Tips for E-commerce SEO’s

Check out the 9 tips given by Adam

www.searchengineland.com/9-tasty-tips-for-ecommerce-seos-26730

Additionally here are a few other tricks I think would work.

- Product Categorization:  One might say that this is more of a site navigation features, but makign sure the products you are featuring on your site are well categorized is very important. This will help you get targetted traffic and the user could be pointed directly to the correct category page within your e-commerce site, thus ensuring that the user doesnt leave the site struggling with the navigation having to make a few more clicks from the home page to the specific category pages to find what they are looking for.

- Bubble up your ratings/reviews: If you have ratings and reviews for your products on your site, make sure they are featured well enough to be featured on the SERP. Users love seeing a 5 star against a search result before clicking on it

- Make sure you have trackbacks from famous review sites or related sites.

 

The joys of being in a Rut…

There were times when i used to hate the ‘rut’ , getting up – going to work-doing the same job again and again – coming home – fixing dinner – watching tv.. and the same cycle all over again. But recently I have been craving for that, especially since the huge house project that went on for a year and changes with job etc… I never thought i would say this but.. I love the days when i am in a ‘rut’, although they don’t really last long, but I surely enjoy them… and I am sure thats the reason i enjoy them – they don’t last long

 

Finally.. we have micro-payments on Twitter

 

Its like someone read my mind or my blog  (http://amrutam.wordpress.com/2008/07/07/seeing-beyond-the-tweet/). Micro-payments was of the key things  twitter was missing and kept me wondering why Twitter didnt make the move.

 

But someone else has – Tipjoy

 

Check out the post: http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/04/08/micro-blogging-meets-micro-payments-courtesy-of-tipjoys-api/

 

Let Our Start-Ups Bail Us Out – Reid Hoffman

This post by Reid Hoffman speaks to my sentiment and I am sure a lot of you dealing with the current economic situation.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/03/02/AR2009030201947.html?sub=AR

 

Consultants – do we really need them?

During my 6 year career in technology I have come across various consultants doing all sorts of studies for the companies. I found very few of them to be justified the rest – a waste of money. Its like paying someone more than what you make to tell you what you already know. I am yet to see great value out of a consultant.

I love this statement made by Anil Ambani: “Don’t hire a consultant to tell you the time from your own watch! “.. right on.

 

Why give Google so much importance ?

Since I moved to the Bay area there is one thing that became quite obvious – Anything Google releases is considered a hit. I think the press and the attention that small google app releases get is a little too much. I think ts time that press and everyone in silicon valley start focusing their energies inon other innovators as well.

Om Malik from gigaom does a great job of expressing the same feeling that i have regarding google’s ‘new ideas’  http://gigaom.com/2009/02/03/google-the-big-ideas/

 

Desktop Smartphones could be the future

Microsoft recently filed a patent for Desktop Smartphones. You could wonder, what the hell is this? I did too.. but i would recommend reading about it more, it has great potential

http://blog.wired.com/gadgets/2009/01/microsoft-paten.html

 

The world is flat — and now things start getting scary

When search engines such as Google and Live (yes it IS a good search engine) and other sites like wikipedia surfaced the web, finding information about anything became as simple as clicking a button. This also included information about people and connecting with people as well, especially with the recent storm of social networking sites which make keeping in touch with people a trivial task – at least for those net savvy people who have nothing else to do but keep browsing the web wasting their time going through others facebook profiles and updating their status.

All of this has surely made the world flat and everyone’s life an open book. I can basically find information about where a person lives, his/her marital status, work status and even what a you did yesterday or last weekend at a click of a button- doesn’t this get you scared. Sometimes i feel like a celebrity (not in a good way), in the sense that everyone seems to know everything about me without knowing me personally. There are even sites which specialize in people search (eg. pipl.com) where you can just get info about people just knowing their name and country, and if you have a unique name like mine well you have all the information, including my previous addresses which even i don’t remember.

This is making me very anxious. While I do want to share information about myself (and yes i do know how to use the security features on the social sites) there is still a lot of information about me that I dont like seeing out there.

I am waiting to see a service/tool which would enable people to secure information about themselves on the web, not only information they published but also published by other people. Dont we have a right to information about ourselves?

All you social networking entrepreneur’s heres some food for thought, and if you need someone to help you design it get in touch with me, I already have some stuff cooking.

 

Microprinter – I want one!!!

This is one of the coolest things i have found on the web via twitter.

http://tomtaylor.co.uk/projects/microprinter/

This is what i call innovation. I can get my to do lists, voice messages even tweets printed out for me..  yeah i know some of you will say I have reached another level of laziness, but come on this is really cool.

 

2008 Recap

• Got married
• Moved to San Francisco
• Moved teams/groups at work
• Bought a house
• Renovated (still renovating) a house
• Turned 30
• Took no vacations
• Re-connected with some old friends
• Made some new friends
• Gained 10-15lbs
• Learnt to play squash

And Enjoyed life and would love to do it all over again. Thanks to everyone who made 2008 an awesome year and wish you all the best for 2009