SEO Starter Kit
Posted by Ahmad Barirani in 
So you are interested in learning SEO but you wonder where to start from. Let’s say you want to understanding the basics of SEO because you are going to hire an SEO expert. This article is a starting point for someone like you.
Understand the basics
Of course, you should start with having a broad idea of what SEO is. There are many ways to achieve this. You can first start with a book on SEO. There are a lot of them out there and reading them will give you a good introduction to how search engines operate and best ways to create optimized content. You can also read a few good introductory articles like this beginner’s guide to search engine optimization.
Learn From A-List SEO Blogs
One of the most effective ways of learning about SEO is to read top SEO blogs. You’ll find the list of top 25 SEO blogs here. These are the gurus of the field and have the best connections in the industry. They offer a lot of advices and you should read them regularly to be up to date with news and trends.
Be skeptical about what you read
Always remember that you are not reading a holly book. First, check the date of the post. If it’s too old, then you might want to make sure that what you are reading is still relevant. Check with other sources and see if other experts recommend the same technique. Be careful to understand when the article is promoting a black-hat technique.
Sometimes, and this is sad, advertising will be disguised as content. This is a reality for a lot of blogs out there and you should be vigilant with what you read. Sometimes, you end up working with a new tool that is supposed to be IT according to a top blogger, but in reality, it’s just a product still being tested.
Know the right SEO tools
You can’t be productive or successful in SEO if you don’t have the right tools. You will find a very thorough list of SEO tools in here. Learn to work with them and see how they can be useful with what you can achieve. You don’t have to use or work with all of them, but it is always good to know that there is a tool for a certain need. Who know when you will need to use that tool.
Experiment SEO
We all learn by doing. Therefore, it is a must to experiment different strategies and techniques to see how they work and in which context they are most effective. You should have one or many websites that you maintain as your ‘SEO living lab’. These are sites on which you try all sorts of experiments and see how those experiments respond. Who knows, maybe you’ll find a pattern that may be very valuable.
Work with SEO experts
There are things you will never be able to do in a cost effective way. Search engines and SEO are ever evolving and gurus will always be a few steps ahead of you. If you need to perform well on search engines, learn to rely on SEO experts and you will save a lot of time and money. Even if your objective is to become a top SEO expert, you should still be working with the top guys because collaboration and cooperation will always give better results that working alone in your corner. As a direct consequence of this reality, you should always be networking with people who are in the SEO industry. The more you are connected, the better it is going to be for you.
Too Much Innovation Can be Fatal: the Case of Google Chrome
In an attempt to prepare the introduction of it browser-OS, Google introduced a few novelties in its Chrome browser. These novelties all fall inside one category there is no toolbar in Google Chrome. Users are complaining about the fact that Google Chrome doesn’t work with Google Toolbar to the point that Google had to write a support page about using Google Chrome. The page explains how Google Toolbar functions are part of the browser but not in the shape of a toolbar. Taking into account that those using Chrome are early adopters, this seems to be just another case of too much innovation not being well received by the market.
Good timing is the recipe for success
An important factor playing in the success of an innovation is the timing of its market introduction. If a product is too disruptive, people won’t be able to connect with products they already use. Visionaries must therefore take it easy with their creative swing and not forget the today’s consumer. In the case of Google Chrome, things went wrong because people are used to have a very tiny browser that is extended with plugins. They are not yet used to the idea that the browser is going to be the operating system.
People are used to the tiny browser
To better understand this phenomenon, we must take into account that browsers weren’t the most used application in the early days of the Internet. As more web applications answered day-to-day needs, plugins were built on top of the tiny browser to provide a better and more productive user experience. Today, the Browser is the most used application and the Internet has evolved to a point were a browser is all we need. In tomorrow’s Internet, everything is going to be on the cloud. Our desktop will not do anything else that allow us to click on buttons that are on a remote server.
Being the Internet leader, Google is taking the right bet of getting the market rid of the heavy desktop client (Windows) and replacing it with something lighter (Chrome OS). Only the push seems to be a very clumsy one and has to work harder to bring innovation in a more fluid way.
Ten Linux Tools for Windows: Take Advantage of Open Source Software
There are tons of Linux tools for Windows and they just do a great job. Of course, most developers use a lot of GNU software on Windows, especially to port their Linux-developed applications on Windows. But things are not limited to developers. Open source products are actually targeting a wider audience. I have compiled a list of then great tools that are destined to Linux but that have great port to Windows platform.
- Knoppix: this one is actually a Live Linux distro. What does it have to do with Windows? Well, it can be useful to recover data from a broken Windows installation. If your Windows doesn’t start for some reason and that you can’t repair it through Windows’ own repair utility, use Knoppix to restore a few files. My best story is when Windows wasn’t able to read one of my external hard-drive’s partition table but that Knoppix was able! Another story is when I wanted to downgrade to XP and that I had to use Knoppix to remove the ’sticky’ Vista hard-drive partition.
- MinGW (Minimalist GNU for Windows): contains the great GCC compiler and can be used to build native Windows applications. The good thing is that you can then use the same source code to build the application on Linux. Among all the Linux tools for Windows, this is the one that is most popular.
- GIMP: this is actually a great tool that was also initially destined to Linux but that has been ported on Windows. GIMP is a raster graphics editor, which means that it is in the same category as Adobe Photoshop with the difference is that it doesn’t cost a fortune. Besides being free, GIMP offers pretty much the same functionality than Adobe’s popular product.
- Inkscape: this one is a vector graphics editor, which means that it competes with Adobe Illustrator. Again, it offers the same functions as Illustrator.As you can see in the image below, it can produce quite impressive images. Most users won’t need more sophistication.
- XAMPP: XAMPP stands for Cross Platform (X), Apache, MySQL, PHP and Perl which were all originally built for Linux. Being later ported on Windows, the package can actually be very useful for Windows web servers that would incorporate both ASP.NET and PHP web applications. Lets say you would like to use Wordprss for your ASP.NET MVC web application’s blog. XAMPP will give you all you need to run Wordpress on your Windows server.
- CVS: this is one of the best source code version control system. It is open source, cross-platform and super stable. This thing has been working for decades and is very reliable. This is very subjective, but I personally prefer CVS to SVN because of it’s branch management model.
- Clam Antivirus: initially built for mail servers on Linux, this free anti-virus does a great job and is in constant development. Its Windows port, WinClam, has progressed a lot and will soon compete with other known anti-virus brands.
- Dia: a lot of people know about OpenOffice as an alternative to MS Office. But Dia is less known as an alternative to Visio.
- VNC: this tool is for desktop sharing and did a great job on Unix/Linux systems. So much that i was ported on Windows and it can be used, for example, to have remote desktop on cheaper Windows Edition (like home versions).
- OpenOffice: of course, this is a must. If you ever get fed up with paying a fortune for Office, then use OpenOffice. It is compatible with Office Suite, so a lot of people are considering this alternative.
Windows to Linux Migration: Now or Never
I mean in the early days of Linux, Windows to Linux migration wasn’t an easy thing to do. The simple task of installing the operating system was so difficult that a few hardcore geeks did the move. But today, changing to Linux is easier than ever.
Easier Migration
First of all, the installation itself is more easy. Now, installing Ubuntu distro is so simple that slightly computer-savvy users can consider Windows to Linux migration. Here is link to a step by step installation guide for Ubuntu 9.10 where you’ll see that the installation is done within 5 installation wizard steps. So the days of Microsoft FUD campaign against Linux complexity are over. If you know how to install Windows, then you have enough knowledge to install Ubuntu.
Better Compatibility With Windows Software
90% of people user computers for email, Internet surfing and productivity software. All these three things can be done using Linux. Of course, when more than 25% of surfers using Firefox and that Firefox is available in most important Linux distros, a lot of people can make the change to the open source operating system. Also, email standards aren’t proprietary Microsoft standards which results in great compatibility between email clients. Evolution, the default email client for Ubuntu, is very similar to Outlook in terms of functionality. The big question remains around productivity software and the replacement of MS Office with OpenOffice. In fact, .doc and .docx file formats’ domination of the productivity market makes it risky to switch to the productivity alternative.
While OpenOffice becomes is more and more compatible with MS Office, the is a third option and that’s Google Docs! Google Docs has something to offer that Office doesn’t have: it is cloud-based, which means that files are stored on Google Docs server hard-drive. If you are working on the same file from multiple computers or if you work in collaboration with your team on the same file, Google Docs will save you a lot of time and trouble because all changes to a file are stored on Google’s server instead of being stored on your computer hard-drive. And guess what? Google Docs is compatible with Office file format.
New Computing Platform
The days of the traditional OS are counted because of the emergence of mobile devices and of cloud computing. With people spending more time one Facebook, Twitter, Gmail and Google Docs from their mobile devices, the need for a stronger browser will increase and the need for the operating system will decrease! What will happen is that the current client-server architecture of the Internet will go one step further with servers doing more of the things that used to be done by the client machine. This is precisely why Well, guess what: Linux is very well positioned to be a strong player in this new market because of its small size. This is precisely why Google is betting so much on Android and Chrome OS which are both based on Linux versions capable of running on very basic processors.
Until recently, most software producers have concentrated their effort on building software and device drivers for Windows. However, with the current transformations in the IT industry, more producers will deliver Linux-compatible software which will give more options to the consumers.
Price
This has something to do with new devices and cheap computers flooding the market. Back in the old days when an average PC cost $2000+, nobody thought of complaining about $50 the Windows operating system OEM costs. Today, devices cost as low as $200 and we will soon see basic PCs for $100 or less. When people can cut prices down 25 to 50% by not paying Windows license, things are going to look bad for Microsoft.
Conclusion
It seems that the current IT market structure goes in favor of Windows to Linux migration. This is because people can consider a cheaper alternative that is as easy to use and that offers compatibility with the Windows platform and that is also less resource hungry. I think that those who have considered turning to the open source platform take a shot at Linux and enjoy all the benefits.
ASP.NET MVC Ajax.BeginForm Sample Code
I must admit enjoying ASP.NET MVC. Ajax is a must for all modern and respectable websites so I ended up using it over and over again. This little set of code snippet happened so often that I decided to write it down somewhere.
First, you will need to have an HTML element like for example a div that will contain a partial view:
<div id="mydiv"> <% Html.RenderPartial("MyPartialView", Model); %> </div>
This div is going to be updated by the Ajax-executed code. Second, the partial view will contain the Ajax.BeginForm() code needs to look like this:
<%@ Control Language="C#" Inherits="System.Web.Mvc.ViewUserControl<MyModel>" %> <% using (Ajax.BeginForm("AjaxActionName", "MyActionName", new AjaxOptions{ UpdateTargetId = "mydiv" })) { %> <input id="input1" type="text" /> <input id="input2" type="text" /> <input id="dosomething" type="submit" value="save" /> <span>The Answer is: <%= Html.Encode(Model.Count()) %></span> <% } %>
Take note that input1 and input2 are provided by the user and the result of the website is shown in the span. Finally, there should be a controller like the following:
[AcceptVerbs(HttpVerbs.Post)] public PartialViewResult MyActionName(string input1, string input2) { return PartialView("MyPartialView", DataHandling(input1, input2)); }
When the user clicks on ‘dosomething’ button, an Ajax call to ‘MyActionName’ action is made. The action handles the user inputs and updates ‘mydiv’ with the a new instance of ‘MyPartialView’. Only this time, ‘MyModel’ object passed to the partial view is the result of the website handling ‘input1′ and ‘input2′ from the user.
Linux vs Windows Web Hosting: Top Five Reasons That Could Change Your Mind
So you wrote and tested your new web application using PHP-MySQL and you’re wondering about Linux vs Windows web hosting. If you are like me, you don’t want to get involved with web server administration and especially not with server up-time. You want to concentrate on the business side, which made you consider choosing a web hosting service where you’ll have everything you need to get your website up and running for less than 10$/month. If this is your case, this article is to help you in the decision of a Linux vs Windows web hosting service.
Before I go any further, I would like to warn readers that are used to my critiques of Windows OS that when it comes to the server market, I am much more friendly to Windows. The main reason for this apparent confusion is that I mainly criticize Windows because of the perverse effects of its domination of the desktop market. This is less true in the server market where balance exist between 3 main players: Unix, Linux and Windows.
Linux vs Windows web hosting is not really an issue if you are a strictly PHP-MySQL developer and that after 10 years of web development, it never occurred to you to use an ASP.NET-based module. You’ll never need ASP.NET or SQL Server to run your application, so why bother? I would like to point a few reasons that are related to my own experience:
- There’s not a big difference in price: most Linux vs Windows web hosting difference in price is around 1$/month. If you need a dedicated server, price differences are in the same proportions. However, this price difference is only a fraction of your development or maintenance costs. Even if your website is not making money, you’re time is worth a lot more than you might think. See it this way: if you spend 20 hours a week developing and maintaining your website that is not making money, you are losing 20 times 50$/hour equals 1000$/week not working as a freelance consultant. If you do spend this time on your website, it is because you think it is worth the investment of 1000$/week. So why try to save 12$/year? Of course, this is if you live in North America and Europe where 1$/month doesn’t make a big difference in your pocket.
- You’re not loosing anything with Windows: most Windows web hosts will include PHP-MySQL. FastCGI on IIS 7 will host PHP with no problems. For that extra dollar, you’ll also be compatible with ASP.NET and SQL Server. If you are going to host many websites, then this option is going to be very attractive, especially if you might have to deploy solutions that are developed in ASP.NET (ex: Kigg, DotNetNuke).
- ASP.NET is gaining market share: C# is gaining popularity amongst developers. Therefore, chances that the next hot module is developed in .NET increases with time. Let’s say you found this great addition to your website and that it is written in ASP.NET. Does your Linux web host support mono project? If not, you’re not going to be able to use that addition.
- Windows gained some market share: same thing goes here for windows platform. Until 2006, Apache was de facto choice of web server. But Windows 2003 and IIS were stable enough to convince enough webmasters to own more that one fifth of the market today. This means that a lot of innovative will show up on the Windows platform exclusively and that you might not want to miss them.
- Don’t go crazy over security: The strongest argument against Windows is security. Don’t forget that this is true for the desktop market where 90% of PCs run on Windows, making it the dream target for hackers. However, when it comes to web servers, it is the website’s popularity that comes in play. What it means that unless you are not having huge traffic, security is not really an issue. When you’ll get traffic, you’ll need to invest in security and that is going to cost you as much in both platforms because the real cost again is in human resources as opposed to the platform.
In this article, I have explored the case of Linux vs Windows web hosting for those who want to outsource web server administration. This will be an issue in the first few months where traffic is not important. But even after, when you’ll have a clientele, the platform is not an issue. The big reason is that human resource costs are the main operations cost for your business. Since Windows will give more compatibility and interoperability, it becomes a wiser decision to go for this platform, as a lot of webmasters are going for it.