Amit Nyamtabad | Blog on SEO, Technology and Blogging

Official Google’s SEO Starters Guide

Amit — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 13:37:51 +0000

It’s a great move by Google to finally release an SEO starter’s guide for webmasters on how you can improve your search engine rankings on Google and better indexing of your site and can be downloaded directly from here. I must say that this SEO Guide is not for the absolute newbie to SEO but will be a nice refresher even for SEO experts.

I have been through the SEO guide and it covers common areas like description meta tags, URL structure, site navigation, content creation, anchor text, and more that needs some tweaking.

This is taken from the original blog post itself and we have to agree with it.

So, the next time we get the question, “I’m new to SEO, how do I improve my site?”, we can say, “Well, here’s a list of best practices that we use inside Google that you might want to check out.”

Post your comments what do you think about the Official Google’s SEO Guide.

Google Chrome’s Market share not looking good

Amit — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 05:10:01 +0000

Google’s open source browser, Chrome which was released a month back is showing a declining trend in the userbase according to tracking service Net Applications. Google Chrome market share was at a peak when the browser was at it’s peak at 1.16% on September 4 and now after a month Chrome’s market share seems to be stabilized at 0.7% after initial download rush from Google lovers.

Google Chrome’s forte is faster javascript execution, tabs isolation and it’s minimalistic approach for a browser.

Also there have been speculations about how Chrome will handles privacy and the ownership of content.

It is also true that this is too eraly to decide on the market share as we have only a month’s data for analysis. Most firefox users are not willing to migrate to Google Chrome until Chrome starts supporting all the plugins and extensions that Firefox has to offer.

How to track keywords trends and conversations on Twitter

Amit — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 09:27:39 +0000

Have you ever thought of what people are talking about you or your brand on Twitter or finding popular trends on Twitter which can be invaluable. There is a lot of fun tracking the hottest trends and convesations on Twitter along with Google Trends or explore some more advanced features with Google Insights.

How to track Keywords and conversations with Twitter ?

There are a lot of ways to track conversations, trends and what people are talking about with websites listed below

1. TwitScoop: TwitScoop tracks the most popular keywords on twitter and also has a search feature. It also displays the latest tweets for that term. You also get a graphical representation of the rise and the fall in the trends for that particular keyword versus time.

2. TweetScan: TweetScan is also a cool tool which displays all the recent conversations for the particular key-phrase.

3. Twitter100: Twitter100 is for tracking conversations when you have a lot of followers and displays their tweets all in one page for your 100 followers also comes in with a refresh rate of 3 mins.

4. Quotably: Quotably is my favorite tool to follow/reply to all the conversations and trust me it is better than desktop clients like TweetDeck and twhirl.

I also recommend that you check twitag which is a #tag finder for twitter and TwitterTroll which happens to be a real time twitter search engine.

Please let me know If I have missed any listing any other tools and share them in your comments.

Discover how more than 100K people blog with Iphone

Amit — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 09:41:10 +0000

Last month to be exact 102,208 people worldwide have installed the Wordpress for iPhone application to simplify blogging on the iPhone. We understand that replying to emails and sending text messages is fine on Iphone but writing a complete blog post on Iphone with images can be very tough and time consuming.

It can debated that whether 102K bloggers have actually installed the application on their iphone as these numbers comes from Apple and does not include the upgrade from v1.0 to v1.1. You can download v1.1 of Wordpress for Iphone application and also track v 1.2 which will be available for downloads in the next few weeks via iphone.trac.wordpress.org.

What is really refreshing is that bloggers are looking iphone as a complete computing platform for blogging also and not just a phone.

Also a small update : I am sure that you will be intrested in WPtouch – Wordpress on Iphone. It’s a complimentary theme installed as a plugin on your WordPress blog or website that will format your content with this Apple-inspired, full-featured theme when your visitors are using an iPhone or iPod touch.

Please share your comments on how do you blog on iPhone.

7 Creative ways to use wordpress

Amit — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 07:42:28 +0000

Wordpress is obviously the most popular open source, powerful (in terms of on-page SEO, plugins, themes and the wide range of options) and secure blogging platform with updates almost every month now.

This blog post how you can extend the capabilities of wordpress blogging platform rather than using it simply as a blog. At the time of this writing WordPress blogs power 0.8% of the web..

1. Twitter Clone: MicroBlogging is really taking off with almost every one posting on twitter with the 140 characters tweet limit. So If you want to try something similar to twitter on wordpress you can check the twitter wordpress clone demo and you can download the twitter theme from here and since the theme comes with Gravatar and RSS support you will definitely enjoy your twittering activity.

2. Wordpress as CMS: The second most popular usage of WordPress after blogging is using WordPress as a full-featured CMS. Web designers, Internet marketers and small business owners regularly use WordPress as a content management system (CMS) and use the static pages feature to build and publish their content online. Here are examples of 10 popular sites using wordpress as a CMS.

3. Video Trailer site: Wordpress can be effectively tweaked with Video Flick wordpress theme to be a fully featured video trailer site with use of Ajax.

4. Article Directory: Wordpres can also be used as an article directory with the wordpress article directory plugin and you can have the demo here. The same theme can also be extended to a press release site.

5. Review Sites: We all know review style always have better conversions and are loved by affiliate marketers. Dan Grossman has come with a nice review plugin for wordpress which a lot of features (priced at $97.00 for single site licence)

6. CSS showcase gallery: You can also create your own CSS gallery with free CSS gallery wordpress theme by Shabu or take a look at premium option at Gabfire gallery theme and with so many gorgeous wordpress CSS galeries online you will never run out of ideas.

7. PopURLs Clone: PopURLs displays latest content from popular websites like Digg, Propeller, flickr etc and also offer customization of content that is displayed on homepage. SimplePie and One news theme are really cool plugins to clone PopURLs on the wordpress platform.

Now I have included some of the popular options like using wordpress as a magazine based style, photo blog, video blog, web chat system and also wordpress resume site or even a portfolio site.

Please share your ideas in the comments and also subscribe to our RSS feed.

Fun with Google 2001 Search Index

Amit — Sun, 05 Oct 2008 09:39:20 +0000

Google has come with their vintage Google’s 2001 search index as part of their 10th Google’s birthday celebrations with the index size of 1.3 million URL’s in 2001.

Google came out with a post on how to use their old archive, The fun really starts when you try some of really popular search queries on the older archive. The following list will make you happy

1. Firefox : The world’s most popular term did not existed back in 2001.

2. Youtube : Youtube was unknown to Google back in 2001.

3. buy links : The #1 ranking site for the term buy links is some Vaccum tubes selling site and I am sure Matt Cutts would be have really enjoyed it.

4. Matt Cutts : It does not point to mattcutts.com. I am sure that Matt Cutts joined Google some time later.

5. Ipod : Ipod was unknown as music player

Do let me know If you come up with more cool search queries with the 2001 Google index. I hope they keep up the old index for some more time as it is lot of fun.

Google SMS channels to keep you updated in India

Amit — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 19:58:54 +0000

Google Labs India

So Google Labs India has done a great job in terms of creativity to come with a new application Google SMS channels to keep you updated on wide variety of topics ranging from Business, Entertainment, Jobs to Technology via SMS.

So the first step that you need to do is to select a nickname and enter your mobile number so that the verification code can be sent you to your mobile phone which you need to enter on the Google SMS Channels page.

Update: I am on Vodafone A.P mobile network and got their SMS in 5 seconds and registration process was real fast and easy. Once you are registered you can signup to get updated on channels (topics) that intrest you.

I am a tech lover so in no time I subscribed to GoogleNews Technology and Digital Inspiration channels. You can learn more on Google SMS channels with their large FAQ section or you can create your own channel and provide updates made on your blog or website.

I also strongly suggest you to visit Google Labs page to brows through more cool applications, guys at Google love to create.

Trackback Spam on Official Google Blog

Amit — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 07:12:14 +0000

I was just ready to make a blog post on Google moderator launched by Google some days back which is really a nice concept on voting for your favorite questions. Until I had a look at the trackbacks that Google approved on their Google Moderator Launch post. Even though all the trackbacks are written on the page using a javascript function and does not carry an link juice or backlink benefits, but still a nice traffic resource for these traffic sites.

Here is a screenshot of the spammy trackbacks on the page I am talking about.

We all understand that trackback spam has evolved over the years with many BlackHat tools and scripts. But I think Google must have some kind of approval system to filter out of all these spammy trackbacks before they go live on their blog.

Looking forward to your comments.