How to succeed in the Offshore Software Development

Software Development model that emphasizes on global delivery of quality software build by talented pool of professionals from a development center that is located in a foreign land at a highly economical cost is called Offshore Software Development.

India, China, and Russia are the three leading countries that currently control the offshore programming market.

Huge cost savings, time optimization: there are several benefits but these opportunities and advantages in this nascent business are also accompanied by challenges. Though the software vendor has hi-tech professionals with the best of technical skills with delivering quality output, there are few challenges faced which cannot be overlooked. These challenges are communication gaps, non-clarity of the project status, improper estimation in terms of resources and budget therefore and of course cultural hindrances.

Cost cut without compromising on quality is the key objective for this business and to achieve this objective, there has to be a smooth coordination between offshore client and the software vendor. This should start with the best possible approach by both the parties the offshore client and the software vendor.

The most important aspect in the offshore software development other than the required technical skills is the smooth communication between the two parties. Seamless communication oils the project speed. The communication in writing, video conferences along with and apart the verbal ones is more constructive. This is accomplished by implementing the work-schedules that intersect the time-frames for both the countries. Generally the offshore vendor works in accordance with the client for the later’s convenience but it is better if you as an offshore vendor also have a local presence for the client. This is like an added privilege, since this strengthens the client’s confidence into the offshore vendor. This helps the client to approach the vendor easily.

Another very important factor is the Resource and Budget forecast for the project. The Technical and Business Analysts should take the following points into consideration:

The risks involved in the undertaking the project and its measurement.

Whether the rates quoted are in accordance with the requirements of the project.

The terms of payment/billing: whether it should be hourly, weekly, per month or on the project completion, etc.

Will the quality standards set by the vendor be able to meet in carrying out the project or quality would get compromised for quoting an attractive price.

Double-Check for the specifications of the Project sent by client. Check whether there are any milestones in the project which has dependency on the client end. Check whether there would be any re-works or change-requests from client side.

Once the project starts, both the offshore client and the software vendor should coordinate on regular basis on the project flow. The communication has to be transparent between the both.

The offshore vendor must see that the project flow is smooth and the status is well communicated to the offshore client time to time.

This gives client a kind of satisfaction and confidence in the vendor's work. Also, the vendor should target to complete every deliverable in the project in 80% of time committed. A buffer time of 20% of the actually committed is always good to balance if any sudden problems faced.

Also, it is better to have a single point of contact at both the ends to have a smooth and proper communication throughout the project development. But at the same time, everyone associated in the project should be aware of the communication going on between the two parties.

If you as an offshore vendor feel that any milestone in the project that puts a dependency onto client is approaching, you should intimate that to client at least 3 working days before depending on the weight of that milestone.

Though how much the project team strives to put up an error-free product, some problems or unpredictable issues may turn up and thus slow-down the project process. But these should be handled and solved with mutual cooperation and proper coordination from both the software vendor and the offshore client to achieve the objective.

Hence forth, to bring success to any offshore software development projects, it is the joint effort from both the ends that ultimately works out. But the most important factors here would be transparent and clear communication, proper forecast on resources and budget and smooth coordination on deliverables.

Online Reputation Management

It takes many good deeds to build a good reputation, and only one bad one to lose it –Benjamin Franklin- an American Philosopher shows here the importance to safeguard one’s reputation.

One's reputation is very important in a society. Moreover, for a Business that has lost its reputation in the market finds it very difficult to survive or last long.

A great brand might have taken years of hard work and millions of dollars to build-up; but it shall take just few hours by anyone- disgruntled customers or left-away X-employees, low morale competitors, etc. to badly affect its reputation. If this is done through using social communities, it stands more chances of getting in the top SERPs (i.e. Search Engine Result Pages), more rapidly. And when this appears on Search Engine Result Pages, it is JUST killing your reputation; it is killing your business. And there is no chance of you putting a "GO AWAY" to it.

In this traumatic situation, how about getting the unfavorable content that appears on your 1st Search Engine Result Page getting pushed down to 11th and later pages or removing it totally out of the scene???

Many SEO companies have come forward to offer their services into Online Reputation Management. The simple rule that stands here is "Creating more Positive to push down the Negative". This becomes a continuous process for quiet a long time. Negative content in the search results won't "JUST GO AWAY." You will need to continuously get into this and create positive online content about your brand / business across the web so that the unfavorable content is pushed down in search results by this positive content.

We gladly announce that we at Semaphore Software have been very successful in achieving such targets of pushing back the unfavorable content (negative marketing) from the 1st SERP to the 11th SERP for One client; 14th SERP for Second client and totally removed the unfavorable content from the entire SERPs for the Third client.

We at Semaphore have an independent division for Search Engine Optimization services with highly experienced SEO professionals. Semaphore also provides them high quality training on regular basis.

We at Semaphore Software have a 100% success ratio in achieving the project objectives and thus giving our clients a high level satisfaction.

We have achieved pushing down the unfavorable content for our three clients with an intensive implementation of our wisely planned SEO strategies. We went for designing micro websites for them, optimizing them (Search Engine Optimization) strategically and getting more positive content in the SERPs (Search Engine Result Pages) by an extensive Search Engine Marketing of these micro-websites.

The root for achieving the success lies in the Strategy that applies of - "What to do in what extent and when".

It shall always be wise to consult a good SEO company like ours that offer such services than to wait and watch your own ruin.

This makes me remember of Oscar Wilde -an Irish Poet and Dramatist who truly said:

"One can survive everything, nowadays, except death, and live down everything except a good reputation."

Link Building

Link Building – One of the fastest ways to uplift your website rankings
In the virtual world of Online Marketing and Search Engine optimization, the off-page factors are becoming more and more important for a website to boost up its ranking in the search engines.

It is very important to know that link building can either make or break your website within the search engines. You have to be very careful with your link building campaigns.

For a website to rank high, it has to have solid link popularity apart from the on-page optimization. This link popularity refers to the number and quality of in-bound links that point to your website. But as said, link popularity can either make or break a website. Hence, one has to be very careful while building link popularity for one’s website.

One of the oldest methods in off-page optimization is Link Exchange. Few tips while doing link Exchange are as follows:

Link exchange is a task defined under Search Engine Marketing by which you exchange your website link with the link of a counter website; thus mutually benefiting both the parties.

At the outset, create a 'Links' or 'Resource' page that carries the same theme/ design look. Define Categories for putting the Anchor text (or title) of your link partners. These titles shall - 'on click' open up the website of your link-partner.

Your link exchange partners should not be your direct competitors.

When you offer your link partner with a link exchange proposal, always see that you have already put the link of your link-partner in your resource page and presented the proposal-email with that link for your link partner to refer.

Your email should be personal and should not look like a spam. It should explain the benefits of link exchange that would happen between both the parties.

Also, quote your Title and Description that you want to get displayed in your link partner's link-page. Giving html source is always a better option so that the link-partner will directly copy and paste it.

If you don't receive a reply to your email-proposal, try again after 3 days. Keep trying till three tries for your link-partner to know that you are not a spam bot but you are serious in your intention of emailing the proposal. If you don't get any reply after three tries, take-off the link and acknowledge about it to the proposed link-partner.

Also, it is important to check that your link-partners carry weight. You may check the Page rank of your link-partner's website - home page and Link-page by downloading the Google toolbar in your browser. Also, it is better if they carry a good ranking in the search engines for the key-phrases they link exchange for. This would give you quality link-partners thus giving you a quality link-exchange.

Few more tasks are submitting Press Release and Article into their relevant directories. Write a good Press-note that announces of some good accomplishment of your services and market your services through submitting your Press-Release into quality Press-Release Directories. Same way is for the article. Write an educational essay on subject that describes your product/ services in your industry. And then submit it into relevant high page-rank directories for getting quality links from Content-rich web pages.

Like Press Release Submission and Article Submission, you may also submit your website into a Quality Online Directory. Get your website URL added to the Quality Directories to get rich link-backs for your website. Take care of submitting your website into relevant category. Directory Submissions, Press Release Submission and Article Submission prove to be very useful for Quality link building.

More information can be availed at semaphore-software.com that provide quality SEO /SEM services at affordable prices.

About Semaphore:

Semaphore is an offshore software development company. With over 500+ employees, 15+ years of rich experience Semaphore has a proven track record of 1000+ Offshore Software Projects developed successfully. Apart from Search Engine Optimization/Marketing Services, Semaphore offers Software Development, Website Design and Development, Mobile Application Development, Internet/Intranet Solutions, E-Commerce Solutions, Legacy Application Re-engineering, Business Process Outsourcing Services.

Semaphore offers world class Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Services to its clients throughout the world. It also offers complete web promotion services globally, that includes Search Engine Marketing (SEM), SEO consulting services, market research, as well as link building campaigns. Moreover, Semaphore has been 100% successful in delivering the best Search Engine Reputation Management services to our clients.

Top 3 Tips researched to get your website on the Top

“Search Engine Optimization”, “Link Building”, “Social Media”: I am hearing these words almost everyday in reference to Internet marketing services. Few of my friends say “Use Del.icio.us”, few say “Use Digg”, few say “Twitter is good”, few recommend “Try best for link building through Manual submissions into articles, directories, etc.”
And I am sure this would be the same for many of you. After researching more and working on number of projects, I have found 3 best tips that will help you surefire to gain more traffic and more traction for your website business.

Tip 1: Search Engine Optimization

Search Engine Optimization or SEO is either taken very lightly or taken so consciously that the results are undesirable. Give around 30% of your time to understand what exactly is your business requirements or on what products/services would you get more business. What exactly are you planning to target and what is your Audience? Conduct a market analysis of it and filter our 10 key phrases that best suit your business. If your website is fresh and /or you have just started with your online business, target light-weight (less-researched) key phrases. Go for targeting more of long-tailed key-phrases rather than single key-words. Give proper Title and Meta, appropriate Alt tags. Check your content in relative to your Meta you have kept and see that your page gets easily downloaded.

Tip 2: Link Building

Once you are done with On-page optimization, put your best of efforts to gain as much inbound links you can. There are multiple ways that you can work on to achieve a golden value for your website. At the outset, submit your website URL to 100+ Search Engines and 500+ Quality online directories that give you quality link-backs. Write good relevant articles and submit them into quality Article sites. You may also submit your Press-notes into quality Press-release directories. Put your Ads into free classified directories. You may also go for link-exchange campaigns but Google has stopped giving much weightage to these links.

Tip 3: Social Media

Make a list of quality social networking sites where in you can go and bookmark your important web-pages into these social sites. You may also create your blogs (relevant to your services), post good content on these and make them more interactive for more visitors to visit them. One such good social marketing is posting comments into good blogs or forums and thereby creating a rich link-base. You are sure to get high traction through social media marketing. It may go as high as getting 2000 hits in just 5 days on one single comment posted with a link to our website. It really makes a lot of difference!

Buyers rely heavily upon search and social media for researching products and services. It is therefore critical that you not only have relevant and detailed content on your website, but you must be showing up where they are searching for you. To do so you must undertake an integrated and comprehensive search and social media marketing effort.

For more information on these and how to rank your website on the top SERPs or if you want us to get your website rank on the top of SERPs, contact us on 201-777-2366 or email your details at kj@semaphore-software.com.

Semaphore- Successful in Search Engine Reputation Management

"Reputation management" here portrays what happens when you have a problem arise in SERPs, i.e. search engine result pages. Reputation management is a major pain for brands and businesses; whether this arises due to bloggers or social media site jumping on negative news - which might have resulted due to disgruntled customers or left-away X-employees, low morale competitors, etc.

In the online world with Search Engine results, Reputation management can be quite challenging, and more than this, you have frustrated clients who are pressured to make the negative content “go away”. But you can’t make it just “go-away”. If this has been a newspaper or pamphlet in an off-line media, you may throw this away; or even if this is broadcasted, this very rarely has a re-run so that the negative marketing has a real “go away” overtime. This may not bother you as much the negative marketing in an online-media would. In the online world, the information posted about you stays online, long time, accumulates links, and is always accessible from anywhere. Negative content in the search results won’t “JUST GO AWAY.” You will need to continuously get in this and create positive online content about your brand / business across the web so that unfavorable content is pushed down in search results by this positive content.

We at Semaphore Software have more than 15 years of rich experience in Offshore Software Development Projects, Web Design and Development and Search Engine Optimization Services.

We at Semaphore Software offer highly experienced SEO services to our clients. Our SEO and SEM skills get our client’s website to Top Rankings in the search engines and also result in increase in page rank of their website; giving our customers high satisfaction. We have expertise in Keyword Research, Analysis, On-page Optimization, Search Engine Marketing activities like:

Manual Submission of your website URL in Search Engines

Manual Submission of your website URL in Quality Directories

Link Exchange

Manual Submission of your articles into Quality Article sites/ directories

Manual Submission of your press-notes into Quality Press Release sites/ directories

We also go for high quality link building efforts by Social Media Optimization/ Marketing.

Semaphore has a big list of clients that varies from small businesses to world-renowned brands. Three of our clients who are Big Brands across the whole world (names not mentioned as agreed upon with the clients) were severely affected with negative marketing and the negative links were positioned in the first SERP i.e. in the first ten results. It was driving towards a big loss towards the credibility of these Big Brands. We at Semaphore accepted this challenge and within a short span of 6 months were successful in driving these negative links back over 10-12 pages for all these three brands.

We called this “Search Engine Reputation Management” that sounds like an unlikely marriage. Search engine reputation management fuses two formerly separate faculties; reputation management and SEO. Reputation management has traditionally been the job of public relations specialists while SEO, a process of optimizing web pages to rank high in the search engines for specific keywords, is considered a function of marketing and promotion. Together they can do double duty and provide a hybrid form of risk management.

As also put earlier, our clients’ businesses were affected so much that they were ready to spend a few thousand dollars to overcome these ‘reputation management’. Our SEO experts at Semaphore planned definite strategies creating 12- 20 micro-sites and optimizing them with applying SEM campaigns for each of these. Our Press Release submissions, social bookmarking and posting positive content of our clients’ businesses into social media sites, blogs and forums proved to be very useful in achieving us our goals and objectives. It is projected (by one of the clients) that through the SERM activities, over a period of time client will save a few million $.

Semaphore Software has a 100% success ratio in achieving its project objectives and thus giving our clients a high level satisfaction. Semaphore has an independent division for Search Engine Optimization with highly experienced SEO professionals. Semaphore also provides them high quality training on regular basis.

Coming back to Reputation Management, a negative marketing not only damages your credit but also destroys your business to a big deal- putting your business into a bin. Hence, before this destroys you, it is always wise to go for Search Engine Reputation Management through a Professional SEO company like our clients did.

SEO- The Most Unnoticed Yet Important Marketing Strategy on the Internet

Today many businesses are turning towards having their own websites. Having an informative website or rather having a virtual presence on the www platform has become very common now a day.

But then there comes a very vital question: what is the use of having a website if your potential customers can’t find it!

There are many different ways like email or banners or print ads to drive people or rather say Web Traffic to your website; but if you think more about this, there’s no prominent way to score more online customers other than by spooling in people who tell what they are interested in, what information they want, request information on your website and visit you website at zero or rather say no advertising cost.

Then here is where the Search Engine Optimization comes into picture.

Search engine Optimization and Search engine marketing is the low-cost and high-return tool for targeted advertising. And it’s proven that one yields great rewards by adopting and utilizing this tool. I would rather say that there is no better way any body can challenge that can drive better traffic to your website.

It is proved that in b2c ecommerce models, online businesses have yielded more business than traditional brick and mortar ones. But the only way seen now to stand above in the crowd and stake your claim in the online industry is by employing the sound practices of search engine marketing.

Today, many are adding-on their presence in this virtual business world. SEO is a tool that is affordable by all. And small players have started to compete with the big ones by using the smart moves of SEO.

People strive hard to get their websites to the top of Google's, Yahoo's, and MSN's search results.

The best way is adding proper Title and Meta to each of the web pages of your website. You have to be very careful in defining your keywords and description. Try to have key-word oriented titles; and that is a simple and straight way to have your pages ranked higher for that keyword.

The Google algorithms consider this very much. Also important is on-page optimization where in you put Heading tags, Alter tags (to pictures and links), 'links' in the content wherever applicable, using images with low size, giving bold and italic styles to keywords and titles wherever applicable, etc.

SEO- The Most Unnoticed Yet Important Marketing Strategy on the Internet

Today many businesses are turning towards having their own websites. Having an informative website or rather having a virtual presence on the www platform has become very common now a day.

But then there comes a very vital question: what is the use of having a website if your potential customers can’t find it!

There are many different ways like email or banners or print ads to drive people or rather say Web Traffic to your website; but if you think more about this, there’s no prominent way to score more online customers other than by spooling in people who tell what they are interested in, what information they want, request information on your website and visit you website at zero or rather say no advertising cost.

Then here is where the Search Engine Optimization comes into picture.

Search engine Optimization and Search engine marketing is the low-cost and high-return tool for targeted advertising. And it’s proven that one yields great rewards by adopting and utilizing this tool. I would rather say that there is no better way any body can challenge that can drive better traffic to your website.

It is proved that in b2c ecommerce models, online businesses have yielded more business than traditional brick and mortar ones. But the only way seen now to stand above in the crowd and stake your claim in the online industry is by employing the sound practices of search engine marketing.

Today, many are adding-on their presence in this virtual business world. SEO is a tool that is affordable by all. And small players have started to compete with the big ones by using the smart moves of SEO.

People strive hard to get their websites to the top of Google's, Yahoo's, and MSN's search results.

The best way is adding proper Title and Meta to each of the web pages of your website. You have to be very careful in defining your keywords and description. Try to have key-word oriented titles; and that is a simple and straight way to have your pages ranked higher for that keyword.

The Google algorithms consider this very much. Also important is on-page optimization where in you put Heading tags, Alter tags (to pictures and links), 'links' in the content wherever applicable, using images with low size, giving bold and italic styles to keywords and titles wherever applicable, etc.