Why Your Business Needs SEO?

Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of optimizing a website so that it performs well in organic search. Ranking highly for search terms which are known as keywords increases the visibility of a website and leads to a higher number of visitors to the actual website.

In today’s competitive market, SEO is more important than ever. Search engines serve millions of users per moment looking for answers to their questions or for solutions to their problems. If you have a website or eCommerce/online store, SEO can help your business grow and meet the business objectives.

Search engine optimization is very important because:

• Search engines(Google,Yahoo,Bing etc.) users are more likely to choose one of the top 10 suggestions in the results page so to take advantage of this and increase visitors to your website or customers to your online store you need to rank as higher as possible.
• SEO is not only about search engines but good SEO practices improve the user experience and usability of a website.
• User trusts search engines and having a presence in the top positions for the keywords the user is searching increases the website’s trust.
• SEO is also good for the social promotion of your website. People who find your website by searching search engines (Google,Yahoo, Bing etc.)  are more likely to promote it on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn or other social media channels.
• SEO can put you ahead of the competition. If two websites are selling the same thing, the search engine optimized website is more likely to have more customers and make more sales.

In short, growing your business through online you need a well optimized website for search engines. So, this is the right time to select a SEO plan for your website.

Which Domain Extension You Should Choose For Website?

If you want to launch a website then the first thing you got to do is, decide a domain name for your website. This is the name you want to give to your website. It's like the address for your website on the internet. Well, what happened in our real life when someone wants to visit our place? First and foremost he/ she need to know our address, right? The Same thing is happening on the internet as well. To reach another person on the Internet you have to type an address into your computer - a name or a number. That address has to be unique so computers know where to find each other. A domain name just like an address for your website.

Let's dive into a domain name. What is really a domain name? A domain name is an identification string that identifies a website. Each website has a domain name that serves as an address, which is used to access the website.  For example, I have a website which  is "https://www.digitalistic.net". Here in this domain name, "http://" is the protocol name; "www" is hostname " digitalistic " is the domain name of this site and ".net" is the domain's extension. So the final address would look like this:

"Protocol//host name. Domain Name. Domain Extension".

An organization name Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) provides any kind of Top-Level domain name. It's a nonprofit organization. ICANN often referred to as “the phone book of the Internet” because it matches domain names with appropriate IP address numbers etc.

Generic top-level domain:

Generic top-level domain(gTLD) extensions are those extensions which do not represent any particular state, country or area.  A gTLD is the name of an Internet address that identifies it generically as associated with some domain class, such as .com (commercial), .net (originally intended for Internet service providers, but now used for many purposes), .org (for non-profit organizations, industry groups, and others), .gov (U.S. government agencies), .mil (for the military), .edu (for educational institutions); and .int (for international treaties or databases and not much used). Among all these domain extensions ".com" is the most popular one. This domain extension is mainly for commercial entities, but unrestricted. So anyone or any type of businesses can use this.  Other domain extensions such as: .net, .org, .info, .biz are unrestricted as well. These extensions are being used with the domain name (such as digitalistic.net). When you intend to buy a domain name, you have to check whether it is available or not. If you want to buy a particular domain name but it is already sold out to another person then you can't buy it unless the person who bought it last time wants to sell because every domain name has to be unique. In this situation, you have to change your domain name or the extension. Since ".com" is the most popular extension so it is a little bit tough to get a domain name with this extension, in this case, you can choose other available extension. You can use these domains .biz, .one, .co (even it is a ccTLD which refers to Colombia but it is being used a generic lately) if available. There are more domain names available which are approved by ICANN (To view the list, click here) and they are adding more day by day.

Some Generic Top-Level Domains:

.com (commercial)

.net (Network)

.info (Information)

.ai (Artificial Intelligence)

.org (Organization)

.biz (businesses)

.edu (Educational Institute)

Country Code Top-Level Domain:

Country Code Top-level Domain (ccTLD) is one type of Top-Level domain which is only used for a country but this does not mean that only people from that particular region can only access it. Anyone from anywhere can access the website. well, you might think why ccTLD has been created when gTLD is already being using. As we know that a domain name has to be unique. It is impossible to find a website unless it has a unique name. Where are millions of millions website available right now on the internet so it's quite tough to find a unique name, this is why ICANN decided to create Country Code Top-level Domains.

Some Country Code Top-Level Domain:

.au (Australia)

.cn (China)

.ca (Canada)

.fr (France)

.in (India)

.uk (United Kingdom)

.us (United States)

However it does not matter what type of domain extension you use, always try to use paid one. It is better not to use free domain extension like .tk, .cf because search engines do not prefer this extension. So for better SEO, you should always avoid such extension.

Boost Your Business Up With Facebook

  

Facebook is not just one of the best social media but also a best place for business. Especially for online business. If you have an online store, then Facebook advertising is your way to go.

Recently, I have started an online clothing store. As it’s online based and  don’t have any physical store hence I know that digital marketing is suitable for me. I narrowed it down a bit more. I chose Facebook for marketing. Surprisingly, I am doing great. Let me break it down a bit on how powerful Facebook marketing is. Yes, I did have to present the page in a beautiful way. I had my designers to create stunning cover images and Facebook post templates. Yes, they are good reasons to get great sales but you need those good advertises to reach out to right audience and Facebook is your ultimate partner in that. So I started my page and right after decorating it, I started boosting post. I added $25 for boosting a post for a week. Thank goodness, I did it. I was out of stock in 5 days. Well, I started with about 120 shirts. The boosting worked so well and as soon as I was out of stock I decreased the boosting. When the boosting was $25, I used to get about 12-15 sale per day. When I set $5, I was getting 2-3 orders per day. So this just explains how effective Facebook boosting is. What I love about boosting is, you can cancel, increase or decrease the payment whenever you wish to.

One thing you should watch out for is, what you are boosting. Make sure it’s very interesting so that people are forced to have a look at your page. Increasing Facebook like is not a bad idea. When people will see you have about 10-15k likes then they might consider it to be a popular or safe place to purchase things. You must know that, increasing Facebook like can be costly. But the rate is not same all over the world. For example, if you set USA as target it will cost you a lot, however, if you set country like Bangladesh as target then you can get many like in very less price. The difference is, these low cost likers might not get you sale but they can come handy as I mentioned

that people can feel safe when they will see that a page has many likers. When you put an ad on your Facebook page, make sure the post is precise and gives a clear message what is the post about. Present things in pictorial form if you like. Pictures and videos attracts more people than a regular post. For boosting post, make sure the image contains not more than 20% texts. You can use the image overlay tool to make sure that the image is eligible for boosting.

To sum up, I would say that, Facebook will make your business stand out only if you use the Facebook advertisement. I heard many people, trying to be partner of popular groups even paying some money to show their advertise on those pages, but trust me, it’s not even close what Facebook can do to promote. So shake hands with Facebook to grow your online business.

*** This article has published on  Sentinel Times (Philippines). Link: https://www.sentineltimes.net/2019/02/boost-your-business-up-with-facebook.html

ICT In Education

Since the education sector plays a vital role in economic development, Education System in developing countries should align with the fast evolving technology because technological literacy is one of the required skills in our current era. ICT can enhance the quality of education by increasing learner motivation and engagement, by facilitating the acquisition of basic skills and by enhancing teacher training which will eventually improve communication and exchange of information that will strengthen and create economic and social development.

There are many examples in neighboring countries where the development of nation has been brought about the improvement of ICT & education, with visionary initiative in the sector. Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST), Indian Institutes of Technology, Tata Institute of Fundamental research, Indian Institute of Science are growing examples of initiative in education that have changed technological face of the country. KAIST is widely regarded as a creator of modern Korea. For the last 30 years Korea has invested in education enormously and the result is astonishing as can be seen from economy, scientific and technological progress. The same is true for Malaysia that was sending thousands of students to Australia, UK and USA for many years for education. Now they are developing a commendable education base.

Let me come back to computer education scenario in Bangladesh. For the last 15 years more and more universities opened departments in this field. Nationally we also aspired for changing lot of our distressed people through the golden touch of information technology. Unfortunately, in none of our efforts did appear that computer education should be given some priority. There were directives from the upper level to double intake in relevant disciplines without really giving any commitment to improving ICT facilities and development in education. For the last 10/15 years we have been dreaming to change the socio economy condition of the country through reaping the benefit in Information Technology. Different governments have attached significant improvement to IT calling it thrust sector and so on. Efforts have been made to formulate IT policies in order to expedite and accelerate its progress. Meetings, seminars, festivals, exhibitions on IT have become a part of our life. The government has set up an incubator to facilitate IT development activities and has given tax holiday to our entrepreneurs. But unfortunately none of these infinitives has been rewarded with any mentionable success. Two billions dollars ambitious target for software export has been set although there is no justifying indication in our performance. It appears that our initiatives are not mission oriented.

Time and again government has instructed to increase intake in computer departments throughout the country with a hope that these graduates will add to the IT workforce. Hoverer, there has been no government institutive to develop laboratory facilities or faculty in universities. While professionals of different fields are able to participate in IT related workshops and other training programs, as far as we know these facilities are almost never available to teachers of computers department of any university. We are aware of our deficiencies and the big responsibilities that have been placed on our shoulders without strengthening it, reinforcing it.