Details Information about SAP

 

 

 

Who and / or what is SAP? How popular is it? Wow!

SAP the company was founded in Germany in 1972 by five ex-IBM engineers. In case you're ever asked, SAP stands for Systeme, Andwendungen, Produkte in der Datenverarbeitung which – translated to English – means Systems, Applications, Products in Data Processing. So now you know! Being incorporated in Germany, the full name of the parent company is SAP AG. It is located in Walldorf, Germany which is close to the beautiful town of Heidelberg. SAP has subsidiaries in over 50 countries around the world from Argentina to Venezuela (and pretty much everything in between). SAP America (with responsibility for North America, South America and Australia – go figure!) is located just outside Philadelphia, PA.

 

The original five founders have been so successful that they have multiplied many times over such that SAP AG is now the third largest software maker in the world, with over 17,500 customers (including more than half of the world's 500 top companies). SAP employs over 27,000 people worldwide today, and had revenues of $7.34 billion and Net Income of $581 million in FY01. SAP is listed in Germany (where it is one of the 30 stocks which make up the DAX) and on the NYSE (ticker: SAP).

 

There are now 44,500 installations of SAP, in 120 countries, with more then 10 million users!

 

So what made this company so successful? Back in 1979 SAP released SAP R/2 (which runs on mainframes) into the German market. SAP R/2 was the first integrated, enterprise wide package and was an immediate success. For years SAP stayed within the German borders until it had penetrated practically every large German company. Looking for more growth, SAP expanded into the remainder of Europe during the 80′s. Towards the end of the 80′s, client-server architecture became popular and SAP responded with the release of SAP R/3 (in 1992). This turned out to be a killer app for SAP, especially in the North American region into which SAP expanded in 1988.

 

The success of SAP R/3 in North America has been nothing short of stunning. Within a 5 year period, the North American market went from virtually zero to 44% of total SAP worldwide sales. SAP America alone employs more than 3,000 people and has added the names of many of the Fortune 500 to it's customer list (8 of the top 10 semiconductor companies, 7 of the top 10 pharmaceutical companies etc). SAP today is available in 46 country-specific versions, incorporating 28 languages including Kanji and other double-byte character languages. SAP also comes in 21 industry-specific versions.

 

SAP R/3 is delivered to a customer with selected standard process turned on, and many many other optional processes and features turned off. At the heart of SAP R/3 are about 10,000 tables which control the way the processes are executed. Configuration is the process of adjusting the settings of these tables to get SAP to run the way you want it to. Think of a radio with 10,000 dials to tune and you'll get the picture. Functionality included is truly enterprise wide including: Financial Accounting (e.g. general ledger, accounts receivable etc), Management Accounting (e.g. cost centers, profitability analysis etc), Sales, Distribution, Manufacturing, Production Planning, Purchasing, Human Resources, Payroll etc etc etc. For a full description of the modules included in SAP, see the related articles. All of these modules are tightly integrated which – as you will find out – is a huge blessing … but brings with it special challenges.

 

SAP are maintaining and increasing their dominance over their competitors through a combination of

- embracing the internet with mySAP.com (a confusing name we believe) to head off i2 etc

- extending their solutions with CRM to head off Siebel

- adding functionality to their industry solutions

 

Who is it made for? Why might I need it?

 

We have all heard about the large (and very large) companies who have implemented (or are still busy implementing) SAP R/3. But SAP is gaining acceptance by smaller companies too.

 

There are many reasons a company selects and implements SAP – some are good and some are bad. The good ones include replacing an out-dated and inefficient IT Architecture (including the CIO's nemesis … the burning platform), enabling business process change, and to gain competitive advantage. The bad ones are too numerous to go into here but would include the "why are we the only semiconductor company without SAP" question. More on the good reasons follows:

 

1. Replacing an out-dated and inefficient IT Architecture:
   

   In the beginning, computer systems were developed by individual departments to satisfy the requirements of that particular department. When someone finally realized that benefits could be had by linking these systems together, interface heaven was born. There are some companies today with literally thousands of interfaces, each of which needs to be maintained (assuming of course that there is someone around who understands how they work!). Sweeping them away and replacing them with an integrated system such as SAP can save much money in support. Of course, if you have a burning platform as well the question becomes even easier.
   

 

2. Enabling business process change – From the start, SAP was built on a foundation of process best practices. Although it sounds absurd, it is probably easier (and less expensive) to change your companies processes to adapt to SAP than the other way around. Many companies have reported good success from combining a SAP implementation with a BPR project.

 

3. Competitive advantage – The CFO types around have heard this old saying from the CIO types for many years now. The question still has to be asked … can you gain competitive advantage from implementing SAP? The answer, of course, depends on the company. It seems to us, however, that:

 

• being able to accurately provide delivery promise dates for manufactured products (and meet them) doesn't hurt … and

• being able to consolidate purchase decisions from around the globe and use that leverage when negotiating with vendors has gotta help … and

• being able to place kiosks in stores where individual customers can enter their product specifications and then feed this data directly into it's production planning process is pretty neat

• etc etc

 

How much does it cost? What will it take to implement it? Wow!

There is a defining moment in the journey of all companies on the road to SAP nirvana. This moment comes just after the company has concluded that it wants' SAP, it needs SAP, it's gotta have SAP … then comes the question 'so what does it take to implement it'?

 

Before being accused of being too negative, let me remind you that at the heart of every good business decision lies a cost benefit analysis. If this cannot be complete with a positive outcome, the initiative (whatever it is) should probably not be launched. Same goes for a SAP implementation.

 

Implementing SAP is expensive. No doubt about it. But the potential rewards can dwarf the costs (and have for many existing customers already). One customer reportedly made enough savings on the procurement of a single raw material to pay for the entire enterprise-wide SAP implementation! Of course these are hard to substantiate, but visit SAP's website and take a look at the customer testimonials.

 

SAP sells it's R/3 product on a 'price per user basis'. The actual price is negotiated between SAP and the customer and therefore depends on numerous factors which include number of users and modules (and other factors which are present in any negotiation). You should check with SAP, but for a ballpark planning number you could do worse than starting with $4000 per user. There is also an annual support cost of about 10% which includes periodic upgrades. Again, check with SAP.

 

Then there is the implementation cost. Yowser. It is about now that you need to get the business case out again and remind yourself why you need to do this. The major drivers of the total implementation cost are the Timeframe, Resource Requirements and Hardware.

 

Timeframe – The absolute quickest implementation we have ever heard of is 45 days … but this was for a tiny company with very few users and no changes to the delivered SAP processes. At the other end of the scale you get the multi-nationals who are implementing SAP over 5 to 10 years. These are not necessarily failures … many of them are planned as successive global deployments (which seem to roll around the globe forever). Of course the really expensive ones are those we don't hear about! For the most part, you should be able to get your (single instance) project completed in a 9 to 18 month period.

People – The smallest of SAP implementations can get done on a part-time basis without outside help. The largest swallow up hundreds of people (sometimes over a thousand) and include whole armies of consultants. This adds up fast. Again, get that business case out. The types of people you will need run the range from heavy duty techies to project managers.

Hardware – The smallest of SAP implementations probably use only three instances (boxes) … one for the production system, one for test, and one for development. The largest implementations have well over 100 instances, especially if they involve multiple parallel projects (otherwise known as a program).

Adding all this up, your SAP project can run anywhere from $400,000 to hundreds of millions of $'s. As you can see, SAP can be all things to all companies … so it's best to talk to them (or your consulting firm) about your specific requirements.

 

 

Is there any help out there? What should I do next? Help From SAP AG

There is a ton of help available out there – depending on your companies budget and culture – to help you along your journey beginning with your strategy and ending up when you reach that hallowed (and sometimes distant) ground of post-implementation. This article concentrates on the help available from SAP AG. Article 5 discusses other sources of help.

 

SAP AG employs around 22,000 people. Although they re-organize as often as most other companies, you can think of them as being organized into the following four areas: Pre-Sales, Consulting, Training and Developers.

 

• Pre-Sales. These are people with heavy-duty functional knowledge of one or more SAP modules and one or more industries. They give really excellent system demonstrations on particular areas of the system which – while thick with pre-sales features – are an extremely valuable source of information about SAP. I'm sure they have many other responsibilities as well, but if you can, get a demo from them. For an even more useful demo, ask if you can provide them with business process scenarios that are pertinent to your business or industry prior to the demo.

 

• Consulting. While also knowledgeable in SAP (of course), these are mostly consulting types like those that can be found in the major consulting firms. Often a team will consist of consultants from SAP and a partner consulting firm and you will not know the difference. Expect them to have business process and/or industry knowledge in addition to detailed SAP knowledge. They are not readily available to non-customers as they are usually assigned to one or more customers. A good list of consulting partners is available in the links section of this website.

 

• Training. In 1999 SAP opened up their training programs to non-customers and non-partners. This opens up a whole world of top-rate training programs at SAP's facilities around the globe. These can be expensive, however, and up to three weeks are usually required to gain a sufficiently deep understanding of a particular module or subject. If you have lots of time and money, you could register for one of SAP's 'academies' which are five-week crash courses (emphasis on crash … as in burn) in one of the following areas: FI/CO, MM/SD, and HR/ABAP. These end with an examination and 'certification' in your chosen area. More information on SAP training courses can be found on SAP's website.

 

• Developers. These heavy-duty techies are off limits to non-customers. Customers can sometimes get a message to them via the OSS system – which is an automated trouble ticket type system. If you ever actually see one, or have one on the phone, ask all the questions you can think of, as you may never have the chance again!

 

Is there any help out there? What should I do next? Help From Other Sources

Here we will cover the help that is available from other sources, including: Consulting Companies, SAPPHIRE and other SAP Events, ASUG, and this website.

 

1. Consulting Companies

One of SAP's key strategies has been to develop partnerships with the Consulting Companies. This has contributed enormously to the widespread adoption of SAP due to the fact that there are literally thousands of consultants (SAP estimate 55,000) ready to help with all aspects of your SAP implementation … from strategy to completion. There are two types of consulting partners:

• Global consulting partners (13 of these at last count) are the largest of the consulting firms who are able to provide global assistance to global companies, and
  
• National consulting partners who are accredited by country
  

Your need of a consulting partner depends on your project scope and complexity, your project budget, company culture, and prior SAP implementation experience in your company. Suffice to say that without heavy prior SAP experience in your company, all but the simplest SAP implementations would benefit from the involvement of experienced individuals who have done it before. Rates depend on your negotiations with the consulting company, of course, but you could do worse than use an estimate of $200 per person per hour. Consulting styles differ from firm to firm, so make sure your company culture is compatible with the typical approach of your chosen consulting partner. In addition, spend some time on their websites to get an idea of their approach, experience and capabilities.

2. SAPPHIRE and other SAP events

SAPPHIRE is the name given to SAP's annual user conference. Multiple SAPPHIRE's can be found around the globe each year, and are usually sold out in advance. North American SAPPHIRE's are typically held in hot cities (off season) and attract upwards of 14,000 prospects, customers and partners. Read up on SAPPHIRE'99 here. SAPPHIRE is a great place to go explore, but is quite expensive at around $2,200 for three days (food, lodging, travel etc is at your own expense). Even so, it is well worth the time and expense.

Note: SAP holds other events throughout the year (TechEd, for example, is aimed at the more technical users) see their website for additional details.

 

3. ASUG (America's SAP User Group)

As the name suggests, ASUG is a forum for users of SAP. Non-users (prospects and consultants) and not usually found lurking here. ASUG actually comprises of multiple sub-ASUG's – each focusing on a particular area of SAP, for example there is an ASUG for High Tech companies, and an ASUG for companies using ALE etc. Leadership of these sub-ASUG's (for lack of a better description) usually rotates between members of the user community. ASUG provides opportunities for networking, learning and influencing SAP (for example joining forces with other users to convince SAP to include a particular modification in their standard software). In addition to meetings within the sub-ASUG's, there is an annual conference (which attracted nearly 6,000 users and vendors in 1999). More details on ASUG can be found at www.asug.com.

 

SAP AG Corporate Overview (Updated August 2004)

3rd – SAP is the 3rd largest software company in the world

 

30,000 – Total number of people employed by SAP

5,400 – Number of programmers employed by SAP

 

$7.024 billion – FY03 Revenue

$1.077 million – FY03 Net Income

 

12,000 – Number of companies using SAP

79,800 – Number of SAP installations

12,000,000 – Number of people using SAP

120,000,000 – Total number of people in the 12,000 companies who are using SAP

 

28 – Number of languages supported by SAP

46 – Number of country-specific versions of SAP

22 – Number of industry-specific versions of SAP

 

1,000 – Number of pre-defined best practices contained in the SAP system

10,000 – Number of tables requiring configuration in a full SAP implementation

 

55,000 – Number of SAP experienced consultants worldwide

 

28 – Number of years ago SAP was started

 

5 – Number of people who started SAP

 

SAP Modules and Solutions Overview

SAP now are moving away from describing their system as a set of modules, and now are using the term 'solutions', which is much better. If you visit SAP's website (as we urge you to do) you will find that they have structured their Solutions tab as follows:

1. Financials

2. Human Resources

3. Customer Relationship Management

4. Supplier Relationship Management

5. Product Lifecycle Management

6. Supply Chain Management

7. Business Intelligence

If you're still looking for that list of modules, here they are:

FI (Financial Accounting) – essentially your regulatory 'books of record', including

1. General ledger

2. Book close

3. Tax

4. Accounts receivable

5. Accounts payable

6. Consolidation

7. Special ledgers

CO (Controlling) – basically your internal cost/management accounting, including

1. Cost elements

2. Cost centres

3. Profit centres

4. Internal orders

5. Activity based costing

6. Product costing

AM (Asset Management) – track, value and depreciate your assets, including

1. Purchase

2. Sale

3. Depreciation

4. Tracking

PS (Project Systems) – manage your projects, large and small, including

1. Make to order

2. Plant shut downs (as a project)

3. Third party billing (on the back of a project)

HR (Human Resources) – ah yes, people, including

1. Employment history

2. Payroll

3. Training

4. Career management

5. Succession planning

PM (Plant Maintenance) – maintain your equipment (e.g. a machine, an oil rig, an aircraft etc), including

1. Labour

2. Material

3. Down time and outages

 

MM (Materials Management) – underpins the supply chain, including

1. Requisitions

2. Purchase orders

3. Goods receipts

4. Accounts payable

5. Inventory management

6. BOM's

7. Master raw materials, finished goods etc

 

QM (Quality Management) – improve the quality of your goods, including

1. Planning

2. Execution

3. Inspections

4. Certificates

 

PP (Production Planning) – manages your production process, including

1. Capacity planning

2. Master production scheduling

3. Material requirements planning

4. Shop floor

 

SD (Sales and Distribution) – from order to delivery, including

1. RFQ

2. Sales orders

3. Pricing

4. Picking (and other warehouse processes)

5. Packing

6. Shipping

CA (Cross Application) – these lie on top of the individual modules, and include

1. WF – workflow

2. BW – business information warehouse

3. Office – for email

4. Workplace

5. Industry solutions

6. New Dimension products such as CRM, PLM, SRM, APO etc

Common Mistake by SEO

• Meta
  

Problem:

You've not only put all the possible combination of keywords that describe your site, but you're halfway through all the keywords that you've ever heard of.

Solution:

The maximum number of keywords a site is allowed is 10. Sites with more than 10 meta keywords can be penalized and pushed to the bottom of the search results. Make sure you site has no more than 10. Even if it's just one over, it's like having thirty over. 10 is the absolute limit. For meta descriptions, the maximum allowance is 150 characters. This really is enough space to give visitors an idea of what a site is about. However, having no meta information is a big killer.

• Title
  

Problem:

Your site title is 230 characters long, and you're on your way to the third run-on sentence describing your site.

Solution:

The page title should be no more than 70 characters long. Some people may think that this doesn't allow enough space for their marketing genius. But to be honest, even 70 characters is too long. You don't have to write a book to save that for your content.

• A Word or Color?
  

Problem:

Everything on your site is HTML. You love HTML and can't get enough of it.

The solution:

If your site design is in HTML, you're commit a cardinal SEO sin. What year is this – 1997 ? Site designs should be written in CSS. Otherwise search engines can't differentiate what is design and what is content.

• Everyone Can See My Photos except Google
  

The problem:

No "alt tags on your images."

The solution:

Add "alt tags" to each of your images. By doing this, you're telling what the image is. You don't have to describe the entire picture, but at least put something descriptive there. Everyone likes to know what's in a photo, even if they can't see it. Many people do not have the time to input alt tags for every single little icon or part of the design. It isn't really necessary to have alt tags on ALL images, just the important ones. The alt tag argument is becoming more and more controversial, but it doesn't hurt to add them and personally. I've noticed a different since adding them.

• Domain Age and Register Period
  

Problem:

You have 210 days until your domain expires.

Solution:

Search engines like Google put more faith in a site that's going to be sticking around. That being said, domains that are registered for more than a year do much, much better with SEO than sites that will expire in less than a year. Personally, I register sites for two years, but I've registered my most important sites for up to 10 years. The domain expiration mistake is quite common as many people are baffled by the fact that search engines actually consider this as a factor in measuring the importance of a site. But, I guess if you register a site for something like 10 years, then it's important to you and if it's important to you, then it's slightly more important to Google. I mean, anyone willing to put more than just $10 down per year on a domain must REALLY be interested in it, right ?

• Incoming Links
  

Problem:

Your site has no back links.

Solution:

A site's on-page SEO really helps, but off-page SEO is what's going to bring it to the top. Web sites need back links. In fact, the most important part of SEO is back links. It's important to also put your keywords in your back-links.It's important for back-links to be natural… or at least appear natural, so webmasters must take care in not creating too many back-links right away. This looks fishy and sites have been known to be penalized for this. Take it slow. Add a new back-link here and there. Taking it slow allows you a lot of space to dabble a little – to see what works and what doesn't without a major investment of time or money.

• I'm Going to Be Rich Someday.
  

Problem:

You've picked a great keyword, but you have 50,387 back links and still don't rank for the keyword.

Solution:

You've picked some bad keywords. It's too bad, just do some keyword research with this tool. Every niche has those extremely competitive keywords, but those with a creative mind can come up with some good keywords – ones that people search for often, but are allow the webmaster the ability to rank for those keywords.

Black Hat SEO Techniques

Black hat SEO is both a myth and a reality we have to face sooner or later as SEO practitioners. While I abide by probably one of the strictest SEO codes of ethics around and SEO optimize is a clean white hat SEO company itself we still can't deny that there is black hat SEO.

Here some technique of Black hat SEO:

 Hidden text – Create modern CSS based websites with JQuery effects. They often hide large portions of text in layers to display them on click or mouse over for usability reasons. Example: CSS pagination.


IP delivery – Offer the proper localized content to those coming from a country specific IP address. Offer the user a choice though. Shopping.com does a great job here.


301 redirects – Redirect outdated pages to the newer versions or your homepage. When moving to a new domain use them of course as well.


Throw Away Domains – Create exact match micro sites for short term popular keywords and abandon them when the trend subsides. Something like tigerwoodssexrehab.com


Cloaking – Hide the heavy Flash animations from Google, show the text-only version optimized for accessibility and findability.


Paid links – Donate for charity, software developers etc. Many of them display links to those who donate.


Keyword stuffing – Tags and folksonomy. Keyword stuff but adding several tags or let your users do the dirty work via UGC tagging (folksonomy) every major social site does that.


Automatically generated keyword pages – Some shopping search engines create pages from each Google search query and assign the appropriate products to each query. You can do that as well if you have enough content.


Mispsellings – Define, correct the misspelled term and/or redirect to the correct version.


Scraping – Create mirrors for popular sites. Offer them to the respective webmasters. Most will be glad to pay less.


Ad only pages – Create all page ads (interstitials) and show them before users see content like many old media do.


Blog spam – Don't spam yourself! Get spammed! Install a WordPress blog without Akismet spam protection. Then create a few posts about Mesothelioma for example, a very profitable keyword. Then let spammers comment spam it or even add posts (via TDO Mini Forms). Last but not least parse the comments for your keyword and outgoing links. If they contain the keyword publish them and remove the outgoing links of course. Bot user generated content so to say.


Duplicate content on multiple domains – Offer your content under a creative Commons License with attribution.


Domain grabbing – Buy old authority domains that failed and revive them instead of putting them on sale.


Fake news – Create real news on official looking sites for real events. You can even do it in print. Works great for all kinds of activism related topics.


Link farm – Create a legit blog network of flagship blogs. A full time pro blogger can manage 3 to 5 high quality blogs by her or himself.


New exploits – Find them and report them, blog about them. You break story and thus you get all the attention and links. Dave Naylor is excellent at it.


Brand jacking – Write a bad review for a brand that has disappointed you or destroys the planet or set up a brand x sucks page and let consumers voice their concerns.


Rogue bots – Spider websites and make their webmasters aware of broken links and other issues. Some people may be thankful enough to link to you.


Hidden affiliate links – In fact hiding affiliate links is good for usability and can be even more ethical than showing them. example.com/ref?id=87233683 is far worse than than just example.com. Also unsuspecting Web users will copy your ad to forums etc. which might break their TOS. The only thing you have to do is disclose the affiliate as such. I prefer to use [ad] (on Twitter for example) or [partner-link] elsewhere. This way you can strip the annoying "ref" ids and achieve full disclosure at the same time.


Doorway pages – Effectively doorway pages could also be called landing pages. The only difference is that doorway pages are worthless crap while landing pages are streamlined to suffice on their own. Common for both is that they are highly optimized for organic search traffic. So instead of making your doorway pages just a place to get skipped optimize them as landing pages and make the users convert right there.


Multiple subdomains – Multiple subdomains for one domain can serve an ethical purpose. Just think blogspot.co or wordpress.com – they create multiple subdomains by UGC. This way they can rank several times for a query. You can offer subdomains to your users as well.


Twitter automation – There is nothing wrong with Twitter automation as long as you don't overdo it. Scheduling and repeating tweets, even automatically tweeting RSS feeds from your or other blogs is perfectly OK as long as the Twitter account has a real person attending it who tweets "manually" as well. Bot accounts can be ethical as well in case they are useful no only for yourself. A bot collecting news about Haiti in the aftermath of the earthquake would be perfectly legit if you ask me.


Deceptive headlines – Tabloids use them all the time, black hat SEO also do. There are ethical use cases for deceptive headlines though. Satire is one of course and humor simply as well. For instance I could end this list with 24 items and declare this post to a list of 30 items anyways. That would be a good laugh. I've done that in the past but in a more humorous post.


Google Bowling – The bad thing about Google bowling is that you hurt sites you don't like. You could reverse that: Reverse Google bowling would mean that you push sites of competitors you like to make those you dislike disappear below. In a way we do that all the time linking out to the competition, the good guys of SEO who then outrank the ugly sites we like a lot less.


Invisible links – You'd never used invisible links on your sites did you? You liar! You have. Most free web counters and statistic tools use them. Statcounter is a good example. So when you embed them on your site you use invisible links.


Different content for search engines than users – Do you use WordPress? Then you have the nofollow attribute added to your comment links. this way the search engine gets different content than the user. He sees and clicks a link. A search bot sees a no trespass sign instead. In white hat SEO it's often called PageRank sculpting. Most social media add ons do that by default.


Hacking sites – While crackers hack sites security experts warn site owners that they vulnerabilities. Both discover the same issues. Recently I got an email by someone who warned me to update my WordPress installation. That was a grand idea I thought.


Slander linkbait – Pulling a Calacanis like "SEO is bullshit" is quite common these days. Why don't do it the other way around? The anti SEO thing doesn't work that good anymore unless you are as famous as Robert Scoble. In contrast a post dealing with "100 Reasons to Love SEO Experts" might strike a chord by now.


Map spam – Instead of faking multiple addresses all over the place just to appear on Google Maps and Local why don't you simply create an affiliate network of real life small business owners with shops and offices who, for a small amount of money, are your representatives there? All they need to do is to collect your mail from Google and potential clients.

Increase Website Speed

 

• Remove everything unnecessary:
  This tip may sound dumb, but please look at your website once again: do you really need this background sound (most people find them annoying anyways). Is that huge GIF animation with jumping bunny really that cool ? And do you really need this crappy JavaScript code for the flying clock ? Remember, all this stuff needs time and bandwidth to be loaded with every page view and don't forget the most important thing: People are visiting your website to get information - just give them what they want!
  
• Avoid nested tables:
  Don't place tables inside another table - the browsers need much longer to parse this.
  
• Use CSS where possible:
  
  By using a linked Cascading Style Sheet, which is basically just a set of instructions of how to represent elements your source code will be a lot lighter, therefore load faster. For example, you could replace this code:
  
  <div align="right"><font face="Arial, Verdana, Sans Serif" color="#008000" size="3"><b>Here is some text</b></font></div>
  
  to something like this:
  
  <div class="style1">Here is some text</div>
  
  See the difference? There are many good internet sources where you can learn some CSS basics. Invest some time in it - it's worth it!
  
• Optimize your images:
  Images are the most heavy part of many websites. Try to reduce the amount of images as much as you can. Remove all the fancy GIF animations and replace them with static images.
  
  Always define the width and height of an image by setting the image tag attributes. That way, the browser will already know how the things will look like and will load the rest of the page. Otherwise, it loads the image first and then the rest of the page.
  
  Consider using smaller clickable thumbnails instead of big images where possible.
  
  Reduce the filesize of your images - there are a lot of free tools out there. For example, GIFCruncher for GIFs and JPEG Wizard for JPEGs.
  
  Use GIFs instead of JPEGs. JPEGS are only good for fine images like photos, for all other web graphics GIF is usually a better choice.
  
• Clean up your code :
  Many WYSIWYG HTML editors leave a lot of unnecessary code like empty tags (like <font> </font>) and comments in your source code. remove them with a simple text editor for a faster website loading.
  
• Remove whitespaces:
  Every unnecessary space between your tags and new line characters are increasing your page size. You can remove them easily with our free HTML Optimizer
  

 

SEO Plan Lunch a new website

When an online researcher build up his career to SEO at first he want gather plenty of knowledge about all kind of website. Like social marketing, social media, social networking, social bookmarking and more.

 

There are two types of SEO in the online marketing like on site, off site. Here the details as follows:

ON SITE OPTIMIZE:

The first phase is where we make SEO recommendations and changes to optimize your website to target better the audiences that you are looking to target for your business and throughout your website.

• Search Engine Optimization Strategy – We will review the history of your website, your online competition and will conduct an analysis of the customized specific approach we will take to optimize your website.
  
• SEO Keyword Research – Extensive research of your industry and recommendations on which keywords and phrases will be most beneficial to optimize and naturally incorporate on each page of your website.
  
• SEO Keyword Selection – We will hand pick the most relevant keyword phrases for each page of your website, based on the content on each page.
  
• Content SEO Recommendations – A thorough review of the existing content of your site and we will naturally incorporate the selected keywords within the existing content throughout each page of your website.
  
• Meta Tags Copywriting – We will write visitor focused Meta Tags for your website that will include the following for each page: Title Tag, Meta Tag Description, H1 Tags and Image Tags for each page of your site.
  
• Additional On Site Optimization Changes - If needed we will create a new XML sitemap and will re-write and analyze the URL structure of your website.
  
• Implementation of SEO Changes – We can work with your website designer to install all of the search engine optimization recommendations or let our expert web developer implement the changes directly to your website.
  

  
   

OFF SITE OPTIMIZE

The second phase is just as important for every website in every industry. The first phase above which is the onsite SEO will only get you so far. To really do well long term, every website MUST build relevant incoming links from many different sources to their website to help build their business online. Our SEO link building approach will help: increase visitors, improve your brand online and will help develop a level of "search engine trust" over time.

 

• Online Publicity: Writing and online distribution of newsworthy press releases.
  
• Social Networking: Creation of relevant social networking profiles for your business.
  
• Article Marketing: Writing and online distribution of relevant topics that relate to your business.
  
• Local Search Engine Submission: Creation of business listings in the top local search engine directories.
  
• Directory Submission: Manually select and submit the highest quality relevant directories available.
  
• Blog Commenting: Well crafted comments on relevant industry blogs.
  
• Video Marketing: Submission of videos to top video portals.
  
• Industry Associations and Industry Websites: We will look for locate highly relevant
  
• Other Link Bait SEO Campaigns: We can take a more advanced link building approach as needed.
  

Monthly Ongoing SEO Reporting – We will look at your visitor and website conversion growth generated from our SEO efforts by looking at your website analytics. You will have a scheduled meeting with one of our seasoned SEO experts each month to review the monthly link building activities and to review the reports and discuss any additional ongoing SEO recommendations that might be needed for your website.

Web speed Test Information

 

 

Many Factors affecting website performance

Amateur website design

An unprofessional design will drive professional business people away. Some businesses have not redesigned their website for years. It's obvious from the appearance they have not kept up with new design technologies. Make sure your web site has a clear navigation menu, the colors are coordinated on the page and there is plenty of white space between all the elements.

Slow loading web pages

A web page should load within a few seconds with a high speed connection. Many sites have a flash introduction but visitors must wait for it to load before it is displayed. Large images (or too many of them on one page), JavaScript and Video are just some of the elements that will slow the loading of web pages.

Place CSS and Javascript in external files

Instead of including the full cascading style sheet (CSS) or Javascript within your page code place it in an external file. This speeds up load times and keeps your code mean and clean.

Cross browser compatibility

Your website may look fine in your own browser but may look terrible in other browsers. Test how your website displays in the major browsers e.g. Internet Explorer, Firefox and Safari.

Screen resolution

Computer users these days use various monitor sizes. Most of them have a width over 1000 pixels so design your site between 900-1000 pixels. A small width of 800 pixels means there'll be a lot of white space on both sides of your web pages when viewed with a large monitor. If the width is over 1000 (e.g. 1500 pixels) a person with a small screen size will have to scroll horizontally to view your web pages.

Validate html code

Code errors prevent your pages from rendering correctly on all browsers and slows the indexing of your web pages by the search engines. Google "html validator" to find the website that will validate your pages then repair the code errors.

Web copy

Content is what keeps visitors on your website. Your header graphic, titles, subtitles, paragraphs, bullets, images and navigation should work together to easily and quickly provide the information visitors are seeking. The first paragraph should clearly outline the purpose of your website followed by paragraphs explaining the main benefits. The navigation menu should link to deeper information. Don't try to cram too much information on the home page.

 

How to decrease your website loading time:

Check for HTML errors

Run your web pages through an HTML validator to find code errors. HTML errors often cause web pages to render incorrectly in the major browsers and increase their loading time. Having clean code makes it easier to return to the original document should you add a design element that causes errors.

Reduce the size of your images

Large images will increase the weight of your pages. Instead create thumbnails that link to the larger image. Don't include too many images on one web page because it will increase the overall file size of that page and slow down its loading time.

Limit the use of flash or video

Flash and video files are much larger than image files. Often a visitor needs to wait a while before these files load and appear on the web page. Keep in mind showing videos on your website can use large amounts of bandwidth. If your video gets downloaded by hundreds of people at the same time it may shut down the server so your website will o longer be accessible.

Place CSS and JavaScript in external files

Many websites use JavaScript to create dynamic navigation menus. All the JavaScript code is often included within the web page causing it to load slowly. To speed up the loading time place your JavaScript in an external file and reference the file code within the HTML.

Instead of placing all the CSS code within your web page place it in an external style sheet and attach it to your web page by coding the file into your HTML. This will reduce the file size of your web page and increase its loading speed.

Use cascading style sheets (CSS) for design

Limit the use of tables for the design of your web pages. It takes longer for browsers to read through them. CSS creates less code than tables thus increasing site speed. You can also control the order of the items that appear on the screen. For example you can code the content to appear before any large images that may load slowly.