Saturday, February 25, 2006

SEM Times (Issue 8): What is Blogging?

Dear Reader,

Blogging came first into existence in mid 1990’s.

The term blog is a shortened form of weblog or web log. Authoring a blog, maintaining a blog or adding an article to an existing blog is called "blogging". Individual articles on a blog are called "blog posts," "posts" or "entries". A person who posts these entries is called a "blogger".

Blogs are updated regularly, usually on a daily basis. Blogs, in some cases, are used as daily diaries about personal lives of people, group or communities.

Blogging is considered as next revolution on Internet. Blogging enables people to publish content without requiring technical knowledge as in case of a normal website. The ease and speed to publish and distribute new content is what makes blogging so popular.

The phenomenon of blogging is today used not only by individuals but organizations are also using the power of blogging.

If you want to be part of this revolution, you can visit the below sites:

1. http://www.blogger.com
2. http://www.wordpress.com

Happy Blogging!
SEM Times

Monday, February 13, 2006

SEM Times (Issue 7): SEO Basic Principle

Dear SEM Times Reader,

Now, we have learnt SEO, its time to understand the basic principle of SEO. In other words, "what is the fundamental reason for one site ranked higher than other site?" To understand it, let me give you a real life analogy.

How do you decide the movie to watch or book to buy? Fundamentally, we take such decisions based on the recommendation of others. You decide to go for a particular when a friend, family member or someone else known to you recommends the same. So, your decisions are based on the number of people recommend. Not only, has it depended upon the number of recommendations but also on the quality of recommendation. For e.g. if you best friend recommends a movie then you are more likely to go for such movie then if 5 distant friends of yours recommend the same.

Same principle applies to SEO. But, what is recommendation in the context of websites?

Yes, you've guessed it right! It is the "links to your site from other sites". So, based on the number of links and also the quality of links (i.e. how authoritative those sites are), one site stands to rank better than other. Of course, other factors (like on page optimization) matter but "links from other sites" is the most important factor.

To find the number of links to the home page of your site (on Google), type the following in Google Search Box:
link: http://www.yourdomain.com

For e.g. 'link:http://www.amazon.com' gives 2,610,000 links on Google.

I hope this has been valuable to you. As always, your inputs are highly valuable.

Happy Learning!
SEM Times