SEO Kolkata - Experienced SEO Consultant India, Kolkata

Well, I never thought of writing a post like this but due to the increasing number of queries about SEO training that I am receiving these days, I feel that it might be better to have a post on this.

I do receive a lot of request for providing SEO training or to suggest some SEO training institute. I receive these requests from people all over India but specifically more from people in Kolkata. Also there are few who plan to join some SEO training course in Kolkata and call me to check if I know anything about or recommend the person/ institute offering the training .

I have never been a fan of classroom training for SEO and I always tell people that the best way to learn SEO is to read on the web and try them practically. There are thousands of good blogs and SEO forums that provide valuable information and help for the SEO beginners. There are also tons of SEO whitepaper available for Free that can work as a starting point.

While there are definitely a few institutes that might be helpful for a beginner to grab the basics of SEO, there is no full proof course that can make you a SEO guru. For those of you, who are planning to join a SEO Training institute or some personal SEO training class allured by the possibilities of high paying jobs, here are few questions that I suggest you ask your SEO trainer…

1. How did they learn SEO ?
   If they could learn it by themselves or through on-job training, you can too..



2. What has been there career graph? Have they ever worked for any leading brand? Do they have a portfolio to show their SEO skills?
   Trust me, someone who does really well for himself as a SEO would not get into training. Working as a SEO pays much more than running a SEO training course.



3. What about their accreditation? Are they associated with any university or any bigger institute ( e.g,NIIT) ?
   Remember, if they don’t have a proper accreditation, the certificate that they give you is absolutely useless.



4. Do they give a job guarantee?
   Don’t be fooled by vague promises like “don’t worry about jobs, once you complete this course jobs will come after you”. In most cases even after completing one of these so called SEO courses you will probably start off in your first job at the same salary that any other fresher gets at your position.



5. Industry Exposure?
   Most SEO training institutes offer a “industry exposure” for their students. In most cases the SEO trainer or the training institute also have a service wing or operates as freelancer where they provide SEO service to external clients. In the name of industry exposure they are able to get half their work done through you for free (rather you are paying them – training Fees). This experience can actually be a good exposure but you can also get the exposure if you build a site of your own and try optimizing them. Ask them if they would allow you to work on your own website to gain this exposure?

I would also suggest you do a few reference checks before joining any SEO training course. The reason I say this because I have received two calls till date where someone running a SEO training institute in Kolkata told the prospective students that they have actually learnt SEO from me – where the fact is that I just know that person as a casual industry acquaintance. I would not be able to name the person/ institute here because I don’t have a written proof on this but I am thankful to those two guys who actually cared to call me to check if I was actually involved with the SEO training institute/person.

I am more than happy to help people learn SEO and that is one of the main purposes of writing this blog, I have also provided a FREE Guide to SEO whitepaper that details the SEO process and ideas for a start and I also make sure I answer all questions that I receive from people about learning SEO – and yes, you DON’T need to pay me anything for that.

p.s. I am NOT involved with any SEO training institute in Kolkata or elsewhere or HAVE NOT provided any formal training to any individual. I did conduct some corporate training for few companies though.

Labels: kolkata, SEO course, SEO institute, SEO training, SEO training institute

Share It : Digg  | Sphinn  | Netscape  | Google  | reddit  | del.icio.us  | Squidoo  | StumbleUpon  | Yahoo MyWeb  

Well, am still undecided! Searched for the keyword Symbiosis Distance MBA in Google and the first result was a hard core p**n site. And further even without clicking on the link it attempts to download some malware onto your site - which looks absolutely absurd and unbelievable to me. While I can attribute the ranking for the p**n site to some out of mind SEO genius, I have no clue how is it technically possible to initiate a malware attack from the site without clicking the URL or visiting the site.
Check the screen shot for details..



When I first saw this search result, the only thing that I could think of was Google bombing, but then Google has already formally declared that they have killed Google bombing - so what is it this time ?

Labels: Google, Google bombing, keywords, Screw Up, SEO genius, Symbiosis

Share It : Digg  | Sphinn  | Netscape  | Google  | reddit  | del.icio.us  | Squidoo  | StumbleUpon  | Yahoo MyWeb  

I have been a big fan of CopyBlogger for a long time and recently due to my ever increasing work pressure it has become extremely difficult to follow up with my favorite websites ( I have more than 50 blogs on my Google Reader) and the time crunch has also taken a toll on this blog as I hardly find time to write.

However, today, while I was checking CopyBlogger after a long time I found this free give away and thought I would mention it here for my readers. Brian Clark , the founder of CopyBlogger is giving away a fantastic 28 page white paper – "How to Create Compelling Content That Ranks Well in Search Engines" . And the best part is that this white paper is actually FREE – you don’t even need to trade your email id for this.

Of the 28 pages, as Brian have been extremely honest to mention, the first 24 pages are pure educational stuff on search engine friendly content writing while the last four pages talk about the Scribe Software. If you are not interested just ignore it, but Scribe isn’t really bad and can be pretty helpful for people involved in SEO content writing.

You can download the whitepaper here.

Labels: Content writing, copyblogger, free white paper, SEO content writing, seo white paper

Share It : Digg  | Sphinn  | Netscape  | Google  | reddit  | del.icio.us  | Squidoo  | StumbleUpon  | Yahoo MyWeb  

There is no need to mention that digital marketing is a highly dynamic field and with the advancement of technology marketers are finding newer ways to leverage it to reach their target audience.

We are all familiar with the tons of SMS advertising that we receive this days and many of us tend to think that is probably what people mean by mobile marketing. But as I have always said, mobile marketing is a much broader thing and involves a lot more than spamming the hell out of your customers.

I wrote a short article today, that is though very basic, gives a bunch of hints on how mobile development influences marketing strategy.

Hope you like it !

Labels: digital Marketing, Mobile Marketing, SMS

Share It : Digg  | Sphinn  | Netscape  | Google  | reddit  | del.icio.us  | Squidoo  | StumbleUpon  | Yahoo MyWeb  

Its been quite some time ( exactly a month - to be precise) that I have written a post here and while I have my own justifications for it - I do admit that it is bad and more so because this new year I made a resolution to blog more frequently. I knew that New year resolutions are meant to be broken but never though I will do it so early :P

However, just so you understand the reason for this long gap, my life has been moving pretty fast and there has been some changes. To put them in short ...

I have left my last job with Ecselis, Havas Digital

Took a short break to visit my home town in Kolkata and spent a few good days with the family.In midst of those 5 days attended two weddings ( now you know why I was away from computer :)

Bought a car - my first car rather - a red Maruti Swift

Took a short vacation with my wife in Goa and feasted on the heavenly Goan delicacies - you don't expect me to blog from the beach, do you ? :p

and finally, I have joined PurpleTalk as VP - Marketing and now have tons of work to do.

So am back to work now and though there are boat loads of work to do, I will try to keep posting here on regular basis.

Labels: Havas Digital, PurpleTalk

Share It : Digg  | Sphinn  | Netscape  | Google  | reddit  | del.icio.us  | Squidoo  | StumbleUpon  | Yahoo MyWeb  

It has been in discussion for quiet some time now that wether Microformats would play any role in search engine optimization in the near future. To understand how Microformats might come into play in respect to SEO, let us all first understand what Microformats are.

To quote Wikipedia, “A microformat is a web-based approach to semantic markup that seeks to re-use existing XHTML and HTML tags to convey metadata and other attributes.” Basically Microformats enable the use of XHTML and HTML tags in such a way that information on a web page that are actually meant for the users would become clearly comprehensible to software ( search engine robots in perspective to SEO ).

It might sound a bit confusing because all of us know that search engine bots can already read and understand the content of web pages which is the basic foundation of any organic search algorithm, then why do we need Microformats ?

Looking back at the Wikipedia definition, microformats “convey Meta data and other attribute” about the existing content that the search engines are already indexing enablng them to understand exactly what they mean and stand for; basically attach semantics to the information for better processing by software.

Let’s look at an example, my contact information can be displayed as

<div>
<div>Saptarshi Roy Chaudhury</div>
<div>SEO Consultant India</div>
<div>09963111179</div>
<a href="http://seo-kolkata.blogspot.com">http://seo-kolkata.blogspot.com </a>

A search engine bot can read this information , index it but it would probably not mean much more than that at this stage. Once we use Microformats for presenting this information, the same code would look like…

<div class="vcard">
<div class="fn">Saptarshi Roy Chaudhury</div>
<div class="org">SEO Consultant India</div>
<div class="tel">09963111179</div>
<a class="url" href="http://seo-kolkata.blogspot.com">http://seo-kolkata.blogspot.com </a>

Now, this is basically a simple use of the hcard ( HTML vcard) Microformat, and because the data is bound within the “vcard” class, search engines would now treat it as my virtual visiting card and interprete
fn as full name
org as organisation
tel as telephone number
url as web address

There are a lot of such mircorformats that add properties and attributes to the data available on a web page, which in turn helps search engine bots better comprehend and process the data.

So how can these Microformats change or effect SEO ?

We all know the main objective of search engines are to serve relevant results. So with enhanced data comprehension ability due to the use of such microformats they would be able to search more relevant results.

Again taking a leaf out of Wikipedia, “processing of microformats enables data items to be indexed, searched for, saved or cross-referenced, so that information can be reused or combined.” Note the point about “Cross-referenced”, I feel that would be one of the key benefits that search engines would have once the usage of microformats become ore common on the web. We already know that search engines are trying to have access to social network data of users ( twitter and Facebook are already in) now once search engines start getting more info on these and also cross reference this data with the data about the users found through other sources, it would probably allow them to weigh the social messages in a much better way.

Use of microformats can be a great help for search engines to parse local queries and serve relevant results.

Google has already announced last year that they are capable to read hProduct Microdata and encourage webmasters to use the same to mark up their products on their website and ecommerce store.

I have a strong feel that th use of Microformats would increase greatly by the end of 2010 and not just that search engines would start using them effectively to increase their search result relevance. While that would definitely be a big enough push for the SEOs to start advocating the use of Microformats, looking at the greater interest of forming a semantic web, it would be great if we start using these wonderful tags from now on and help make the web a better place.

For those of you interested to learn more about the different types of Microformats and their usage check out Microformats.org .

Labels: meta data, Microformats, semantic web

Share It : Digg  | Sphinn  | Netscape  | Google  | reddit  | del.icio.us  | Squidoo  | StumbleUpon  | Yahoo MyWeb  

Of the many one thing that I have often appreciated about my profession is that I can work from any corner of the World, wherever I might be, as long as I have a computer and a stable Internet connection. Not just about being an SEO or Internet marketing professional but most internet based businesses enjoy this luxury. However, the prerequisites remain the same a computer and an Internet. While computers are not really a lot of trouble as most of us today carry our own laptops, Internet connections and ISPs can at times put you in a soup.

While I have experienced it very frequently with my earlier provider Hathway in Hyderbad ( click to read about their pathetic service), my present service provider BeamCable is way better.

While discussing this with one of my overseas clients, he actually brought up the topic about getting a T1 connection for people like us. However, the fact remains that while businesses can easily afford a T1, individuals like us who do some business/official work on the Internet and primarily dependent on it can’t always afford to get a business T1 .

My client was telling me about the package he has got for his business with his service provider MegaPath that not just includes a very stable and robust business T1 connection, but they have a very stringent service level agreement and a hyper active customer support team that takes care of any rare issues. He is paying just $279/month and that too without having to spend anything for his router or installation as Megapath includes all those in his package. He is so happy with the service that he was actually thinking of taking up their Business Ethernet package for his other office. The whole thing sounds like a great deal to me.

Not sure, what the scenario is for business connections in India, but going by what I have seen in few of the companies in most cases a line equivalent to a t1 would cost much more than $279/month( or equivalent INR) here in India. Hopefully with the ever increasing number of internet users in India the cost of internet would continue to go down while the service level would improve. Let’s hope for the best.

Labels: BeamCable, hathway, Internet Connection, MegaPath

Share It : Digg  | Sphinn  | Netscape  | Google  | reddit  | del.icio.us  | Squidoo  | StumbleUpon  | Yahoo MyWeb