Thursday, April 17, 2008

Improve Ranking with meta description

Improve Ranking with meta description


The quality of your snippet — the short text preview we display for each web result — can have a direct impact on the chances of your site being clicked (i.e. the amount of traffic Google sends your way). We use a number of strategies for selecting snippets, and you can control one of them by writing an informative meta description for each URL.
Why does Google care about meta descriptions?
We want snippets to accurately represent the web result. We frequently prefer to display meta descriptions of pages (when available) because it gives users a clear idea of the URL's content. This directs them to good results faster and reduces the click-and-backtrack behavior that frustrates visitors and inflates web traffic metrics. Keep in mind that meta descriptions comprised of long strings of keywords don't achieve this goal and are less likely to be displayed in place of a regular, non-meta description, snippet. And it's worth noting that while accurate meta descriptions can improve clickthrough, they won't affect your ranking within search results.

What are some good meta description strategies?
Differentiate the descriptions for different pages
Using identical or similar descriptions on every page of a site isn't very helpful when individual pages appear in the web results. In these cases we're less likely to display the boilerplate text. Create descriptions that accurately describe each specific page. Use site-level descriptions on the main home page or other aggregation pages, and consider using page-level descriptions everywhere else. You should obviously prioritize parts of your site if you don't have time to create a description for every single page; at the very least, create a description for the critical URLs like your homepage and popular pages.

Include clearly tagged facts in the description
The meta description doesn't just have to be in sentence format; it's also a great place to include structured data about the page. For example, news or blog postings can list the author, date of publication, or byline information. This can give potential visitors very relevant information that might not be displayed in the snippet otherwise. Similarly, product pages might have the key bits of information -- price, age, manufacturer -- scattered throughout a page, making it unlikely that a snippet will capture all of this information. Meta descriptions can bring all this data together. For example, consider the following meta description for the 7th Harry Potter Book, taken from a major product aggregator.
There are a number of reasons this meta description wouldn't work well as a snippet on our search results page:
  • The title of the book is complete duplication of information already in the page title.
  • Information within the description itself is duplicated (J. K. Rowling, Mary GrandPré are each listed twice).
  • None of the information in the description is clearly identified; who is Mary GrandPré?
  • The missing spacing and overuse of colons makes the description hard to read.
All of this means that the average person viewing a Google results page -- who might spend under a second scanning any given snippet -- is likely to skip this result. As an alternative, consider the meta description below.
What's changed? No duplication, more information, and everything is clearly tagged and separated. No real additional work is required to generate something of this quality: the price and length are the only new data, and they are already displayed on the site.
Programmatically generate descriptions
For some sites, like news media sources, generating an accurate and unique description for each page is easy: since each article is hand-written, it takes minimal effort to also add a one-sentence description. For larger database-driven sites, like product aggregators, hand-written descriptions are more difficult. In the latter case, though, programmatic generation of the descriptions can be appropriate and is encouraged -- just make sure that your descriptions are not "spammy." Good descriptions are human-readable and diverse, as we talked about in the first point above. The page-specific data we mentioned in the second point is a good candidate for programmatic generation.

Use quality descriptions
Finally, make sure your descriptions are... descriptive. It's easy to become lax on the quality of the meta descriptions, since they're not directly visible in the UI for your site's visitors. But meta descriptions might be displayed in Google search results -- if the description is high enough quality. A little extra work on your meta descriptions can go a long way towards showing a relevant snippet in search results. That's likely to improve the quality and quantity of your user traffic.
Posted by Maile Ohye on Google Webmasters Blog

Thursday, November 22, 2007

Project Management

I'm going completely in different direction from the last post but can't resist writing about the MOST essential thing in any Development field i.e. Managing a Project.

Managing a Project Includes:
1) Identifying Requirements
2) Establishing Clear and achievable Objective
3) Balancing the competing demands for quality, scope, time and cost
4) Adapting the specifications, plans and approach to different concerns and expectation of various stakeholders.

Project Managers often talk of a "triple Constraint" - Project Scope, Time and Cost - in managing competing Project requirements. Project Quality is affected by balancing these three factors. High Quality Project deliver the required product, service or result within scope, on time and within budget. The relationship between these factors is such that if any one of the three factor changes atleast one other factor is likely to be affective.

Project Management is accomplished through the application and integration of project management processes of Initiating, Planning, Executing, Monitoring and Controlling and Closing. Apart from 5 process groups, it has been organized into 9 knowledge areas as below:
1) Integration Management : describes the processes and activities that integrates the various elements of project management. It consists of Develop Project Charter, Preliminary scope statement, Project Management Plan, Manage Project Execution, Monitor and Control Project Work.
2) Scope Management : describes the processes involved in ascertaining that the project includes all the work required, to complete the project successfully. It consists of Scope Planning , Definition , Verification and Create Work Breakdown Structure.
3) Time Management : describes the processes concerning the timely completion. It consists of Activity Definition, Sequencing, Resource Estimating, Duration Estimating.
4) Cost Management : describes the processes involved in planning, estimating, budgeting and controlling costs so that the project is completed within approved budget.
5) Quality Management : describes the processes involved in assuring that the project will satisfy the objectives for which it was undertaken.
6) Human Resources Management : describes the processes that organizes and manages the project team. It consists of Human Resource Planning, acquire project team, Develop and Manage Project Team
7) Communication Management : describes the processes concerning the timely and appropriate generation, collection, and storage of project information. It consists of Communications planning, Information Distribution, Performance Reporting and Manage Stakeholders
8) Risk Management : describes the processes concerned with conducting risk management on a project. It consists of Risk Management Planning, Identification, Qualitative and Quantitative Risk Analysis and Risk Monitoring
9) Procure Management : describes the processes that purchase or acquire products, services or results as well as contract management processes

Friday, October 26, 2007

Web Development

Web Development Technologies

There are two types of Web Development Technologies.

1. Client-Side Technologies
2. Server-Side Technologies

Client-Side Technologies :

XHTML

XHTML is a markup language designed to structure information for presentation as web pages. We write all our XHTML by hand, ensuring that it is clean, valid and of the highest standard. This means that pages have fastest download times possible, are viewable on all browsers, are search engine friendly, and have maximum forward compatibility.

Cascading Style Sheets

Cascading Style Sheets control how web pages are displayed in the browser, and allow the separation of presentation from structure and content. CSS help ensure that web pages are presented in an accessible way to all visitors, over a wide range of media.

JavaScript

JavaScript is a lightweight scripting technology which is used alongside XHTML documents to make websites more interactive.

Server-Side Technologies :

PHP
PHP is a fast, server-side scripting language that is used to create interactive, dynamic web sites. It is particularly well-suited to integrating with a range of databases.

PHP offers several key advantages:
• Cross-platform operability
• Compatibility with a wide variety of databases
• Support for most current web servers
• Communicates with numerous network protocols
• Not limited to HTML output
• Strong text processing capabilities

JSP

Java Server Pages (JSP) is a technology that lets you mix regular static HTML with dynamically-generated HTML. Many Web pages that are built by CGI programs are mostly static, with the dynamic part limited to a few small locations. But most CGI variations, including servlets, make you generate the entire page via your program, even though most of it is always the same.

The advantages of JSP are twofold. First, the dynamic part is written in Java, not Visual Basic or other MS-specific language, so it is more powerful and easier to use. Second, it is portable to other operating systems and non-Microsoft Web servers.

ASP/ASP.NET

ASP.Net is development under the full control of Microsoft Technology Corporation.
ASP.net is the successor of Asp. Which is more powerful and advanced .It has large set of new controls and XML based components, and better user authentication. ASP.NET uses the new ADO.NET tools for database connection.

Ruby

Ruby is known as programmer’s friendly languages. Ruby is seen as a flexible language, since it allows its users to freely alter its parts. Essential parts of Ruby can be removed or redefined. Existing parts can be added upon. Ruby tries not to restrict the coder.

For example, addition is performed with the plus (+) operator. But, if you’d rather use the readable word plus, you could add such a method to Ruby’s built-in Numeric class.

CGI/Perl

Perl is a programming language that can handle input and output from a Web Server, usually through the Common Gateway Interface. It is most commonly used to process information through forms.

XML/XSL

XML is a software and hardware independent markup language designed for describing and transmitting information. It is set to become the most common tool for all data manipulation and data transmission. XSL is a language for defining, transforming and formatting XML documents.
MySQL

MySQL is a fast, open-source Relational Database Management System that uses the popular Structured Query Language (SQL). It is perfect for most websites that need database functionality, and works hand-in-hand with PHP.

PostgreSQL

PostgreSQL is a more sophisticated open-source Relational Database Management System. It is well-suited to sites that require robust database functionality, such as e-commerce sites.

Linux/Apache

Linux is a popular open-source operating system, and Apache is the most widely-used web server on the Internet. Together they provide a fast, extremely reliable, secure platform for web sites.

Window IIS

Internet Information Services (IIS) 6.0 is a powerful Web server that provides a highly reliable, manageable, and scalable Web application infrastructure for all versions of Windows Server 2003. IIS helps organizations increase Web site and application availability while lowering system administration costs. It is available with Windows Operating Systems.

SSL/Secure Servers

Unlike normal web servers, secure servers ensure that information exchanged between the visitor and the web site cannot be viewed by any third parties. A secure server is essential when handling confidential information, such as online credit card transactions or personal medical details. SSL, or Secure Socket Layer, is one method of exchanging data securely.

For more details, visit http://www.globalworldtech.com/services.html

Thursday, October 11, 2007

Web Development


Web development is a broad term for any activities related to developing a web site for the World Wide Web or an intranet. This can include e-commerce business development, web design, web content development, client/server-side coding, and web server configuration.

However, among web professionals, "web development" usually refers only to the non-design aspects of building web sites, e.g. writing markup and coding. Web development can range from developing the simplest static single page of plain text to the most complex web-based internet applications, electronic businesses, or social network services.

Information Processing Systems

Web technologies are used to produce not just simple personal or promotional Web sites containing informative, interesting, or entertaining material for public consumption. Rather, they are becoming important means for supporting the foundational "business processes" of modern organizations -- the underlying operational and management-support functions. The technical infrastructures for supporting these purposes are roughly classified into three types of Web-based systems, termed
  • intranets,
  • internets, and
  • extranets.

1) Intranet : Intranets are private, internal systems to help carry out the day-to-day information processing, management information, and work-flow activities of organizations. Web-based intranets service the standard internal business functions and in doing so impact basic organizational systems such as accounting and financial reporting systems, marketing and sales systems, purchasing and distribution systems, production systems, and human resource systems, among others. In time, Web-based intranets will become the primary technical means through which organizations function internally to carry out their business processes.

2) Internet : Internets are public information systems. They include public sites that provide news, information, and entertainment; electronic commerce sites to market and sell products and services; governmental sites to inform or service the general public; and educational sites to provide local and remote access to education and training. In all sectors of society, public internets are providing goods, services, and information to the public through the World Wide Web and its associated networks and services.

3) Extranet : Extranets are business-to-business (B2B) systems that manage electronic data interchange (EDI) between business enterprises. These systems facilitate the flow of information between organizations -- between a company and its suppliers and between the company and its distributors -- to help coordinate the sequence of purchasing, production, and distribution. Electronic data interchange helps eliminate the paper flow accompanying business transactions by using Web technologies to transfer electronic documents for processing between computers rather than between people. As Web-based systems, EDI applications eliminate the difficulties of communicating information among different hardware and software platforms with inherently different information formats and with different protocols for exchanging information.

For more detail, please visit http://www.globalworldtech.com

Thursday, October 4, 2007

Layout

Layout is the structure of given content for a web page. There are certain things a web designer needs to take into consideration while designing. That are

  1. Golden-point

  2. Balance- Symmetrical balance, Asymmetrical balance.

  3. Breathing Space.

1. Golden Point-
Is an object on which we are going to focus. When there are too many things in front of you to arrange, choose any one object in your design. That can be anything like.. logo, image, illustration, typography etc. towards which you want people get attracted and then arrange other objects which would complement your golden point.
Remember in any design Golden point or Focal point can be only one. You can not focus on objects more than one. That would confuse your audience.

Positioning the golden point :
Golden Point
Divide your design in 9 parts. Choose any one point shown in above diagram, to position your golden point.


2. Balance:
Symmetrical balance is achieved arranging objects of similar weight to both the sides of the design.
Asymmetrical balance is achieved arranging objects randomly in design considering their weightage.

3. Breathing space-
Breathing space is the most important aspect of any type of design. It is a spacing between any two objects. A design should not look too crowded. Complicated design will make your audience confused. They will get where to find what.
Though we always try to utilize maximum space of our design, every object should get some space to breath. So always try to make very neat and clean designs.

For more details, please visit http://www.globalworldtech.com/

Sunday, September 23, 2007

In our previous post we explained the areas of web designing. In this post we will elaborate one area that is color.

Color has different names like Shade, Tint, Hue and Chrome.

In olden days people used to make colors using natural elements and these colors were also limited. Now we have many different shades of a single color made by using chemicals and all.

There are two types of colors.
1) Pigment colors- colors that we use for painting on paper, canvas, fabric, glass etc. and for printing purpose.
2) Light colors- These colors come from the ray of light. These colors are invisible to human eye without any medium. ( we can see colors of light through spectrum)

Internet is an electronic media and the colors we see on the screen of our computer or television or mobile are light colors. Electronic media make light colors visible to human eye.

Let’s learn color theory.

Primary colors-
















Yellow- Red- Blue – Primary colors are basic colors, that are original colors and are not the mixture of any two colors.

Secondary colors-



Orange – Violet – Green – These are secondary colors and are the mixture of primary colors e.g.
Yellow + Red = Orange
Red + Blue = Violet
Blue + Yellow = Green

Color-Wheel


Color- wheel plays very important role in color theory. All the color theories are based on this color wheel.

Color schemes-
Color scheme is a combination of different colors.
Here are some color schemes created considering color wheel containing primary and secondary colors in color theory.

1) Mono chromatic color scheme- Mono means one. Color scheme which contains any single colors and it’s light and dark shades.
2) Achromatic color scheme- Achromatic means without colors. Black and white are not considered as colors in color theory. So black and white color scheme is called Achromatic color scheme.
3) Contrast or Opposite color scheme- This color scheme contains colors that are opposite to each other in color wheel. E.g. Red- Green
4) Analogous color scheme- This color scheme contains colors that neighbouring to each other. E.g Yellow- Orange

It is not like we have to follow these color schemes while designing. But if you are confused with colors or got stuck with any color issue, following these color schemes is the best solution. Alternatively, send us an email with your query.

For more details about us, please visit http://www.globalworldtech.com/

Friday, September 14, 2007

Website Design - Basic Fundamentals

What is a Website?
1) A Web site is a collection of information about a particular topic or subject. A Web page consists of information for which the Web site is developed.

2) Collection of HTML files that reside on a web server and present content and interactive interfaces to the end user in form of Web pages.

Designing of a website/web page starts with concept. But what exactly is concept?

Concept is an Idea, a visual approach through which we communicate with the people who visit our website. Concept is everything, Overall look, content and the structure of the website.

Concept is decided recognizing the Target-Audience. Target audience is the type of people who visit any particular website. e.g.:
  • Like if we are a software company, Our visitors would be our clients, any other software company or people willing to switch the job. So considering the above points and the interest of our visitors, we would design our website that would appeal to our target audience. The website should have very professional look, highlighting the services of our company, informative and providing the links considering their interests.

  • And if we are a brand of Clothing, our target audience would be people from fashion industry and mostly youngsters. So considering our target audience the look of our website MUST be very trendy, interactive, up-market and vibrant. The focus of the website should be products, their information and the price
That is how the concept of website depends on the subject.

After concept the second point that a web designer has to take into consideration is “colors”. Colors play an important role in any design. But use of colors in web industry is the matter of
  • trend, e.g. in the early stage of web designing, designers used to use light and soothing colors,

  • and subject of the website
Colors create the mood of the website. We all know the significance of colors and which color represents what, Following are the sets of the colors- most commonly used-
1) Corporate colors- Grey, black, sky blue, dark blue, light yellow.
2) Masculine colors- Blue, any shade of grey and black, white.
3) Feminine colors- Pink, Lavender, white.
4) Kiddy colors- Bright shade of any color.
5) Foody colors- Green- Yellow – Red.

Third area of web page designing is Layout.
Layout is the structure of the content on web page. Deciding layout is deciding the area of content. Remember the designing rules that we have been taught in college days?

Golden Point- It is the basic rule.

Even if you dont remember, Just take out pencil and paper and scribble out as many layouts as you can for your content and choose the one which is most attractive and applicable for your website.

For more details, please visit http://www.globalworldtech.com