelevant web sources.

Buying or selling links for PageRank can have a negative impact on your site, resulting in a loss of rankings on the search engine's result listings. However, you can still buy links for advertising purposes.

Such links should be easily identifiable, and this can be done through some simple tactics like:

• Use the rel=“nofollow” attribute for the link's <> tag, so that the search engine crawler does not follow the link back to its source of origin.

• Use a robots.txt file to redirect such links to an intermediate page that has been already blocked by search engines.

If you are a webmaster, just be a little more careful when building links. Try something original and do not try to manipulate search engines – you cannot be successful at it all the time.

Moments that Changed the Web Forever - IV

I know I cannot continue with this topic forever... it might have gotten a tad bit boring. So, for the last post in this series, I shall talk about the four most impacting moments in the Internet's history.

Internet Browsers – October, 1969
Way back in the year 1969, the concept of Internet was being pondered upon by Professor Len Kleinrock. The idea took off when he tried to use a dedicated phone line to link a mainframe computer at UCLA to one at the Stanford Research Institute. He managed to transfer two alphabets before the system crashed. The second attempt, however, bore results, and the concept of Internet browsers came into being.

Google – September, 1998
This can be easily described as a historic 'invention' in the online world. Stanford University students Sergey Brin and Larry Page met in the year 1995, and within a year, started working on the concept of links influencing search engine rankings. In September 1998, they opened the first Google office in a garage, and changed the web forever. Google was the company that brought in the idea of profit sharing through search engines. Today, it is considered to be one of the most influential web entities in the world.

Netscape – August, 1995
Netscape was the pioneering effort in the field of Internet browsers. After going public with its shares in 1995, it actually went on to prove that the web is a great place for all kinds of marketing activities. The legacy has been carried forward by a number of web entities, many of which even went defunct in the process. But, Netscape continues to stand tall and make new strides in the online marketplace.

The World Wide Web – December, 1990
What can be bigger than the Web itself? The greatest moment in the history of the web is the moment of its creation. In the year 1990, the world got its Christmas present in the form of the world's first web server. The brains behind this operation were that of Tim Berners Lee and Robert Cailliau of the CERN research lab in Geneva. The first-ever content posted on the web was the CERN phone directory.

Today, the World Wide Web impacts almost every aspect of our lives, both personal and professional. And yes, this blog is very much a part of the same web!

Moments that Changed the Web Forever – III

This topic is getting even more interesting now. As the World Wide Web started to grow, it also became a platform for the coming together of entities bound by some common thread.

Social Networking – March, 2003
It all started with Friendster. And, as the name clearly indicates, it was a site meant for 'friends'; a source of networking on the Internet. By the month of July 2003, the site was being used by more than a million people, who liked 'staying in touch' through a common, feasible platform.

Today, Friendster, the pioneer, has lost into oblivion; sidelined by stronger competitors. MySpace, Facebook, Orkut and the likes were started on the same lines and continue to dominate web users' mindsets with increased doses of interactivity and that personalised touch.

Amazon – July, 1995
Termed as the 'world's largest book store', Amazon started operations in the mid of 1995, headquartered in a garage in Bellevue, Washington. Jeff Bezos, the founder of this all-inclusive online store, has actually revolutionised e-commerce big time. Today, Amazon sells anything and everything through its global network of affiliate programmes.

Domain Names – June, 1983
The domain naming system came into place in the year 1983, resulting from the combined efforts of Paul Mockapetris, Craig Partridge and the late Jon Postel. These guys did a world of good for web users by replacing numerical Internet addresses with real domain names.

Just imagine if we had to memorise all kinds of 12-digit numbers in order to open a website! It would have been so taxing. But thankfully, all we need to do is, type the domain name of the site, and the server itself will decode it into numbers and open the required Internet address.


Today, we can't actually think of the web without all these 'facilities'. More in the next blog...

Moments that Changed the Web Forever - II

Continuing with the interesting discussion on Moments that Changed the Web Forever, I would now like to talk about two of the other significant 'events' that changed the Online world over the years.

eBay – September, 1995
The concept of online shopping was initially quite far-fetched. But, in due course, every business – big and small – thought of cashing in on the frenzy to make millions through the web. eBay was the pioneer in this regard, as it fostered the creation of an online junkyard where you could dump and pick anything and everything.

As per reports, the first item auctioned on the site was a broken laser pointer that fetched $14.83. That was the September of 1995, and today, more than 12 years hence, eBay has carved a niche for itself, involving more than 60 million people in its functioning.

Wikipedia – January, 2001
Encyclopedia Britannica has been considered as the 'Bible' for knowledge seekers. With the introduction of Wikipedia, the free online encyclopedia, everybody got a chance of showing off his/her 'expertise' in the subject of their choice.

This all-inclusive website allows you to add or edit entries on any topic. It does not matter if you are not well-versed with the same; all you need is factual accuracy and some grammatical and linguistic sense.

Created by American Internet entrepreneur Jimmy Wales, Wikipedia has an archive of more than seven million articles in more than ten different global languages. It will not be an understatement to say that it is considered as the 'online answer' to almost all our queries.

More in the next blog... Moments that Changed the Web Forever - III

Moments that Changed the Web Forever - I

The World Wide Web came online in the year 1990. Today, seventeen years hence, it is an indispensable part of our lives, at least in an urban scenario. Thousands of events have shaped the way this medium has been perceived by users. There have been quite a few 'Eureka!' moments that'll go down in the history of the web as moments that changed it forever, and probably, for the good.

I would like to take you back down memory lane, and chronicle ten of the most significant moments in web history, in ascending order of importance.
1) Yahoo
2) eBay
3) Wikipedia
4) Social Networking
5) Amazon
6) Domain Names
7) Internet Browsers
8) Google
9) Netscape
10) World Wide Web

Yahoo – February, 1994
'Yet Another Hierarchical Officious Oracle', or Yahoo, was the brainchild of Stanford University students Jerry Yang and David Filo. It all started in the month of February 1994 when they posted a list of their favourite sites on the web. By April 1994, Yahoo came into existence, offering directory-style listings of important websites.

Eventually, it revamped itself time and again, developing into a web portal providing search, news, sports, entertainment, email, instant messaging, et al. Despite encountering stiff competition from numerous websites of the same era, Yahoo went on to expand its services and still continues to rule the online world.

The other important moments in this list will be talked about in consecutive blogs. Watch this space to know more about how the web became what it is today.

The Evolution of Online Marketing

The Internet was first introduced about 15 years ago. Back then, it was mainly used for email communication and data transfer, with most global entrepreneurs declaring it 'unfit' for marketing purposes.

The 'online marketplace' came into limelight, thanks to pioneering efforts from Netscape, one of the first Internet service providers in the world. The company presented remarkable strategies that could help foster web trade, raking in profits for buyers and sellers.

In the year 1995, Netscape floated its shares in the market, and this aroused public interest, with
advertisers making the most of this new advertising platform. In due course, the wide expanse, cost-effectiveness and easy accessibility of the Internet saw millions of businesses using this medium.

Today, more than half of the world's populace is hooked on to the web for information and entertainment related to an all-encompassing range of subjects. If you go by latest reports, Americans and Europeans surpass the others in terms of online purchases. This list will soon have new rank-holders, with the whole world preparing to join in the 'celebrations'.

One Big, Happy Internet Family

When we talk of the World Wide Web, the use of names like Google, Yahoo and Microsoft is inevitable. These three giant corporations are easily the most ubiquitous of the millions of entities entangled in this web. They are growing, and how! Whether it is a web portal, or software technologies, these companies have made acquisitions left, right and centre.

Shelving out billions every year, Google, Yahoo and Microsoft have made sure that no other company manages to topple them from the top three positions they have held on to for ages now. Don't believe me? Check out this list of prominent acquisitions made by these three companies in the last decade.

Google
Founded by Stanford University students Larry Page and Sergey Brin in the year 1998.

• Picasa (2004)
• Stake in AOL (2005)
• YouTube (2006)
• Postini (2007)
• FeedBurner (2007)
  

Yahoo
Founded by Stanford University students Jerry Yang and David Filo in the year 1994.

• GeoCities (1999)
• Overture (2003)
• del.icio.us (2005)
• Flickr (2005)
• BuzzTracker (2007)
  

Microsoft
Founded by Harvard graduate Bill Gates in the year 1978.

• Vermeer Technologies (1996)
• Hotmail (1997)
• DesktopStandard Corporation (2006)
• Parlano (2007)
• Jellyfish.com (2007)
  

Apart from these acquisitions, these companies have, time and again, developed or founded their own web applications for users worldwide. It won't be an understatement to say that every second website or web programme available on the web is a part of this one big, happy Internet family!

The Web Begins Here...

The online marketing domain is my forte. I am Rupiz Media, a UK based service provider dealing with various facets of this ever-evolving work sphere. This blog is my means of communicating with all those entangled in the World Wide Web. I will share, discuss and propagate issues that impact the online marketplace, and consequently, my standing in the same.

Online marketing was considered implausible in the nascent stages of the Internet's advent. However, today, almost two decades hence, it generates billions and employs scores of professionals worldwide.

This blog will be my mouthpiece for all those who care to find out more about Search Engine Optimisation, Pay per Click Advertising, Email Marketing, Web Design and Development, Content Development, Software Development, et al.

Latest industry news and developments related will be all talked about in this blog as we set about demystifying the Web for you. Watch this space for more...