Test Driving Mahindra Logan.

August 2, 2008 in General | Tags: | No comments

This weekend I got an opportunity to test drive Mahindra Logan, the passenger car from Mahindra Renault stable. I went to nearby showroom market of my sector for some work and spotted Mahindra representatives sitting over there under a canopy offering test drive of Mahindra Logan to the people present around. Infact personally, I haven’t found Mahindra Logan too exciting perhaps might be due to dull outer looks of the sedan.

However, I approached the company representatives to have a closer look at the vehicle. The company representatives told me about the three variants of Logan - 1400cc, 1600 cc petrol variants as well as one more diesel variant. One of the technical representative quickly lifted the bonnet of the car and showed me the latest technological advances incorporated into the sedan.

The car’s overall machinery structure looked quite refined to me with Renault’s world wide proven trust and reliability present on each machine part of the sedan. Afterwards, they showed me the interiors of the vehicle. I personally found the interiors not quite impressive but ya the leg space and head space was sufficient inside.

Now it was the turn to take the test ride of Mahindra Logan. I drove the car with AC on for a good distance. The cooling was pretty ok for me. The ride was comfortable over pot holes too. But yes, I personally found the gear lever a bit hard to operate and while changing gears I felt a sound coming from the engine. Rest all was fine with the vehicle.

In my opinion I feel Mahindra concentrates more on the technical aspects of the vehicle rather than just making it visually appealing. Overall I found Logan quite well built and if it can get some improvement in terms of exterior looks, the vehicle can really become a much more big hit with the masses. At last I submitted my feedback and comments related to the car to the company representatives and bid adieu to them.

Disclaimer: The post above only expresses my personal opinion on the subject concerned. The company logos and identities used in the post are respective trademarks of the company concerned.

The Blog goes unofficial now……….!!

August 2, 2008 in Uncategorized | No comments

Hi Folks,

Hope all is fine with everyone. I personally feel that my blog has become too much technical now and is now quite overburdened with technology related posts!! I even got feedback from some of my friends saying that your blog has become purely technology based.

Infact, I was thinking to start a separate blog for sharing my personal experiences and for mentioning other fascinating things I see around and want to share with everybody. Soon I realised that it won’t be too easy to manage two blogs simultaneously.

So finally I decided to incorporate some off technical posts as well in this blog only through which I can share my experiences and lots of other interesting things with all my favorite blog visitors :). So get ready to see much more interesting and lively posts on my blog now in coming days. Enjoy life. Cheers!!

Secrets to make your blog popular sshhhhhhh……!!

July 27, 2008 in General | Tags: | 2 comments

1. Make sure that your blog is visible to all types of users. If your blog is hosted on WordPress, go to Word Press control panel and in the options>privacy, check “I would like my blog to be visible to everyone”.

2. Enable comments posting by all registered as well as unregistered users to your blog.

3. Always keep a relevant blog topic for your post so that a search engine can understand as to for what search queries your blog should get listed.

4. Be sure that your blog is accessible from a single URL only. Accessibility of your blog through multiple URL’s can land you up with duplicate content penalties.

5. Be sure that the xhtml you are using in your blog is valid. Never use erroneous or badly written plugins and themes in your blog.

6. Try to use images in your blog posts so that your blog has visibility in image search engines.

7. Use meaningful post slugs for your blog. Post Slugs are the URL’s of your blog posts. They should contain meaningful and targetted keywords related to your post.

8. Practise deep linking in your blog by linking your blog posts with each other based on the inter relevance of your blog posts.

9. Use tags for your blog posts which let you assign targetted keywords to your blog posts.

10. Use simple SEO techniques in your blog post. Emphasize important keywords in your blog posts and use targetted keywords in your blog posts. Remember to maintain a correct keyword density in your blog posts.

Knol - Encyclopedia by Google!

July 27, 2008 in Latest News | Tags: | 1 comment

As of now we are quite used to log in and have a look at Wikipedia Encyclopedia to update our knowledge on different aspects and topics of our concern.

Wikipedia LogoGoogle recently has come up with Google Knol (short term for Knowledge). One can find various useful articles on Google Knol ranging from topics such as scientific concepts, medical industry to geographical and entertainment related topics.

Authors can put their content on Google Knol with their names below their content. Google won’t edit the content in any way but yes the viewers like in case of Wikipedia will have access to different tools allowing them to submit comments and questions related to the posts on Google Knol.

One interesting feature of Google Knol which looked quite exciting to me is that Google Knol posts may include ads as well! If a particular author while making a post chooses to include ads, Google will provide the author with appropriate revenue generated through the proceeds of these ads.

Though I think its too early to comment on as to what effect Google Knol will have on already popular Wikipedia, but definitely Wikipedia is going to face stiff competition from Google Knol in times to come. Till then Happy Searching!!

Harness the power of Google Traffic Estimator Tool!

July 7, 2008 in General | Tags: | 2 comments

If we are running a PPC Campaign and want to add a new keyword or a set of keywords to the campaign, we can take the help of Google Traffic Estimator tool to see how well the keyword or a given set of keywords would perform if added to our PPC Campaign. Infact  personally I have recently used this traffic estimator tool to calculate average CPC and average clicks per day for a given set of keywords so as to come up with a certain baseline on CPC estimates for a new PPC Campaign for which no past performance data is available.

Simply saying, Google Traffic Estimator tool helps us find the traffic that a particular keyword or a set of keywords would be attracting and the cost estimates associated with the keyword(s) depending upon the language targetting and geo-targetting we select. I personally found the geo-targetting selection interface provided by Google really amazing. The interface provides you with a eye-catching view of the world map in normal,3D as well as in hybrid version and you can select a particular region on the map that you want to target for the keyword(s).

One can zoom the satellite map of the world to the deepest detail and can select whatever region one wants to. I tried using the radius method in which one can select a particular point on map and mark a radius of particular dimension around that point to select an area around that point. The traffic estimator tool will then provide the cost and traffic estimates for the keyword(s) depending upon the area marked on to the map.

The Google Traffic Estimator tool is really helpful in making CPC projections for a new PPC Campaign. While calculating the estimates you can specify your own max CPC that you are willing to pay per click and your daily budget as well. Basically the rule of thumb is that the more popular your keyword is, the more CPC it would demand. So its always better to target a bit longer phrases rather than too general ones e.g “credit card rewards” instead of simply using “credit card”.

But the real fact behind the scene is that the Google Traffic Estimator tool can just give us estimate of the values. We can’t keep ourselves dependent on the data provided by traffic estimator tool for our ppc campaign. Also the tool only works for keyword targetted ads and not for placement targetted ads. Anyhow, the tool if used wisely can really help us a lot in taking off our new campaign higher on the success ladder!

All about CPC and Quality Score in PPC

June 22, 2008 in Uncategorized | 2 comments

Cost per Click (CPC) plays a crucial role in every PPC Campaign.
In a PPC campaign we choose a set of targetted keywords for our PPC campaign and assign a bid rate (CPC in other words) to each keyword depending upon the competition associated with that keyword in the advertising market.

In simple words if we have assign a Cost per Click (CPC) of $2 to a keyword in our campaign “ppc services india”, then for every click on an ad triggered through this keyword we have to pay $2 to Google as part of our PPC program. Higher the CPC associated with a keyword, more are the chances of PPC ad appearing high in the sponsored ads (ad position). But yes, as far as Google is concerned the ad position depends on several other factors as well besides just CPC. Google ranks an ad as per a formula which is:

Ad Rank = Keyword CPC X Keyword Quality Score

Now the question that comes to one’s mind is what is this Quality Score?
The different factors which determine the quality score for a keyword are:

a) Keyword’s Click Through Rate
b) Ad text relevance
c) Past performance of the keyword
d) Quality of the Landing Page

Here Click Through Rate (CTR) refers to the ratio of clicks to impressions expressed as a percentage.

CTR = Clicks/Impressions X 100

So if we are able to get a good CTR for a keyword we can easily reduce the bid rate for that keyword without compromising on the ad rank for an ad triggered through that keyword.

Blogstress - A Warning Sign for Bloggers!

June 16, 2008 in Latest News | No comments

Recently I read an article in a newspaper about Blogstress and I started wondering whether I am suffering from it or not? Is it a new disease discovered by our medical community? The most important part about this disease is that it affects only bloggers!!

When a blogger gets infected by Blogstress, he or she always think of writing the best post on his/her blog, how to get most clicks out of the blog, generating maximum revenue out of the blog and ya suffering from the tension of preparing next yet to come post.

Blogging is not an easy task and bloggers need to continously update themselves on new trends related to the theme of their blog. A blog started as a passion one day might force you to spend some hours daily on it as a routine if you want to make it really popular besides letting the search engine spiders have a taste of it on a regular basis!!

The bloggers might feel irritated or disturbed if they are somehow not able to post on their blog for some reason. I feel that through blogging one can vent out his/her feelings and if one’s blog is popular enough the message can reach to masses. However, the disease is really dangerous and its better not to let it overpower you at any point of time.
 

Tracking Sub-domains through Google Analytics

June 9, 2008 in Uncategorized | 2 comments

We normally track the traffic to our websites through Google Analytics. For this we have to just place the analytics code in the source code of the web-pages and thats done.

But what if the case is like we want to track the traffic of a domain and subdomain separately e.g We have a website abc.com and a subdomain on it xyz.abc.com. We want to analyse traffic for these two domains separately. In such a scenario Google Analytics requires adding a new line in the analytics source code of all the domain and subdomain pages.

The new code looks like this:

<script type=”text/javascript”>
var gaJsHost = ((”https:” == document.location.protocol) ? “https://ssl.” : “http://www.”);
document.write(unescape(”%3Cscript src=’” + gaJsHost + “google-analytics.com/ga.js’ type=’text/javascript’%3E%3C/script%3E”));
</script>
<script type=”text/javascript”>
var pageTracker = _gat._getTracker(”UA-xxxxxx-x”);
pageTracker._setDomainName(”example.com”);
pageTracker._initData();
pageTracker._trackPageview();
</script>

The line marked in bold needs to be added into the existing analytics code in all domain and sub-domain pages and refers to the primary domain. After adding this code on all the concerned pages, we can easily track the domain and sub-domain traffic through a single profile in Google Analytics. Here’s wishing you tons of traffic to your website!!

Adsense in WordPress?

May 26, 2008 in General | Tags: | No comments

Hi Everyone,

I am working on to find out how to put Google Adsense ads on to my blog. Adsense lets you put a code in your blog so that relevant ads matching the theme of your blog are displayed on to your blog pages. If somebody clicks on those ads, you get paid by Google. The amount paid to you depends on how much bid the advertiser has made to come up on to your site. You get a portion of that bid money from Google if the ads get clicked. So far I have been unable to locate Adsense support in WordPress for my blog. The theme I am using has some widgets but none is related to Adsense. If anybody knows how to put Adsense into a WordPress blog, please do let me know and help me generate some revenue out of the ads. Definitely if you help me out you do have the right to share some part of the revenue :)

Cheers!!

A bit of Analytics in WordPress!

May 22, 2008 in General | Tags: | No comments

Yesterday night I was analysing the traffic my blog has received over the past two days. For this WordPress is really helpful. As soon as you log in to the admin section of your blog, it displays your blog stats with a full fledged graph showing the number of page views for your blog for each day in the past.

If I talk about my own blog, yes the good news for me is that traffic has increased ( though a bit only but its always better! ) over the past two days. On May 21st my blog got 25 page views while on May 22nd, it attracted 14 page views. Less or more its always good if your blog is getting traffic :)

Hope to see more and more traffic to my blog in future with some good posts as well and thanks to all those who visited my blog!