When Can We Say if SEO is Organic?

Many of us know what SEO is. However, some of us are still uncertain if an SEO is organic or not. Of course, opposite organic SEO is what we call non-organic SEO. We can say an SEO is organic if the listings are natural and if websites do not rely on commercial means to be listed.

Organic listings are those that appear on the left hand side of the search engines such as MSN, Google and Yahoo. Major search engines have their own ways of assessing the importance and thus positioning websites on their organic or natural listings, making organic ranking a truly complicated process. In search engines, these algorithms are not published, but a lot of web masters have learned by experience and developed techniques for the improvement of organic rankings.

Most online marketing businesses are more favorable of organic SEO compared to “Non-Organic SEO”. In Webster Dictionary, “organic” is defined as instrumental; acting as instruments of nature or of art to a certain destined function or end.

Organic SEO, if done properly in a step-by-step approach, can literally increase traffic and rankings for years. It can also contain overall marketing costs, as the use of PPC (Pay Per Click), is not needed as much with this method. The main drawbacks of this type of SEO, however, are the length of time it takes to properly implement all the necessary steps and the length of time it takes the Search Engines to thoroughly spider and index a site that has implemented Organic SEO.

Overall, Non-Organic SEO methods are quite popular, being a much quicker means to rankings and placement. Links might be purchased from “link farms” that specialize in the promotion of links to others.

Although non-organic SEO can speed up rankings and placement initially, care needs to be given when using any of these methods. If keyword dense pages are automatically generated en masse, the Search Engines might view large sites, with large numbers of such pages as “Search Engine Spammers” and a risk of being banned does exist. In addition, pages may initially place very high, only to drop lower rather quickly, as the Search Engines still place a great emphasis on good content, which is not usually the focus of the Non-Organic” type of SEO.

Outsourcing: Davao City to be its new Center

Recent studies have shown that Davao shows potential to be the new Center for outsourcing. In the headline news that I’ve read yesterday, according to a research by XMG, it states that organizations in the city belonging to the business process outsourcing (BPO) industry are expected to lead the development of the area as a robust technology hub.

XMG added, citing a study it conducted between January to March 2008, saying that outsourcing vendors who participated in the survey are very bullish about Davao City, primarily due to the area’s larger population of untapped qualified resources compared to Cebu City in the Visayas.

The study highlighted that competition in Cebu City is nearing saturation as the talent ramp-up continues.

The study also highlighted the population of Davao City as considerably higher than other Tier-2 offshoring cities globally. In the Philippine context, Davao City’s population is 71% higher than Cebu City, 499% larger than Olongapo-Subic City, 333% higher than the Angeles-Clark area, and 340% larger than Baguio City.

“The city’s estimated workforce is twice of Cebu, 9 times of Subic, and 7 times of Clark, and 6 times of Baguio. This has not even taken to account the manpower pool at the nearby cities and provinces of Davao City,” the company said.

According to the study, Davao City has various educational institutions annually yielding a higher number of IT and BPO qualified graduates than Subic, Clark, and Baguio by 689%, 278%, and 40% respectively.

Wow, this is really good news for all davaoeño wannabes who want to be part of the IT outsourcing companies in the region. This is also an over whelming experience to be a center of outsourcing industry, and overcoming the top outsourcing center, which is the Visayan region.

But the question in my mind is the city well prepared for asserting as a viable alternative information technology hub three years from now?

Lure Your Visitors to Buy Your Products

One of the main reasons why a website has driving good traffic and gains high Page Rank, it’s because not just only having a good content but also the quality of your website’s home page.

I have some important thing to do to make a good impression from your visitors and make them as your customers.

1. Flash intros- avoid flash intros to your site because it will take time to load and time to play, because most of the visitors nowadays are not in awe anymore but in a hurry. Don’t make your visitors wait, so that they will not be tired waiting of something. If you love putting flash intros, integrate it into your home page, but add a call to action at the end.

2. Broken links and pages-

There are more broken links on the net.

Do yourself a favor and download Xenu’s Link Sleuth (http://home.snafu.de/tilman/xenulink.html) – this will run a check on your website because I really tried it, and among some pretty good information tell you where your broken links are.

3. Design- There is some obvious designs slips you need to avoid.

• Hard to read type – Way too many sites use fonts smaller than 10 point – it just won’t get read, simple.
• Logo / Branding – In days gone by you’d have to employ a big agency to get your image / logo / and branding done. There are some great guys on who can take care of this for you. Remember when people are searching for your product or service they will be comparing you with the competition. You have less than 8 seconds before the average visitor leaves your site
• Too many small business owners or one man bands selling a “product” (not service) and put their mug shot on there – why? They’re not buying you they’re buying your “product”. Think about the images and elements you use on your page. They must have a function and not because I think it looks nice – no. Get a blog if you want to showcase yourself.
• Color – No one does black backgrounds anymore – get with it. Neither do they do visitor counters. Corny clip art found in Microsoft Word is a no. There are loads of free stock image sites out there.

The True Meaning of Graphic Designs

What is a graphic design? There are a lots of definitions for graphic design but there’s a one definition that quite uncommon. According to Dino Dini, a computer game developer, graphic design is “The management of constraint”.

He also identifies two kinds of constraint; these are negotiable and non-negotiable constraints. The first step in the designing process is the identification, classification, and selection of constraints. He also stated that the process of design then proceeds from here to manipulating design variables so as to satisfy the non-negotiable constraints and optimizing those which are negotiable.

It is possible for a set of non-negotiable constraints to be in conflict resulting in a design with no solution. In this case, the non-negotiable constraints must be revised.

It also stated that poor designs occur as a result of mismanaged constraints. Something he claims can be seen in the way the video game industry makes “Must be Fun” a negotiable constraint where he believes it should be non-negotiable

Dino Dini’s perception about design is very broad that I can’t really imagine how knowledgeable and how good he is in designing. The design process may include a sequence of steps followed by designers, depending on the product or service, some of these stages may be irrelevant, ignored in real-world situations in order to save time, reduce cost, or because they may be redundant in the situation.

In addition, being a designer is not simply designing, more importantly; it is the broadness of your creativity, and understanding in graphics design.

Top 10 list of Web Hosting Sites

First, let’s discuss what web hosting is. Web hosting is a service which assigns space for customers to showcase their websites on computer servers that are connected to the Internet 24/7.Servers are powerful computers that have extremely huge hard drives, or an array of hard drives. Space is then rented to those who want an “online presence”.

Every server on the Internet has a unique numerical IP (Internet Protocol) address. You can think of servers as apartment buildings with unique addresses. Each apartment unit within each building is vague to space rented out for individual websites. And like real apartment buildings, each unit also has an address based on “the building” in which it is located. When you rent a space on a server, you’re setting up house on the Internet. You can be reached by a unique address (the website address), which is based on the server’s address.

Tips for Web Hosting

Disk Space – The amount of hard drive space on the host server, this space is used to store all codes, files, databases, images, and videos for your site. You generally want to future-proof your site by getting a plan with larger amounts of disk space than you need.

Bandwidth – The amount of data that can be sent to or from the host’s server measured in bytes. This term is often used interchangeably with data transfer. Data, whether it is text, image, audio, or video, is requested by visitors of your site and then transferred from the server your site is on. Many hosts have a limit in place for bandwidth, which is called ‘monthly data transfer’.

RAM – Random Access Memory, commonly known as RAM, is the amount of memory on the server that your site can use. If your site or service is very resource intensive, say a video site, you are going to want a large amount of RAM. A smaller site, say a personal blog, can get by on smaller amounts of RAM.

Here are the top ten lists of web hosting sites:

The following web hosting sites are ranked according to price, popularity, reliability, control panel, features, overall usability, and tech support.

1. www.hostmonster.com
2. www.starlogic.com
3. www.webhostingpad.com
4. www.hostgator.com
5. www.inmotionhosting.com
6. www.bluehost.com
7. www.ixwebhosting.com
8. www.1and1.com
9. www.godaddy.com
10. www.smallbusiness.yahoo.com