Observations on SEO

Based on this google’s blog and the questions under the sub-head "What counts as a high-quality site?"

It seems the focus for websites should not be on seo (search engine optimization), that has cropped up as an industry in India, but its more to do with creation of high quality and authoritative work. The seo concepts and ideas should only be used to create an easy index so that the 'crawler' can easily identify the page. 

Just as we use an index to search in a book, the tags, description etc will help the crawlers to identify and index properly. To put in in simple words -- the website should have high direct traffic, which sort of reflects its brand value. And the website should be easy to navigate and index by Google’s crawler.  

Thus people who are not aware of a topic/subject and hence when they search on google, the evaluation for the result will give the highest point to the subject expert (meta Description and the company background), followed by direct traffic density (brand value) and definitely this will be supported by easy navigation for its crawlers (page description and tagging).  

My experience working in the business segment of the media industry, my knowledge as of now says that I should follow the following websites for business related news:  

reuters.com -- Business and breaking news  
blooomberg.com -- Business and breaking news  
moneycontrol.com -- Business and breaking news  
livemint.com -- Business news and good analytical views on breaking news  
vccircle.com -- India related private equity news and all merger and acquisitions in India valueresearchonline.com -- Mutual funds news and numbers  

Then other website of interest would be  
http://economictimes.indiatimes.com 
http://www.thehindubusinessline.com 
http://www.business-standard.com 
http://www.indiainfoline.com  

All of these cover Indian businesses in the media industry. Now that you also have an idea of where to look for what. just follow the simple exercise.  

So in the google’s search box if we type a mutual fund’s name, not a fund house name like Franklin Templeton, but the name of the exact fund like ‘Franklin India Bluechip’. 


Then the top results should represent -  

• Franklin Templeton (the fund house) 
• Value Research (the expert) 
• Money Control (the expert) 
• Economic Times (the expert)  

Similarly if we search with a company’s name like ‘RIL’ the result will start from the company’s website followed by other sources but most of these results don't come as a surprise to me. If the search ambit is increased to ‘RIL Valutaions’ it will make a difference in the result but even they are not all that surprising.  

This leads to a conclusion that site ratings matter on things like direct traffic, claim of expertise which has been recognized over a period of time etc This is not surprising considering the article on google in The Atlantic Magazine.

p.s. Not so sure but I think the search result also takes into account if we are logged in or not on gmail/orkut or any other google affiliates or how many people receive mails from a website, which sheds light on their popularity. I need to do some testing and reading on these part.

A Wednesday

Yes, 'have stolen' the headline from the movie from the name of the movie. Will save you (readers') the harrasment of thinking.

The day started as usual. Searching for story ideas to keep myself busy and be productive. Meeting targets and deadlines, the usual stuff. Read an interesting article in Mint where the editors were complaining of the current rating system.

But then suddenly the newschannels started screaming that reports have come that there was a blast in New Delhi outside the high-court.

Of the six televisions that were blasting soundbites trying to gain attention. One particular channel said the sentence "There has been a blast outside the highcourt in New Delhi" nine consecutive times with slight variation of speed and trying to sound serious, as if the first time or the second time the viewers didn't get it. And they were blind enough to not read the alert that was flashing right at the center of the TV.

Them there was another channel where the host concluded even before anyone can actually understand the situation that this was done by a terrorist outfit from outside the country. Sounded as if wanted to claim, he was the one who did it, that was the level of surity.

And then Rajdeep Sardesai was talking about how the CCTV was not working nor were the metal detectors. This led me to think that perhaps the mere presence of security theatrics does work because whoever did it did not try taking it inside.

There were couple of things that were surprising about this. First it was a bold move considering that there was recently a blast in Mumbai. Second, the choice of location, why the high court in Delhi? Attention does not seem to be the motive here because there could be many other locations which would have got the imagination of the crowd. It was also not a location which was VVIP sort, it was near it but not the brightest of spot.

So either these guys were absolutely dumb or this puzzle will only be solved on flick.

And as for the interesting article I was reading on Mint. I think you should also read it.