Bharati Ahuja

The pros And Cons Of Being A Solo Entrepreneur

I think every career oriented person secretly nurtures the dream to run a company and given a chance would prefer to be their own boss.

The dictionary definition of the term 'entrepreneur' is 'a person which runs a small business and assumes the risk and rewards that come from it'.

Yes, we all know that when a business is successful there are the rewards in terms of profit, recognition, appreciation, the sense of achievement, etc. but, the most important thing to keep in mind when one decides to undertake this journey alone is the risk factor which goes along with it and in fact it this risk factor is something the entrepreneur has to deal on a daily basis .

If you are the kind of person who wants to be ensured of a paycheck at the end of every month and prefer the security and perks that a 9 to 5 job offers with regular week-ends and holidays then trust me being an entrepreneur and running a one person company is not your cup of tea.

As people who have the responsibility of running a business on their shoulders have to go without having any monetary return many times especially when you just start your business or launch a new product by ploughing back the amount you just earned from the last deal in the business. On the other side once the business gets established successfully you can reap good rewards.

Once you decide to call yourself an entrepreneur, identify something that you have a passion for and contemplate if you would like to work on it day in and day out without getting bored and most important would you enjoy working on it. If yes then you have got an idea start funding the project and be prepared to work hard.

Initially at the time of start up the first and foremost objective is to gain as much as market reach as possible with the lowest possible cost of operation. All this is possible if you have a website of your company which has a presence on the search engines for the relevant keywords. As nowadays people find your company reference through the search engines more than the yellow pages or any other media.

Trust me initially people will doubt what you say till you prove it by achieving the results. The real challenge will be to get the first few projects as you will not have any testimonials, references or examples of work to show but after that if one keeps moving ahead with sincerity then there is no looking back .

If you are sincere, honest, hard-working, responsible and committed to your venture then surely it is not you who has to run after success but success runs after you. Again, success is a very relative term. Decide what success means to you and measure your growth in terms of success accordingly.

Yes, all this is easier said than done but for any kind of business having the patience and perseverance is very essential because there will be times when you cannot see the road ahead and cannot identify why things are not picking up but it takes time to establish the goodwill and prove yourself.

As Theodore Isaac Rubin has rightly said:
Happiness does not come from doing easy work but from the afterglow of satisfaction that comes after the achievement of a difficult task that demanded our best.

What is hCard Integration?

hCard is a simple, open, distributed format for representing people, companies, organizations, and places, using a 1:1 representation of vCard (RFC2426) properties and values in semantic HTML or XHTML. hCard is one of several open microformat standards suitable for embedding in HTML, XHTML, Atom, RSS, and arbitrary XML.

Microformats are a way of adding simple markup to human-readable data items such as events, contact details or locations, on web pages, so that the information in them can be extracted by software and indexed, searched for, saved, cross-referenced or combined.

Microformats are a way to use (X)HTML for data and a logical next step in the evolution of web design and information architecture and a way of thinking about data which combines html, content and presentation .

From the SEO perspective the most commonly used microformat is the integration of Hcard for the contact address on your website contact page.

If I write the contact address of my company without the using the hCard the HTML will be as follows:

If I integrate the hCard the HTML is as follows:

If you are using the hCard it is advisable to put only one address on the page but if you have to put more than one the change the div id="" class="vcard" tag accordingly for every address.

The code can be generated by using the hCard creator on the following link:

http://microformats.org/code/hcard/creator

Reference Reading:

http://www.microformats.org/wiki/hcard

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HCard

http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2009/05/introducing-rich-snippets.html

SEO – Search Engine Optimization 2010

I am sure all SEOs would agree that the year 2010 started with a lot of apprehension, anticipation, discussions , doubts and predictions regarding the changing scenario of search as a result of Google implementing caffeine the new indexing architecture from all their data centres.

Matt cutts announced in December 2009 that caffeine would start rolling after the holidays i.e from Jan. 2010 . We all waited with our fingers crossed hoping that it does not affect our sites adversely but till the end of the first quarter of 2010 the change was not at all noticeable apart from the Google SERP display being changed by adding more options like news,videos, blogs, updates for Real Time Search, maps on the LHS of the SERP along with more search tools added.

Search Engine Optimization 2010

Google caffeine is being implemented but at various levels and gradually. Caffeine is more about making the indexing architecture of Google more robust .

As SEO professionals and companies we have to see that the rankings of our websites improve or are maintained. But in 2010 as we all know that search is not only about rankings it is much more. If we want to ensure the visibility of our website on the complete search engine landscape then optimizing the site for local search and having a listing on the Google maps, having a presence on the image search, News, Blogosphere presence and having our tweets being listed in the most recent development the updates is all very important.

Having a presence on all these platforms of search shall surely aim at more targeted traffic reaching your website.

Apart from a wider presence the downloading speed is a major factor for the websites to be preferred by the search engines.

To know more about the speed factor for the websites view the following video.

The real scenario of search and how our websites have responded to the change will be unveiled only when all data centers of Google shall be updated . That should be sometime in mid 2010 latest by August 2010 ( My assumption) as the last Major Google update which was in 2005 was truly reflected by August 2005.

Why can't students and teachers be Facebook friends?

Why can't we be Facebook friends? Facebook has blurred the lines between teachers and students, forcing districts to grapple with what's appropriate online.

Just came across the article related to the above topic on http://bit.ly/dpogcx (Please read the article on the link to co-relate to the following write up)

In my opinion when such problems arise the best approach is to have a positive attitude with additional responsibility from parents and teachers and the acceptance of the new technological advancement via the web and internet.

These issues were bound to arise sooner or later. We have to accept that the society is changing and the web and the internet are here to stay to be woven into the fabric of our real lives like never before.

Instead of putting restrictions on children and or being confused about the real world and the virtual world the parents and teachers should educate themselves about these technologies and use it as a tool to help the children through a medium which they have become quite comfortable with.

Of course as a responsible parent or a teacher one has to think before speaking now just think before you share or tweet by using the right words to make an impact on the children positively.

Lets take this media and the net revolution positively and start considering it as a boon rather than a curse or a distraction.

I must say this generation who have started using the internet from the time they started writing will have a better control about such situations in future. As they will know about its pros and cons already.

This is a transition phase that we are going through. Let us make the most of it by educating ourselves and accept the change as change is the only constant things in our lives.

I think we as responsible elders should understand this new media for social interaction and use this as an effective tool to communicate with our children and students and influence them positively.

Let us empower ourselves with the knowledge of the web world and not doubts !

Using The Internet Effectively For Studies

Recently WebPro Technologies conducted a programme at Ahmedabad Management Association (AMA) on the topic "Using Internet Effectively For Studies". The age group was between 10 to 18 years.

It was amazing to see that the tweens and teens of today know so much about the world, internet, Wikipeidia, downloading, Facebook, Search etc.

Hats Off to the Next Gen. !

A Brief History Of The Internet

The Internet has had a relatively brief, but explosive history. It grew out of an experiment begun in the 1960s by the U.S. Department of Defence.

The DoD wanted to create a computer network that would continue to function in the event of a disaster, such as a nuclear war.

If a part of the network was damaged or destroyed, the rest of the system still had to work. That network was ARPANET, (Advanced Research Projects Agency Network) which linked U.S. scientific and academic researchers. It was the forerunner of today's Internet.

In 1985, the National Science Foundation (NSF), an American research organization, created NSFNET, a series of communication networks. Based on ARPANET protocols, the NSFNET created a national backbone service, provided free to any American research and educational institution. At the same time, regional networks were created to link individual institutions with the national backbone service.

NSF also coordinated a service called InterNIC that registered all addresses on the Internet so that data could be routed to the right system.

More information about the History Of Internet can be found here: http://www.isoc.org/internet/history/brief.shtml

Long Tail Keywords And SEO

Long tail keywords are basically a keyword phrase with more than 2 or 3 keywords.

For example the keyword 'edible oil' cannot be considered as a longtail keyword but 'edible oil refining process India' surely is.

A good SEO starter plan should surley target the longtail keywords first as getting the rankings for these kind of keywords is comparitively faster so the website starts getting the web presence which gradually improves with time.

I have been following the philosophy of long tail keywords since 2004 from the SEO perspective.

If the site starts getting ranked for the long tail keywords then generic ones are sure to follow sooner or later once the site gets perfectly indexed.

Moreover, the search patterns of the searchers have also become very specific hence the long tail keywords shall surely bring in more targeted traffic.

The topic is excellently explained here http://www.webpronews.com/expertarticles/2010/03/10/longtail-seo-for-ecommerce

SEO is No Longer Just About Search Engines

Yes, SEO is No Longer Just About Search Engines but much more now.

The social graph linked with quality search results to inform the searcher about what people are saying about it is the next extention to make the search results more qualitative.

If we compare this to the real time decisions we take, logically we also want to know more about the owner of the company or the company culture before finalizing any deal with a company.

But SEO will very much be there but with a more wide connotation. As SEO has only evloved further and the SEO services shall always be in demand as long as there are search engines.

The like buttons of the social media merely state the preferances of the people who are connected with eachother and the preferances, likes and dislikes vary from person to person hence that cannot be the metrics to judge or influence the rankings. That can just depict the popularity of the product and inform you about the latest buzz.

Search is not getting replaced by the social media but rather getting supplemented by it and shall become more qualitative, once the search engines have their algorithms for integrating social media in their results up and running.

Upcoming Programmes To Be Conducted by WebPro Technologies At AMA

Using Internet Effectively for Studies

Sunday, May 9, 2010

10.00 a.m. to 1.00 p.m. (3 hours)

10 to 18 years
Today education has become more learners centric. Children learn with practical approach at school.
Thus, projects have become an integral part of studies. Most of the students rely on their parents for completion of their projects.
Now in this era of worldwide web each and every information is just a click away. The need of the hour is making children use internet effectively for their studies.
This workshop aims at helping children learn basic internet browsing and become self-reliant.

Faculty : Ms. Bharati Ahuja

Fee : Rs.300/- per participant.

http://amaindia.org/summer-workshops/2010/usinginternet.htm