Indian Railway in collaboration with Google is now providing a 10 digit
Mobile number. Just SMS your PNR number on this mobile number and
instantaneously you will get your ticket's current status along with all
other journey related details.
The number is 9773300000 . NO need to prefix 0 or +91.
Best of all, you don't pay a premium charge for any of this,
just the price of a standard SMS .
For more details: http://www.google.co.in/mobile/default/sms/#
DON FORGET TO STORE THE NBR IN MOBILE.
It turns out that storage space problems are not limited solely to personal computers. As the numbers of files that are available through ftp increases daily, ftp sites are actively looking for ways to squeeze more files into a limited amount of space.
The ftp sites accomplish this by using file compression.
The good news is that a compressed file takes up a lot less space on the ftp site's computer. The bad news is that a compressed file is absolutely useless until you uncompress it.
Wait ... it gets worse. Before you can uncompress a file, you have to know what compression method was used to compress the file in the first place. Unfortunately, there is no one standard ftp file compression method -- there are HUNDREDS of different file compression methods in use today :(
If you have to know what compression method was used before you can uncompress a file, how are you ever going to figure out which method was used? Well, it is actually pretty easy:
- Most ftp directories have a READ.ME file that shows an index of all the files that are in that directory. Some really nice ftp sites have expanded READ.ME files that include a mention about what compression method was used and where you can get a free copy of the software needed to uncompress the files.
- Look at the files' extensions. By looking at the extensions and comparing them to the chart below, you will be able to determine what compression method was used and what particular software is needed to uncompress the file.
The list below shows some of the most popular extensions that you are bound to encounter during your visits to ftp sites around the world. It also shows transfer modes needed to retrieve files with these extensions, what uncompress software package you need to to uncompress the files after you retrieve them, and it even gives some additional comments about each of the extensions.
Paraphrasing something I said in MAP01: Welcome, I want you to be aware that the one compression method that isn't listed below is going to be the one compression package that you ADORE. Please do not take this personally. There are literally HUNDREDS of compression methods in use today, and there is no way that I can list all of them.
Suggestion: Save the following list, and use it as a reference tool for when you encounter an extension that you have never seen before :) Also, please notice that the following list talks about "archie". Archie is an FTP search tool that we will discuss in the next lesson.
(the following list was adapted from "The EFF's Guide to the Internet" by Patrick Crispen)
FILE TRANSFER UNCOMPRESS"A few last words of caution: check the size of a file before you get it. The Net moves data at phenomenal rates of speed. But that 500,000-byte file that gets transferred to your host system in a few seconds could take more than an hour or two to download to your computer if you're using a 2400-baud modem. Your host system may also have limits on the amount of bytes you can store online at any one time. Also, although it is really extremely unlikely you will ever get a file infected with a virus, if you plan to do much downloading over the Net, you'd be wise to invest in a good anti-viral program, just in case." (1)
EXTENSION MODE PACKAGE ADDITIONAL COMMENTS
------------ ------ ---------- -----------------------------------
.txt or .TXT ASCII By itself, this means the file is
a document rather than a program,
and does not need to be uncompressed
.ps or .PS ASCII A PostScript document (in Adobe's
page description language). You can
print this file on any PostScript
capable printer or use a previewer,
like GNU project's GhostScript.
.doc or .DOC ASCII Another common extension for text
documents. (Be careful, though: .doc
and .DOC extensions are also used for
Microsoft Word documents (which are
Binary files). The duck theory will
help you determine the difference)
No decompression is needed, unless it
is followed by:
.Z Binary uncompress This indicates a Unix compression
method. To uncompress type
uncompress filename.Z
and hit enter at your host system's
command line.
u16.zip is an MS-DOS program that
will let you download .Z files and
uncompress them on your own computer.
The Macintosh equivalent program is
called MacCompress (use archie to
find these).
.zip or .ZIP Binary PKZip or This indicates the file has been
Zip/Unzip compressed with a common MS-DOS
compression program, known as PKZIP
(use archie to find PKZIP204.EXE).
Many Unix systems will let you un-ZIP
a file with a program called unzip.
.gz Binary gunzip A Unix version of ZIP. To uncompress,
type
gunzip filename.gz
at your host system's command line.
.zoo or .ZOO Binary zoo A Unix and MS-DOS compression
format. Use a program called zoo
to uncompress.
.shar or .Shar Binary unshar Another Unix format. Use unshar
to uncompress.
.tar Binary tar Another Unix format, often used
to compress several related files
into one large file. All Unix
systems will have a program called
tar for "un-tarring" such files.
Often, a "tarred" file will also be
be compressed with the gz method,
so you first have to use uncompress
and then tar.
.sit or .Sit Binary StuffIt A Macintosh format that requires
the StuffIt program.
.ARC Binary ARC or Another MS-DOS format, which
ARCE requires the use of the ARC
or ARCE programs.
.LHZ Binary LHARC Another MS-DOS format; requires
the use of LHARC.
FTPMAIL AND BINARY FILES
Yesterday, I showed you that it is possible to get ftp files using e-mail by sending an e-mail letter to one of the following addressesAustralia ftpmail@cs.uow.edu.auwith the following commands in the body of your e-mail letter
France ftpmail@grasp.insa-lyon.fr
Germany ftpmail@ftp.uni-stuttgart.de
Great Britain ftpmail@doc.ic.ac.uk
Ireland ftpmail@ieunet.ie
Sweden ftpmail@lth.se
USA ftpmail@sunsite.unc.edu
USA ftpmail@ftp.uu.net
USA ftpmail@decwrl.dec.com
replyBefore I introduce you to the new stuff, there are a couple of things that I want to review with you.
connect
chdir
get
quit
First, the
- reply
reply pcrispe1@ua1vm.ua.eduwithout changing the reply address, FTPmail is going to send the file to me, not to you :)
connect ftp.sura.net
ascii
chdir /pub/articles
get fall91.issue
quit
Please remember to change the reply line to include your Internet e-mail address.
Also, I did not mention this in the last lesson, but FTPmail limits you to only one CHDIR command per letter.
Finally, in the last lesson I asked you to contact you local Internet service provider to see if they placed any size limits on file transfers. If they do, there is an additional command that you need to add to your list of commands
- chunksize
- chunksize 49000
You already now how to retrieve ASCII text files using FTPmail. In this lesson I am going to show you how to retrieve Binary files using FTPmail.
Binary file transfers using FTPmail aren't difficult ... they just require a few additional steps. Because all e-mail has to be in ASCII form, FTPmail has to encode your Binary file in ASCII before it can e-mail the file to you. Once you get the file, you can then decode the file back into Binary :)
Fortunately, there are two ways that FTPmail can encode Binary files into ASCII. The first way it can do this is through something called "uuencode." As long as you have a uudecode program -- and uudecode programs are all over the place (chances are your site has uudecode stored on its system) -- the whole process is simple.
The second encoding type that you can use is called "btoa" (binary to ascii). Your local Internet service provider will be able to tell you a little more about btoa.
So, to get ASCII files using FTPmail, you would use the following commands in the body of your letter to the FTPmail address:
replyand to get Binary files using FTPmail, you would use the following commands in the body of your letter to the FTPmail address:
connect
ascii
chdir
chunksize
get
reply
connect
chdir
chunksize
get
Google seems to be rapidly becoming the most popular search engine. Submitting, getting listed and getting a high ranking in Google can get you a lot of traffic, usually even more than Yahoo. Google uses link popularity while ranking web sites which results in quality search results therefore making it a favorite among most web searchers.
-
Submitting to Google
You need to only submit your homepage o Google. It will automatically index the entire site. Don't submit individual pages of your site.
Tip: Google's crawler Googlebot will follow all the links in your site. So make sure all your pages are linked otherwise some of your pages will not get indexed.
Submit to Google here
- Getting Listed in Google
Getting listed in Google is usually very fast. We got listed within 2 weeks and all our new pages are usually listed within a month. The time frame depends on their crawl schedule and how many other web sites are in queue to be indexed before ours. In our experience, Google usually lists a site within a month.
Tip: Make sure your web site is ready before you submit it to be listed. Google will index your entire site, content and all. It takes keywords from the metatags as well as the content. You'll find that Google will send you the maximum amount of traffic (in our case it is triple of what Yahoo send us - and Yahoo is supposed to be the #1 Search Engine), so time well spent on your web site will pay off in the long run.
Tip: Google usually indexes sites during the 2nd week and lists new content during the first few days of the next month. We usually see our new content added on the 2nd or 3rd of the month. A safe bet is to wait for a month to see new pages listed.
- Ranking in Google
Getting listed in Google is pretty easy but what really matters is your ranking. The best way to get a high ranking in Google is to have many sites linking to your site. As Google uses link popularity as its most important factor in ranking web sites, getting many sites to link to you is your best bet in getting a high ranking. Get quality links and increased visitor traffic with only minutes of submission efforts!
Tip: Try to develop quality content which is different from what other sites are offering and you're guaranteed to get a high ranking in Google. Think of specialized keywords instead of using generic terms. Using generic keywords would usually land you in the 30th or 40th page whereas using specialized, or a combination of keywords would get you in the 1st or 2nd page of search results. Think of writing articles that others have not written and you're sure to come up in the first 10 search results. E.g If we were to write an article on web design we would probably come up in the 100th page of search results, whereas if we were to write on 'Creating Swap Images in Fireworks' we would probably come up in the first 10 search results.
Google Tips 'n Tricks
- Make sure all your important keywords should appear in your title, description, content and alt tags of your web page. This increases your keyword density and helps in boosting your ranking.
- Write articles, give away freebies and make your site a quality site with fresh content. Sites will automatically link to you thus increasing your link popularity.
- Here's a cool trick to find out if you are listed in Google. Type this URL in your browser
http://www.google.com/search?
q=YOURDOMAIN+site:WWW.YOURDOMAIN.COM
Google will return to you a complete list of all pages that lie on yourdomain.com that exist within the Google catalog.
Example
http://www.google.com/search?q=entheosweb+site:www.entheosweb.com
- You can also find out how many sites that are listed in Google are linking to your site. Here's the trick. Type this URL in the browser and watch the results.
http://www.google.com/search?as_lq=YOURDOMAIN.COM
Google will return to you the number of pages which link to your web site in addition to a listing of each URL.
Example:
http://www.google.com/search?as_lq=entheosweb.com
-
Meta tags
The first and most important step is to create relevant meta tags after studying your competition and coming up with the most important keywords for you site. All the pages in your web site must have the relevant keywords, title and description.
- Keywords in your Content
The keywords used in your meta tags should be repeated in your content - specially in the heading and the first paragraph.
- Alt Tags
Put your keywords in the image alt tags. Some search engines index the alt tags.
The golden rule for effective search engine submission is that all your important keywords should appear in your title, description, content and alt tags of your web page. This increases your keyword density and helps in boosting your ranking with the search engines.
- Create Doorway Pages
Create doorway pages for your most important keywords. These keyword specific pages will rank higher in the search engines and can be used as a doorway to your site.
- Site Readiness
Directory submissions are reviewed by people, so make sure your site is 100% complete before submitting it.
- No special Symbols in your URL
Don't put any special symbols in your URL (e.g. &, %,=, $ ,? ). Search engines cannot recognize these symbols.
- Don't Spam
Try to stay in the search engines' good books by not spamming. Spamming includes excessive keyword repetition, machine generated doorway pages with little or no content and pages that contain invisible text.
- Submit to the Major Search Engines and Directories
Make sure you have submitted your web site to the 10 big search engines and directories. Most of your traffic will be generated from these search engines. Keep checking to see if your web site is indexed. Dmoz, Direct Hit and Inktomi seem to be gaining a lot of importance so make sure that you are listed in these sites. Their results are used by a number of other important search engines.
- Don't change the URL of your pages after submission
Never change the path of any of your web pages after submitting your web site. Don't rename a file or change the file extension. This can really hurt your promotion efforts because it will show up as a dead link in the search results page.
- Be Patient
Don't expect miracles overnight. It may take anywhere from 2 weeks to 5 months to be indexed in the big search engines and directories. Keep checking every week and be patient. Continue to add quality content to your site. That will be a sure winner.
Before you start the process of submitting your web site to all the major search engines, make sure that you have optimized your web pages and checked your site thoroughly. If you would like to learn more about this, read our article on Preparing your web pages for effective web site promotion leading to high search engine ranking
It's easy! Just read our tips, click on our links and submit your site
In this section we have made a list of all the major search engines which will drive approximately 80% of visitor traffic to your site. These are the search engines that you need to focus on getting listed in. We have given tips on submitting to these search engines and have provided links to their 'Add URL' pages. All you have to do is read our tips, click on our links and submit your site to the top search engines. It's that simple. You'll be finished in just an hour or two.
Are you ready? Have fun. Work hard. Get ready for a lot of traffic!
AltaVista usually adds a page within a few days. It's best to submit only a few URLs per day to them, even though they appear to accept as many as you try to feed them. For whatever reason, they just don't seem to index them as quickly if you give them a lot at once. All you need to do is submit your URL.
Google is one of our personal favorites. It makes heavy use of link popularity as a primary way to rank web sites. This can be especially helpful in finding good sites in response to general searches such as "cars" and "travel," because users across the web have in essence voted for good sites by linking to them. The system works so well that Google has gained widespread praise for its high relevancy. Google also provides some results to Yahoo and Netscape Search. Submit only your homepage URL. It will automatically index the entire site.
Excite claims it takes about two weeks to add a submitted URL to its index. Sometimes, but not always. You'll need to be very persistent with them. But take the time to do it, Excite is the primary search service for the new giant AOL/Netscape.
Its main listings come from the Open Directory project, and then secondary results come from either Direct Hit or Lycos' own spider. Just follow their simple instructions and don't expect immediate results from your submission. Again, your best bet is to get indexed in the Open Directory project.
Enter your URL, e-mail, site name and site description to submit your site.
Enter your URL, category and e-mail address to submit your site. The Norwegian company behind FAST Search also powers some of the results that appear at Lycos
- Quality Site with Quality Content
The first and most important rule is to promote quality sites. Don't waste your time promoting junk sites. It won't pay off in the long run. This is honest talking here. You must be willing to spend time developing a quality website, if you want your promotion efforts to pay off. The first month you won't do too well but as you keep adding new pages, getting new links and updating your site you will see your hits increasing over the months. Your site will get more traffic as time goes by. Also don't underestimate the importance of small websites. Once they come to your website and they like what they see they will usually link to you with a good review. I can't emphasize enough on building a quality website. If you have a good website you will definitely get a lot of traffic over time.
Important Tip: While we are on the subject of content here's a very important tip - Try to come out with something original or slightly different from what your competitors are coming out with. Write articles related to your field of experience and focus it on specific topics. For e.g. If we were to write on 'website promotion', we would have thousands of sites competing with us in the search engines. Whereas if we were to write on 'website Promotion Tips and Advice' we would have a better chance of ranking high in the search engines. Now visitors would come to this page and through this page they may go to our website promotion page or services page. The idea is to write something a little different from the norm to draw visitors to your site. There's no use writing a great article on what others have already written about. It will only be lost in the search engines.
I'd like to share a personal experience here. When we first launched Entheos I wrote this entire website promotion guide on very generic and common keywords. I made these great pages on search engine submission, meta tags, link popularity etc. - keywords I was sure people would search for. What I didn't realize was that there were thousands of sites offering what I had written about, as a result of which my pages never came up in the first few pages of search engines. Though they were good pages they failed to bring traffic to Entheos. I then changed my strategy and wrote articles on slightly different topics - like Google Tips 'n' Tricks, Altavista Tips and boy did we do well in the search engines. They got the 1st position in the search engines and resulted in an increase of traffic. I wrote these articles because I just learnt of some new tips after a lot of experimentation and research and I was just dying to share them - the rest is history!
- Meta Tags
While preparing your meta tags don't use generic or common keywords, try to use a combination of keywords and see if you can make them different from your competition. This would give you a better chance with the search engines. Try to come out with something different and you'll probably do pretty well.
Tip: The golden rule for effective search engine submission is that all your important keywords should appear in your title, description, content and alt tags of your web page. This increases your keyword density and helps in boosting your ranking with the search engines.
- Concentrate on the Big Search Engines
Google is my favorite search engine so I've really been concentrating on our listing, ranking and links here. Its brought us the most amount of traffic (more than 40 times the other search engines - no kidding!). Google brings in a lot of traffic because it takes keywords from the content as well as the meta tags resulting in a good chance of getting ranked high when searching for unique keywords. Also it gives a lot of importance to link popularity so getting many quality sites to link to yours can get rid of a lot of unwanted competition. Focus on the search engines that are sending you the most amount of traffic - understand their strategies, study their sites, visit forums and get as much of information as you can to tackle them. Contrary to popular belief Excite, Lycos, HotBot, Direct Hit don't send much traffic. Google by far is the Best.
- Get Like-minded Sites to Link to You
This is the key to high search engine ranking and placement. Link Popularity means how many sites link to you. The idea behind link popularity is that other sites will link to you only if you are a quality site offering quality resources. Google uses this concept while ranking websites. Get quality sites to link to you and you will get a good ranking in Google. This is also a great way to bring traffic to your site. Usually sites that link to us send us more traffic than the popular search engines.
- Be Patient - Traffic increases over time
Be patient. Don't expect miracles to happen overnight. Promotion is a continuous process. You need to continue to update your site, add new articles and resubmit to search engines. Over time you will see your site coming up in search engines, getting better placement and sending you more visitors. Check your ranking every month. Be involved in the promotion process. Check your website statistics to see which sites are sending you the most traffic. Work on getting new sites to link to you. Tweak the pages that are not sending you any visitors.
Web site promotion is the most important step in making your business succeed online. To help you promote and maintain your web site, we have dedicated a whole section of our web site to site promotion. We hope that you will find these articles, guidelines and tips useful.
Some people mistakenly believe that as soon as a site is on the Internet, the search engines will automatically index their site and people will start visiting their site from Day 1. This is not true. Once your site is live (i.e. uploaded and accessed through the Internet) you need to concentrate on web site promotion. This is the step that will really give you a powerful Net presence. It's easy and it's fun so let's jump right into it.
Let's start with the basics
There are many methods that you can use to promote your web site. But one rule remains the same. Make sure that your web site is 100% ready to be submitted before you begin with promotion. You don't want to give anyone a chance of rejecting your web site and you don't want to disappoint visitors who come to your site.
- Submitting to Search Engines
The first and most important method of promotion is submitting your web site to search engines and directories. The webmaster fills out a form that tells the search engine or editor (in case of a directory or site) to visit and index the suggested site.
- Preparing your web pages - Meta tags
You must submit your web site only after you have prepared your web pages for the search engines. This means you have to insert appropriate meta tags on all your web pages (keywords, description and title).
Preparing your web pages for effective web site promotion leading to high search engine ranking
- Web site Optimization
For your site to score high with search engines, you will need to optimize your web site (improve your HTML, load time, browser compatibility and other factors to cater to search engines). Only after optimization should you submit your site.
Web Site Optimization - Using Free Web Site Analysis Software to improve your site
- Finally, it's time to submit!
After optimization, it's time to submit your site. We recommend submitting to all the major search engines, since search engines generate approximately 90% of web site traffic. Top search engines have a form for site suggestions. A link to this form can usually be found from the home page; it may say "Add a site" or "Suggest a URL." You can jump to our article which has links to all submission forms and tips on submission, so you don't have to spend hours looking for them.
Click here to see a list of major search engines and their submission pages
- Preparing your web pages - Meta tags
- Submitting to Directories
Once you have submitted your web site to all the top search engines, it is time to submit your site to the important directories, like Yahoo, Looksmart, AOL etc. Submitting to Directories is different from submitting to Search Engines as human editors review your site and accept or reject your site according to its quality. Before submitting to Directories, you need to make sure that your site is 100% ready. You also need to carefully follow their guidelines while you submit your site.
Click here to read more about submitting your web site to directories.
Note: There are a number of free search engine submission tools available but I suggest that the first time you submit your web site, do it manually. And never use these free tools while submitting to Directories. This must be done manually. Don't worry, submitting to search engines is very easy. It's only preparing your web pages with the appropriate meta tags that takes time.
- Other Internet Marketing Techniques
You need to know that web site promotion is an ongoing process, as there are thousands of web sites being added every day and the competition is getting tougher by the minute! Most of the sites listed on the search engines are getting lost as there may be 100 -10,000 other web sites in the same field. We all know that most people don't look at more than 2-3 search result pages. The web sites that are not found in these pages are lost in the competition. New promotion techniques are coming out every day to get around this problem. We will discuss these new promotion techniques soon. Some of them are as follows:
- Link Popularity
This is a very important Internet marketing technique which is rapidly gaining importance. The term "link popularity" refers to the number of sites that are linked to your site. Search engines check your link popularity and based on how popular your site is, give you a higher ranking. Try getting as many quality links as possible to boost your search engine position.
Read more about link popularity and ranking high in the search engines.
- Writing Quality Articles
Get visitors flocking to your site by writing quality articles. Write articles that are related to the content of your site. Most people come to the Internet for quality information. Articles build your credibility and reputation and your visitors may use your services in the long run. You also get more links to your sites through this method.
- Publish your own ezine or newsletter
Ezines (or e-mail newsletters) are the latest buzz for marketing on the Internet. Everyone is talking about how you should publish your own ezine to increase traffic, hits and sales. Popular ezines usually give current information and resources that will keep subscribers informed and updated. Ezines are also a great way to keep in touch with your visitors.
- Link Popularity
- More Internet Marketing Tips Coming Soon! We will continue to update this page so don't forget to bookmark it for your future web promotion endeavors.
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