Metrics That Matter For SEO And Quality Web Presence

Author : Bharati Ahuja

Image by Intersection Consulting via Flickr

Internet + Search + Social Media = The Biggest Shift Since The Industrial Revolution 

The internet has changed the way we think and execute our professional and personal interactions and activities. It has touched the lives of all age groups in accordance to their need and requirement.

Moreover, its high time we accept it whole heartedly with full positivity as the internet and its technologies are here to stay and have already got woven as a part of the DNA of our day to day lives. Whether you are a grandchild , parent or a grandparent everyone is using the internet in some way or the other.

From the business perspective the internet is the lifeline of every office. All the activities come to a stand still if the broadband or wifi is down for some time as the office just cannot function if the data packets are not flowing to and fro through the router.

From the marketing perspective too, the focus is on search marketing and bringing people to your website and having a web presence on the online platforms where the netizens are available in numbers.

Optimizing a site for search engines is a must for the search engine presence . Majority of your targeted visitors reach your site via search engines hence ranking high for targeted keywords is important. For that it is highly essential to have the on-page optimization as per the norms of the search engines of course, but it is all the more important to have an over all quality web presence on the web to retain your position on the SERPs.

Having a good quality website with great content is laying the foundation stone for your web presence but it does not end there . The edifice of your web presence will get structured only when you have a presence on all the search options and social media. This web presence will get solidarity and brand recognition the following metrics in the formulae are put into practice with proper planning and expertise.

SEO + Social Media + Blogging + Discussions = Quality Web Presence Which Future Proofs Your Search Engine Presence. 

Good UX (User Experience) + Trust Factor + Social Factor + Domain Authority = Factors Affecting SERPs , CTR , CR and ROI 

If we dissect the formulae you can see that each and every metric is inter-related to each other.

                                                             

Good User Experience depends on  design, functionality and download speed of the website 

If the website is ranking high for targeted keywords on the search engine options and has a good UX then the probability of a high CTR (Click Thru Rate), More Time on Site and a low bounce rate increases 

A good social media presence and discussions which prove your expertise in your niche industry boost your social factor and trust factor

A good SEO campaign works on all these factors and as the internet is a network of networks, all these factors are also inter-woven with each other and the improvement in one metric ensures improvement in another. No factor can be considered in isolation and then worked upon or focused upon. Every website is unique and which factor needs to be given priority in the campaign will depend on how well your SEO does the SEO audit before he/she starts working on it.

As you can see that all this can be achieved only through team effort. It is not only your SEO who is responsible for the success of your online marketing campaign but all the members of your web development , marketing and management teams are also responsible as many times your SEO company cannot achieve the set targets without their cooperation and understanding.

Online Marketing Is About Being Found Where The People Are Searching For You

Author : Bharati Ahuja

Image by Getty Images via @daylife

Every marketing activity revolves around people . Hence it is essential to focus all marketing activities where the targeted crowd is found. The traditional marketing methods made the  marketing activities reach out to people via magazine Ads., Newspaper Ads, TV Ads, hoardings, signboards, etc. Now for online marketing it is important to be present where the people are reaching out to find for information related to products and services. Hence having a quality overall web presence is the key to get found when people surf and search for what they are finding on the web.

Hence, the term Inbound Marketing which has become synonymous to Hubspot  (http://www.hubspot.com/) is an apt term for web marketing mainly focused on search and social media marketing.

The key mantra for online marketing is “Be Found Where The People Are Searching For You” The following presentation by Hubspot explains this point very effectively:

HOW TO BE THE AWESOMEST MARKETER EVER!

View more presentations from HubSpot Internet Marketing

The Internet , Search and Social Media Have Become An Integral Part Of Our Lives

Author : Bharati Ahuja

Recently I read some very good posts which discussed about how internet, search and social media have become a part of the DNA of how we execute our professional and personal interactions and activities.

Image via Wikipedia

Vivek Wadhwa wrote on whether Social Media was the start or an end of a golden age http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/may2011/tc20110524_792362.htm 

Rand Fishkin of SEOmoz discussed on whether a company needs “Social Media Experts” on http://www.seomoz.org/blog/everyone-should-hire-social-media-experts 



I have written in one of my blog posts published in August 2010 http://blog.webpro.in/2010/08/is-social-media-new-marketing-mantra-or.html that the merging of the real world and the virtual world is a constant evolution happening right from the day people started using the internet. Some time back email management was a task which needed training and setups at the offices in the corporate world. Today majority of these corporate people who may not be tech savvy flash a smart phone with ease for receiving and sending emails.

Social interaction is nothing new, since ancient times humans have been interacting. Every one must have read the sentence which is usually the first sentence uttered in any lecture on Sociology, Psychology, History or Moral Science - ‘Man Is A Social Animal’.

So the urge to communicate, connect, interact, share is very basic, normal and at the core of human psychology only it is the medium which varies from time to time.

Hence online social media is the new way people want to connect personally or professionally.

The urge for searching (For Knowledge or in primitive times for food) and being social are the most intrinsic parts of human personality so that has not changed it is only the way we are executing these activities has changed as we have woven internet technologies with it which is making it look different.

Its high time we accept this technology in our lives rather than running away from it. The real world is getting reflected on the virtual world and whoever is breathing on earth today has an online presence and you can reach out to him/her . Search engines and social media have a reach with a multiplier effect which makes the world appear small but the basic things remain the same.

The goals and principles of traditional methods of marketing and online marketing methods are the same but the way we achieve them is different in a traditional marketing team we have sales people, advertising people, customer support, etc. and now we need SEOs, social media experts, web administrators,etc. The end is not different we still calculate profits with the same mathematical formula but the data sources are different.

Children are still getting education but have access to more reading material at the click of the mouse and can interact more with their friends and discuss to learn more with more speed and efficiency.

Hence internet and internet technologies are tools which increase efficiency and help us to reach out to more. Whether we use it for our benefit and convert it into a bane or boon for us depends on the user ‘s choice. The technology is not right or wrong the way we use it makes it right or wrong.

The internet, search engines, social media, etc. are surely a start of a golden age and we need more and more search and social media experts who with time are surely going to emerge as an offshoot of the massive usage of the net as they all are busy gaining experience as of know. As you can call yourself an expert only if your knowledge is backed by the valuable experience.

Yes, positive acceptance of this evolution in the way we execute tasks and achieve success is the only way to go ahead .

Content Explosion And Content Curation

Author : Bharati Ahuja

Image via Wikipedia

We all know that there is a content explosion on the web. Everyone can publish content on the web today, search engines reward fresh and quality content but as a SEO strategy every Tom, Dick and Harry is adding content to their blog, website, posting comments and getting involved in discussions.

Some do this with a focus on quality information and knowledge which is the main purpose but sometimes content is just added for the sake of getting SEO benefit i.e only for spiders not for users. That is where the problem of junk content arises.

Due to this content explosion we see search engines also tightenting their noose on quality standards for content and we have the Panda updates. This cat and mouse chase will be an ongoing process, as the content and websites go on mushrooming on the web.

So, where does the searcher get relevant, quality search results for what he is finding on the web. He does not have the time nor the inclination to search and then validate the results and then go to social media to get the assurance for the WOM regarding that site or blog . He wants quick answers for that he needs to have an in-house team to do all this search and refined search exercise for him or better than that he finds a site which curates content related to his search requirement.

Content curation is about finding the most relevant content about a topic online and listing all the relevant links found on that topic after a thorough research on the web. Now the reliability and the quality of links will depend on the knowledge and sensibilities of the curator. But once people find his findings to be valuable and worth a read I am sure the blog, website or any other platform he uses to share that set of links will be surely be regularly read and followed. So, content curators are basically people who do the search activity for you and present the results in the form of ‘Ready To Eat’ food packages or like instant coffee.

Content curation infact gives good quality inbound links to the content pages that have been curated. I say good quality links as the curator has found these links to be useful and informative and hence they have been listed by the curator for that topic or relevant search. Hence, in a way these sites help the search industry as a whole the searchers and the search engines.

You never know content curator site signals could be incorporated the ranking factors of the search engines for quality and relevance just as social media signals are incorporated for popularity and WOM.

Hence again we come back to square one where content is important and again the uncrowned king. As only when you have quality content there will be a possibility of someone curating it for sharing it and making it available in the ready to serve search page for the users.

Hence, instead of having 10 posts of nonsensical information and content just for the sake of having content have one post but which will add some value and give information and knowledge to the reader and which will have the possibility of getting curated on the curation sites adding value back to your domain authority.

Why Is Your Klout Score Important ?

Author : Bharati Ahuja

Klout.com started in 2009 with 2 people in the company and now they have 34 people in their team who are mainly engineers.

Klout measures how influential you are on social media on Twitter, Facebook and Linkedin . HR people and other industries do consider Klout score as a standard for measuring the influence of a person.

The Klout Score is the measurement of your overall online influence. The scores range from 0 to 100 with higher scores representing a wider and stronger sphere of influence. Klout uses over 25 variables to measure True Reach, Amplification Probability, and Network Score. According to Klout influence is the ability to drive people to action -- "action" might be defined as a reply, a retweet or clicking on a link. We perform significant testing to ensure that the average click-through rate on links shared is highly correlated with a person's Klout Score.

Read Related Article Here: http://blog.webpro.in/2010/09/why-is-it-important-to-measure-your.html

The State Of Sharing Content Then And Now And The Importance Of Social Media – A Real Life Example

Author : Bharati Ahuja

Image via Wikipedia

When I read posts like these http://mashable.com/2011/05/18/social-good-ecosystem-infographic/ , I am reminded of one of the incidents which took place during our online journey in around 2003 – 2004. I had come across an article on ‘SEO And Web Design’ in a newsletter which I had subscribed for .

The article was so well written that I wanted to share it with every visitor who came to our site www.webpro.in but as in those days Twitter , Facebook or such social media platforms were not the norm for sharing information, so I had created a new page for that content and copy pasted the article on that page and gave due credit to the newsletter and a link on that page specifying that the source of this content was from this newsletter with their logo on it.

I thought I had done due justice to the source from where I have got the content and the visitors on our site shall get the benefit of the knowledge and information. Little did I know that the newsletter people had copied content from some website and emailed it to its subscriber list without mentioning the site.

As the web page we created with this content was optimized it started ranking on page 1 for the keyword ‘ SEO Web Design’ pushing the original content page from where the newsletter company had copied it to a few positions lower.

The very next day I got an email from that company accusing me of copying content and was told to delete that page and remove it from the index and also not to use that URL and if I refused to do it their lawyer would speak to me.

I had to clarify the whole thing and forwarded them the email in which we had received the content in the newsletter (Luckily I had saved that email) . Hence , I told them that I don’t mind removing that content from the URL but I shall retain the URL and if at all they wanted to take legal action they should sue the newsletter company and not WebPro Technologies. I still retain that URL ofcourse http://webpro.in/seo-web-design.htm with original content written by me at that time with my name and company name mentioned on it.

Sharing content was not one of the methods used for internet marketing in early 2000, the web has come a long way and because of people becoming more social on the internet and more open to share information with better methods of sharing links instead of direct content the world is truly becoming a global village.

The article on http://mashable.com/2011/05/18/social-good-ecosystem-infographic/ also specifies how sharing can help to promote ideas and influence people for social good. We also then had the good intention of spreading the true meaning of SEO but the adequate platforms for sharing with exponential reach were not available. Now with Twitter and Facebook we have that power of reaching out with righteous means and with due acceptance of the content owner directly from the site with a like button or a tweet button without getting information via newletters.

Thus, social media being integrated with search has a much larger connotation than just getting high rankings.

Since Social media has been integrated by search and real time search is where people go if they want to know what people are saying about a certain topic as of now, SEO and social media have to be used in conjunction by all the companies for a long term qualitative online presence for their business. Both these sources bring in qualitative, targeted inbound traffic which is the main purpose of online marketing.
And yes, Sharing is Caring.

Google Introduces A Special Search Blog And A New Preview Tool In Webmaster Tools

A Special Search Blog By Google:

Google today announced an official search blog http://insidesearch.blogspot.com/ . Google says that search is as old as humanity and they keep on upgrading their search algorithms for quality search results.

 This blog ‘Inside Search’ will be focused on search and Google will be sharing regular updates on our algorithms and features, as well as stories from the people who work to improve Google every day. According to Google this blog is a place where you can find regular updates on the intricacies of search and our team. We have more engineers working on search than any other product, and each one of us has stories to tell.

A glimpse inside the weekly search "quality launches" meeting

You can find the total list of Google Blogs on their blog directory link here:
http://www.google.com/intl/en/press/blog-directory.html#tab0

A blog focused on search is good news for all involved with search marketing and the search industry as such. As an SEO I think this is an indication of further importance being given to organic search by Google. Search has been as old as humanity and SEO is as old as search engines and as search will continue till there is existence of humankind , SEO will live as long as there are search engines. A special blog for Search is one more step ahead to prove this and facilitate this.

Google Adds The Option of Instant Preview Under Labs in Webmaster Tools

Image via CrunchBase

For example as below:

When the search results are displayed the search listing has a magnifying glass icon on the RHS which when clicked shows the preview of the site as below:

Once you’ve enabled Instant Preview mode, you can also use your arrow key to move down through the other results. As you select one, it will be highlighted with a blue background. The preview will change to show the highlighted page:

You can go to http://www.google.com/landing/instantpreviews/#a and try it now.

Once you’ve enabled Instant Preview mode, you can also use your arrow key to move down through the other results.

Instant Previews are page snapshots that are displayed in search results. In general, Google generates these preview images at crawl time. If the Instant Preview looks different from what users see, it could indicate Google is having difficulty crawling your page.

Bing Incorporates Facebook Data Into Search Results - Tapping The Collective IQ Of The Web

Image by Cristiano Betta via Flickr

Search + Social Media = Search , Discuss & Decide

Bing says that they know that decision matter and they just made search more social by incorporating the Facebook data in search results. Bing will now pull Facebook likes—from news, celebs, and movies to bands, brands, and burgers to inform you about the opinions of the people whom you are connected to so that it helps you to decide i.e Bing & Decide.



Search, shortlist products and websites, see what your friends have to say about it and then decide. If you have activated Facebook results, you will see which pages, products and websites your friends like and recommend. Its like bringing the IQ of the web to you so that you can decide.

View the video released by Bing in this regard.



Bing had made a similar announcement on their official blog in October last year

http://www.bing.com/community/site_blogs/b/search/archive/2010/10/13/bing-gets-more-social-with-facebook.aspx

Google too has been working on the social signals for search and had made a similar announcement on 17/02/2011 on their official blog

http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/02/update-to-google-social-search.html

View Google's stand on the Search And Social Integration



As you can clearly see that Bing is incorporating the Facebook ‘Likes’ and Google is focusing on Twitter for the social media integration, the presence on Twitter and Facebook both are equally important .

SEMPO reports a decline of SEO spending in 2011 but an increase in social media spending in 2011. This is in future is going t have a very positive aspect to SEO as the Social Media spending are actually supplementing search only.

Now SEO companies have to educate their clients on how to use social media effectively in addition to educating them about how search works and the importance of quality web presence.

An article based on the SEMPO study can be read on:

http://www.searchenginejournal.com/sempo-decline-in-seo-spendings-2011-good-news-for-seos/29817/

SEO Is Much Beyond SERPs But The Importance Of SERPs Cannot Be Ruled Out - Old Wine In A New Bottle.

Author : Bharati Ahuja

SEO has evolved and it has come a long way since the Search Engine Submission times of the last decade. Search Engine Algorithms too have evolved become more intelligent, robust and sophisticated to penalize low quality content and reward overall high quality websites.

Hence, securing high rankings in SERPs is more challenging and requires an in-depth knowledge of the working of the web and also a lot of co-operation from the website owner to develop an online brand, have a good word and world of mouth on social media for the brand and create positive and quality footprints on the web to ensure and future-proof the search engine presence.

The SEO blogosphere today focuses on quality web presence and SERPs as a performance parameter is losing the focus but that is very misleading which in the long run can again tarnish the reputation of the SEO Industry further from a different perspective.

With the quality evolution of the search engine algorithms the approach and methodology of achieving high rankings has changed but ranking high has always been important as only when you rank high your website can get the targeted search traffic which is the major marketing goal of the online marketing campaigns.

High Rankings lead to a high CTR (Click Thru Rate) which leads to increased traffic with a potential for good conversions.

Hence, SEO is beyond rankings does not mean that high SERPs are no longer a long term goal of an SEO campaign but it means that the website has to reach out and branch out and gain quality web presence before it is ensured of a good high ranking search presence.

This is proved from the following study :

The detailed article can be read on

http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2049695/Top-Google-Result-Gets-36.4-of-Clicks-Study and

http://dejanseo.com.au/position-ctr/

The majority of the objectives of PPC and SEO are the same the way you achieve them is different .

Yes, SEOs cannot guarantee rankings as the ranking factors are many and the search engine algo. undergo continuous upgrdations and tweaking which makes the SERPs also fluctuate but as SEOs working on quality web presence to gain good web visibility for the site and in the long run good assured search presence on search engines despite the SERP shattering algoquakes and constant hiccups in the algorithms is a major responsibility hence the approach to high SERPs is more like an old wine being served in a new bottle which infact increases the value rather than decreasing it.


Related article also can be read on :


http://www.searchenginejournal.com/the-discussion-about-serps-as-one-of-the-factors-for-measuring-the-success-of-the-seo-campaign-in-the-long-run/29533/

About Music , Mobile And Android At Google I/O 2011

The two day Google I/O event in San Francisco on the 10th and 11th of May 2011 at the Moscone West Convention Center started off yesterday and has a focus on the web, mobile, and enterprise developers building applications in the cloud with Google and open web technologies attend Google I/O. Products and technologies to be featured at I/O include App Engine, Android, Google Web Toolkit, Google Chrome, HTML5, AJAX and Data APIs, Google TV, and more.

On Tuesday at Google I/O, Google Music Beta Google was unveiled by which Currently is invite-only, and the product is free for a limited time.

Music Beta by Google, a new service that lets you upload your personal music collection to the cloud for streaming to your computer and Android devices. With the new service, your music and playlists are automatically kept in sync, so if you create a new playlist on your phone, it’s instantly available on your computer or tablet.

The Android the platform has grown exponentially. There are now:

• 100 million activated Android devices 
• 400,000 new Android devices activated every day 
• 200,000 free and paid applications available in Android Market 
• 4.5 billion applications installed from Android Market 

The Android ecosystem has been moving really fast over the last two and a half years and the founding partners are Verizon, HTC, Samsung, Sprint, Sony Ericsson, LG, T-Mobile, Vodafone, Motorola and AT&T.

Related Articles:

http://searchengineland.com/where-are-they-now-products-announced-during-past-google-io-keynotes-76121

http://mashable.com/2011/05/10/google-music-android-gallery/

The Quality Content Site Guidelines and Parameters By Google

Image by welovepandas via Flickr

The latest highly charged buzz on the algorthmic updates of Google especially the Panda Update is truly an indicator that the search and as an offshoot the whole web is going through a transition which is evolutionary in nature.

I personally am in favor of this and am very happy about the changes which are taking place as I believe these steps are surely going to bring a social wave on search which only sites with high quality standards on all fronts will be able to surf on with their website itself as their surfing board .

Google says :

Our goal is simple: to give people the most relevant answers to their queries as quickly as possible. This requires constant tuning of our algorithms, as new content—both good and bad—comes online all the time.

Our site quality algorithms are aimed at helping people find "high-quality" sites by reducing the rankings of low-quality content. The recent "Panda" change tackles the difficult task of algorithmically assessing website quality.

Panda algorithm change was just one of roughly 500 search improvements we expect to roll out to search this year. In fact, since we launched Panda, we've rolled out over a dozen additional tweaks to our ranking algorithms, and some sites have incorrectly assumed that changes in their rankings were related to Panda. Search is a complicated and evolving art and science, so rather than focusing on specific algorithmic tweaks, we encourage you to focus on delivering the best possible experience for users.

With so many algo updates expected this year and with Google practically monopolizing the search market Amit Singhal’s guidance on how to determine if your site is a quality site or not throws light on many issues and queries and also makes us think if your read in between the lines (the 23 questions).

Amit Singhal writes:

Below are some questions that one could use to assess the "quality" of a page or an article. These are the kinds of questions we ask ourselves as we write algorithms that attempt to assess site quality. Think of it as our take at encoding what we think our users want.

Of course, we aren't disclosing the actual ranking signals used in our algorithms because we don't want folks to game our search results; but if you want to step into Google's mindset, the questions below provide some guidance on how we've been looking at the issue:

• Would you trust the information presented in this article? 
• Is this article written by an expert or enthusiast who knows the topic well, or is it more shallow in nature? 
• Does the site have duplicate, overlapping, or redundant articles on the same or similar topics with slightly different keyword variations? 
• Would you be comfortable giving your credit card information to this site? 
• Does this article have spelling, stylistic, or factual errors? 
• Are the topics driven by genuine interests of readers of the site, or does the site generate content by attempting to guess what might rank well in search engines? 
• Does the article provide original content or information, original reporting, original research, or original analysis? 
• Does the page provide substantial value when compared to other pages in search results? 
• How much quality control is done on content? 
• Does the article describe both sides of a story? 
• Is the site a recognized authority on its topic? 
• Is the content mass-produced by or outsourced to a large number of creators, or spread across a large network of sites, so that individual pages or sites don’t get as much attention or care? 
• Was the article edited well, or does it appear sloppy or hastily produced? 
• For a health related query, would you trust information from this site? 
• Would you recognize this site as an authoritative source when mentioned by name? 
• Does this article provide a complete or comprehensive description of the topic? 
• Does this article contain insightful analysis or interesting information that is beyond obvious? 
• Is this the sort of page you’d want to bookmark, share with a friend, or recommend? 
• Does this article have an excessive amount of ads that distract from or interfere with the main content? 
• Would you expect to see this article in a printed magazine, encyclopedia or book? 
• Are the articles short, unsubstantial, or otherwise lacking in helpful specifics? 
• Are the pages produced with great care and attention to detail vs. less attention to detail? 
• Would users complain when they see pages from this site? 

Let us focus on the essence of each question to come to a conclusion to what is the definition of a quality site as per Google if these are the questions asked in the decision boxes of the flowchart when the Panda Algorithm was coded.

If the content is :

1. Trust worthy

2. Written by an expert

3. Not duplicated with other variations on the same site

4. The site can be trusted for credit card payments

5. Does not have spelling and style errors

6. The topic is in sync with what the readers want to read about

7. Is original

8. Adds value to the topic

9. Checked for quality standards to provide good UX

10. Unbiased and give both sides of the story

11. Hosted on Domain Authority

12. Is not mass produced

13. Is edited well

14. Trust worthiness related to important matters like health

15. Reflects brand authority

16. Is complete and offers an overall view about the topic

17. Stating facts or discussing the topic with insights

18. Is it worth sharing

19. Having a lot of Ads. Loses the true essence of information and knowledge

20. Is the content worth being printed

21. Is it long enough to be informative

22. Is attention given to detail

23. Is published with good UX

Then
Google considers it as quality content and has the potential of ranking high.

Now again how many permutations and combinations will work in favor of rankings and how the trust authority, social authority , domain authority will be decided upon only Google will know but these points will surely define the quality of the content of your blog post and webpage.

All Google posts on SEO are guidelines and once these posts are live all SEOs and website owners start following their norms.

 How Google will follow these points to rank websites only time will tell, but if the website owners follow them then the web is surely going to get rid of a lot of junk content and ensure quality content in future which shall shift the focus of search from information to knowledge. This is surely going to be a healthy step forward for the world wide web.


Related Links On This Topic:

http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2011/05/more-guidance-on-building-high-quality.html

http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/02/finding-more-high-quality-sites-in.html

http://seogadget.co.uk/high-quality-web-sites-the-new-google-ranking-factor/

http://www.seobook.com/questioning-questions

http://searchengineland.com/impacted-by-googles-panda-update-google-asks-you-to-consider-this-76050

The Mobile Web And The Mobile Apps.

Image via CrunchBase

We all know that the future is mobile and this is proved by the escalation in the sales of the smart phones and the boom in the mobile apps. Market. At the same time the internet connectivity, wi-fi accessability and the internet speeds are also improving on an increasing scale so the mobile web is also showing a trend of easy access and usability.

With this scenario the question arises - Should one go for a mobile website or a mobile app.?

There are some critical differences between the two which need to be considered before taking a final decision:

Mobile Apps:

• They are like the software packages designed with a specific purpose and which need to be downloaded and installed for a particular brand smartphone. 
• They need to be made portable for the requisite platform like – Blackberry, iPhone, Android, etc. 
• The apps. In order to be successful and have increased usability it needs to be developed very well keeping the user and the small screen of the handset in mind. 
• You need to come up with improved versions of apps. Regularly keeping in mind the advancements of the handsets being regularly launched in the market. 
• As the browsing technologies improve it is imperative to improve upon the apps. too. 

Mobile Website:

• A website especially designed for mobile devices. 
• This mainly has links to other pages which provide text information about your products and services and the contact details. 
• Unlike the Apps. It does not need any installation and it can be accessed by anyone having an internet connection but the only difference is that it is designed to suit the browsers and screen sizes of mobile devices. 
• Your mobile website can be found on search engines by users once you optimize it. 

But, with the mobile web getting better and better it makes sense to have an optimized website which can have a larger access easily but again there are situations when apps.  may be more viable like for example where downloads and easy payments are the main feature for the users for example  like if you have an iTunes like product which you want users to buy and download on mobile devices.

Identify your need weigh the pros and cons and then decide. But, again to sum it up all sooner or later with the advancements and improvements in technology on both the hardware and software side there will be an integration resuting to websites suiting all devices desktops, laptops, tablets and smartphones .

The Etiquette Of Co.ordinating With Guest Post Submissions.

If you accept guest posts for your blog then I am sure you know that a guest post benefits both the blog and the person who writes the post. It is a mutually beneficial exchange of resources .

But, if you frequently publish guest posts and you keep on getting regular posts which you need to moderate and queue them for publishing  then having a system to communicate with the guest bloggers is of utmost important. As  people need to kept informed about the progress and status of the post submitted by them.

The guest  who has submitted the post for the blog has spared time and effort to write the post and in this times of Twitter and social media many times the posts lose their significance and importance if they get delayed in getting published which is shear injustice to the writer.

 If the post has to be rejected due to some reason then it should be done right away so that it can be published else where by the blogger. If it has been  read and accepted then it should be immediately be scheduled and the date should be informed to the person who has submitted the post so that he is clear and go ahead planning for the next post.

Ideally the person should be informed within 24 – 48 hrs about the status as later than that is considered as being very inconsiderate of the other person’s time and effort.

 Points The Guest  Bloggers Should Keep In Mind:

•       Follow the blog guidelines.
•        Submit the post as per the procedure on the site.
•        Submit original and useful content.
•        Interact with the commenters on the blog .
•        Do not make the blog post or the comments a cheap link building avenue.
•        Promote the post.

Points The Host Needs to Keep In Mind:

•        Make it simple to submit the post.
•        Have a page to explain the guidelines for guest post submissions.
•        Be quick in responding to the guest regarding your decision after moderation.
•        Give a reason if the post is rejected .
•        Respond to emails by the guest poster. Answer their questions and clear their doubts.
•        Promote and share the post giving due acknowledgement and credit to the guest blogger as they are giving you content for the blog.

Guest blogging is a team effort if it is managed and coordinated well it can be very helpful for the blog  as this is like your online team that you have which is contributing to the content and marketing  of the blog.