Well that is from a blogger’s point in view.

1. What is about advertisers who are pouring money into SEO job month after month?

2. Are they aware of possible advertising opportunities a blog can provide?

3. Do advertisers know the demand of contextual links replacing typical link-building process?

4. Do they consider blog marketing as a major part of social media promotion?

A lot has changed in monthly link scope as search engines have shifted their attention to updated and interactive pages. Now blog has turned into a good resource to collect quality backlinks. And to none of our ignorance typical link-building process is taking back stage.

Here are some questions for advertisers:

• How do you market your business website through guest blog posting?
• How do you find theme-based, high quality blogs to promote your campaigns?
• Even if you are contacting a SEO company for guest posting what are the parameters you must consider high?

Here are a few advices how to do it at its best?

Avoid dealing with individual bloggers:

If you are searching relevant and high quality blogs through Google the job is not that easy. You don’t know whether a blog accepts guest post or not, let it be it free or paid.  Moreover it is time consuming if you are rummaging a number of blogs for guest posting.

Plus you are not sure whether your post will be published within due time or not.  Contacting individual bloggers for guest posting is bit difficult as you don’t have a standard price rate or a formal agreement.

Dealing with a company hosted blogs is safer option:

It is a good idea to contact a SEO company who hosts number of quality blogs across any theme – all maintained internally. The advantages of dealing with them are manifold as follows:

1. You have a single point of contact. No need to handle hundreds of contacts and wasting time in it.
2. No need to rush, as you won’t run out of time. A complete list of guest blogs will be given to you.
3. You have ample choice to choose the best ones. You can check with blog layouts, traffic, page rank and other parameters at your discretion.
4. Such blog networks are well professionally maintained so you don’t have to worry about link life. Once you get a deal it will be as per terms and conditions only.
5. You are sure about the budget to spend from the very beginning. Any transaction related matters can be solved very easily since the company will keep a track of every deal you make.
6. Since you have access to any number of blogs in any topic you need the whole process gets quicker.
7. Reliability, stability and easy communication are what make this guest blogging option a better choice.

Measure the quality of a blog:

Don’t always run for Page Rank (PR) of a blog.  Even a well maintained, theme related, great looking blog may not have a high PR. What is most important here is the number of backlinks and traffic a guest blog has.

Check if the blog categories suit your website requirements. 1 or 2 inbound links from a decent-looking blog carries much weight than a high PR but irrelevant blog. Stick to blogs that actually looks like a blog, not a site with link deposits.

Thus you can capitalize on guest blogging benefits. If you have any queries ask for expert advices.

Launch of the redesigned website of Softz Solutions attempts to boost our primary objective – optimum customer satisfaction! To experience the added features, easier navigation and enhanced interactivity of the new site, visit us at http://www.softzsolutions.com/

How does the new site differ from the earlier one? Here are a few points of distinction you are sure to notice.

Enhanced Services for Success

Adding new services, and new dimensions to existing ones, helps augment the scope of your business. What’s new on offer? The On-Page and Off-Page service makes up the complete SEO Services. The newly added Content writing services incorporate website content development as well as other essential elements.

Apart from user and search engine friendly website designing, we also offer blog creation, customization and optimization services. The best advantage of using our White Label SEO Services is that it offers complete confidentiality.

We provide complete organic SEO Solutions, including conversion optimization services, as well as PPC Management Services. Softz Solutions sure is a one-stop shop for all your SEO related business needs!

• Portfolio that Speaks for itself: SEO Folio, Website Folio or Blog Folio – take your pick and view a few examples of what we do and how we do it. If you feel our work is good enough for your business, which you sure would, contact us to know more.

• Inclusion of Package Details: Offering the exact details of how much each service would cost helps you chalk out your financial plan. Get to know our packages and the associated expense.

• Adding an Element of Interactivity: If you have a query, you can just send us a message using the form on the ‘Contact Us’ page. You may also get in touch via different means – email, telephone, messenger and fax. Contacting us was never easier!

• Revamping the Knowledge Centre: Want to know more about our tutorials? Want to check out the SEO tools? Want to know the meaning of a specific term? Our knowledge centre aims to help you know more about SEO and how it enhances the scope of online businesses.

We have tried our best to come up with a website that offers you the maximum of information with the minimum of efforts. We welcome all your feedback regarding this endeavour of ours to help us achieve more in future!

7 Reasons Why You Should Take Blogging Seriously

Blogging is the latest trend in online marketing industry. From small business owners to celebrities, from professionals to amateurs everyone is having a blog knowingly or unknowingly of how much powerful blogging can be. However, we can cite 7 solid reasons why blogging should be taken more seriously and be included in your routine.

1. Productive time: Blogging is a good way to make use of your spare time. Instead of chatting online or flipping though TV channels you can use this time productively by writing something out of your professional or personal experience that can be of help to others.

2. Improved skill: For people who have a flair for writing or those who have already taken up web copy writing as profession can use blogging as a good platform to improve their writing skill, grammar and vocabulary.

3. Increased creativity: Blogging helps to increase your creativity as you religiously keep on thinking about what to post next. You will have to dig out new ideas to write on and improvise new ways to presenting it in an interesting manner in order to attract readership.

4. Insight on a subject: Blogging is learning. As you write on something you need to do thorough research on the topic to write with authority. During the process you learn a lot.

5. Improved Public Relation: As you keep blogging chances are that you start receiving feedbacks gradually. It not only impels you analyze your writing but also helps you improve your public relation skill. Wondering how? Well, you may not get positive feedbacks all the time; there will be negative comments and criticisms too. In the due course of time you’ll learn how to deal with the negativities of life.

6. Knowledge in technicalities: While small business owners who mostly look for blog optimization and maintenance services as part of their extensive online marketing campaign individuals can handle it on their own. Creating, designing, and optimizing a blog can give you an insight into the technicalities and technological aspects of blog hosting and maintenance.

7. Reinforced online presence: You might have profiles in a number of social and professional networking sites. You might be popular and gained several recommendations from your fellow contacts. But nothing can add more substance to your online profiles as blogging. If you can write well and deliver some useful quality content it adds value to your credentials whenever you apply for a better job. In short, it helps you reinforce your identity as a writer and your employer will know beforehand about your writing style and prowess.

So, blogging is a two-way process. The more you give the more you get in return.

Some SEO campaigns do not perform to the fullest potential. There can be many factors behind this which are beyond the scope of this article. Rather I want to point out one factor that contributes to underperformance of an SEO campaign.

Some SEO campaigns underperform due to the client not being a good Seo client.

Quite frequently I come across clients that hand over site to an SEO and wash their hands off, till the time when the ranking reports are due.  If you are such an SEO client it is about time you changed your approach.

You need to be a good SEO client. Being a good SEO client ensures that your campaign(s) run smoothly in time, resulting in maximum return for your SEO investments.

So how do you go about being a good SEO client?

I suggest a 6 steps formula.

1. Clearly state what you want from the campaign.
2. Participate in Keyword Selection.
3. Answer Questions from Your SEO.
4. Implement Changes suggested by your SEO.
5. Allow Reasonable Time for rankings.
6. Ask Questions

Clearly state what you want from the campaign.

As the business owner you should have a clear idea of what you want out of the campaign. High rankings / High Traffic / More Exposure / More Conversions … anything else?  What is it that you want? Express it clearly to your SEO. If you don’t then chances are your SEO will have a vague idea of what needs to be done, resulting in a directionless campaign wasting time and money. Worse still, you may get taken for a ride by unscrupulous operators, who will feed you all sorts of meaningless stats just to squeeze more money out of you.

Participate in Keyword Selection.

An SEO will (and should) of course perform keyword research for you as part of the agreement. But a key component of Keyword research involves understanding the target market well, and who knows your target market better than you?!  Provide feedback to your SEO about what people in your target market want, what terms they use etc. All this is valuable input that will help your SEO prepare a well rounded Keyword List targeting the appropriate terms for your business.

Answer Questions from Your SEO.

This one should be obvious. But, still I come across clients that do not bother to reply queries.  Your SEO needs to understand certain things about your business/site, and you are required to provide him the information.

For example, your SEO wants to know why you have those links to 3 external sites on the sidebar – are they partners, or paid sponsors or just random links? Or why you have that fixed text block at the bottom of each page – is it some kind of disclosure (some sites need such info) or you have put it just to make your page look good?  If you don’t reply to these queries how on earth your SEO is going to understand what to do with these issues?

Find some time to check mails (or phone calls) from your SEO and provide him the required information, if you want your campaign to be a success.

Implement Changes suggested by your SEO.

This is very important.  There will be changes suggested by your SEO during the optimization process. You are supposed to implement things as suggested. If your contract allows/binds the SEO to implement the changes, then let him do it. Do not interfere. If no such clauses are there in your agreement then be prepared to implement whatever is suggested by your SEO. Even minor tweaks here and there can bring about massive improvements in rankings. So implement things as suggested – invest in resources to bring about these changes. Failing to do so can only result in poor campaign performance.

Ask Questions.

Never take anything at face value! Ask questions. Get your doubts cleared by your SEO. A good SEO should provide you with satisfactory answers. But, do not overdo it. You should not be debating each and every action performed by your SEO. Ask only when you have reasonable doubt or want to know something – then leave the rest to the expert.

Allow Reasonable Time for rankings.

No SEO can guarantee you instant rankings – unless you consider PPC listings as organic results!

Typically you should allow at least 2 months of time to rank for any selected keywords. This is not to say that you cannot rank before 2 months, this is just a recommendation based on my own observations of client sites, and your mileage may vary a bit.

At the same time, you should not be pressing your SEO to rank at the top for ‘mortgage’ within 3 months of time!  Rankings take time. The more competitive the keyword, the more time it will take to rank. Do not try to push things too much in a short while even if you have the resources to do so – your site may only get burned by search engines beyond repair. Be reasonable with your expectations.

So, that’s it! Be a good SEO client and let your SEO campaigns soar above the competition!

A good SEO client possesses certain traits/qualities which result in maximum ROI from the SEO campaign.

As an SEO client you should certainly like to be a good SEO client. Are you one? Check out with the following list -

1. Do you clearly state what you want from the campaign?
2. Do you participate in Keyword Selection?
3. Do you answer Questions from Your SEO in a timely manner?
4. Do you Implement Changes (or allow your SEO to implement) suggested by your SEO?
5. Do you Ask Questions?
6. Do you allow Reasonable Time for rankings?

Any other points I have missed here? Feel free to suggest below using the comments form.

There are many ways to optimize a site to rank well in local search results (local SERP) which are beyond the scope of this article. Rather I will focus on a specific tactic that can bring rich dividends to your local search optimization efforts – using hCard microformat.

There are many types of search queries people perform on a search engine. Search for entities like other people, businesses and places are some query types. Search engines have long been trying to provide correct information about such entities on the SERP.  To do that they have to assign special meaning to your content (that have information about people, business or place). But information about entities like people, business, places etc does not have any specific identifier in normal html markup.  In absence of any specific identifier in your content the search engines have to rely on complex parsing techniques to assign special meaning to your content.  This frequently results in misinterpretation of data and incorrect information in SERPs.

hCard is a microformat type used to provide semantic markup information about people, businesses and places.  You can use an hCard microformat to provide correct information about your local business to search engines and other services and tools that support microformat standard.

So how does it relate to Local Search Engine Optimization?

Search engines rely on ‘local’ signals to determine relevancy of a web pages for a ‘local’ search term. These signals include hosting information, geo tags in Meta data and domain extension.

We can add one more to this signals list – contact / business info.

As stated above, in absence of any unique identifier in your content, extracting correct business info from your website can be a hit or miss affair. With an hCard it will only be hits!

Search engines will parse the information on the hCard and display your business information correctly on the SERPs.  Besides, now you have established your site’s relevancy to a particular locality – which means that now your site has a greater chance of showing up in the SERPs for a local search.

Another advantage of using an hCard is that your web page might get a rich snippet in Google web search results. This can lead to increased click through to your site resulting in greater conversion.

Also, some other services and tools that support microformats standard may parse your hCard and display your business information on various web applications leading to more publicity for your website.

How to create an hCard?

An example code block for an organization looks like this –

<div>
<span>L’Amourita Pizza</span>
<span class=”tel”>(206) 555-7242</span>
<div>
<span class=”street-address”>2040 Any Street</span>
<span class=”locality”>Springfield</span>
<span class=”region”>WA</span>
<span class=”postal-code”>98102</span>
</div>
</div>

[source: http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=146861]

You can also use the online hCard creator to create an hCard for your website/business.

For more information on microformats and hCard visit: http://microformats.org/wiki/

• Are you using Keyword(s) in image ALT attribute
• Are you using Keyword(s) in image Title attribute
• Are you using Keyword(s) in image Caption
• Are you using Keyword(s) in text block close to the image
• Are you using Keyword(s) in image filenames
• Are you building links to your image files with Keyword rich anchor text

Answer to each of the above questions should be a ‘yes’. One caveat that you need to keep in mind is that it is easy to get carried away and start stuffing keywords in above mentioned places. Resist that temptation! It can lead to over-optimization and bring ranking penalties for your website. Use keyword(s) as suggested above but at the same time take care not to make the image attributes look stuffed and spammy. If in doubt, use normal descriptive attributes for your images.

Google is well-known for changing its logo on special occasions. Yahoo! and AOL are also going with the trends these days.

I gave two widely circulated newspapers a glance today during breakfast; did not find any coverage on Earth Day on a prominent place. It’s good to see that Search Engines are educating people on such a crucial topic.

Earth Day has a long history and it is better to read wikipedia to know more about Earth Day. Basically it is a day to think about our planet. Earth is our home in this universe, sooner we realize the fact the better.

However, Earth Day is not all about changing LOGO. We need to do something in real. Let’s take up an oath today. All of us reading this blog post would make Earth greener by doing at least the following things:

• tree plantation
• taking care of existing green fields
• preventing water wastage
• raising our voice to make rainwater harvesting mandatory in India

Let’s start it from today. We will come back here on April 22, 2009 to check our progress.

Way back the studies on blog concentrated mainly on blog writers but now a day’s trend has changed. Researchers are also now concentrating on the people who read the comments and also participate in it.

Now, the researchers from the University of California have thrown light on the experiences and online habits of blog readers’. They always told that for better interactions between reader and the Blogger it is very important to understand the reader – blogger connection. Their research was based on a various aged group of 15 people who will go through the content of the blog and will have good conversation with blog writers and blogs.

Their study was interesting. They found that very few of them post comments while others only go through the content without commenting.

The study also revealed that blog reading has become a every day habit for people like newspaper reading or email checking. Readers are always keen to read the most recent post on the blog appearing on the top of the page irrespective of the age of the post.

The most of the participant don’t bother to read all the blog post because they want to remain updated with the latest post. So the bottom line posts on the screen are of least interest for the readers.

The study show that some readers took responsibility to make comments on the blog post so that they can produce good contribution on the blog.

The popularity of the blog has introduced several tools which made blog writing easy for beginners. Full Social potential of the blogging will remain untapped unless and until the technology embraces the role of the audience.

The researchers are in a hope that their studies will lead to new ways of commenting and linking.

Hello Friends,

Welcome to our blog at SoftzSolutions, an India (Kolkata) based SEO Company. The only thing we can promise out here is that we will try to make it “Not Just Another WordPress Webblog” on SEO.

Perhaps we are a bit late to start this blog but once started, it will not stop. Most of us have personal blogs and a lot of them have earned enough reputation in the blogosphere. At SoftzSolutions blog, you will find a combined effort.

So stay tuned for some exciting posts.