Improving Search Engine Optimization

April 29, 2009 · Filed Under seo · Comment 

In today’s era any kind of information is a click away and the computers have literally swapped places with calculators, record books, diaries and to some extent the human brain. Most of the businesses today operate on the various softwares that are being developed in every second house in countries like Japan and India.

Internet too is an amazing work of software development. Every company today has its own website and some firms are purely website based firms. These firms only work on improving the ratings of their website and make money from the advertisements they get. Internet is also an effective way of providing people what they want to read.

It is here that search engine optimization comes into picture. It is a process of improving the site’s rating or PR (page rank) on a search engine. To provide the internauts and surfers with the content they are looking for, one requires that their webpage relevant to the topic is displayed on the first page of a search engine. People more often than not visit those web pages that are displayed on the first page of a search engine when they type what they wish to read.

There are a number of ways to optimize the search engine effectively. Some of them are as follows

1. Linking: it is important to have both inbound link and link outs. Google provides the ratings to a site according to the number of inbound links it has from other relevant sites. However it is a quid pro quo scenario. If it is desired to have inbound links from other sites then it becomes necessary that outbound links are provided to their sites.
2. Apt usage of keywords: using too many keywords in a single webpage on a site does not help improving the traffic as the search engine does not give preference to pages with a lot of keywords. Most of the search engines require that the concentration of keywords in a particular page be less than 10%. Secondly it is must to have keywords in the headlines and title tags. Search engines tend to give preference to keywords that appear early in the page in headlines and titles.
3. Content: Original content is one of the most important aspects of SEO. It is important that the content is not copied and is original. Search engines don’t increase ratings if the content is copied. To attract traffic, another good practice would be to highlight the important or the best content on the web pages. This helps making the content catchy and leaves a mark in the surfers mind which may lead him to hit the page the second time he looks for the same thing. It is also recommended that the tags and the categories are limited to the most important content of a site.
4. Blogging: A recent report has proved that blogs are more viewed than the websites and have started getting good page ranks. Most of the firms also have a blog relating to the content in their websites. Blogs may contain promotional articles and may be linked back to the original website and vice versa. Again it is good if the web addresses for the blogs contain keywords.
5. Grouping: It is beneficial to provide the user with groupings or theme pages as it makes things simpler for the reader. Category pages helps making a search specific and can cater to the requirements of a user in a better way.
6. Publicity: Mouth publicity to promote blogs and websites is also a good idea to get more traffic on the site. Talking to friends and random people on public forums also helps attracting interested people to the website.

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Outsourcing : Advantage India

April 18, 2009 · Filed Under Outsourcing · 2 Comments 

Call centers in India have been a huge success both in India and across the borders. MNCs are now setting up more and more outsourcing centers in India. With the US President, Barack Obama lifting the ban on call centers, India can further look to expand the outsourcing industry.

The Asian countries have witnessed a great flourish in the BPO sector ever since the concept was introduced. This is because of the difference in the value of currencies in the Asian countries to that of the West or the European countries. The manpower is enormous here in the Asian countries, especially in China and India and the employees in BPOs in India work at a lower pay as compared to those in other countries, again because of the dollar-rupee ratio.

Indians can make a living at cheaper costs as compared to citizens of developed nations. An average Indian can get along the month with an earning of $200. The same figure in America amounts to somewhere around $500.

India is also the second largest English speaking nation after America. India is also one of those nations that is home to some sharp brains and hence the ‘technical support’ part is taken care of by these professionals.

This industry has also helped providing jobs to many unemployed graduates in India. According to a recent survey the BPO industry also provides an unmatched job satisfaction to people working there. Way to go India!

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Types Of Customers Encountered In a BPO

April 16, 2009 · Filed Under Outsourcing · 7 Comments 

Working in a BPO does teach one to be patient and to be polite to even the most irate of people. In the BPO industry, the freshers are taught to be polite to the customers and to not yell back at them in spite of the vituperations they throw at you. They are told that the contumelies are aimed at the company and not to them, hence they should not take it personally and talk to the customer elegantly.

When taking calls in a BPO, many categories of customers are confronted with. These categories include
1. The polite customer
2. The irate customer
3. The confused customer
4. The analytical customer
5. The simple customer

The polite customer is generally a treat to talk to. He is one customer easy to deal with. He would be urbane and will not make a mountain out of a molehill. It would be like talking to the guy next door who needs a little help. This is the ideal customer to build rapport in front of.

The irate customer is the one who will cause a lot of problems. Yelling, abusing and high usage of slanderous sentences are the common characteristics of this species of human being. To deal with them one needs to understand that all the criticism is being addressed to the company and not the person taking the call; hence one needs to be calm and composed. Let the customer say all he has to and then politely apologize and assure that you would do your best to help him solve the problem. One needs to be patient and CSRs are told to put the call on mute while the customer goes on with his long volley of outbursts and swear the customers and then resume the call again with a smile on their face.

The confused customer is the one who has the ability to even confuse the best of agents with his data and statistics. This kind of customer does not know what he is looking for or is confused between two products or some policy of the company. In this case you need to be the speaker and clear all his doubts. If he is satisfied then he may thank you with all his heart and the rapport would be built by default itself.

The analytical customers are the ones who would appear as if trained to increase your call time. They would analyze each and every aspect a particular offer or a product. One needs to be patient and help the customer come to his final conclusion. These types of customers are not really sure about the product they want or the scheme they want to discuss and have nothing pre planned and prefer to discuss things out on the phone. At times the call duration can extend up to 15 to 20 minutes thus lowering the points of an agent. This does not mean that one should try to wrap things up and disconnect as fast as possible. Doing this would leave a worse remark in an agent’s profile than taking a call that lasted long.
The simple customer is the one who talks to the point as is not game for any thing else than his demand. He would call up and place the order and hang up without getting into any kind of conversation. These are the professionals who are short of time and do things rapidly and have things pre planned i.e. they know what to speak on the call and would do exactly that. These customers generally give the agent a very short call which is an advantage for the agent.

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