SEO in 2015 (and Why You Should Care)

If your business is healthy, you can always find plenty of reasons to leave SEO on your to-do list in perpetuity. After all, SEO is technical, complicated, time-consuming and potentially dangerous. The SEO industry is full of self-proclaimed gurus whose lack of knowledge can be deadly. There’s the terrifying fact that even if you dabble in SEO in the most gentle and innocent way, you might actually end up in a worse state than you were to begin with.

To make matters worse, Google keeps changing the rules. There have been a bewildering number of major updates, which despite their cuddly names have had a horrific impact on website owners worldwide.

Fear aside, there’s also the issue of time. It’s probably tricky enough to find the time to read this article. Setting up, planning and executing an SEO campaign might well seem like an insurmountable obstacle.

So why should you care enough about SEO to do it anyway?

The main reason is that you probably already see between 30% and 60% of your website traffic come from the search engines. That might make you think that you don’t need to bother, because you’re already doing so well. But you’re almost certainly wrong.

If you have a look through the keyword data in your Google Webmaster Tools account, you’ll probably see that around 30–50% of the keywords used to find your website are brand names – the names of your products or companies. These are searches carried out by people who already know about you. But the people who don’t know who you are but are searching for what you sell aren’t finding you right now. This is your opportunity.

If a person goes looking for a company or product by name, Google will steer them towards what they’re looking for. Their intelligence does have limits, however, and even though they know your name they won’t be completely clear about what you sell. That’s where SEO would come in.

Still need more convincing? How about the fact that the seeming complexities of SEO mean that your competition are almost certainly neglecting it too. They have the same reservations as you about complexity, time and danger, and hopefully they aren’t reading this article and so are none the wiser of the well-kept secret: that 70% of SEO is easy.

I’m going to lead you through what you need to do to tap into that stream of people looking for what you sell right now.

WHAT IS REAL SEO?

Real SEO is all about helping Google understand the content of your website. It’s about steering, guiding and assisting Google. Not manipulating it.

It’s easy to assume that Google already understands the content and relevance of each and every page on your website, but the fact is that it needs a fair amount of hand-holding. Fortunately, helping Google along really isn’t very difficult at all.

Rest assured that real SEO has nothing to do with keyword stuffing, keyword density, hacks, tricks or cunning techniques. If you hear any of these terms from your SEO advisor, run away from them as quickly as you can.

UNDERSTANDING YOUR CURRENT SITUATION – GOOGLE ANALYTICS

Before you can do anything to improve your SEO status, you need to get an idea of how you’re already doing. Below is a very quick and easy way of doing so.

1. Open up your Google Analytics account.

2. Click on the date range selector on the top-right of the interface and change the year of the first date to last year. So 12 Dec 2014 will become 12 Dec 2013. Then click on Apply.

3. Click on the All Sessions rectangle towards the top-left, click once on Organic Traffic and click Apply.

4. Click the little black-and-white squares icon that has now appeared under the date selector on the top-right, and drag the slider all the way over to Higher Precision.

5. Change the interval buttons on the top-right of the graph to Week to make this easier to digest.

At this point your graph should look something like this:

Graph showing all sessions per week.

It’s worth noting the approximate proportion of your visitors that currently come from organic sources.

6. Click the little downwards arrow to the right of the All Sessions rectangle and choose Remove, so that we’re only looking at the organic traffic on its own.

7. Click on Select a metric next to the Sessions button above the graph and select Pages / Session. You should then see something like this:

Graph showing pages per session.

In the example above we can see that the quantity of traffic has been increasing since the middle of August, but the quality of the traffic (as measured by the number of pages per session) has fallen significantly.

How you choose to view this is down to your own graph, recent history and interpretation of events, but this should give you an indication of how things stand at the present time. Trends are often much more revealing than a snapshot of a brief moment in time.

YOUR GOOGLE WEBMASTER TOOLS DATA

If you’re not very familiar with your Google Webmaster Tools account, it’s really worth taking ten to fifteen minutes to see what’s on offer. I can’t recommend this enough. From the point of view of an SEO health check, I’d advise you to look into the HTML Improvements, Crawl Errors and Crawl Stats, and most importantly the Search Queries.

From what you see here and the trends shown in your Analytics data, you should now have a good idea of your current status. If you want to explore further, I recommend Screaming Frog as a good diagnostics tool, or Botify if your website is large or unusually complex.

COMBINING THE DATA INTO SOMETHING USEFUL

Your Google Analytics session will have shown you how you’re doing from an SEO point of view in terms of the quantity and, to some extent, the quality of your visitors. But it’s only showing you what is already working. In other words: the people who are finding you on the search engines, and clicking on your links.

The Google Webmaster Tools search query data, on the other hand, will give you a better idea of what isn’t working. It will show you the keyword searches that are getting you listed in the results, but which aren’t necessarily getting clicked. And it doesn’t take much by the way of expertise to see why.

For example, if you see your targeted keyword, which you feel is extremely relevant, has generated over 2,000 impressions in the last month but produced only two clicks, you’ll probably find a very low average position. Bear in mind that an average position of fourteen will mean being around halfway down the second page of results. Think about how rarely you go beyond the first two or three listings, never mind to the second page of results, and you’ll understand why the click-through rate is so low.

So now you have an idea of what you’re being found for at the present time. But what about the other terms?

WHAT WOULD YOU LIKE TO BE FOUND FOR?

This is one of the more common SEO mistakes, on a number of different levels.

Many businesses assume that they don’t need to worry about keyword research. They think they know what terms people use to find what they sell, and they also assume that Google understands the content on their website. This is incorrect on all counts.

A better starting point is to brainstorm a small number of your most obvious keywords, then run them through Google’s Keyword Planner. Ignore the information in the Ad group ideas tab, and instead go straight to the Keyword ideas tab. Rather than wade through the very unfriendly interface, I recommend downloading the data as a spreadsheet, in which not only is more detail included, but you can also slice, dice, sort and report the data as required.

From there you can delete all the irrelevant columns, and start working your way through the list, deleting any irrelevant keywords as you go along.

It’s around this stage that you may hit a problem in terms of where to focus your efforts. The number of reported searches for a given keyword is of course important, but so is the level of competition. Ideally, you’d like keywords with plenty of searches but not too much competition.

I personally like to factor both together by adding a column that simply divides the number of searches squared by the level of competition:

(number of searches × number of searches) ÷ competition

There are plenty of alternatives to this basic formula, but I like it for ease of use and simplicity. Once I’ve added this column, I then sort the data by this value (largest to smallest) and I then only usually need ten to fifteen keywords at most to give me plenty of ideas to work with.

This is a slightly involved but effective methodology for keyword research, as what you’re left with is a list of keywords that both Google and you consider to be relevant to the content of your website. And relevance is an important concept in SEO.

Real SEO keyword research is about making sure that your customers, website and Google are all in agreement and alignment over the content of your website. Other sources of inspiration and ideas include having a look at what terms your competition are targeting, Google Trends and, of course, Google Suggest. If you’re not sure where to find these things, you can probably work out where to search for them!

If you want to dive further into understanding your current search engine status, search for some of the better keywords that you just discovered and see where you rank compared to your competition. Note that it’s vital to avoid Google serving up personalised results, so either use the privacy, incognito or anonymous mode of your browser for the searches, or use a browser that you don’t normally use. I hope this is Internet Explorer. If what you find isn’t great, don’t despair: everything in SEO is fixable (terms and conditions may apply).

PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER

You should now have a good idea of where things stand with your current search engine traffic, and a solid list of keywords that you’re not getting visitors for but very much want.

All that’s left now is to work out how to use these keywords. But before we do, let’s take a quick step back.

If you have in any way kept up with what’s been happening in SEO over the last couple of years, you’ll have probably heard about Google updates with names like Panda, Hummingbird, Phantom, Pirate and more.

I won’t go into the technical details of what Google is doing, but it is important to understand why they’re trying to do it. At the most basic level, Google understands that there’s a very real problem with people who are trying manipulate its index. In response to this, Google is trying to clean up its results. They don’t want people getting fed up with bad results and considering other options – have you even tried Bing?

This is extremely important. Remember earlier when I said that 70% of SEO was easy? That rule still applies. So, for example, if you have a list of keywords that you know are relevant to what you sell, then all you need to do is create great content for them. Incredibly, that’s all there is to it (terms and conditions apply again, unfortunately – see below).

There is, however, one simple rule to be consistently followed without exception: that the content you create should not only be good quality and completely original, but it should also be written primarily for the human visitor and not the search engine spider.

In other words, if you create some fantastic content for a keyword like “choosing a small business HR service”, then the article should not only make perfect sense if read out loud (as opposed to the same phrase being repeated fifteen times), but also provide real value to the person reading it.

So the process is simple:

1. Choose your keywords

2. Create spectacular content

WAIT. IS IT REALLY THAT SIMPLE?

Unfortunately there’s a lot more to the other 30% of SEO than just creating great content and waiting for the visitors. There are issues like helping Google understand the content on your pages and website, incoming links, page authority, domain authority, usage patterns, spam factors, canonical issues and much more.

But there’s the often overlooked fact about Google: it actually does a reasonable job of working out what’s on your website and (to some extent) understanding the gist of it. If you’ve never done any SEO on your website but still get some traffic from Google, this is why.

Even without dabbling in the other 30% of SEO, by creating the right content for the right visitors using the precise language and terminology that your potential customers are using, you’re significantly better off than your competition. And you can only gain from this.

When you’ve checked this off your to-do list and made it an ingrained part of your content creation process, then you’re ready to delve into the other 30% of SEO. The not-so-easy side.

Until then, work on understanding your current situation, exploring the opportunities, creating a list of good keywords, creating the right content for them, and starting 2015 with a little bit of smart, safe and real SEO.

(Source: Dave Collins, 24ways)

Ways to Use LinkedIn to Market Yourself

When it comes to business networking; LinkedIn has won the social media battle when it attracted 259 million professionals from over 200 countries with 178.4 million visitors monthly.With the various features it provides for business networking and marketing,an increased number of professionals use LinkedIn everyday to make important connections that help them and their companies grow.

So what can you do to market yourself and your work using LinkedIn?

1.Have a %100 completed profile

You can follow LinkedIn’s Profile Completion Tips when editing your profile. Add a profile picture of your face looking professional. A smile is a plus but stay away from Facebook-like profile pictures. Make sure your title is how you present yourself to people and not your current job title. For example, your title could be “Professional Business Writer” while your job is a content manager at Xycompany. The title is the 1st thing that people see so it’s really important that it tells your story. You can use it to tell everyone that you’re seeking opportunities but be careful not to actually state that you’re looking for a job. This might upset your current employer as well as make you sound desperate.

Complete all the fields on your profile as this will help you appear in search results when someone or some company is looking for skills, experience or keywords used in your profile.

2.Endorsements are important

This feature allows anyone who is viewing your profile to quickly see your top skills based on how many endorsements you have for each. While a single endorsement taken in isolation may not provide a ton of insight, if someone is endorsed for a single skill 99 times, that becomes a very powerful way to understand their key strengths and the strength of their network.

Another benefit is that LinkedIn’s algorithms actually take your skills and endorsements into account. Let’s say you’re a computer engineer living in Saudi Arabia and have been endorsed for your communications skills 140 times; LinkedIn algorithm will use that combination of factors to show you jobs you might be interested in.

Remember, the more people you endorse, the more you will be endorsed.

3.Ask for recommendations

The best way to get a recommendation on LinkedIn is to ask for one. Make sure you personalize your recommendation request to each person specifically and refrain from asking people that can’t directly speak to your work ethic. Never send a mass message asking all of your connections to take some time to rate your work. No appreciates that.

Likewise, recommending others in return is a great way to get them to recommend you in return.

4.Make great connections

You can make as many connections as you want on LinkedIn but it will get you no where; unless you’re interested in viewership of the links you share or the posts you write. Search for people you have already met and re-introduce yourself. LinkedIn also has a “People You May Already Know” tool that’s great for making meaningful connections, but use it sparingly and do a little research on your own.

Likewise, it’s important to keep up with the LinkedIn contacts you already have by updating your contact page and consistently updating your business page as well. Once your LinkedIn connections increase, you’ll have to search for laptop deals because your business will grow so fast you’ll need computers for all your new employees.

5.Join and Create Groups

Within LinkedIn’s like-minded professional bubble, there are specific interest groups for certain areas of focus within the business arena. Joining a LinkedIn group is an effective way to network and demonstrate your expertise within your field of interest by posting and commenting.

Likewise, taking the time to create your own interest group will boost your LinkedIn presence as one of the leaders in your industry or at least someone the group members will turn to for help and advice. It will also help keep your name and your picture remembered. But before you start a new group, search groups to see if a similar one already exist and join it.

Linkedin is the number one social network used by employers and job seekers alike. Even if you’re not yet looking LinkedIn is a great tool to build your personal brand and connect with other professionals.

(Source: Arab News)

7 Simple Ways To Be Much Happier Than You Already Are

Want to be happier? I have good news and bad news. First, the bad news: Research shows that approximately 33-50% of your level of happiness is hereditary. Your genes dictate your “happiness set point.”

Now, the good news. According to psychologist Sonja Lyubomirsky, 10% of your happiness is due to life circumstances and 40% is the result of your own choices and personal outlook: your career, your relationships, your friends, your activities, your level of health and fitness…

So even if you have a relatively low happiness set point, you still have significant control over how happy you feel. The key is to exercise that control by making choices and developing habits that make you happier.

Easier said than done?

Actually, no:

Surround yourself with positive people.

Like Jim Rohn says, we’re the average of the five people we spend the most time with. Spend time with negative people and your outlook will become more negative. Spend time with a chronic devil’s advocate and your attitude will go all to hell. .

Good friends encourage you, support you, and lift you up when you’re down. They see the best in you, and that helps you see the best in yourself. (That’s also true for our co-workers, and is why it's so important to have great colleagues at work. It's not just that we spend a lot of time with them, we essentially become them.

You can’t choose your family, but you can choose your friends. Choose people who make your life better – and happier.

See perfection as the enemy of happiness.

Your career doesn’t have to be perfect before you can be happy. Your marriage doesn’t have to be perfect before you can be happy. Your kids, your home, your car, your clothes… nothing has to be perfect.

And that’s a good thing because nothing can ever be perfect. Setting a bar you’ll never reach only ensures you’ll never be satisfied, fulfilled, or happy.

Instead think about what you already have. Think about what you’ve already accomplished. See where you are today not in terms of where you think you should be…. but as a great platform for achieving even more.

Then focus on doing well. Focus on doing great. Focus on excellence – not perfection, but excellence.

And know when to smell the roses – because you have a much bigger garden than you let yourself think.

Focus on now, not later.

“What if?” is like kryptonite to happiness. “What if I get fired? What if my business fails? What if something happens to my family? What if....”

“What if?” thinking is great if it results in a plan.

“What if?” thinking that only results in worry and stress and distraction is a waste of time.

If you can’t control tomorrow, don’t worry about tomorrow. Just worry about making today great, because the best way to be happier is to enjoy every moment as it comes.

Compare yourself to yourself, not to other people.

Comparisons are a zero-sum game you will always lose: no matter who you are, there will always be someone smarter, or richer, or more attractive, or more successful. Someone will always have “more.”

(But no one will have what you have.)

So stop comparing yourself to other people and start comparing yourself to yourself. Work to be a better version of you than you were last week, last month, and last year; that way when you look back you’ll love seeing how far you’ve come.

And you’ll feel a lot happier with, and about, yourself.

Do unto others.

“It is better to give than to receive” has a scientific basis: studies show providing social support can be more beneficial to the giver than the receiver.

Not only is helping a person in need gratifying, the act is also an explicit reminder of how comparatively fortunate we are… and that’s a wonderful reminder of how thankful we should be for what we already have.

You can’t control whether other people help you. But you can control whether you help other people – and that means you can control how happy you are, since giving always makes you feel happier.

Live your life.

The most common regret of people that only had a few months to live?

"I wish I'd had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me."

What other people think -- especially people who aren’t important in your life -- doesn't matter. What other people – especially people who aren’t important in your life – want you to do doesn't mater.

You have hopes. You have dreams. You have goals. Regardless of what other people might think or say, make the choices that support those hopes and dreams and goals.

Don’t look back and wish you’d done things differently. Decide what you want, decide how you want to live, decide what is best for you, your family, and the people you love… look forward and live your life in the way that supports what you truly want.

Have the courage to be who you are. You’ll be much happier now… and much happier later.

(Source: Dharmesh Shah, HubSpot)

Google's Very Rough Transition

Google's stock price hit a 52-week low yesterday.

This is not surprising news.

This has been a year of major change for Google, and it hasn't always been pretty.

CEO Larry Page, frustrated with the pace of innovation at the company, took a big step back from day-to-day operations, turning over control to Sundar Pichai.

Google's core business, search advertising, is looking shakier than it has in years. The problem is the rise of mobile. Search advertising is the best way to make money on the web. But people aren't using the web as much on their mobile phones as they did on their desktops. Last quarter, Google's advertising business grew at its slowest rate in six years.

People are searching for products on Amazon, rather than using Google. The only reason search makes money for Google is that people use it to search for products they would like to buy on the internet, and Google shows ads for those products. Increasingly, however, people are going straight to Amazon to search for products. Desktop search queries on Amazon increased 47% between September 2013 and September 2014, according to ComScore.

The executive in charge of running the moneymaking side of Google, Nikesh Arora, quit for a new job at Softbank. Internally, Arora's departure has been the source of some tension and disappointment. Before he left, Arora was planning to throw a huge conference for Google sales employees in Las Vegas. Now that Arora is gone, the event has been canceled in favor of more regional meetings, and we've heard some Googlers are bummed. These same Googlers are under the impression that the whole company is in the middle of a hiring freeze. After speaking to several more sources, we're pretty sure there is not actually a hiring freeze at Google. But it is interesting that some people inside the company think there is. Clearly, there are pockets of pessimism.

Google is getting knocked around overseas. Google just pulled its engineers out of Russia. It shut down its news aggregator in Spain. The EU wants to break up the company. The situation isn't looking great in Brazil, either.

Facebook has decided to compete with YouTube for video-advertising dollars, and Facebook may win. Facebook is working on bringing YouTube-like video to its News Feed. It's also rolling out video ads. Many in the industry believe that Facebook is in a better position than YouTube to eat into the advertising dollars that are leaving TV. Anmuth writes, "Facebook appears better positioned to capture new dollars coming online given its 21% share of mobile time spent, strong leverage to news feed ads, and nascent opportunities in video and Instagram."

Add it all together, and there are some serious worries about Google in the industry.

Says a former Googler: "I think 2015 is going to be disastrous."

"Mobile has been eating away [at them] for years, but they've been able to pull rabbits out of the hat to increase revenue."

"[That] has to end somewhere."

(source: Business Insider)

Indian Films High on Sexualization of Women with Nudity: UN

India tops the charts in showing attractive women in its movies and as much as 35 per cent of these women characters are shown with some nudity, finds a first-ever UN-sponsored global study of women characters in popular films across the world, Press Trust of India reported.

The study, commissioned by the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media, with support from U.N. Women and The Rockefeller Foundation, reveals deep-seated discrimination, pervasive stereotyping, sexualization of women and their underrepresentation in powerful roles by the international film industry.

Indian films, the study finds, have a significantly higher prevalence of sexualization of women characters and the movies score low in depicting women in significant speaking roles. While women represent nearly half of the world’s population, less than one third of all speaking characters in films are women and U.K.-U.S. collaborations and Indian films are at the bottom of the pack.

Indian Films High on Sexualization of Women with Nudity: UN

Both, American/British hybrid films (23.6 per cent) and Indian films (24.9 per cent) show women characters in less than one-quarter of all speaking roles. Indian films are third behind German and Australian movies in showing women in “sexy attire”. About 35 per cent of women characters in Indian movies are shown with some nudity, the study finds.

The prevalence of women directors, writers and producers in the Indian films is also not at a very high ranking. India had 9.1 per cent women directors, slightly above the global average of seven per cent, while its percentage of women writers was 12.1 per cent, significantly lower than the 19.7 per cent global average.

This data examining gender prevalence behind the camera translated into a gender ratio of 6.2 males to every one female in the film industry in India.

(NEW YORK, caravan daily)

No room for jugaad on Mars

Think of numbers about Mars. One jumps out at you. Rs 450 crore (approx $75 million). India crossed a technological milestone this week by successfully injecting a spacecraft into Martian orbit. While celebrating the fact that India has been able to achieve an elusive goal, we also want to celebrate the idea that ours is the cheapest mission to make it to Mars. A successful series of ads from Maruti Suzuki in 2010 showcases our love for the "low-cost" like no other. In one ad that was spooky in its foresight, a Nasa tour guide is showing off a top-notch new spaceship meant for Jupiter. The first question that an Indian visitor asks is, "Kitna deti hai?"

It turns out that we have collectively made a virtue out of a fuzzy number. The Indian government and its departments follow archaic conventions when it comes to budgeting and accounting. Rs 450 crore is just the explicit budget line devoted to the Mars mission. Salaries of ISRO staff as well as the extensive use of ISRO's facilities and equipment is counted in other budget heads. So if accounting is done fully, the cost of the mission will be higher than Rs 450 crore.

Further, government departments like ISRO often get hidden subsidies like free land, making the calculation of costs a difficult exercise. This is not to mention how ISRO scientists get paid lesser than their counterparts elsewhere in the world. Even if we include all such implicit costs, it is likely that the Mars Orbiter Mission may be cheaper than others. If we had the option to spend a little more and get more equipment into the Mars orbit, we should have done it. Excellence does not come with discount stickers.

The Mars mission's cost is popular because of two reasons. First, its apparent low-cost nature captures public imagination because we have made a virtue out of jugaad. Somehow, we believe that the Indian version of innovation is of hacking things together cheaply.

ISRO did not get to Mars by using duct tape and M-seal to make the orbiter work. ISRO is not trying to repair cars by refashioning cycle chains. It takes several minutes for the ISRO command centre to beam a message to the orbiter and an equal length of time to hear back. The "thoda adjust kardenge" attitude of jugaad with people tinkering on the fly would have failed like a wet cracker here. ISRO built a top-class launch vehicle and payload, and we should not cheapen its success by harping on any number. India's space programme is a testament to a culture of tackling hard challenges because they are hard, not because they are easy. Of doing the best, and not the cheapest. Jugaad in India was born as a necessity in impoverished conditions, and instead of elevating it to godhood we should be trying to escape a culture of jugaad as quickly as possible. ISRO is showing us the way.

The second reason for the low-cost narrative is that the Indian space programme was always framed against poverty. The question of why India spends on space when there is poverty at home was on an endless loop. Never mind that this is a silly question to ask, and never mind that we have never spent much on space. Now things are changing and there is better public support for space exploration in India, but the narrative is still stuck.

We are now in 2014. We have over 400 million children below the age of 18 in India. In the last decade, we have succeeded in getting most kids enrolled in school. We still need good teachers and curricula to educate students well. But while teachers can light an ember of curiosity in children, it is space exploration that is the best fuel to turn that spark into a bright flame.

Many of us dreamt of becoming an astronaut one day, as many do from every single generation. Most people do not end up becoming astronauts, but it is the dream that propels people to learn science, get interested in building things, and eventually pursue careers in science and engineering.

The success of the Indian space programme can inspire the next generation to invent the jobs of tomorrow. We should spend whatever it takes to make that happen.

(Source: TOI, by Pavan Srinath | Sep 28, 2014)

The other half: A woman’s worth?

The widows of Vrindavan. Photo: V.V. Krishnan

How can we support or justify ‘shameful traditions’ that debase women for no other reason than that their husbands have died or have abandoned them?

So let me add my voice to the controversy generated by Mathura Member of Parliament Hema Malini’s comments about the thousands of destitute widows and abandoned women who live in her constituency. In the fashion of most public figures caught out, Hema has proceeded to retract her remarks, and claims that she wanted the sons and daughters of these women to take responsibility for them.

However, the issue is not just her insensitivity towards these women, many of who barely survive on alms and die miserable lonely deaths, but that the Bharatiya Janata Party member has also cynically used these women to rake up an entirely pointless issue of regionalism. Go back to where you came from, she said in effect. For someone who is supposed to be aware of the Indian Constitution and the rights it gives its citizens, this exceeds limits of not just insensitivity, but ignorance.

The only salutary purpose the BJP MP’s remarks have served is to draw attention again to a shameful tradition that has no place in 21st century India. If Hema is worried about the conditions in which these women live, she should be questioning the very reason that drives them to Vrindavan.

What she and all of us need to question is why in India a woman’s worth is measured primarily through the institution of marriage. Why should a woman’s life end when her husband dies, or abandons her? Why does she become ‘inauspicious’ when this happens? How can we support or justify ‘traditions’ that debase women for no other reason than that their husbands have died or have abandoned them?

We cannot speak of women’s rights and equality as long as traditions like this exist, traditions that are reinforced by politicians who suggest that the solution to the situation in Vrindavan is to get families to send their destitute widows to temples in their own states.

The National Commission for Women (NCW), at the behest of the Supreme Court, had done an interesting survey of the women in Vrindavan. In its 2009-10 report, the NCW makes a number of useful recommendations that Hema ought to read and pursue, given that she represents these women in Parliament. She should also take time to read the report as it contains useful data, including more accurate estimates of the number of widows and abandoned women in Vrindavan. Based on detailed interviews with 216 women, the report documents their pathetic life and the reasons for their coming to Vrindavan. Although the majority of them were from West Bengal, there were also women from other states including Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Bihar, Odisha, Assam, Rajasthan, Maharashtra and Chhattisgarh. Most of the women were in the 60 and older age group. Also, while the majority were widows, among them were women who had been divorced or separated, women who came to Vrindavan with destitute and ailing husbands, and women who had never been married.

The report quotes the 2005 survey conducted by the Vrindavan Nagar Palika Parishad that estimated the number of such women at 3,105. Another survey in 2008-09 of the number of women receiving pensions placed the figure at 3,710. Even if these are underestimates, and they most likely are, the total figure would surely not exceed 10,000 in a population of 63,005 in Vrindavan (2,011 census). Incidentally, between 2001 and 2011, the population of Vrindavan grew by less than 10,000. So there is more than a little exaggeration in the numbers of widowed and abandoned women flocking to the city. Numbers aside, even if a handful of women are compelled to leave their homes and travel to a temple town many miles away just to survive, it is a matter of shame. We have to rethink the value of a woman within the institution of marriage. As long as she is measured first by the amount of dowry she brings, second by her ability to produce a male heir, and third by dying before her husband, the tragic saga of the widows of Vrindavan will continue.

The Prime Minister is busy travelling around the world, projecting the image of an India impatient to change and move ahead. Perhaps he should turn his gaze to the condition of widows in his own constituency, Varanasi, and that of his party colleague’s, Vrindavan. India will move ahead when we understand what is holding back half our population.

(Source: The Hindu, by Kalpana Sharma, September 28, 2014)

How Entrepreneurship Screwed Up My Life.

First of all I would like to give a little introduction of myself, so you can understand my background,

“I did my graduation in Eng literature and then MBA in IT and Finance and the most awful thing is that I don't have background of either”.

Therefore at the beginning I faced many hurdles to land a job, every interviewer wanted to know why did I go for IT and Finance, actually to tell the truth, the decision was wrong anyway since I’m very expert in manipulation so finally got a job and the thing was going fine. Due to my continuous success in my job I become very dear to management of that company and that time I came to know that there is a misunderstanding among the partners.

I was about to leave that company for the hope to hike in my salary as everybody was known to me in that Industry so I wanted to take the benefit of that situation then suddenly one of the Partner of that company came to me and offered me to start our own business at the beginning I was hesitating to go with him since it seems a kind of cheating others for the benefit of personal gains but somehow that man succeeded in his mission and convinced me to start our own, I kept all the ethics in shelf and started with him, and this is the biggest blunder decision of my life so far.

Many close friends and former colleagues of mine said I was “brave”, “courageous” and “did the right thing”. Some also told me that they “wished they had the courage to do exactly the same thing” and that it would be a “fantastic feeling” to do it. For me I knew it was my biggest career mistake I could have done till date.

For Startup, according to me, 1^st, either you go for your own (Sole Proprietorship) or if you are going with partner(s) then you must know him/her (them) in details, their background everything or at least they should not be so selfish to leave you alone in the dense forest where there numerous starving dangerous carnivorous animals are living. 2^nd, the most important thing is that you must have that much backup that if God forbade, your business go down for some reason as startup has many ups and downs then you can be able to survive with your business in these days. (by backup I mean financially strong enough).

And if succeeded in 1^st two points then be ready to answer for the 3^rd point until you are Mark Zuckerberg of FB,

“Sooo, how is your business doing?! Is it growing?!” “When will you have your BMW?”

You may fed up by explaining to people that a business needs more than one day to grow.

At the beginning of my startup everything was going fine during these days when I was about to be a father I’m out of my business for around 2 months (I mean I could not be able to focus on business) everything has been collapsed, my clients were not served well by my company so they ultimately abandoned me, I was expecting others would take care but nobody took care your work, you are the sole responsible, when I returned to business with full concentration everything was beyond my reach, I tried my level best but it was over and my half partner had a secret strategy to push me out of business, told me lets divide the employee, you bear the half expense and I’ll bear the half as the cunningness underneath here was(which I later understood) he has few fixed clients, I don’t have enough fortune, could not bear the burden of expenses, first, I’m out of my savings then I bound to release my employees, my card has been blacklisted and ultimately I'm kicked out of my own business.

After winding up my business I was expecting to land a job soon as I have lots of exp in my field but I was wrong, interviewer always have a problem, they says you are an entrepreneur by heart and we need an employee, till day I’m unable to understand what the F*** difference between an Entrepreneur by heart and Employee but I think it's just a matter of time, sometimes things are happen in front of your eyes and you cannot do anything expect to bear the pain lies underneath, thus time was passing by, one month, two month, three month until eight month after my business I could not land a job for me then I made a strategy and changed my CV, omit the Entrepreneurship portion. During these days where was the status of morale I could not say, I was started thinking of myself that I’m a useless burden on the earth.

Then a very local company was showing some mercy and interest on me and I finally got a job, they did not go to check the details of my past I think they were in hurry to hire one so they hired me.

This eight month I went through the pain, trauma and agony could not be able to express in words, soon realized I was starting to pull myself away from social gatherings and eventually find myself alone in the desert, out of savings, card is blocked, borrowed from others were also finished and lender, banker everybody started pressuring me to return back their money, nobody tried to understand my situation, my wife and kid left me and went away what else I can say, I’ve no idea perhaps this was my life’s worst experience.

What happened to me, made me stronger but I would never do it again, because it came with a big price and could have ruined a promising career and importantly sucked my life and the worst part of this entrepreneurship was I lost many close friends and one best friend.

What about you? Do you have any similar experiences and how did you pick your career back in the track? Waiting to hear your story…

Feel free to connect with me also on Facebook: here or Twitter: @zubairchoudhury

Quotes (Inspirational)

“One day you will ask me which is more important? My life or yours? I will say mine and you will walk away not knowing that you are my life.”

― Khalil Gibran

Some of the biggest challenges in relationships come from the fact that most people enter a relationship in order to get something: they’re trying to find someone who’s going to make them feel good. In reality, the only way a relationship will last is if you see your relationship as a place that you go to give, and not a place that you go to take.....:)

It is of practical value to learn to like yourself. Since you must spend so much time with yourself you might as well get some satisfaction out of the relationship.

Never idealize others. They will never live up to your expectations. Don’t over-analyze your relationships. Stop playing games. A growing relationship can only be nurtured by genuineness....

Rise above the storm and you will find the sunshine...

Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art… It has no survival value. Rather it is one of those things that give value to survival...

I laugh, I love, I hope, I try, I hurt, I need, I fear, I cry. And I know you do the same things too, So we're really not that different...

Na shikayaten na gila kare,

koi aisa shaks b mila kare..

jo mere liye hi saja kare,

mujh hi si baatein kiya kare..

kabhi roye jaaye wo bepanaah,

kabhi betahasha udas ho..

kabhi chupke chupke dabe kadam,

mere peeche aake hansa kare..

meri qurbatein meri chahatein,

koi yaad kare qadam qadam..

main kabhi safar me hun agar,

meri waapsi ki dua kare..

The biggest mistake by most human beings: "listening half, understanding quarter, telling double"

The greatest thing in life is finding someone who knows all your mistakes and differences and still finds you absolutely amazing.....:)

I agree that you will not remain indifferent, but

I will be dust by the time you become aware of me

- Mirza Ghalib..

It's really really very painful but true that in life, sometimes you meet someone who means a lot to you, only to find out in the course of time that it was never bound to be nd u don't have any options left just have to let go....:(

I never let anyone become priority in my life....when I’m just an option in their life... I'm perfect in my imperfections, secure in my insecurities, happy in my pain, strong in my weaknesses, and beautiful in my own way...I am ME!!!...

Love is a feeling, it starts when u don't need it and ends when u actually need it.

I'm perfect in my imperfections, secure in my insecurities, happy in my pain, strong in my weaknesses, and beautiful in my own way...I am ME!!!

It's difficult to wait for someone.. it's difficult to forget someone.. but the most difficult thing is to decide whether to wait or to forget ~

‎"If you take the time, you will find that the most interesting person you could ever know is yourself."

Women fall in love by what they hear. Men fall in love by what they see. that's why women wear make up. that's why men lie.

Don't let someone become your priority in your life....when you are just an option in their life...

The minute you think of giving up on any relation, think of the reason why you held it for so long..

Apologizing does not always mean that you are wrong and the other person is right. It just means that you value your relationship more than your ego.

Don't ever beg someone you love to love you back. It just shows how pathetic you are. If they don't love you, just leave them. That is how you hold your pride.

Life stops when you stop dreaming, hope ends when you stop believing, love ends when you stop caring, friendship ends when you stop sharing.

I don't forgive people because I'm weak, I forgive them because I'm strong enough to understand that everyone makes mistakes.

If someone asks u with whom u want to spend your entire life, u should simply say "Someone who can understand that i am not perfect"

Doors in our lives open and close all the time, but sometimes we're too busy looking back at the one that closed to see the one that opened.

RELATIONSHIPS are not about...whom you have known the longest...who came first...or who cares the best...it's all about- who came and never Left!

Whats looks to be nothing, Finally becomes everything, & What is everything finally changes into nothing ... That`s life , Enjoy every moment! :)

Just Because My Eyes Do Not Show Tears, Doesnt Mean

My Heart Doesnt Cry N I Dont Get Hurt.

Just Because I Come Out Strong, Doesn't Mean There Is

Nothing Wrong.

Often I Choose To Pretend That I'm Happy.

So I Don't Have To Explain Myself To People Who'll Never

Understand...

Relationships are like birds, if u grip tight they die, if u hold loosely they fly

but if u hold with care, love & respect they remain with u forever.....

7 Simple Tips To Increase Online Sales That You Can Implement Right Now

So you want to sell more online?

Good news, customers want to buy more online.  E-commerce sales in the US rose by $33 billion from 2011 to 2012. Mobile shopping alone is predicted to represent a quarter of all e-commerce by 2016 and by 2014, mobile will account for 30% of all US Internet access and will likely surpass total desktop usage.  In light of these seismic shifts, is your site optimized for e-commerce? If not, here are seven simple things you can do now. We tackled this at my company and it took five very full months to implement with results well worth the efforts.

1) Create one e-commerce goal:

Choose one main goal to focus on, such as improving your conversion rate or increasing traffic.

2) Pay for the right things:

While many resources and tools are available for free (WordPress, plug-ins), there are definitely some things you shouldn't skimp on. Be prepared to pay for graphic design, a project manager who knows how to drive things forward, and a website design company that understands your goal, can work within your budget, and has a proven track record of delivering on time and on budget.

3) Faster is Better:

Have you tried your site from a smartphone lately? If you have time to sip your latte while waiting for it to load, it’s too slow. Have your web team look at the platform they are using and see how they can improve the speed.

4) Optimize like Crazy:

Plan for mobile shoppers – your site needs to be able to re-size based on the device of the visitor. Add more visual content for people viewing on the go.  Make sure all buttons and calls to action are “tap-friendly.”

5) Sales Funnel:

If you are selling, make sure you are taking visitors down a sales funnel. In other words, guide them to the parts of the site where they can purchase where they won’t get distracted by lots of shiny objects on the site that don’t lead to getting out their credit card.

6) Offer Free Shipping:

Research shows this is the number one thing that convinces visitors to buy. Think about Amazon and Zappos. It works. Do the numbers to see how you can make it fit with your business model.

7) Focus on SEO:

Invest in more content and the right content. Video ranks higher than text in search engines and it has more a long-term effect on SEO.

What you can do right now:

• Research the sites of competitors in your space and also companies not in your space that have successful e-commerce businesses

• Look at your data in Google GOOGLE+0.04% Analytics to get a sense of which parts of your current site people are visiting, how long they stay, and how many of them turn into customers (your conversion rate)

• Talk to people in companies selling to the same demographic about what has worked, and what hasn’t on their websites

Don’t give your customers and visitors any excuse to click or tap away from your site…make it easy for them to buy quickly, even if it takes you five months to do so!