Technology Blog | Technology News

Facebook
RSS

How to Improve Search Engine Ranking:

How to improve search engine ranking is a critical component of your online success and a topic of considerable importance to traditional and high tech companies alike. Without generating traffic from the major search engines like Google, Yahoo!, Ask and Bing, the fanciest and most expensively-designed website will fail to deliver.
To understand the importance of search engine optimization for websites simply ask the thousands upon thousands of organizations and individuals who spend inordinate amounts of time and money developing a website that no one visits. Having cool graphics, plenty of flash animation and a great “look and feel” does nothing to improve search engine ranking without a methodical approach to SEO web design.
In these pages I have pulled together the very best of tools, processes and methodologies in order to help you understand the world of Search Engine Optimization. While tools may vary the basic approach is the same and that is that you must create a website that provides useful information as well as one that is search engine optimized
________________________________________
Get help with how to Improve Search Engine Ranking or share your expertise and experiences!
GO TO:
•SEO Copy Writing
• META Tags Optimization
• How to Make a Website
• How to Build a Website (Interview)
• SEO Consultant


________________________________________

The Basics to Improve Search Engine Ranking


I will describe 2 parts to improve search engine ranking in SEO web design, both of which are crucially important: keyword optimization and quality content. I call these "HTML And Words That Sell." It is not good enough to rank high at the search engines if you do not have the quality content to generate a favorable human response as well. If you do not please your human visitors you will lose your search engine rankings over time.
The mistake most people I have talked to make is to focus on just one of these. Thousands of business and individuals create fancy websites that look and read like brochures that no one reads because no one sees. On the other hand, there are plenty of "tech-savvy" search engine for website specialists who achieve temporary rankings that fail to last because of a lack of quality content.
"Keywords" are those search terms that users enter into search engines in order to find information online. Keyword search terms tend to follow specific patterns over time so that if you correctly analyze and build a website based on high-value keywords then you will in essence be creating a website with terms and information that people are searching for.
The Search Engine Game
Improved search engine rankings only persist when you deliver that your visitors seek and not just search engines. I cannot emphasize this point enough and this is where most search engine optimization consulting fails. It is no use temporarily ranking highly through SEO "tips and tricks" unless you deliver quality content that people like.
In terms of how search engines actually find your site I will now describe the necessary steps in the process of search engine optimization for websites:
(1) Submitting Your Site: A lot of people do not know that you actually have to submit your website to search engines to ensure that your web pages will be indexed. If your web pages are not indexed, you will be “invisible” to search engines. The major search engines follow a protocol called Sitemaps whereby you are required to submit an XML Sitemap of your website to search engines.
In my opinion submitting a Sitemap to improve search engine rankings will be tricky if you are a non-technical person. Your best recourse is to hire a technical person to do this job for you or utilize a solution like Site Build it! which does this automatically for you
The Steps to Improve Search Engine Ranking
Creating Inbound Links is the last step to search engine optimization for websites and I cover that – along with Keyword Research and Page Optimization and - on my search engine optimization consulting page. These steps form the core SEO web design process along with making sure that you regularly continue to submit new content to the search engines as well.
Finding high value keywords and creating keyword-optimized web pagesaround them gets your site “into the running” in terms of improved search engine ranking. An Inbound Links program is then required to give your website added credibility with the search engines. For more detailed information I recommend the excellent SiteSell PDF Make Your Links work! That contains a number of link building strategies.
Search engines like Google look at, among other things, the number and quality of other websites that link to yours. In terms of search engine rankings, the better and more relevant the website that is linking to yours, the better its effect on your overall search engine results page (SERP) rankings. While inbound links is not the most important criteria in weighing your search engine ranking, it is important to have at least a few high-quality inbound links to your website.
[ Read More ]

Drupal vs. Joomla vs. WordPress



Building a website has never been easier. Gone -- mostly -- are the days of having to hand-code HTML and PHP scripts in order to get a slick, fully functional website, thanks to the capabilities of content management systems that do most or all of the heavy lifting for site creators.
There are boatloads of content management systems (CMSs) for serious site creators, but the most common for websites today are three open-source tools: Joomla, Drupal and WordPress. Actually, to call them "tools" is an understatement -- these are full-fledged platforms, with tens of thousands of add-on tools created by very active developer communities.


These applications have a lot of similarities. For example, all three are written in the PHP programming language, all three are licensed under the free GNU General Public License (GPL), and all three depend on the MySQL database to hold and manage the actual content within a website.
3 site builders
• Introduction
• Installation
• Interface
• Configuration
• Traffic promotion
• Commerce tools
• Support/community
• Conclusions and videos

Drupal had comparatively sedate beginnings. Built by developer Dries Buytaert, the project was open-sourced in 2001 and eventually gained a following of community members that has made Drupal one of the most successful open-source projects to date, with a large ecosystem of add-ons and commercial vendors.
Both Drupal and Joomla are designed to enable users to build websites with template-based management, and both let users plug in add-ons that provide highly dynamic features, such as e-commerce, blogging with comments or mapping. In fact, any Web app feature you might think of should be available with Drupal or Joomla add-ons.

Of the three, Joomla is the newcomer to the CMS scene, first released in 2005 as a fork from the earlier Mambo CMS, which was owned by vendor Miro International. The trouble between the projects began in early 2005, when Miro established a non-profit Mambo Foundation (good) that pretty much kept all control of Mambo in the hands of Miro (not so good). A few months of arguments over the exact nature of Miro's interpretation of free software principles eventually led to the split of what would become Joomla from Mambo and the beginning of a vibrant community-based CMS.


Like Joomla, WordPress also began as a forked project in 2003, gracefully leaving b2, its parent project. WordPress actually has two implementations, which can confuse newcomers to the software. WordPress.com is a free service (not unlike, say, Blogger) that allows anyone to create blogs using pre-built themes and tools. (WordPress.com, along with Blogger, Tumblr and Posterous, will be reviewed in an upcoming roundup.) The other, the open-source WordPress CMS software, is the technology I will examine in this article. Initially, my inclination was not to include WordPress in this review. Past experience indicated that WordPress, while gaining complexity and flexibility, was still not quite up to speed with Drupal and Joomla. But after re-examining the WordPress ecosystem and tools, I decided to include WordPress in this shootout of the Big Three open source CMS platforms.
So which CMS is right for you?
It's a difficult question to answer. Apples and oranges are both fruit, but it's hard to quantify one feature or another that makes either better. The same holds true for Joomla, Drupal and WordPress. It's easy for site creators to be passionate about one CMS or the other, but from the outside looking in, it really looks like an apple and oranges comparison.
In the past, I've helped build sites in all three CMSes and I have found good and not-so-good features in each one. To get a better idea of what's going on with these platforms, I used each CMS to build a simple business website for Happy Flights -- a company devoted (somewhat maniacally) to making people's flight experiences, well, happy -- complete with a blog, static pages, forums and a marketplace for goods to be sold. Along the way, I discovered some interesting things that challenged my preconceptions and gave me a clearer picture of the pros and cons of each CMS.
[ Read More ]

50 Microsoft Excell commands


1 CTRL+B Applies or removes bold formatting.
2 ALT+DOWN ARROW opens a selected drop-down list. 
3 ALT+ENTER starts a new line in the same cell. 
4 ALT+F1 creates a chart of the data in the current range. 
5 ALT+F11 opens the Visual Basic Editor, in which you can create a macro by
using Visual Basic for 
6 ALT+F8 displays the Macro dialog box to run, edit, or delete a macro. 
7 ALT+PAGE DOWN moves one screen to the right in a worksheet. 
8 ALT+PAGE UP moves one screen to the left in a worksheet.
9 ALT+SHIFT+F1 inserts a new worksheet. 
10 ALT+SHIFT+F10 displays the menu or message for a smart tag. If more than
one smart tag is present, it 
11 ALT+SHIFT+F11 opens the Microsoft Script Editor, where you can add text,
edit HTML tags, and modify any 
12 ALT+SPACEBAR displays the Control menu for the Excel window. 
13 Applications (VBA). 
14 ARROW KEYS Move one cell up, down, left, or right in a worksheet.
15 as the active cell. 
16 Available only after you cut or copied an object, text, or cell contents. 
17 BACKSPACE Deletes one character to the left in the Formula Bar. 
18 CTRL Alternates between displaying cell values and displaying formulas in
the worksheet. 
19 CTRL+ Apostrophe - Copies a formula from the cell above the active cell
into the cell or the Formula Bar. 
20 CTRL+- Displays the Delete dialog box to delete the selected cells. 
21 CTRL+ Quote -Copies the value from the cell above the active cell into the
cell or the Formula Bar. 
22 CTRL+ semicolon Enters the current date. 
23 CTRL+! Applies the Number format with two decimal places, thousands
separator, and minus sign (-) for 
24 CTRL+# Applies the Date format with the day, month, and year. 
25 CTRL+$ Applies the Currency format with two decimal places (negative
numbers in parentheses). 
26 CTRL+% Applies the Percentage format with no decimal places. 
27 CTRL+& Applies the outline border to the selected cells. 
28 CTRL+( Unhides any hidden rows within the selection. 
29 CTRL+) Unhides any hidden columns within the selection. 
30 CTRL+* Selects the current region around the active cell (the data area
enclosed by blank rows and blank columns). 
31 CTRL+: Enters the current time. 
32 CTRL+@ Applies the Time format with the hour and minute, and AM or PM. 
33 CTRL+^ Applies the Exponential number format with two decimal places. 
34 CTRL+_ Removes the outline border from the selected cells. 
35 CTRL+~ Applies the General number format. 
36 CTRL++ Displays the Insert dialog box to insert blank cells. 
37 CTRL+0 Hides the selected columns. 
38 CTRL+1 Displays the Format Cells dialog box. 
39 CTRL+2 Applies or removes bold formatting. 
40 CTRL+3 Applies or removes italic formatting. 
41 CTRL+4 Applies or removes underlining. 
42 CTRL+5 Applies or removes strikethrough.
43 CTRL+6 Alternates between hiding objects, displaying objects, and
displaying placeholders for objects. 
44 CTRL+7 Displays or hides the Standard toolbar. 
45 CTRL+8 Displays or hides the outline symbols. 
46 CTRL+9 Hides the selected rows. 
47 CTRL+A Selects the entire worksheet. With Data- CTRL+A Selects the entire
worksheet. 
48 CTRL+ALT+F9 calculates all worksheets in all open workbooks, regardless of
whether they have changed 
49 CTRL+ALT+SHIFT+F9 rechecks dependent formulas, and then calculates all
cells in all open workbooks, 
50 CTRL+ARROW KEY
moves to the edge of the current data region (data region: A
range of cells that contains 
 
[ Read More ]

How to Use JavaScript With ASP.NET


Because ASP.NET uses postback procedures when a user clicks a button, you can't simply insert Javascript functions into the web page's code. The Javascript must be declared in the code-behind in the application. Using C#, this example shows programmers how to create a confirmation window when users delete a record.

Instructions:
1) Create a button. A button is needed to link the Javascript code. The button is placed in between the page's form tags. For example, the code below places a new ASP button.

2)Insert the Javascript confirmation code in the Page_Load function. The Page_Load function is called at the beginning of every instance of the webpage. When the page is loaded in the user's browser, this function is called. Code that needs to be run during the web page's load process is placed in this function. Below is an example of Javascript loaded into the button created in Step 1. It creates a confirmation screen that verifies the user's deletion.
protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e){
btnDelete.Attributes.Add("onClick",
"return confirm('Do you want to delete this record?');");
}
3) Create Javascript functions. You may want to place a Javascript function on your page. In older web programming languages, the code is placed on the page and called when specified on the web page controls. However, with ASP.NET, the Javascript functions need to be registered before they will work. Here is an example of creating a Javascript function on an ASP.NET webpage.
using System.Text;
StringBuilder myString = new StringBuilder();
sb.Append("")
// Register the code with the ASP.NET page
Page.RegisterStartupScript("AlertScript", myString.ToString());
4) Test the code. Open the new webpage in your browser. If no syntax errors are present, the page will open and show a button with the text "Delete Record."
5)Click the new button. If the code was inserted properly, a confirmation screen should appear asking if you want to delete the record. If you hit "Cancel," it should cancel the operation. Clicking "OK" continues with the deletion process.





[ Read More ]

Impact of Technology on Education


Technology has certainly changed the way we live. It has impacted the different facets of life and redefined living. Undoubtedly, technology plays an important role in every sphere of life. Several mundane manual tasks can be automated, thanks to technology. Also, many of the complex and critical processes can be carried out with ease and efficiency with the help of modern technology. Thanks to the manifold positive effects of technology, the fields of education and industry have undergone a major change and sure, they have changed for the better.

Computers and the Internet technology have revolutionized the field of education. The importance of technology in schools cannot be ignored. In fact, with the onset of computers in education, it has become easier for the teachers to render knowledge and for the students to grasp it. The computer technology is used to add a fun-element to education. And it goes without saying that the Internet has endowed education with interactivity.

The computers offer an interactive audio-visual media. PowerPoint presentations and animation software can be used to render information to the students in an interactive manner. The visual effects provided by the animation and presentation software result in inviting greater interest from the students. Moreover, these softwares serve as visual aids to the teachers. Overhead projectors and screens facilitate a simultaneous viewing of information by a large number of students. These audio-visual teaching aids have brought about marked improvements in student attendance and attentiveness. Interactive media have proven to be useful in enhancing the concentration levels of students. This underlines the importance of computer teaching against textbooks.

The web is a huge information base. The Internet can be used an effective tool for acquiring knowledge. All a web user needs to do is to key in search queries to search engines, which are prompt to present him/her with millions of search results. There are several informative websites and web directories that offer information on a wide variety of subjects. Students can use the Internet to gain all additional information they need to enhance their knowledge base.

Today, computer education is a part of school and college curricula. Considering the wide range of applications of the computer technology, it is necessary for each one of us to befriend computers. Considering the advantages of the Internet technology, it is important for each of us to gain a basic knowledge of Internet access and connectivity. We live in a technology-age and hence, it is extremely important for us to introduce ourselves to the new inventions and discoveries that have made a difference to our daily life.

Online education and distance learning have given a new dimension to the field of education and higher learning. Today, students do not necessarily need to be physically present in classrooms. Many educational institutes offer online courses to their students. Most of the schools and colleges offer online assignment submission facilities. Students can submit their homework and test assignments through the Internet. Many universities offer online education programs wherein the students can interact with their teachers over the web, access reference material from the University website and earn degrees online!

The importance of science and technology in education cannot be stressed enough. The introduction of technology in the educational field has made the process of learning and knowledge sharing, an interactive and fun-filled activity. Technology is indeed one of God’s greatest gifts to mankind.
[ Read More ]

LAMP (Linux Apache MySQL PHP) Software Bundle for PHP Developers


Article providing information on Web application development with LAMP. LAMP is known as a software bundle useful to PHP developers in getting complex and performing web application development. Being a cost effective software bundle, LAMP has been used in more percentage worldwide then its competitor.
Current website development relies more on open source to handle forms and back end things. Whether it is an e commerce website or a portal, certain level of technical handling is there from server side. Certain redirection, conditional surfing based on ip address of client, privilege approving and database integration all are done by a software bundle named LAMP. LAMP is a short notation of individual software such as Linux (OS), Apache HTTP server, MySQL (DBMS) and of course PHP.

PHP has become one of widely used open source software product for developing hundreds of sites ranging from simple to complex one like WordPress. The P of LAMP may be sometimes replaced by another scripting language such as Perl or Python.

They four individual has got together to give the best performing web applications to PHP developers. Here are the benefits of MySQL and PHP explained further to get the idea why they’ve been together to deliver efficient web applications.

Benefits of MySQL:

Very low licensing cost
Low hardware consumption
Execute anything from data houses holding terabytes of data
Ultra-fast loading
Table and Index partitioning
Master/Slave replication with high speed reconfiguration utility
Multi-version Transaction support
Highly robust
Efficient query engine
Secure encryption decryption functions
Open source freedom

Benefits of PHP:

Easy to use
Simplified task handling in heavy traffic sites
Open source
Secure
Low cost
Being open source new functionality have been added consistently
Simple coding style
Highly functional to code simple to shopping cart projects

As LAMP meant to be run on Linux platform, this software bundle is more reliable and performance giving. When you are on Linux platform, you are sure for one thing that is less down time. Benefits of Linux platform add more things to the Benefits of PHP and MySQL.

Hence, we can conclude that a reliable platform (Linux), an easy to manage and highly functional server side scripting language (PHP) and a flexible & low cost DBMS can give the PHP developers the edge of development which helps them in complex website development.
[ Read More ]

Top 5 SEM Tips to Get More Online Sales This Holiday Season

Competition on the web is at its highest point ever. How can we make such a general statement, you ask? Have you seen how much you’re paying for keywords in your Google AdWords or Yahoo Search Marketing accounts? One area that isn’t necessarily hurt by the poor economy is online advertising spending. Since there are much better methods of measuring results nowadays, companies can afford to keep their budgets where they usually are because they’re better able to measure ROI (return on investment).

As such, following some critical search engine marketing (SEM) guidelines for your Ecommerce website can help you keep pace with your competitors this holiday season. Since for many websites, December is the most important month affecting the bottom line, it is more important than ever that you keep these techniques in mind when managing your website this month.


1. Establish Sales/Revenue Tracking
2. Expand Your Budget for Existing Paid Advertising Accounts
3. Branch Out Only to a Few New Advertising Venues
4. Email Blasts
5. Customize the Look and Feel of Your Site to Match the Holidays
1. Establish Sales/Revenue Tracking

It is absolutely critical that you measure where traffic, sales, and revenue originate from because you can then use that knowledge to make smart decisions when it comes time to allocate your budget. At this point in the year, we are hoping you spent the requisite amount of time instituting effective tracking either by way of Google Analytics or whatever web analytics package you might be using.

Here are the specific areas of tracking you need to be concerned with:
1. Pay Per Click (PPC) Conversion Codes
2. Goal Tracking
3. Ecommerce Revenue Tracking
4. Campaign Tracking


PPC Conversion codes are provided by the engines, Google AdWords, Yahoo Search Marketing and MSN AdCenter. Implementation is rather “tech-lite”—you don’t need programming knowledge to do this. Simply insert these codes on the order confirmation pages of your site so that they can be triggered when a sale occurs.

Goal Tracking simply refers to setting up Google Analytics to track the secondary metrics on the site. These would include newsletter signups, catalog requests, contact us forms submitted, etc. This implementation can actually occur within Google Analytics. No coding on your site is required. Similarly, other analytics packages (such as Omniture SiteCatalyst) have ways to track these metrics, although they may require some minor code adjustments on site.

Ecommerce Revenue Tracking is slightly more complicated to implement. It involves setting some variables that can be used to pass order data to the analytics program from your shopping cart. This is where you need your programmer or webmaster to step in. This step is especially important because you’ll want to know, at the end of a particular time period, where your revenue came from.

Campaign Tracking involves appending tracking codes to links you are promoting on other sites. These would include banner ads, text links, or other links that point back to your site. By appending these tracking codes, you can more accurately determine how much traffic and/or how many sales a particular referral source brought in to your site.
2. Expand Your Budget for Existing Paid Advertising Accounts

By this time, you must know what advertising sources are driving sales to your business. Or, even if you haven’t effectively implemented proper tracking, you might at least have some idea about what is and isn’t working. So, it is time to expand your budget on the existing sources. If tracking is properly installed, then it should be relatively simple to determine where to allocate the increased budget.

If your existing accounts are Google AdWords or Yahoo Search Marketing, for example, make sure to generate multiple ad variations so that you can test multiple messages. For example, if you’re running a free shipping offer, mention that in one ad variation, and exclude it from another. Then, over the course of a few days, you can see which one produces better, and if it makes sense to continue the free shipping offer.

So it’s OK to test different things in your existing paid advertising accounts.
3. Branch Out Only to a Few New Advertising Venues

We’re right smack in the middle of the online retail holiday season right now, so there’s no time to lose! There’s only money to lose. We recommend you do not expand to unknown, or previously untested advertising sources at this time. However, we do recommend you consider branching out to Google Product Search (also known as Google Base, or Froogle), as well as Yahoo Products. Google signup is free, while Yahoo charges by the click.

The latter 2 advertisers are called comparison shopping engines. Basically, you generate a feed (spreadsheet) of basic product information (product name, description, price, URL, etc.) and submit to these sites so you can then see your products listed alongside other vendors. You’ll quickly understand the importance of remaining price-competitive because very frequently your product listing could get completely lost amid the multitude of other listings on Google Product Search and Yahoo Products. This is why you should also keep your prices competitive and you should load up your product descriptions with keyword phrases that best describe the product. This will at least help improve the click through rate of your listings.

We don’t recommend expanding to brand new advertising venues right now simply because online “window shopping” is at its highest point in the year. Those other comparison shopping sites that charge you per click might prove expensive, yet unprofitable. Especially now, users are looking for the best bargains, so while you might see a spike in traffic, you won’t necessarily see a spike in sales. Increasing the budget to known advertising sources is the way to go here rather than trying new things. Wait till January for that.
4. Email Blasts

Sending out targeted email blasts to your existing customer base is probably something you, as an Ecommerce website owner, already do. As a consumer, as well, you know how many emails you get this time of year. But the truth is it’s OK to increase the frequency of email offers. Instead of one a month, you could double your output to twice a month, or even 4 times (once a week) per month. It is vital that you target the email offers to the time period of December during which you are sending the blast. In other words, at the beginning, you can play on the “fall” theme since technically we’re still in the fall season. However, by the 2nd and 3rd weeks of December, it’s time to migrate your messaging to winter, then holiday themes.

There’s nothing quite as unproductive as sending out a canned email blast. This may be an obvious point, but we challenge you to check your Yahoo or AOL email Spam folder to see how many of the emails are NOT tailored to the winter or holiday season.
5. Customize the Look and Feel of Your Site to Match the Holidays

Our final suggestion involves updating the look and feel of your website to match the season. This can range from subtle color changes highlighting blue and white, then red and green, to more extensive design enhancements such as updating your logo to include snowflakes. To emphasize this, just check out Amazon or eBay. Their changes are not-so-subtle. But this gives the user a comfortable feeling, like the site is up-to-date, not stale, and probably has good prices.

Competition online is high right now as retailers slash prices to adjust to the growing recession fears. As an online retailer, it is vital to make sure you’re accurately tracking sales and revenue data, and that you’re measuring the traffic each advertising source is bringing to your site. Additionally, you should consider expanding your budget on known advertising accounts—those producing sales and profitability—but you should consider waiting to try most new advertising sources because you’re likely to get many window-shoppers and few buyers. Conversely, new accounts with Google Product Search (Google Base) and Yahoo Products are acceptable places to expand your advertising reach because they are proven entities. Lastly, updating the look and feel of your website and email blasts to display the appropriate imagery of the winter/holiday season will help buyers feel more comfortable shopping on your site. And this could lead to more sales. Isn’t that the best gift you could get this holiday season?
[ Read More ]