1.Logfiles: The easiest method to find out the best keywords is search in site’s log files; we can find out the keyword that people used to search in search engines to get into the website. Another useful method is Google Analytics, using google analytics, we can find out the keyword users used to find out the website and also it is possible to find out the web pages that the visitors spent more time, number of visits, location etc.
2. Internal Search in the Website: When we place a search option in the website, and while checking the logfile of the internal search results, we can identify the keyword people used to gather information once they get into the website. Also it is an easier method to find out the common spelling
mistakes in the keywords.
3. Look the website in different angle: Assume that our website is a shop and people are coming to the shop for buying various products and think about the ways they are asking to the shop fellow for buying a product, in this way we can find out different choices in the form of words/ sentences in search engine to get the website they are looking to visit
4. Google Adword Search: Google offers a keyword search tool
( https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal ) we can choose the keywords that got more hits when we provide our major service or website link. We can see which keyword got more hits and all the possibilities
How to get Top placement with Less Pay Popular search queries are more competitive and comparatively high bids are happening there.

Activation fee: $5.0
Minimum cost per click : $0.01
Minimum cost per thousand impressions: $0.25
Forms of Payment: American Express, JCB, MasterCard, Visa, and debit cards with a MasterCard or Visa
logo both prepay and postpay options are available.
Minimum Payment: 10$

How much should we spend?

We need to set price about how much we are willing to pay per click or pay per impression. When we spend more, the chances also will increase.
There is no definite way to find out how much we should spend to get profit. Here is a simple math equation:

How much percentage of people can click on the link x maximum cost per sale = Maximum cost for a single click

For example, if we are willing to pay 20$ and assume that a chance of 2% of people click in the links, then the maximum cost for a single click is 20x.02 = .40 cent

Step 1: Create Adwords
First step in using ‘ Adwords’ is creation of advertisements and choosing the right keywords. These keywords are words or phrases related to our business. Google keyword tool help to create keywords. We can generate keywords from the services offered by our company or simply providing the website url. While selecting the keywords, we should be very specific about the keywords that the customer can put while searching. We can enter upto 20 keywords and it can actually be a multiple word phrase.

Step 2: Register for Adwords
The next step is register into google http://adwords.google.com .We can register either using our existing Google account or we can create new adwords account. Once we register into the website, we will get an email notification from Google with account number and a link to the adwords account.

Following is the procedures for creating first campaign
1. Choose Budget
2. Create Ads
3. Select the keyword that match the ads to potential customers
4. Enter billing information

Once we complete the process, Google will send an email with all the billing information, advertisement details with all the setup information. We can simply activate the account and include ads on following the instructions provided by Google.

According to Google AdWords, new ads will show immediately the credit/debit card process completes

Adwords Advantages:

• Local extension mechanism
• We can set how much we are willing to pay each day
• When we go with CPC method, google uses a ‘ discounter’ method to match what we are offering and what others are offered for a particular keyword
• In google’s standard edition, we can set multiple ads, variety of pricing options, keyword specific bidding, content bidding, ad position preference and so on
• Target specific websites for ad placement
• Google provides facility to view ad performance
• There is no spending requirement other than one time activation fee.
• No one can simply higher the price to keep the ad in the top spot, Google will check the clickthrough rates, bumping up the ads with the highest rates. When the click through rate is higher than the competitors, they will win with a lower bid

Disadvantages:
• Eventhough google is saying that there is no minimum limit for the amount to pay for
advertising, they also enclosing that when somebody bids for a keyword higher than others, the chance of getting listed in google will be more.
• Sometimes google reduces the higher bid to a penny just above the second highest bid

What is AdWords ?

Adwords is google’s flagship advertisement product. In 2008, Google earned more than 20 Billion Dollar through Adwords. Google uses account management software ‘ Adwords Editor’ for managing the accounts. Due to huge reach of Google and its affiliate sites, Google claims that it reaches 80% of the Internet users. As a result of this, marketers are spending more for getting attention to their ads when people search in Google.

We don’t pay anything when Google displays our ad, but we have to pay when somebody clicks on our ad. Advertising in Google can consider as a form of direct marketing where marketers are directly getting leads of potential customers. The success of Adwords depends on the keyword we are selecting.

Google provides complete freedom to choose the keywords. There are mainly 4 types of keywords

1. Broad Match
2. Phrase Match
3. Exact Match
4. Negative Keyword

TYPES OF ADWORDS ADVERTISEMENT

Google offers following adwords advertisement methods

1. Pay Per Click Advertisement :

PPC is a widely using Internet Advertisement Method on Search Engines, Advertising Networks, Content Sites, Blogs etc. In PPC, advertisers need to pay to their host only when the ad is clicked. A fixed price per click method is normally following in content sites. But in the case of search engines, Advertisers need to bid for the keywords that can expect more hits and closely relate to the target market.

How it Works?

When users search and keyword query matches with advertiser’s keyword list or a content website displays with relevant contents, websites that uses PPC advertisements will appear. This normally appears just above or adjacent to the organic lists. These results displays as ‘Sponsored links’ and enclosed within a box. When the user clicks on the links Advertisers have to pay depending on the cost of adwords they purchased.

Cost and Major PPC Providers

Cost varies depending on the demand for the particular keyword and popularity of Search Engine. The two models exists are cost per click flat rate and bid based model. In flat rate model, advertiser and publisher agrees upon a fixed price and that will be paid to the publisher on each click. In bid based model, Advertisers bid for the keywords and inform to the service providers about the maximum rate they are willing to pay for a given ad spot. The auction plays in an automated fashion every time the visitor triggers on the ad spot. Normally private auctions are taking place by the private auction hosted by the publisher or in an advertising network. Advertisers need to bid for the ads based on the keywords and the ads with highest bid will show up. The largest players in PPC Market are Google Adwords, Yahoo Search Marketing and Microsoft AdCenter.

Risks: The major difficulty in this scenario is the abuse through fraud click, there can be situations where the user click on the links and harmful scripts will evoke or malicious code will run resulting suspicious activities. This is considered as a type of Internet crime and normally occurs through Pay per Click advertisement. Google and other search engines guard against abusive clicks, but still it exists.

2. Site Targeted Advertisement Methods

Site targeted advertisements are normally doing with the help of text or banner advertisements. Banner advertisements are usually embedded into the web page. Web banner advertisements embeds as images or multi media elements. Google’s text advertisements are short in size, consisting of one title line and two content lines.

How it Works?

When the user clicks on the banner advertised in the website, he will directed to Advertiser’s website. Advertisers can identify user’s visit on his website through banner ads while scanning his log files. For those entire occurrences, the advertiser needs to send few cents (normally 5
to 10 cents) to the search engine/ site(s) where the banner ad is placed.

Standard Size of Banner Ads
Leader board 728 by 90
Full banner or impact banner 468 by 60
Half banner 234 by 60
Button 1 120 by 90
Button 2 120 by 60
Micro Banner 88 by 31
Micro Button 88 by 15
Vertical Banner 120 by 240
Square button 125 by 125
Skyscrapper 120 by 600
Standard Skyscrapper 160 by 600
Half Page 300 by 600

3. Adsense
Adsense are displayed by website owners who wish to make money through displaying third party advertisement on their website. Google checks the contents in the pages and displays relevant ads based on advertiser’s keyword lists. We can add text ads, image ads, local business ads, mobile text ads and video ads in Google’s network.

These advertisements are administered by Google and generate revenue either as per click or per impression basis. Websites that are content rich have been very successful in adsense advertisements. Advertisers submit sealed bids for Adsense. For any given click received, advertisers pay one bid increment above the second highest bid. Click tracking programs are using to prevent click fraud.

Where will the ads appear?

Ads will appear in Google search result page, in google network, search and content websites, other products and blogs. Ads will appear alongside or above search results. Ads in the content sites depends on the content and url of the search page. Ads will be related to the content of the website.
Ads will appear in Gmail Services also. Automatic filters will check the gmail mails and suitable ads will be displayed in the mail page.

Google owns more than 80% of the Search Engine Market, and it is a fact that smart people always win and get their ads posted and earn millions and the rest become looser. It is a smart business and uneducated marketers always fails in this business. Paying few dollars to google is not the end of everything; we should put extra effort to bid and place less amount to get the right keyword in right time in right place to get the right business.

Marketing is the most critical function of a Business. In all the business, marketing division will generate the revenues necessary for the survival and growth of the organization. Based on the kind of services one organization is offering, the percentage of investment on marketing will vary.  Due to the increase in competition, companies are forced to increase the percentage of amount spending for marketing activities.  Let us have a detailed look about how much percentage of the total revenue a company spends on Marketing

How much we should spend on Marketing?

There is no specific condition or formula for calculating the percentage of amount we need to spend for Marketing Activities like market research, advertisement and other promotional activities.  Any company can develop their own formula that works best for them.  Public sector companies normally specify this in their financial statements. There are certain factors that determine the amount to spend for Marketing Activities.

Factors influencing the amount to spend for Marketing

• Type of Business:
  Consumer goods and retail companies will spend more than other companies due to strict and focused competition in the particular sector

• Target Market
  When the product of the firm comes under FMCG/Consumer goods, company needs to spend more to sustain in the market.  On the other hand, when a company is focused on B2B marketing, its percentage of investment for marketing or advertisement will be comparatively lesser. Method of advertisement and medium using for advertisement will change accordingly.
• Position in Market
  Companies who are in a saturated position not spend much for marketing and advertisement. Once they get into a saturation level they will get sales without putting many efforts for marketing. While in the case of a company who is in the growth stage need to put more efforts and more investments to get a competitive position in the market
• Company turnover
  By definition, turnover is the total sales of the company’s product. Profit will calculate in the next step.  Profitable companies would prefer to spend more to get business and for maintaining their position in the market.
• Influence of Brand
  It would be much easier for a branded company to introduce new product and bring them into the market. Nothing special, just the influence of the brand image. Let us consider an example of introducing a high power processor from Microsoft and AMD, since the brand image of Microsoft is higher than what AMD has market will curiously watch the reaction of Microsoft’s new processor rather than AMD’s
• Demand of Product:
  Industry demand will determine the expenses in advertisement. When the demand of the product is more and the availability of product is limited without advertisement and any marketing activities customers will buy the product.  We can see similar example in the case of Tata’s new economy car ‘ nano’ It is considered to be the cheapest car in the world. So its demand is more and company can not meet the people’s request on time. Obviously without much advertisement and marketing activities people will buy this car
• Positioning of Product:
  Positioning of the product in the category of people (upper, middle, high class etc). Advertisement will play major role in Middle class and lower class families but word of mouth is the main marketing techniques much beneficial for upper class families.  Upper class families look brand and lower class and middle class families consider cost of the product and quality rather than other factors
• Competition:
  Increasing competition will force the companies to invest more on Marketing Activities. Most of the time they fight to sustain in the market rather than looking for a huge amount of profit.

• Marketing Channels:
  Marketing expenses will vary based on the different channels using for marketing. For example consider the sales of an FMCG Product; it requires mass communication either through television, radio and advertisement through printed Medias. More manpower needed for managing this.  But in the case of a B2B Marketing or a software product, it does not require that much expense or media coverage.  Normally it can attain through digital medias , internet, email marketing , search engine etc

It is a general fact, even if we spend more amount of money and we fail to take care the existing customers properly we will loose whatever we are going to spend on Marketing.

How much each industry spends for marketing?

Car                               : 2.5 – 3.5

Liquor                        : 5.5-7.5

Packaged Foods     : 4-10

FMCG                          : 18-22

Software                    :  9-12

Hardware                   : 15-18

* Source: Various market research reports

There is a 30/60/10 rule: If you are managing a Product based firm, then you need to spend 30% of the time and developing product. 60% of the time in Marketing and 10% for administrative tasks. We need to spend more time for this kind of business. The advantage in this scenario is once we develop a product, then we don’t have to spend much time on rebuilding it, we can use same concept, ideas and technology for developing similar kind of products.

According to the above rule, when a firm is concentrating on Services, we need to spend 60% of the time in doing services, 30% in Marketing and rest 10% in Administrative tasks. The important thing in Service Industry is to meet the expectations of the customers on time and develop the product best suit to their customers. If we can satisfy the customers as per your expectations, we will get more business from them also we can generate more business opportunities from them through references.

Marketing in Software Industry:

A Software development firm can categorize into

1) Product Based firm

2) Process Based firm

Normally in Product based firm, they will develop a product first and sell this product into targeted market. In this case, the company needs to invest more on Marketing. In most of the cases, company can meet the breakdown in limited period, after attaining break down, all the new businesses comes as profit of the firm. It is comparatively risk free business; company can meet the development cost in few businesses. Rest of them depends on the smartness of the company officials showing in promoting the business. In the case of a product based firm, promoting the product will go through the following cycle.

1. Identify business and development of product

2. Identify the target audience

3. Find out the potential customers

4. Promotional activities to attract customers

5. Market the product and offer after sale support to retain the customers

The initial stages before achieving the breakdown will be critical for the firm. Word of mouth also plays an important role in promoting the business. Brand name of the company, quality of products, cost factor, after sale service etc are very important in deciding the future of the product. Let us think about how these factors affecting in a product based firm.

1. Brand Name: Brand Name can play an important role in promoting the business. When Microsoft/IBM introduces a new product, interested people will consider this product without waiting for a review. The kind of image the company generated is the reason. We will be assured that when they develop a product, it will be an outstanding one and they made it after proper R&D and we can expect better service from them. Marketing and other promotional activities will be comparatively easier for this kind of firms.  They just need to push the product into the targeted audience.
2. Need of the Product: The industry demand of the product can call as “need of product “. The kind of innovation the company is adopting, USPs of the product, how the product reduces the need gap etc are some of the factors comes under here.  How much a company or product can reduce the need gap, that will determine the profitability of the product.
3. Quality of the Product: Quality is the major factor determines the product.  A company can promote the product through various marketing activities.  But to capture market and develop an outstanding position as well as to sustain there to meet the future demands, company should have certain quality criteria.  Once the company fails to maintain the quality it will affect the brand, product as well as the company.
4. After Sale Services: In the case of IT companies, customer care and support is playing a major role. Once the company fail to offer the customer support it will affect the goodwill of the firm. After selling the product most of the companies offers AMC (Annual Maintains Contract), when company can maintain AMC properly, definitely customers wouldn’t think about a new product or company for their future needs.

Once the company develops a product, it will not be the end of everything.  They should do proper R&D in a specific period of time to meet the change in demand of the customers.

We can see there are many stories about how a product based company fail after a period of time. In 1990s most of the computer applications were desktop based and later people preferred to do everything online.  The increase in demand of web in the daily life of the people, the trend has changed into web applications. When the company fails to understand this demand and still concentrate on desktop applications rather than web based one, obviously people won’t prefer their product. Similar twist we can see in the case of mobile based technologies. Today when a company goes for a website they will consider the portability in mobile devices also.  Only those companies who can adapt the changes/demand in battle field definitely they will sustain in this competitive environment.

Due to competition and price factor in Software Industry, in the case of a product based software firm who has an annual revenue of 100$ million in revenue need to spend at least 12-15% for Marketing activities and business development.

When we consider about the Process Based Companies we can see the investment for Marketing and Advertisement will be comparatively lesser then a product based company. While selling software services, the quality of services, support and innovation etc are the major factors. We can see the application of ‘ Pareto Principle’ here.  Pareto Principle in the case of marketing can write like this “20% of the customers of a firm will create 80% of the revenue “.  While selling services to a firm in the first two months both parties will understand each other and they can work more closely. Instead of looking for big revenue from them when we focus on caring them properly in a professional manner they will never think about considering other firms and we will get maximum revenue from them.  Also it is a reality that satisfied customers will bring more customers.

Delivering the product on time is a biggest problem in software industry.  Normally all the developments will take more time than expected.  When we are working closely to the clients they might be running on tight schedule, but also they will understand this fact.  Instead of this, when we are working to a client who is working in the first time with us, they may not think about our schedule and development time.  This will create issues and they may consider other firms for future projects.

Those companies working on this sector need not spend more for marketing. If a company can offer best service and support then an investment of 7-10 % of revenue in Marketing will bring them into a higher level

Sales and Marketing Expenses for Software firms

Sales and Marketing expenses of a software firm varies based on the product or services they are managing.  Based on the secondary data available in the internet, it has been indicated that software companies spending an average of 18-21 % of the total revenue for their marketing activities.  Even Microsoft also spends 18-19% of its revenue in Marketing.  Of course some of the companies spending more aggressively for Marketing Activities to capture more market.

Various Marketing expenses

1. Direct Sales: Direct sales force including business executives, tele marketing people etc are most of the company’s major Sales Marketing expenses. Also these people are the major source of bringing revenue to the firm
2. Distribution Channels: Distribution channels eat the majority of the marketing expenses of a firm. Because company needs to spend heavily on channel related lead generation programs and promotions.
3. Online Marketing: The expenses in online marketing are comparatively lesser than other marketing activities. Online marketing includes email marketing, banner advertisement , expenses for search engine optimization and other web related promotional activities
4. Trade shows/ campaigns : Promotional activities through trade shows and campaigns are common in IT related companies
5. Brand Building : Brand building activities includes associating values with brands and developing a situation where people can remember the product the while hearing brand name
6. Advertising: Most of the software firm advertises through internet and magazines. As we know the target market of a software firm is focused and they won’t get any kind of benefit on advertise it through popular Medias like television or radio.
7. Public Relations: Public relationship includes developing new business opportunities through alliances/developing partnership etc
8. Market Research: Proper research in the market is necessary for understanding people’s preference and tastes.  Many companies failed in their market while inventing the product without proper Market Research and analysis.  Normally market research activities are managed by third party companies. MR will help to understand the change in trend, people’s preference, taste as well as the current market scenario.

Usability is a quality term.  It measures user’s experience on a particular product or website. In a better way usability is the measure of how easily a user can browse the web pages and satisfy his needs. It varies from kind of websites/application.  In the case of an ecommerce website, usability will be the easiness of the user to buy a product in optimum time. Usability depends on cost effectiveness and usefulness. The purpose of a usability test is to identify areas where users struggle with the site and make recommendations for improvement. It’s better to clearly define problems, goals, and objectives before testing a website.

Usability of a website is a combination of factors such as

1.  Ease of understanding: While visiting in the home of a good website, we will understand 90% of site functionality and features.  It can be achieved through the proper alignment and positioning of links, short descriptions, images and other multi media contents using in the website.

2.  Efficiency: It means how quickly a user can accomplish his task on visiting the website

3.  Remembrance: How quickly a user can meet his needs when he already visit the site

4.  User Satisfaction: It is a measure of how much does a user like the system.

5.  Mistakes : How often a user make mistakes or system create errors while using the website

Importance of Usability Engineering

Usability engineering is using to improve user’s ability to find information and bring satisfactory result and impression about website. Usability engineering will improve user’s attention into the website and attract more users.

User Centric Website Design

User centric website design focuses only on users. During development users will be involved all the stages and it is focused on how users are seeing each phase , how they can easily navigate the website and collect information or meet their requirements.

Procedures using for User Centric Website design are

1.  Understand the goal: Understanding the goal of the organization, users involved in it etc

2.  Understand the reason for visiting the website:

3.  User’s preference about the website ( How the website would like to look from the user’s point of view)

4.  What hardware and software necessary to visit the website

Importance of Usability in Website Design

Following will be some of the good practices that can use in Dental Website Design

1.  Theme of the website: If the website design and theme is very attractive and closely relate to the services of the organization, definitely it will bring the attention of the users and create an urge to browse the website in first look itself.

2.  Quick Links: It would be a good practice, if we can place some quick links to the major services in home page itself. In his first look into the website itself he/she can notice the quick links and able to browse the detailed page

3.  Navigation System: User friendly navigation to the informative pages can play a major role in bringing the attention of the users into the information about particular service/ product

4.  Arrangement of Contents: Proper alignment and linking of contents will help the users to navigate pages as per his desire and he can collect the necessary details without interruption.

5.  Fonts and Styles: The fonts and style of texts using in the website should be readable and understandable for all the age groups

6.  Use of Google Analytics : If we can use tools like google analytics, we will be able to find out where did the user get the website link, what was the  search criteria and how much time he /she spent on particular page etc

7.  Use of Automated Services: Automated services will help web webmasters to identify most visited pages, first/last visited, long visited etc. These services advice on predictable problems, broken links, missing ” alt ” tags etc

8.  Response time: Users may hate on browsing the website if they face long delay in getting response from particular page or page is not properly.  Lot of factors can influence this like speed of server, use of flash contents, broken links, images etc

9.  Load Management: It has been a good practice that webmasters uses tools like load runner to check the capacity of the website on managing particular application or tool. For example, assuming a situation where more than 500 visitors try to register the site online or many people trying to build a particular product from the website in the same time etc.

10. Social networking/Bookmarking: Social networking/ bookmarking options like digg, deli-ci-ous, twitter, facebook, myspace features will help the users to bookmark/store his favorite pages.

Eventhough search engines were not revealed their criterias of choosing ‘ Search Algorithm’ people are trying to get first ranks in the search engines. Search Engine Optimization for a website is a big task. Here are some of major steps that has to be taken to do the basic SEO for a website

1. Tittle Tags
Tittle tags are the name of the webpages that appears in the top. We
need to ensure certain parameters while giving name to the web pages.
* Use SEO friendly tittle tags
* Using blank or meaningless name is a bad practice
* Keywords should explain the summary of the page
*Tittle tags should contain necessary keywords

2. Description Tags
* Description tag is used to describe the contents used in the web page
* Using keywords in description tag is good practices

3. Use of more ‘ headings‘ tag in a single page

4. Inbound and outbound links
* Get listed in directories
* Add links of popular sites
* Make a chance to place links in other websites
* More inbound links than outbound links is a bad experience

5. Contents
* Regular updation of contents will increase the traffic
* Adding RSS and Blog will attract more users as well as result
updation in contents
* Avoid duplicate contents
* Reduce images and flash contents
* Avaoid Javascript and Frames

6. URLs
* Static URL is better than dynamic URL
* URL Rewriting is a best practice

7. Submit URLs in Search Engines
Google: http://www.google.com/addurl/?continue=/addurl
8. Get traffic through Social Bookmarking sites like digg.com ,
reddit.com stumlipon.com

9. Use of Sitemaps, search engines will easily notice the changes that
has been recently made to the site through sitemaps

-t : Ping the specifed host until interrupted

-a : Resolve addresses to hostnames

-n : count Number of echo requests to send

-l : size Send buffer size

-f : Set Don’t Fragment flag in packet

-i : TTL Time To Live

-v : TOS Type Of Service

-r : count Record route for count hops

-s : count Timestamp for count hops

-j : host-list Loose source route along host-list

-k : host-list Strict source route along host-list

-w : timeout Timeout in milliseconds to wait for each reply

It is very easy to download the youtube videos,if you are using mozilla firefox. Please instal any popular component for video downloading ( I would like to suggest the addon ‘video download helper’ (https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/3006 )  In firefox, go to tools->Add ons->Get Add ons-> Search-> Install)

After insalling this, you can see its iconn in the footer bar. Click on this icon after opening the required video in youtube.

In Google Chrome

If you are using the browser ‘ Google Chrome’ please copy and paste the following java script after opening the desired youtube video

javascript:window.location.href = ‘http://youtube.com/get_video?video_id=’ + swfArgs['video_id'] + “&l=” + swfArgs['l'] + “&sk=” + swfArgs['sk'] + ‘&fmt_map’ + swfArgs['fmt_map'] + ‘&t=’ + swfArgs['t'];

It will automatically save the videos into the default chrome folder.

Keep Downloading….enjoy

You know vista is not supporting full screen mode of ‘ Turbo C++’ . This is an easist solution in getting the full screen mode
for your C++ and C programs in Vista

Step1: Install ‘ Turbo C++’

Step2: Run the program

Step3: In the top left corner of the window just before the tittle ‘ Turbo C++ IDE’ , you can see a small black icon

Step4: Click on it, you will get a menu

Step 5: Click on properties and Select font tab ( You can see two fonts Raster and Lucia Console)

Step 6: Select ‘ Lucia Console’ and set size as 28 or 30

Step 7: Select Layout tab and unselect the “Let system position window” option from window position options

Step 8: Set the following values
Screen Buffer Size: Width:82 Height: 28
Window Size : Width: 80 Height 26
Windows Postion: Left: -4 Right: 4

Step 9: Click on ‘ OK’ to get the full screen

When you get any warning message while starting C++,just ignore the warning and continue…..Happy Programming