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Business owners improve the visibility and popularity of their website by using the right keywords. Content is vital for the website and must be both relevant and useful. New standards and algorithms used by popular search engines block websites that use irrelevant content and follow Black Hat SEO strategies, such as keyword stuffing.

Image Source

Following new strategies helps business owners find the best keywords to use in their website content.

Evaluate Related Searches on the SERPs

Evaluating related searches on the search engine results pages helps companies find better keywords and phrases. At the bottom of each page is a list with different keyword combinations. These keywords are used by internet users often when locating similar content. Conducting searches for the company and its products shows the business owner all related searches. When adding keywords to the website content it is paramount to use variations of the keywords to increase the visibility of the website and the company’s products. To learn more about selecting keywords, companies can learn about SEO services from Appiloque now.

Align Keywords with Business Goals and Missions

Businesses identify the company’s mission and business goals. The details help the company decide what keywords are relevant to the company and its brand. Adding keywords that are aligned with the company’s goals improve visibility and help like-minded consumers find the business faster.

Using Auto-Populate Features

Using auto-populate features improve how companies use keywords and improve the popularity and relevance of the website on search engines. Auto-populate features complete phrases and sentences entered into the search engine. The additional expressions and phrases are useful to company owners and show the owners what phrases are beneficial for driving traffic to the website. Testing different keywords with the auto-populate features helps companies track relevant keywords and expressions and add the expressions to their website content.

Using Analytic Tools on Search Engines

Using analytic tools on search engines provides companies with further insight into finding the best keywords to use in web content. All popular search engines offer business accounts where the companies generate reports for statistics on the company’s website. A comparison between the web site’ content and relevant keywords helps business owners determine if the content requires changing. Using the account console shows business owners all historical data for all relevant keywords and phrases that pertain to the company, its products, and services. It also helps business owners plan out new marketing strategies and campaigns by supplying companies with more popular keyword selections.

Accessing Keyword Niche Finders

Accessing keyword niche finding tools helps businesses link keywords together and help customers find exactly what they want online. The tools generate a list and show businesses what word combinations help internet users find the company’s products online. An analysis is conducted by the tools that shows for which niches the company and its products are relevant. Using niche-based keywords improves the visibility of the company website and its products online.

Business owners research keywords and phrases by following a variety of techniques. Evaluating related searches and auto-populate features help businesses find relevant expressions and keyword combinations for the website content. Analytic tools are used to evaluate keywords on popular search engines. Niche finders are also effective tools for generating reports and statistics about keywords. Following the best strategies helps businesses increase their profitability and achieve greater success online.

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Blogging is something that I started couple of years many years back in 2004 and this blog was hosted on blogspot. Many of my readers, friends, colleagues share the question with me – What was the real motivation for starting a blog? There was no real answer in 2004~2005 since I was following the herd of early-stage bloggers and wanted to be counted in one of them 🙂 But over a period of time blogging transformed from hobby to passion and when you are passionate about something, you do it diligently and results would automatically come out!

Image Source – LinkedIn

It helped change my entire personality, my observation skills, reading habits and countless number of things. The real achievement was is I could motivate others to start blogging and connect with entrepreneurs/techies/students (and support them in whatever way I could via book reviews, app reviews, product feedback etc.) The most important decision of my personal life also has a deep-rooted connection with my blog!!

This article is not about listing my blogging achievements but to reiterate that Blogging can be a life-changer and a game-changer 🙂 Blogging, Competitive Coding, Social Media have changed the market landscape and these would much more important than ever before! If you are an engineering student and interested to get acquaintance about these traits then you should definitely attend Hello Hacker on September 24 (5:00~6:30 PM) in Bengaluru.

Hello Hacker : Listen, Learn, Connect and Execute

Hello Hacker is an event chapter to acquaint engineering students from all across Bengaluru about the following aspects:

  • Competitive level programming
  • Open Source Communities
  • Modularisation
  • Social Media & Blogging

Competitive level is now playing a crucial role in tech-hiring and this platform would answer all the lingering questions about it. There are expert speakers doers from each of these fields who would walk through their pros & cons. In a nutshell

Hello Hacker is an event to help students stay ahead of the curve, make them more employable, and get them connected with domain experts. It is intended to be a stepping stone for young minds to get acquainted with the diverse ways in which web related technologies can affect their lives.

Hello Hacker : Agenda, Speakers

The proposed topics for Hello Hacker are:

  • How Open Source communities change lives.
  • How to contribute to the open source communities.
  • How relevant is blogging in today’s world for personal growth?
  • Importance of Hacker Meets and Hackathons in students’ lives.

The speaker list is below:

Sayan Goswami (Decision Scientist, MuSigma Inc)

  • Topic of discussion – Concept of Modularisation of code.
  • Relevance – Understanding what it takes to write a good code and makes the student more employable.

Anirban Saha (Proprietor, Kolkata Bloggers)

  • Topic of discussion – Blog as a Personal Branding tool.
  • Relevance – Don’t blog to just earn money out of blogging; make it a personal branding tool & be ahead of the cut-throat competition.

Shreyas Narayan Kutty (Regional Coordinator, Mozilla Clubs)

  • Topic of discussion – Requirement of community building among programmers, open source communities and how it could be used to engineer the products of the future.
  • Relevance – To take open source to more people, encourage them to use it in their products for free with modification. It accelerates innovation.

Harishankaran K (Co-founder & CTO, HackerRank)

At HackerRank, he is responsible for the product delivery and scaling the core platform where developers from all over the world come to solve interesting challenges in different domains of Computer Science (Artificial Intelligence, Algorithms, Machine Learning, Functional Programming, etc) for fun, glory, learning, and jobs. Recruiters also turn to HackerRank in order to identify the best tech talent while saving massive amounts time in their recruitment process.

  • Topic of discussion – Insights into Competitive Level Programming.
  • Relevance – Competitive level programming & why it is required in the life of a Technocrat.

Hello Hacker : Venue, Registration

The venue for Hello Hacker is below:

JAAGA Startup, 5/1, Penthouse,6th Floor Rich Homes Apartment Richmond Road Bangalore – 560025 (Directions)

For registration, please visit Hello Hacker’s Registration Page

Hello Hacker : Team, Partners

Hello Hacker’s partners can be found here

There is an awesome team behind this initiative, details below:

Mozilla Clubs – Largest groups of Open source evangelists, Mozilla Clubs are a global network of community members that share Mozilla’s mission to ensure the Internet is a global public resource, open and accessible to all. Mozilla provides free training and resources to help clubs succeed and grow digital literacy in community spaces.

Hacker Rank – It is a company that makes a programmer discoverable to corporates ranking them evaluated on their coding skills thus adding value to the companies.

Kolkata Bloggers – It is the largest database of bloggers based in East India. In the last one year they’ve worked with TOI, NASSCOM, US Consulate General Kolkata, Facebook, International Kolkata Book Fair, Kolkata Literature Festival to name a few brands. They’ve conducted workshops in NIT Durgapur, IIT Kharagpur, St. Xaviers College Kolkata and other educational institutions.

Though I don’t fall in the student bracket, I would also be joining Hello Hacker and hope to share my thoughts on Blogging 🙂 Register for Hello Hacker and learn the Art from people who have “Been there, Done that“!!

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Are you losing possible new sales, registrations and subscribers ?
Before you answer that question, answer this one:
Can you remember the last time you updated ‘About Me’ page ? If your answer to this question is anything other than ‘YES’, then you need this guide. Andrew Wise from Wise Startup Blog has a complete about me page guide on what Should be on your page and what Should Not.
Before you read the guide, here’s an actionable tip you can use right now

Build a Call to Action Into Your About Me Page

What’s a call to action?… If you run a blog, then your call to action should be to “subscribe” to your blog. If you are a salesperson, your readers should “call you”. If you have an ecommerce site, then you should promote your “100% satisfaction guarantee”, or whatever your promo is to encourage customers to buy.

You get it. Okay, so now implement this technique and checkout the rest of the guide or just skim the infographic below:

[Source* – Andrew Wise Blog]
If you loved the info-graphic, than you would surely enjoy the ‘Mantras’ shared by Andrew Wise on creating Killer About-Me Page
Note* : Content reproduced with Andrew Wise’s consent

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How many of us would have thought of dancing our heart out in order to enjoy & release all the tension 🙂 . The only thing that worries us is ‘I do not know dancing’, ‘I will look like an idiot if I dance in front of so many people…’ We would have all wished that we can fearlessly dance like this Old Man dancing in the video below –

Many startups are helping connect like-minded people living nearby so that they can either get-together over a game of tennis or solve each other’s problems. Today we review a startup The Dance Bible that wants to bring people together under one umbrella of ‘Dance’. It aims to be a one stop platform for all dance lovers to come together and connect through the art of Dance.

The Dance Bible : What’s in store

The Dance Bible; a first of its kind online platform for dancers, choreographers, dance educators, dance parents and all dance enthusiasts worldwide; promises to cater everything related to dance. It was started with the following problem [Source]

Living in the age of 140 characters and selfies, we all understand the importance of web presence; every industry has been using the social revolution to its advantage to grow its business. Yet, Dance as an Industry is still shy and hasn’t been able to tap its way into the online world as it should. The Dance Bible, with their goal of being a one stop portal for dancers, is designed to provide the right accessories to every dance soul to shine and empower themselves in their journey.

The Dance Bible consists of the following sections:

Dance Styles : It gives the user crystal clear information about the various dancing styles like Belly Dancing, Ballet, BBoying, Bharatnatyam etc. They could have added a Sub-Category based on the Origin of Dance namely Indian, Spanish etc. or an option to filter Dance Styles based on user preferences. You can various dance styles here

Dance Zone : Just like many of us who work-out & have a specific target in mind i.e. gain weight, loose weight, fitness, flexibility etc.; the Dance Anatomy section gives details about exercises for developing better physique or postures. It offers unique content about various dance styles informing the user about dance histories, biographies, health & nutrition etc

DanceBible_anatomy

The Dance Bible wants user’s to try out ‘Dance As A Work-Out’ in order to stay fit. It would have been better if they could have linked various Dance Forms on how would result in toning of different body parts. An example of the same can be Aerobics Style Garba as seen in the video below:

Dance Audio & Video Playlists : It contains collection of dance video and audio clips that dancers can use to sharpen their dance skills.

The Dance Bible : Unique Features

Two of the unique features of The Dance Bible are  – Portfolio and the Dance Forum section.

Dance Portfolio – Under Portfolio section  of The Dance Bible, a dancer can create his/her profile by telling their dance story, uploading photos and videos of dance. We found this feature very useful as users can make their video viral by sharing on various social media channels. You can create your Dance Portfolio here. If you are Dance Freelancer, you can create a profile on The Dance Bible here. If you are keen about learning dance, there is separate section of Dance Schools. One feature that could have been added is ‘Integration of Maps’ so that users can get idea about the exact location of Dance School.

In order to get your Dance school listed on their platform, you can do the following:

  • Login with your details and head to the Dance School section.
  • Click on Add yourself.
  • Fill in the details, list your USP(s), link other social handles for more coverage and click on Submit.
  • Share your dance school page with the industry, ask your existing students to rate and comment and see your enrollments increase.

Dance Forum – Dance Forum is a unique feature where Dancers or aspiring dancers can network with other like-minded dancers on The Bible Dance. It also provides a platform to promote their talent to a worldwide audience and get genuine feedback from experts in the group.

Dance Events – If you are interested in Dance Events and do not want to miss out on any of them happening in your city, than you should definitely check-out the Dance Events section. We found the number of listed events less in number, a better idea would have been to curate those events from other sites like Explara, MeraEvents, BookMyShow in order to drive in more traffic & build user-base.

The Dance Bible : Dance and Dance Anatomy Blog

We particularly liked the Dance Blog where their team shares stories of dancers on their platform, useful tips, events [anything & everything related to dance]. The Dance Anatomy Blog has interesting content revolving around nutrition, prevention & cure of common injuries caused while dancing and more. They also have a Youtube Channel though we wish that the updates are more frequent since many novice dancers turn to Youtube to learn dancing.

The Dance Bible : Closing Thoughts

The Dance Bible tries to spread the joy of Dance and aims to be the de-facto destination for ‘Anything related to Dance’. We found the ‘Dance Forum’ & ‘Dance Portfolio’ sections to be very useful !! On a lighter note, if actors in ABCD would have known about The Dance Bible, they would have found a Dance Trainer more easily 🙂 . You can connect with them here, here & here.

ABCD – Anybody Can Dance with the help of ‘The Dance Bible’

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Are bloggers spending more time writing ? Do they write longer or shorter posts? Has publishing frequency changed for the typical blogger ? In an effort to identify the business blog trends of 2015, Orbit Media asked 1074 bloggers 11 questions. Feldman Creative has come up with the blog trends such as writing time, post length and publishing frequency. Below are the trends that have been identified:

  • Blog trend 1 – Bloggers are spending more time on each post
  • Blog trend 2 – Bloggers are going deeper into topics
  • Blog trend 3 – Most bloggers publish weekly or more

For more information, please refer Blog Trends – 2015

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When I started blogging around 10+ years back, the blog was hosted on blog-spot. There was no dependency about tracking utilized web space, down-time etc. since it was all taken care by none other than Google 🙂 But when we finally decided to move from blog-post to self-hosted blog, the critical search for good hosting provider begun. There are ocean of choices when it comes to hosting a website, which makes this search even more difficult.

When we had to narrow down on the choice of hosting company, we evaluated them on the following standard parameters:

Back-end Support is the most under-rated term but that plays a very crucial role in the long-term. If the hosting provider’s website did not have a Toll-Free number or Customer-Care’s email-id mentioned in the header, we did not even consider looking at other factors. It was also very important that hosting provider has “Dedicated Team” for Indian customers.

After committing initial mistakes in selection, this blog was finally hosted on HostGator. Now, we are considering to shift to a new provider – Hosting Raja since it offers a compelling proposition. Today, we have a look at Hosting Raja & how it can be your one-stop shop for web-hosting services 🙂

Bird’s eye view of Hosting Raja

Hosting Raja is a leading and reliable web hosting provider based out of India. It offers economical & sustainable services for web-hosting & domain registration.

It is a decade old-company specialized in web-development with headquarters in Bengaluru. They claim to provide 99.9% up-time which has resulted in 1000’s of satisfied customers.

Though they provide the cheapest hosting plans, their focus is on “Quality” rather than “Quantity”. Hosting Raja promises 30 days unconditional money-back guarantee since it aims to build a customer-focused brand.

Flexible Hosting Plans

Hosting Raja offers various web-hosting services i.e. WordPress hosting, Linux Hosting, Windows Hosting, Magento hosting for e-commerce customers etc. The complete list of their service’s can be found here

Whether you are a blogger or an e-commerce company, Hosting Raja has plans that suit your budget requirements. In fact, the flexibility to seamlessly shift from one plan to another is an added advantage !!

Features included in “Premium Unlimited”, “Premium Gold” & ” “Unlimited” Plans are as follows:

For newbie’s they offer the “Starter Plan” which costs around Rs. 69/month. The “Silver Plan” mainly caters to the Start-up & SME segment which costs around Rs. 99/month. The “Gold Plan” caters to corporate clients which costs around Rs. 29/month.

Reliability  and Customer Support

Hosting Raja offers a guaranteed 99.9% up-time using High Availability or Fail Over environment. Web outage can result in heavy-losses to a company & hence, reliability & continuous up-time plays a pivotal role.

As mentioned earlier, technical support is of prime importance & Hosting Raja provides 24*7 customer support. They are available on toll-free number 1800-258-8000. Customer can also get support via chat. Support is provided in Hindi, English, Tamil, Kannada, Bengali, Telugu & other local languages.

If you do not get immediate support, you also have the flexibility of “Call-Back” where you just leave your number & Hosting Raja customer care team would get back to you.

Special Offers

Hosting Raja provides interesting offers which are hard to resist. Their hosting plans are built to suit the requirements from a small website to a large online store. You can find the complete list of offers here

Closing Comments

Hosting Raja provides range of plans to suit the needs of it’s varied clientele.  They have won Top Pick Web Hosts 2012 & Best Re-seller Hosting 2010 awards for their customer-centric approach.

Whether you are newbie blogger/Startup/corporate, Hosting Raja caters to all your web-hosting requirements!!

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Gurgaon based Visual Blogging Platform Bluegape has raised USD 600,000 from ah! Ventures, Rudy Gopalakrishnan of Fidelity & Times Internet. Barclays Capital India has been advising Bluegape & helping in getting connected with right investors. The deal has been closed on ah! Ventures’ equity investment platform, CLUBah Bluegape had earlier raised USD 184,000 in April 2015 from Rudy Gopalakrishnan & ah! Ventures. Bluegape is backed by TLabs and has received a total funding of USD 500,000 [excluding the recent round] till date.

Long form of content is dying in this mobile era where users have a very short attention span. Bluegape is giving users a platform to create and consume content in a visual format. Currently Bluegape has over 15 Million+ unique visitors every month and around 100,000+ posts are getting created on the platform every month.

bluegape-team

Sahil Baghla, Co-Founder & CEO, Bluegape said

Our vision is to make communication of ideas and knowledge very easy. On Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat we are connected to our close group of friends and they are like your private social identity. Bluegape, on the other hand will be your public social identity which is about self-expression with the world. Bluegape will be A Social Profile You Can Be Proud Of.

The startup was founded in August 2011 by Sahil Baghla & Ayush Varshney [Company has pivoted from Merchandise Business to Visual Blogging Platform in January 2015]. Both the founders are IIT-Kanpur alumni.

Ayush Varshney, Co-Founder & CTO added

We will use the money on technology and for expanding our engineering team. The existing investors have lead the round which is a very good sign that we are on the right track.

People are doing amazing stuff at Bluegape like their niche fashion blog, on feminism, on celebrity fan-clubs or Individual bloggers

Abhijeet Kumar, Co-founder of ah! ventures said

In today’s inter-connected, plugged-in world, nothing is more fast-paced than technology. It constantly evolves to meet our ever-increasing need to stay connected. Technology has enabled the world to shrink into a global village where everybody is connected to one another through one platform or the other. Bluegape is a social media disruptor, it’s the black swan. Sahil and Ayush have created the future of social media.

Within a short span, Bluegape has seen traction of over 15 unique million visitors each month and growing, which is the proof of the platform and reflects the dedication of the team in delivering a world class product out of India. CLUB ah! is proud to be associated with Bluegape in its quest to success.

CLUB ah!, an angel network of over 450 investors, including some of the renowned angels and early stage VCs represent the maturity of Indian early stage investment ecosystem. Started in 2012, the CLUB ah! platform boasts of over 2000+ startups, 450+ seed/angel investors and over 60 VC’s & institutional investors. It also has an impact investment network and a mentor network to assist startups in their growth and expansion. Till date CLUB ah! has invested close to USD 6 Million across 15 startups including Bluegape.

Talking about the transaction, Harshad Lahoti, Founder & CEO, ah! ventures said

Some may wonder whether the valuations for some of these new tech companies are exaggerated, but, exaggerated or not, they are reinventing some of the most basic structures of human interaction and for those looking for the next Facebook or LinkedIn, Bluegape is the answer. Social media platforms have a cyclic process, you have to be constantly innovating to stay relevant to the audience.

Bluegape by all virtue is very innovative in its approach and will soon become the new normal. Visual blogging is a new concept and by the traction that we see on the portal, we believe this will be the next big social interactive platform. The Bluegape team has a clear vision to disrupt the existing social interaction landscape. For an investor, the pedigree of the team and idea are critical. In Bluegape, investors can find disruptive growth and a team committed to deliver.

ah! Ventures is in the final stages of closing 2 more deals in the coming weeks.

About Bluegape

Bluegape is world’s first visual blogging platform. The biggest promise of internet was democratization of ideas and knowledge. Everyone has some knowledge or learning to give back. Visual Blogging is a great way to express yourself in this fast moving world of short attention span.

About ah! ventures

ah! Ventures is a startup focused growth catalyst that brings together promising businesses and investors by creating wealth creation opportunities for both. ah!’s unique model serves investors, entrepreneurs and enablers through a unique blend of customized services, skill and industry & domain experience.

About CLUB ah!

CLUB ah! is India’s first full-spectrum startup investment network and platform comprising of over 500 investors, including some of the renowned angels and early-stage VC’s which represent the maturity of Indian early-stage ecosystem. Setup in 2012, the CLUB ah! Platform today has over 2500+ startups, 450+ seed/angel investors and over 60 VC’s & institutional investors. CLUB ah! has till date invested close to INR 36 crores in over 15 startups spread across varied industries and domains.