Codez Blog

ECMAScript for XML: E4X

rupak — Tue, 10 Apr 2012 10:26:42 +0000

E4X stands for “ECMAScript for XML” and ECMA in turn stands for European Computer Manufacturers Association. ECMAScript for XML (E4X) is a programming language extension that adds native XML support to ECMAScript. It is the next gen of Scripting Language.

ECMA is the standardizing and organization JavaScript. ECMA has also developed standards for quite a few stuffs apart from JavaScript e.g. Optical disks, Magnetic tape and C# language etc.

E4X is available to both Firefox and ActionScript developers that turns XML into a native data type on par with strings, arrays, objects, and regular expressions. Worth to mention its not the DOM equivalent of XML but is a distinct entity itself which has its own set of methods. E4X is implemented in SpiderMonkey (Gecko’s JavaScript engine) and in Rhino (JavaScript engine written in Java).

Why work with E4X when you can do the same thing with JSON objects?

JSON is marginally more compact to encode— than for attribute intensive XML or element heavy encodings. But this advantage disappears if the resource is gzipped as for both the cases we are storing labels and associated values. Thus if transmission is concerned then gzipping the content will occur as a matter of fact and the speed becomes insignificant comparison. Apart from this some very interesting work is going on with EXI (i.e. Efficient XML Interchange) that to at W3C level that is trying to make EXI more compact than even compressed JSON.

Key features of E4X include:

ECMAScript for XML specification defines a new set of classes and functionality for working with XML data.
E4X can be used for creating templates for dynamic content.
Using E4X functionality is much easier and more intuitive than “walking the DOM”.
You manipulate XML data with well-known operators, such as the dot (.) operator.
Use the @ and (.) operators not only to read data, but also to assign data.

Limitations of E4X:

E4X doesn’t support parsing XML declaration
It is not currently possible to access a DOM object through E4X.

Importance of Meta Tag Descriptions & Keywords in SEO

anushua — Tue, 03 Apr 2012 10:10:48 +0000

As described in Wikipedia, Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of improving the visibility of a website or a web page in search engines’ “natural” or un-paid (“organic” or “algorithmic”), search results. In general, the earlier (or higher ranked on the search results page), and more frequently a site appears in the search results list, the more visitors it will receive from the search engine’s users. SEO may target different kinds of search, including image search, local search, video search, academic search, news search and industry-specific vertical search engines.
In other words, Search Engine Optimization is the technique of analyzing and building individual web pages, as well as entire sites, so that they can be discovered and listed by various search engines.

What is a Meta Description?

Meta Descriptions are HTML attributes which provide brief explanations of the contents of web pages and are commonly used by search engines to display preview snippets for a given page on search result pages.
It is usually placed inside the section of a web page after the Title tag and before the Meta keywords tag (if you use one), although the order is not important.
Meta description tags although are not of importance in case of search engine rankings but are very important in gaining user click-through from search engine result pages (SERPs). These short paragraphs are the webmaster’s opportunity to publicize content to users to and let them know exactly what content the given page has. Direct relevance to the page and inimitability between each page’s descriptions is very important. The description should ideally be between 150-160 characters.

There are 3 important ways that Meta descriptions are being used today that make them an important part of your SEO and overall online marketing strategy:

•   They can be used as the description (or part of the description) of your page if it shows up in the search results.
•   They are often used as part of the descriptive information for your pages when Google shows “extended sitelinks” for your site.
•   They are often used as the default description in social media marketing links such as Facebook and Google+.

What are Keywords?

Keywords are the most significant SEO element for every search engine because they are what search strings are matched against. Choosing the right keywords to optimize for is the primary and most vital step of any successful SEO campaign. The initial thing you need to do is come up with keywords that describe the content of your website.

Some tips for increasing the visibility of your web page with regards to SEO keywords:

•   Using the keyword in the title of the page
•   Using the keyword in the URL
•   Using the keyword in the meta tags, especially the meta description
•   Using the keyword in any image file paths and in the images’ alt text
•   Using the keyword as the anchor text in links back to the page from elsewhere on the site

(Reference sites: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Search_engine_optimization, http://www.wordstream.com, http://www.highrankings.com)

How Often Do You Try New Things?

mukund — Tue, 03 Apr 2012 10:02:21 +0000

Web design in complicated and requires a lot of time and knowledge — and patience. It’s no longer just embedded text background images and slices; it’s interactivity and dynamic content, it’s HTML5 and mobile development, it’s JSON objects and Local Storage.
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Web design in complicated and requires a lot of time and knowledge — and patience. It’s no longer just embedded text background images and slices; it’s interactivity and dynamic content, it’s HTML5 and mobile development, it’s JSON objects and Local Storage.
But beyond the many technologies to know and love, web design is also moving target. It changes all the time, month to month and week to week so if you’re not learning the new trends and technologies you’ll get left behind really quickly. Staying ahead of the game means you have to try and learn new things quickly. It’s an arms race. A race to better, more efficient designs, a race to embrace new technologies and methods before the next guy. It’s a huge messy world of languages, grids, typography, fonts, management systems and platforms — most designers tend to get really proficient at a few aspects of the web and neglect the rest. But while perfecting one or two aspects is great, what happens when the web changes tomorrow and those technologies are left behind?
I’ve compiled a little list of my own, a list of ways you can begin to try new things — not really a list of things to try, but a list of resources and ways to try them. I’ll go into detail on each one of them below but here’s the quick list of items:
•   Follow Design Magazines
•   Write About Stuff
•   Give Up One Hour a Day to Learn
•   Take an Online Class
•   Work on a Side Project with a Buddy
•   Join a User Group or Two
•   Become Bilingual
•   Do Something Other than Web Design

Read Design Magazines

Fifty percent of the web is made up of design mags. Okay, not really, but it sure seems like it. There are literally thousands of really great design blogs on the interwebs that publish regular if not daily content on design subjects of all kinds. I think my Reader is up to three hundred different magazines that I glance at on a regular basis and no I don’t read them all… that’s why catchy headlines are important.
If you don’t have a few favorite design blogs by now you need to find a couple. May I suggest Codrops.com? I started with Smashing Magazine just like everybody else, I call it the gateway mag for web design. Just start somewhere and find those that interest you the most. Regardless of subject matter, most blogs publish so often that they can’t help but stay up to date on trends. Reading and participating in these design blogs will also bring you into the vast, open and friendly design community and making you a part of it.

Write About It

I started writing about web design about a year and a half ago. I started a weird little blog and just started to write about stuff I knew. Then I realized that one of the best ways for me to learn new things was to write an article about it. It forced me to research the topic, learn the technology, and digest what I learned via writing. It’s a great way to learn and try new things without all the pressure of project deadlines or a boss breathing down your neck.
Starting your blog is a great first step into exploring new things, plus, managing your own site can be an education in itself. But also consider writing guest posts for other magazines. Most magazine love guest writers and contributors because they can bring another perspective and tone their magazine as well as fill some empty publishing spots. Just hit up some of you favorite magazines and shoot them a few article ideas that you’d like to write about, I know they would be happy to have you contribute to their community.

Devote One Hour A Day

With so many design blogs and tutorials on the web just take an hour everyday to go through one of these online tutorials. Most online tutorials are an hour or so, they don’t generally require to much time on your part and they are a great way to learn new methods and tricks from other web professionals.
There are a ton of online tutorials written by industries professionals, but here are a few of my favorite places:
•   LearningJquery (jQuery Obviously)
•   Codrops (jQuery tutorials)
•   NetTuts (everything web dev tuts)
•   PSDTuts (awesome photoshop tuts)
•   VectorTuts (Vector graphic tutorials)
•   Script-Tutorials (Web development tuts)
•   Tutorialzine (tuts for anything interwebs)

Take a Structured Online Class

Online tutorials are a great way to learn new things but they generally only provide small pieces for you to chew on. Sometimes is nice or even necessary to dig deeper into a subject or language. But for most of us full-timers auditing a college course or going back for a Master’s just isn’t in the cards. That’s where a structured online course can fill the gap. Most colleges and universities offer either online course auditing or continuing education courses, continuing education courses are generally cheaper and most of them are aimed at the working professional, so most of the courses are shorter.
iTunes University also offers a lot of great college level tech courses via Stanford University, MIT, ETSU, UC Davis and more. In some cases these tech courses are free to download and are the same courses taught on campus — minus the bookstore.
If you’re not into the whole college course thing, sites like TreeHouse and Lynda.com provide video-based courses and differing member ship packages so that you can customize your education. Both sites provide excellent courses written and taught by industry professionals who really know and practice what they preach. Most of these video classes are self-paced but still offer the structure and deep theory that you would get from a college course.
Not to brag, but more to illustrate, I actually just enrolled in an online AJAX class through my local community college’s continuing education program. It’s a six week, professor lead online course that was surprisingly inexpensive — 95 bones. It doesn’t start until the first of the year so I’ll let you know how it goes, but it looks very promising.

Start a Project with a Buddy

So you’ve just gone through a bunch of jQuery and HTML5 tutorials online and you’ve implemented a few things on your work related stuff, but your boss isn’t really hip to new tech yet so you’re fairly limited. I’ve found that one of the best ways to learn/apply new knowledge is to work on a side project — build something for yourself. Build a new web app for mobile or a funny website, but build something that you care about.
It’s also nice to find a buddy and build something together. Chances are your buddy knows more than you about most things, so it’s a good opportunity to learn from them. I have learned a great deal of stuff just working on even small projects with friends, they all have their levels of expertise on stuff so it’s nice to pick it up from them. Plus, it’s a good way to stay busy, maintaining friendships and apply the new tech knowledge that your boss refuse to believe in.

Join a Group

If the friends you know aren’t into the same stuff as you, or just being pricks about not wanting to work with you on your latest Internet scheme, I bet if you did a little bit of research right now, you’d be able to find a user group in your area on pretty much anything form WordPress to design to Javascript. User groups are great places to meet people, find jobs and just learn more about a particular technology or interest. I prefer the live meet up groups versus the online discussion groups just for the sheer interaction level, but online groups are also a great way to learn and meet people in the community.
Groups and communities can provide you with a lot of benefits and opportunities.You can learn from presentations and classes, you can meet people in your same area of interest, you can network with others to find jobs or freelance opportunities and in some case you can win free stuff! The WordCamp community is basically how I got excited and learned about WordPress. I’ve learned an awful lot form attending WordCamp events, met really good people who have furthered my education and even gotten a freelance job or two.

Learn a New Language

You’ve probably seen a developer at work wearing his new “I Ride the Rails” t-shirt from his priceless collection of ‘I’m smarter than you’ t-shirts collection, but you probably didn’t realize it had something to do with the web — maybe just a new gaming meme. Learning a new web language can be challenging if you’re like me, but in the age of web design it’s a great way to keep up. I’m generally only fluent in HTML and CSS, but I can speak a little PHP and Javascript — even a few dialects like jQuery and Prototype.
Learning even the basic syntax of other languages not only teaches you to be aware that they are out there, but they also expand your knowledge of web programming in general. Learning new languages can actually be pretty fun once you get past that awkward phase where everything is flying over your head, but once you enter the bull shitting realm you’ll be able to use what you know to write and share your own snippets. Oh, and if you still don’t know what Rails is, then might I suggest Rails For Zombies.

Get Outside the Box

Since the web can sometimes be this super overwhelming place of intertwined media and technologies where once a month a new technology is king, it’s important to get out and remember why you started designing web sites and apps in the first place. It’s good to get outside the web and learn something else every once in a while. Go buy an oil painting book and learn to paint. Try your hand at comic book illustration, or go take a class in woodworking at your community college.
These types of outside learning experiences may not seem to apply to the web at all, but they actually do three things: add more design knowledge to your brain, give you a different perspective on design, and allow you to re-kindle your passion for design and creativity. Doing other design related things like drawing or painting allow you to refocus on core compositional principles and help you see things in web design that you haven’t noticed before and be able to apply them.
For me, one of the hardest things was finding creativity when coding. Writing code can seem like such a task, just a necessary evil of reproducing your brilliant designs, but I’ve actually discovered that writing code is just another medium for creation, just like painting or sculpting. It’s only been through recent study of architecture and industrial design that I have found the technical side of the web to be creative. Learning new things outside of the the web design world allows you to see it differently or even from a new perspective.

How often do you try new things?

As web creators there is a lot to learn out there and there have been specific lines drawn in the past as to who knew what. Previously the web consisted of graphics designers, developers, user experience specialist and project managers. But today those lines are becoming more and more blurry day by day. Users demand more interaction and this means that we, the creators, must interact more as well. Try new things often, if not daily, even if this means you’ll never become proficient at any one thing you try, even a small experience with one thing can make a huge impact.

Dynamically Styling Modules and Blocks in Drupal 6

Sandipan Bhattacharjee — Thu, 22 Sep 2011 09:31:48 +0000

The default templates and themable functions contribute a good deal to the productivity on a Drupal site, and several are positioned on the page through the assignment of blocks to regions. Today we will focus mainly on how to control the formatting of a site’s various modules and blocks.

1. Dynamically Styling Blocks:

Block output is controlled by the block.tpl.php template. As in other areas, PHPTemplate will look to the names given to multiple template files to determine which template to display. The order of precedence used for the block template is consistent with that used elsewhere.
• you can provide a template to apply to the blocks of a specific module of a specific delta `(block-modulename-delta.tpl.php)`.
• You can also attach a template to blocks of a module by module name `(block-modulename.tpl.php)`, or to the blocks of a particular region `(block-regionname.tpl.php)`.
• If nothing is specified, the system applies the default `block.tpl.php` template.
If you are not certain of the attribution of your block, that is, the name of the module that produces the block or the block’s delta, try using the Theme Developer feature of the Devel module. If you have the Devel module installed on your site, you can yield information in the form of a list of suggestions quite effortlessly
• Install the Devel module.
• Activate the Theme Developer option.
• Open your browser and go to the page where your block appears.
• Click the **Themer Info** checkbox on the bottom left of the screen, then click on the block in question.
When you click on the element, a pop up will appear:

2. Dynamically Styling the Forum Module:
The base template of the forum module is `forums.tpl.php`. There are several suggestions for both forum containers and topics:

3. Dynamically Styling the Polls Module:
The Polls module is the subject to a number of default templates. There are default suggestions available for all the key templates:

4. Dynamically Styling Nodes:
PHPTemplate provides an explicit template for nodes—`node.tpl.php`. In the absence of a more specific template, the system will apply the default `node.tpl.php` file. The table below shows the suggestions for the default system:

How to Theme profile2 module form

rupak — Thu, 22 Sep 2011 09:05:56 +0000

In drupal the form is rendered using the form rendering system, which doesn’t include template files.
To theme the profile 2 form we use “hook_theme()”.
Go through the steps:
1. In this step copy the code in template.php of the theme or any php file and include the file in template, php used with proper theme name and form id. Here we are using ZUK theme and ‘user-profile2-form’ form id

function zuk_theme($existing, $type, $theme, $path){
return array(
‘user-profile2-form ‘ => array(
‘render element’ => ‘form’,
‘template’ => ‘user-profile-form’,// new form template name
‘path’ => drupal_get_path(‘theme’, ‘zuk’) . ‘/templates’,
//add ‘/templates’ only if you store template files in an additional folder
),
);
}

This tells the Drupal theming system that there’s a template file waiting for it in zuk/templates.

2. Next we define variables to pass into that template in a “hook_preprocess_HOOK” function. You can find the structured array of the form in “$variables['form']” and assign the form elements to the variables we’d like to throw around our tpl.php file.

function
zuk_preprocess_user-profile2-form (&$variables) {
$variables['rendered'][‘first_name’] = drupal_render($variables['form']['first_name']);
$variables['rendered'][‘last_name’] = drupal_render($variables['form']['last_name']);
}

use var_dump(($variables['form']) to see all the element of the array (i.e form element)

3. Create a new template file named .tpl.php in ‘YOURTHEME/templates’. Same as name of template mentioned in zuk_theme() function.

{div id=”new-form_template”}
{?php echo $rendered[first_name]; ?}
{?php echo $rendered[last_name]; ?}
{/div}

In the above code “< >” are replaced by “{ }”
Now you can see the changes in edit tab of the profile pages.

Note: The hidden file like form_id and token must be there inside the form. Otherwise the form saves not working.

Display your Google Calendar in Windows Calendar

paramita — Thu, 22 Sep 2011 07:46:38 +0000

Google Calendar and similar other online calendaring applications provide simple centralized systems, where online communities can maintain event calendars and community members can extract information about upcoming events. But many organizations prefer to display event calendars on their community portals, forums, or blogs. They often copy event calendar information from online calendaring applications onto their Web sites, reducing the effectiveness of centrally managed events online. Google Calendar provides an integrated application program interface (API) that solves the problem.
To subscribe to your Google Calendar, you’ll first need to get the iCal link to your calendar.

In Google Calendar: Go to Settings \ Calendars and then click on your calendar in the list.
You should see a “Private Address” section:

Right click on the ICAL link, and choose Copy Shortcut to copy the link to the clipboard.
Now open Windows Calendar, and click the Subscribe buttton on the toolbar:

Paste the URL into the textbox, and hit the Next button:

After what seems like far too long, you’ll see the next screen:

The key thing that you’ll want to choose on this screen is the Update interval, which will keep the calendar automatically sync up.
That’s all there is to it. Notice the blue appointments are the ones that came from Google Calendar:

Excerpted from : http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/windows-vista/display-your-google-calendar-in-windows-calendar/

SQL Query Optimization

Sahel Aktar — Wed, 21 Sep 2011 11:25:30 +0000

Today we will learn a few interesting things about SQL Query Optimization.

How to get query execution time and executed query number?

Follow the code given below:

function timer()
{
$time = explode(‘ ‘, microtime());
return $time[0]+$time[1];
}
$beginning = timer();
$timer_queries += round(timer()-$beginning,6);

The sql query becomes faster if you use the actual columns names in SELECT statement instead of than ‘*’.
For Example: Write the query as
SELECT id, first_name, last_name, age, subject FROM student_details;
Instead of:
SELECT * FROM student_details;
HAVING clause is used to filter the rows after all the rows are selected. It is just like a filter. Do not use HAVING clause for any other purposes.
For Example: Write the query as
SELECT subject, count(subject)
FROM student_details
WHERE subject != ‘Science’
AND subject != ‘Maths’
GROUP BY subject;
Instead of:
SELECT subject, count(subject)
FROM student_details
GROUP BY subject
HAVING subject!= ‘Vancouver’ AND subject!= ‘Toronto’;
Sometimes you may have more than one subqueries in your main query. Try to minimize the number of subquery block in your query.
For Example: Write the query as
SELECT name
FROM employee
WHERE (salary, age ) = (SELECT MAX (salary), MAX (age)
FROM employee_details)
AND dept = ‘Electronics’;
Instead of:
SELECT name
FROM employee
WHERE salary = (SELECT MAX(salary) FROM employee_details)
AND age = (SELECT MAX(age) FROM employee_details)
AND emp_dept = ‘Electronics’;
Be careful while using conditions in WHERE clause.
For Example: Write the query as
SELECT id, first_name, age FROM student_details WHERE age > 10;
Instead of:
SELECT id, first_name, age FROM student_details WHERE age != 10;
Write the query as:
SELECT product_id, product_name
FROM product
WHERE unit_price BETWEEN MAX(unit_price) and MIN(unit_price)
Instead of:
SELECT product_id, product_name
FROM product
WHERE unit_price >= MAX(unit_price)
and unit_price <= MIN(unit_price)

In SQL, wildcard is provided for us with ‘%’ symbol.

Using wildcard will definitely slow down your query especially for table that are really huge. We can optimize our query with wildcard by doing a postfix wildcard instead of pre or full wildcard.

#Full wildcard
SELECT * FROM TABLE WHERE COLUMN LIKE ‘%hello%’;
#Postfix wildcard
SELECT * FROM TABLE WHERE COLUMN LIKE ‘hello%’;
#Prefix wildcard 6 SELECT * FROM TABLE WHERE COLUMN LIKE ‘%hello’;

count vs exist

Some of us might use COUNT operator to determine whether a particular data exist 1. SELECT COLUMN FROM TABLE WHERE COUNT(COLUMN) > 0
Similarly, this is very bad query since count will search for all record exist on the table to determine the numeric value of field ‘COLUMN’. The better alternative will be to use the EXIST operator where it will stop once it found the first record. Hence, it exist.
Limit The Result
Another common way of optimizing your query is to minimize the number of row return. If a table have a few billion records and a search query without limitation will just break the database with a simple SQL query such as this.
1 SELECT * FROM TABLE
Hence, don’t be lazy and try to limit the result turn which is both efficient and can help minimize the damage of an SQL injection attack.
1 SELECT * FROM TABLE WHERE 1 LIMIT 10

In Subquery
Use operator EXISTS, IN and table joins appropriately in your query.
a) Usually IN has the slowest performance.
b) IN is efficient when most of the filter criteria is in the sub-query.
c) EXISTS is efficient when most of the filter criteria is in the main query.
For Example: Write the query as
Select * from product p
where EXISTS (select * from order_items o
where o.product_id = p.product_id)
Instead of:
Select * from product p
where product_id IN
(select product_id from order_items
Some of us will use a subquery within the IN operator such as this.
1 SELECT * FROM TABLE WHERE COLUMN IN (SELECT COLUMN FROM TABLE)
Doing this is very expensive because SQL query will evaluate the outer query first before proceed with the inner query. Instead we can use this instead.
1 SELECT * FROM TABLE, (SELECT COLUMN FROM TABLE) as dummytable WHERE dummytable.COLUMN = TABLE.COLUMN;
Using dummy table is better than using an IN operator to do a subquery. Alternative, an exist operator is also better.
Utilize Union instead of OR
Indexes lose their speed advantage when using them in OR-situations in MySQL at least. Hence, this will not be useful although indexes is being applied
1 SELECT * FROM TABLE WHERE COLUMN_A = ‘value’ OR COLUMN_B = ‘value’
On the other hand, using Union such as this will utilize Indexes.
1 SELECT * FROM TABLE WHERE COLUMN_A = ‘value’
2 UNION
3 SELECT * FROM TABLE WHERE COLUMN_B = ‘value’
Hence, run faster.

To create a password meter using Javascript

rajat — Wed, 21 Sep 2011 07:23:45 +0000

We can see various type of password strength meter when we are registering on different types of websites. Here I will show you how to create a simple password strength meter using JavaScript and PHP.

There will be three steps:

1st create a html form:

{form method=”post”}
{h1}Password strength meter{/h1}
{label for=”pass”}Password{/label}
{input type=”password” name=”pass” id=”pass” onkeyup=”passwordStrength(this.value)” /}

{label for=”passwordStrength”}Password strength{/label}

{div id=”passwordDescription”}Password not entered{/div}

{div id=”passwordStrength” class=”strength0″}{/div}

{/form}

the “< >” are replaced with “{ }” for convenience.
2nd Create a style sheet which will help us to show the strength meter in different colour:

#passwordStrength
{
height:10px;
display:block;
float:left;
}
.strength0
{
width:250px;
background:#cccccc;
}
.strength1
{
width:50px;
background:#ff0000;
}
.strength2
{
width:100px;
background:#ff5f5f;
}

.strength3
{
width:150px;
background:#56e500;
}
.strength4
{
background:#4dcd00;
width:200px;
}
.strength5
{
background:#399800;
width:250px;
}

3rd and most important step that is to create the javascript code:

function passwordStrength(password)
{ var desc = new Array();
desc[0] = “Very Weak”;
desc[1] = “Weak”;
desc[2] = “Better”;
desc[3] = “Medium”;
desc[4] = “Strong”;
desc[5] = “Strongest”;
var score = 0;
//if password bigger than 6 give 1 point
if (password.length > 6) score++;

//if password has both lower and uppercase characters give 1 point
if ( ( password.match(/[a-z]/) ) && ( password.match(/[A-Z]/) ) ) score++;

//if password has at least one number give 1 point
if (password.match(/\d+/)) score++;

//if password has at least one special caracther give 1 point
if ( password.match(/.[!,@,#,$,%,^,&,*,?,_,~,-,(,)]/) ) score++;

//if password bigger than 12 give another 1 point
if (password.length > 12) score++;
document.getElementById(“passwordDescription”).innerHTML = desc[score]; document.getElementById(“passwordStrength”).className = “strength” + score;}

Value of META TAG

arindam — Wed, 21 Sep 2011 07:12:39 +0000

Meta tags are HTML codes that are inserted into the header on a web page Meta tag helps Google search simpler. The word Meta means information about. Meta tag gives information inserted into the “head” area of your web pages. Meta tags, for example, can tell a browser what “character set” to use or whether a web page has self-rated itself in terms of adult content. The reason why Meta tags used to be so important was because they were relied on by search engines to build a profile of a web page. It also helps to increase page ranking in internet in a minor way.

There are some rules or guidelines to put your Meta tag:

Keep your list of keywords or keyword phrases down to 10 – 15 unique words or phrases
Separate the words or phrases using a comma (you do not need to leave a space between words separated by commas
Do not repeat words or phrases
put your most important word or phrases at the beginning of your list

For example: if you have a page of Software Testing and you write “softwaretesting” as a single word in Meta tag. But some people may instead search for “software testing” with “software testing” in their searches being two separate words.

Therefore, if you write “software testing” as different word, then may be your page will be ranked better.

Several great SEO tips

Subhankar Das — Wed, 21 Sep 2011 05:38:21 +0000

Here are 9 of the top 52 tips on how to optimize your website for its turbo-charge rocket ride up the search engine rankings.

Be bold: Use the tags around some of your keywords on each page. Do NOT use them everywhere the keyword appears. Once or twice is plenty.
Deep linking: Make sure you have links coming in to as many pages as possible. What does it tell a search engine when other web sites are linking to different pages on your site? That you obviously have lots of worthwhile content. What does it tell a search engine that all your links are coming in to the home page? That you have a shallow site of little value, or that your links were generated by automation rather than by the value of your site.
Social bookmarking: Make it easy for your visitors to social bookmark your website, creating important links that the search engines value. There are plenty of free social bookmarking widgets available.
Newsletters: Offer articles to ezine publishers that archive their ezines. The links stay live often for many years in their archives.
First come, first served: If you must have image links in your navigation bar, include also text links. However, make sure the text links show up first in the source code, because search engine robots will follow the first link they find to any particular page. They won’t follow additional links to the same page.
Multiple domains: If you have several topics that could each support their own website, it might be worth having multiple domains. Why? First, search engines usually list only one page per domain for any given search, and you might warrant two. Second, directories usually accept only home pages, so you can get more directory listings this way. Why not a site dedicated to gumbo pudding pops?
Article exchanges: You’ve heard of link exchanges, useless as they generally are. Article exchanges are like link exchanges, only much more useful. You publish someone else’s article on the history of pudding pops with a link back to their site. They publish your article on the top ten pudding pop flavors in Viet Nam, with a link back to your site. You both have content. You both get high quality links. (More on high quality links in other tips.)
Titles for links: Links can get titles, too. Not only does this help visually impaired surfers know where you are sending them, but some search engines figure this into their relevancy for a page.
Not anchor text: Don’t overdo the anchor text. You don’t want all your inbound links looking the same, because that looks like automation – something Google frowns upon. Use your URL sometimes, your company name other times, “Gumbo Pudding Pop” occasionally, “Get gumbo pudding pops” as well, “Gumbo-flavored pudding pops” some other times, etc…..

I will provide the next set of tips in my next blog.