Web 2.0 Concepts and Design

What is web 2.0?

Web 2.0 is a concept which refers to the second generation of web based service- like social platform (MySpace, Friendster), communication tools, wikis and folksonomies etc. It was coined by O’Reilly that refers to a new generation of websites. During surfing the web, these programs help people to communicate and share information with each other online that was not possible in web 1.0 because it was ‘read-only’ web, whereas web 2.0 is extended into ‘read-write’ web.

Google, Amazon, etc. are some examples of web 2.0.

According to Wikipedia-

"Web 2.0 is the business revolution in the computer industry caused by the move to the Internet as platform, and an attempt to understand the rules for success on that new platform."

Basically web 2.0 is a web based application that focuses on user experience and collaboration.

Characteristics of Web 2.0

Web 2.0 has the following characteristics:

• The entire data is shared through open source code as well as open source content.
• Introduction to different web trends like sharing of articles, blog posting- increasing Web 2.0 applications.
• Web 2.0 delivers web based applications.
• It executes social networking capabilities.
• Using web 2.0 application, the users of different websites are able to interact with the web based application.
• It is more user friendly based on the latest technologies like AJAX.
• It has a vast potential for pioneering web applications.
• It helps to implement social networking capabilities where people can interact with each other.

The tools used here are RSS, Social Bookmarking and AJAX etc which are very powerful and operate faster compared to the previous concepts that were implemented in the earlier arenas.

In traditional web application, when anyone clicks something, he has to wait for the page to load, and thus is time consuming. But in Web 2.0, AJAX has made it most popular because the result comes without wasting time e.g. Google Maps.

Several different business models uses web 2.0 concept. Some of them are-

Ø Web development

Ø Web designing

Ø Search Engine Optimization

Ø E commerce.

The web2.0 is gaining popularity because of it's simplicity and becoming important for marketers. It redefines the market with new opportunities.

Due to the simplicity in web 2.0 concept, various websites are implementing the web 2.0 technologies and are becoming successful. Some of them are:

· YouTube.com : YouTube has gained popularity due to it’s user friendly nature and simple concept. Here people can also share video files among each other worldwide. Due to its popularity, it was sold for over 2 billion dollars to Google.

· MySpace.com: In this website, anyone can create his own profile, friend list and personal homepage. They can share their profile and web page both. In this web site anyone can create the web page by introducing images, text, video, etc.

· Wikipedia: It is a huge and famous encyclopedia available free to online. It is full of resource for everyone that can be updated and edited by anyone.

· Digg.com: Websites like Digg.com is an example of social bookmarking that offers people to create friend lists and share websites, opinions, stories etc globally.

· MySpace.com: As mentioned above, people can also create their own profile, friend list and their own homepage by adding text, images, videos, etc. in this website anyone can share their profile and web page worldwide. It is one of the most visited website viewed online.

Web 2.0 design:

Web 2.0 is designed in a simple way where high contrast colors are used. Colors like green, blues, oranges and pinks are used frequently in web 2.0.

3 basic things are needed to design a Web2.0:

1. Text.
2. Object, and
3. Style

The style of rounded corners in web 2.0 has made it popular globally. The user friendly nature, clever visual design with layout and copywriting will help to go a long way.

Web 2.0 font and color scheme:

Simple clean and rounded font style with pastel or high contrast colors are used in web 2.0.

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Choosing the Right Keyword

We all know that Search Engine Optimization (SEO) deals with many aspects of a site but while optimizing a site people generally tend to make mistake selecting the right keyword for the site they are trying to optimize.

The first basic step in optimizing a site starts with proper selection of keyword. If this goes well then you know that 50 percent of your work is done. I am saying so coz even if you rank in the top ten for your targeted keyword in Google it will not help you gain traffic to your site as chosen keyword is an improper selection. So, your first criteria is to choose the best possible keyword that have an comfortable level of competition and would also fetch good visitors to your site.

Now, the question arises how you would actually choose the right keyword for your site. Well, like other people around I will not beat around the bush and directly come to the point. On the first instance I would suggest you to go through your site and understand the theme of it. Analyze what a normal visitor would type in to find similar sites. List down on the number of keywords that you could possibly find out. Check out with your friends and colleagues to give you suggestions. Once you have a list of keywords try to narrow down on the list by eliminating improper and irrelevant keywords.

Once this is over, now try to figure out from the keyword list how many times each keyword is being searched worldwide per month. Once you are convinced about the search rate list down the top 10 keyword as per the search rate. Do not try to optimize your pages for keywords that have high search rate coz it will apparently have high competition. Try to figure out some keywords that will give you fair enough visitors but will have less competition.

Now, when you have selected three to five keywords try to optimize your page keeping in mind that it’s better to optimize a page with twp key phrases.

So, what are you waiting for start your optimizing work. Oops, probably you are waiting for tools that will help you in searching for the search rate for your keywords. Well, I try a combination of tools. I believe none of the tools available provide accurate data but definitely they will help you to approximately guess on the search rate.

The tools I would recommend are:

1. Good Keywords
2. Overture
3. Wordtracker
4. Google Adword Tool


So, head start with your optimizing work and let me know about your success rate.

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Basic SEO Tips

People round the world target three major search engine Google, Yahoo and MSN. The main idea is to drive in maximum traffic through these Search Engines. But how do you actually get to rank on all the three.

The page should be properly structured along with quality content. By quality content I mean content which should be unique and should contain targeted keywords distributes according to the need of the page. But this does not mean that you should start spamming the page with keyword spamming.

The navigation of the page should be user friendly with no flashy images or javascript buttons. And even if they are used then it should be kept in mind that the noscript tag should be used for search engine bots to crawl the links.

The images should have proper Alt Attributes to explain the image and not just put in long list of keywords to fool the Search Engines. Remember that Search Engine are smarter.

Build quality links to you pages. This will help gain trust in the eyes of the Search Engines. Links build on the basis of quality content or editorial links stands out. Otherwise you deal with link farms and link building partners and get banned by Search Engines in the near future.

Make sure that your site is submitted to quality directories. By quality directories I mean quality and they are very few. Do not submit to directories that ask for a reciprocal link back. Also, make sure you learn the pros and cons before submitting to a particular category.

Now to sum up the main points that affect the Search Engines I have listed them down in point wise to make a better understanding.

On Page Optimization

Title Tag – Should be compact and should only contain targeted keywords. It is one of the main criteria’s so should be handles effectively. Do not try to spam the page title with lots of keywords or repetitive keywords. You should always try to limit your keywords in the title to less than three.

Meta Description – Another important tag that helps search engines to denote the content of the page.

Meta Keywords – This should actually contain the targeted keywords and the keywords used in the page. Should not be huge list of keywords or occurrence of keywords. Remember GOOGLE, google, GoOgLe all them gives the same result. Try it out at Google.

Heading Tag – It is equally important as rest of the tags. Should be considered as the heading of the content and should be generated down the order.

Image Alt Attribute – Provide this tag for each of the image used in the site. This should depict the content of the image.


Off Page Optimization

Link Building – As discussed by Matt Cuts. Editorial links are always preferred. But quality links gathered through unique content on the site is also favorable.

Anchor Text – Anchor Text is another very important factor. The anchor text should be very well chalked out according to the need of the optimization plan.

Page Targeting – It is always considered to be of utmost importance that you should try to target two to maximum three keywords per page. This way you can target most keywords to your site rather than targeting 10 keywords per page.

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