Google - Part 3

The Ideal way: Migrating from Blogger to WordPress

Many people start the blog on a free blogging platform like blogger and WordPress. And after 6 months or 1 or 2 years time, if the person keeps on blogging, then he is almost certain to start feeling that he did a mistake! Mistake of starting the blog on a free blogging platform.

But do not think it as a mistake anymore. While starting a self hosted blog is a smart idea, but we know the fact that many blogs die within 1 to 6 months, so its good to start a blog on these blogging platform and invest some time to figure out whether blogging is for you or not. And it will be a good thing to learn the most basic things using those blogging platforms and then move or start a new self hosted blog.

Many people may advice to have a self hosted blog from day one, and we respect that idea too. If you can dedicate more time to learn and if you are commented enough for your blog and blogging, then either way you can start your blog.

Installing a self hosted WordPress is very easy and only takes minutes.

If you have a blog at blogger and want to transfer to your own self hosted WordPress blog, then here is a resource which will help you through the process.

For the text version of this tutorial you can follow this link labnol.org
And to be on safer side, do not forget to tell Google that you are moving your blog, at webmasters tool.

Google Confirms “Keywords meta tag not used in its web ranking” — What next ?

After a long time of discussion online and offline, finally Google came to the rescue and confirmed that Google does not use Keywords meta tag in web ranking.

Source: Webmasters Tool

What does this mean ?
Now you can stop worrying about the keywords that you insert in the meta tag. Stop worrying doesn’t actually mean, to stop using meta tags! To be in the safer side(as we don’t know how other search engines treat meta keywords), it doesn’t hurt at all to use proper meta keywords.
meta-tags-description
And Matt cuts has clearly indicated in the above video that meta description is still valid and Google considers it while showing the snippet of description, if its nicely/meaningfully done.

Avoid the Confusion
Do not confuse this with “using the proper keywords” in the article. Using keywords in the article will get you up in the search ranking(if done properly) — If not UP, your article will be shown for the keywords, that you are using in the article. But as always, play safe. Don’t try to inject irrelevant keywords into your article. This will do more harm then any help, in the future.
Do not believe in people who call you and tell that – they will get your website in the first place of Google search ranking. Many of these guys still think that Google use the keyword tags to assign ranking and that they can trick!

Whats your stand on meta keywords, meta description or meta tags in general ?

Does TRUST Play any Role in SEO ?

I don’t know, whether Trust is one of the factors in getting the results up in the Search Engine Results Page, but I certainly know that Trust will help you get more traffic even from Search Engines.

Benefits of building Trust
Building Trust helps in making people to act. The desired action might be:
1. To subscribe to your blog updates.
2. To subscribe to your News Letter.
3. To purchase your ebook or print book.
4. To make a sales (affiliate link or any other kind of sales).
5. To make them share the article link with their friends and family members.
6. To make them link to your article.
7. To make your brand name stick in their minds.
8. Build authority.
9. Show your passion.
10. Get their feedback and to get their opinion on any issues (make them comment on your blog and to learn from your visitors). Etc etc etc..

So with this Trust factor, you can build readership and you all probably know that, it brings in repeat visitors to our blog. Hence, increase in traffic.
But this Trust can boost Search Engine Traffic too. Its been working all these years, but most of us might not have noticed it. Here is how it works with me:
Google ranks websites based on its algorithm and no one outside Google probably know all about the algorithm.
Google is famous for its testing, like A/B split testing, change of background colour of Sponsored ads, change of width of Search result page and search box etc. And usually Google shares many of the test results with its users, in the form of reports.
And it is known to most of us that, the result shown in the first position of the result page gets more attention and click, than that present in 3rd, 4th, 5th and so on positions. And the results in the latter pages get least clicks.

But if you have seen a blog and Trust that blog, then you are more likely to click on it and go to that blog for information, then that ranking much higher.

Looking at the above image, you may be thinking Sony Ericsson is a bigger brand than fonearena. But if you have been reading fonearena for quite sometime, I bet you would click on it for reading the review before making a purchase.

So branding and Trust can increase the Search Engine visits too. You may be thinking it takes a lot of effort to get a small amount of traffic. Yes, it takes a lot of effort to build such Brand and Trust, but once done, you will get a lot of traffic. Its all about Trust, even if you are not a big brand yet, you can build the brand with the trust factor, which will have a long lasting effect on the minds of internet users.

Do you think, its late to join the bandwagon of building Trust? Might be a little late but better late than never 🙂

What You Need To Know | Matt Cutts WordCamp San Francisco 2009

This is a video + presentation from Matt Cutts at WordCamp San Francisco 2009.
Matt Cutts is the head of the webspam team at Google where he specializes in search engine optimization (SEO) issues.
Matt Cutts blog is a number one source for many webmasters and SEO guys. Hope

This is a video + presentation from Matt Cutts at WordCamp San Francisco 2009.

Matt Cutts is the head of the webspam team at Google where he specializes in search engine optimization (SEO) issues.
Video:

Please refresh and wait, until the video loads..
Presentation:

Matt Cutts blog is a number one source for many webmasters and SEO guys. Hope this video and presentation from Matt helps.

Source:Mutt Cutts blog

Moving Your Website and Worried About Google! ? – Don’t Worry

If you are moving your old website to a new domain or from blogger to your own domain name. Make sure you follow these steps.

It’s very simple. (This helps only for webmasters who have submitted their previous website to webmasters tool.)

1. Setup your new domain.
2. Apply 301 redirect(from your old site to the new one). 301 redirect tells search engines that, the site have moved permanently.
To make the 301 redirects you can refer Apache Tutorial, if you are using apache server. It would be a safe thing to contact your web host before making any changes to your htaccess file.

3. Add your new domain to the WEBMASTERS Tool. Verify it.
4. Now in webmasters tool, select the old website and see the details.
5. In the left-side side bar, click on the “Site Configuration” and in the sub menu, you can see a link “Change of Address“. Click on it.
6. From here, every thing is self explanatory. Make sure you have followed all the steps mentioned there.
7. Now click on the drop down menu, in “Tell us the URL of your new domain” and select the new domain name. If your new domain name does not appear here, then you have forgot to add your new domain to Webmasters tool. Just add it and verify and again do as directed above.

8. Keep checking for the data regarding your new website. You can submit sitemap of the new website and keep watching for the indexing of the content.

Microsoft’s Bing got blown away by Google’s Wave!

I read an interesting article at Techcrunch today, where they have explained the way Google cheered the developers group with the announcement of its 2 years project Google Wave, which excited developers more than Microsoft’s, not yet live, decision engine Bing!

You can watch the videos below to get the preview of Google’s Wave and Microsoft’s Brand New Decision Engine BING!

Microsoft’s Decision Engine BING! :

Microsoft trying to make fun of Google Search:(I feel its just fun!)

The next Big thing on the internet: Google’s Wave

Microsoft has been testing its new search engine with the code name called “Kumo“. Now this new name “Bing” seem to be better, short name which can be spelled by international audience. But the funny thing is, people in twitter and other places are calling BING as – “But It’s Not Google!”. Its funny, but remember its Microsoft, so it has the potential to do innovation(atleast to certain extent!). Lets wait and give it a try before trying to prejudice(Prejudice is Opinion Without Judgment!)

Google Wave is a open source project and developers are already submitting their info, inorder to get the invitation to start playing with the API. Its basically integration of almost all the web2.0 resources.
People can communicate and work together with richly formatted text, photos, videos, maps, and more over it has a real time communication channel(which can be turned off). And we can make our waves public or private. Public waves are crawl able by search engines.
Anyway, we will be waiting to test both these, different services and will share more things in the future. Mean while feel free to share your thoughts about “Google”, “Microsoft”, “BING” and “Wave”.

Google Chrome ads on TV: Google launches its 1st TV ad

Google trying all means to promote its browser, Chrome. Google had never advertised on traditional TV. response when it first launched. But as for today, there are only 1.4% of internet users using Chrome.
A couple of months ago, Google Japan team had produced a fun video to demonstrate how clean and simple Google Chrome user interface is. This video went viral in the blogoshere/and internet as a whole, by seeing this positive response, Google has decided to make the video reach more people.

we talked to our Google TV Ads team to see how we could show the video that our Japan team developed to a wider audience in a measurable way. Using some of the results from our placement-targeted ads on the Google Content Network, we designed a Google TV Ads campaign which we hope will raise awareness of our browser, and also help us better understand how television can supplement our other online media campaigns.
So today, we’re pleased to announce that we’re using Google TV Ads to run our Chrome ad on various television networks starting this weekend. We’re excited to see how this test goes and what impact television might have on creating more awareness of Google Chrome.
Source: GoogleBlog

Google Bus on Indian Roads [Bangalore]

Google announced the launch of Internet Bus Project[on February 3, 2009] – a mobile bus designed to showcase the benefits of Internet to the people across the cities of Tamil Nadu[A state in India].
Google_bus_India

This project was limited to Tamil Nadu and Google had promised to visit other areas, if they get a good response to the program. Now as we had guessed, Google Bus will be seen on Bangalore roads(Karnataka).

Featured Internet Bus Video:-

Internet For Communication:-

Internet For Information:-

Internet For Education:-

Here is the list of places and schedule for the Google Bus:-
04 May Kolar
06 May Mandya
08 May Mysore
13 May Bengaluru
14 May Hassan
17 May Arsikere
18 May Shimoga
21 May Bhadravati
24 May Chikmanglur
27 May Tumkur
30 May Chitradurga
02 Jun Davangere
06 Jun Hubli-Dharwad
11 Jun Belgaum
15 Jun Gadag
18 Jun Hospet

To know more about the Google program, read our previous article @ Google Bus on Indian Roads. You can also look at more pictures on that earlier post.

Next stop for the Internet Bus
Bengaluru (Bangalore). Arriving on 13 May for 1 days.

If you are staying in any of these places, then consider visiting the bus. Do not wait for the bus to visit you 🙂

And if you are one of them to visit the bus, then please share your thoughts about the Google Bus program with our readers.