Route Map

Trip Days: 5 | Distance Traveled: 1680 Km

Places Enroute: Viramgam, Halvad, Anjar, Mundra, Mandavi, Naliya, Narayan Sarovar, Koteshwar, Lakhpat, Mata No Madh, Bhuj, Rudramata Dam Reservoir, Hodaka Village, Shaam-e-Sharhad Village Resort, Dhorodo – White Rann of Kutch, Kalo Dungar, Khavda, Bhujodi, Wankaner Palace

Route Breakup

• Day 1: Ahmedabad to Mandavi. Night stay in Mandavi at hotel Sea View. 375 Km | 6 hours 35 min.
• Day 2: Mandavi to Narayan Sarovar. Night stay in Dharamshala. 145 Km | 2 hours 30 min.
• Day 3: Narayan Sarovar to Bhuj. Night stay in hotel Ilark. 170 Km | 3 hours
• Day 4: Bhuj to Dhordo (Rann Utsav, Kutch). Night stay in desert tents. 94 Km | 1 hour 45 min.
• Day 5: Dhordo to Ahmedabad. 495 Km | 8 hours 30 min.

Day 1 – Tuesday, 27^th December, 2011

The trip started at 6:00 A.M. from Satellite area of Ahmedabad and we took the route via Viramgam to Mandavi, Kutch. The travel distance is about 375 Km and we had a target of reaching the destination by around 1:00 P.M. including the halts for meals and refreshments. Our first stop was at Viramgam where we stopped to enjoy some ‘bhajiyas and methi na gota’ for breakfast – a delicacy savored in Gujarat.

We reached Mandavi at around 2:00 P.M. and checked in to Sea View Hotel. Since time was running short, we took time to refresh and immediately started off for a visit to Shyamji Krishna Varma Memorial – Kranti Teerth.

'Kranti Teerth' - memorial of Shyamji Krishna Varma at Mandavi

After finishing a tour of the memorial we proceeded to view the sunset at Mandavi beach (Wind Farm).

Day 2 – Wednesday, 28^th December, 2011

It was an early start and we woke up at 5:30 A.M. so that we could enjoy the sunrise at the beach. This is worth experiencing and so we hurriedly changed in to warm clothes and moved on to the Mandavi beach (Wind Farm). Before the sun could peep out of the horizon, we were there at the sea shore. While returning back to the hotel, we stopped at a tea vendor and sipped the hot brew to ward away the chill that we had experienced on the beach.

Sunrise at Mandavi Beach. An experience not to be missed.

It was a quick bath for everyone and within an hour and a half we started off to check out the ship building yard which is right opposite to the hotel. On the banks of the Rukmavati River, craftsmen manufacture and assemble ships out of wood and while talking to a contractor of one such ship that was being built, we came to know that each boat takes about 3-4 years to complete and the costs range from around 5 crores to 8 crores rupees.

Each ship is built without use of any modern machinery

The ships are then towed mainly to Dubai where they are fitted with engines and then used for transporting cargo. The ship that we checked out was being built since 3 years and it would still take them 6 months of hard work before it was completed. The weight estimated was 1600 tonnes without engines.

The next place to visit was the Vijay Villas Palace on the outskirts of Mandavi. The place is currently the home of Rao Pragmalji and was designed by a British engineer Col. Wilkins (some say they were Italians).

Vijay Villas Palace, Mandavi

The palace has been a part of Lagan and Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam (Bollywood Films) and I think that is mainly why this has now become a popular tourist destination. Honking is banned so that the animal and bird life that it houses is not disturbed. Take care!

Just outside of the main gate there is a right turn (be careful as you can easily miss this one) which leads towards the private beach resort. More secluded than the Wind Farm Beach, the Vijay Villas Beach (The Beach At Mandavi Palace) has nice white sand, lovely places to swim and accommodation available in air-conditioned tents along the shore. Charges are roughly Rs.7,000/- per tent for a day.

Not far away from the hotel is Koday which has Jain temple complex of 72 different shrines. By the time we finished with the palace tour it was about 1:30 P.M. and time for lunch. One interesting place that my brother had scanned out from travel logs goes by the name of “Zorba The Buddha” which is located in the market area and serves Gujarati Thali. The food was good but what fascinated me was the way they treated people by greeting them as “Bhagwan”. As per Hindu culture, a guest at your place is no lesser than God himself – “Athithi Devo Bhava” – if versed in Sanskrit; and all those who were enjoying the delicacies at the food joint were all Athithi for the staff there.

After a hearty meal it was time to check out of the hotel and move on towards our next destination – Narayan Sarovar and Koteshwar. On way is Naliya which is famous for Great Indian Bustard Sanctuary. Naliya also has an Indian Air Force station, which was built here in view of the town’s proximity to Pakistan. A good place to stop over for a cup of tea while watching the MIGs.

Narayan Sarovar is about 145 Km from Mandavi and is one of the five holy lakes of Hindus with Mansarovar in Tibet, Pampa in Karnataka, Bhuvaneshwar in Orissa and Pushkar in Rajasthan in the list.

Narayan Sarovar

It is believed that during the drought days in ancient times, the sages and saints prayed for days and there appeared Narayan (avatar of Vishnu) who by touching the land with His toes created the lake.

Since accommodation is a problem here due to lack of proper hotels we had to stay in a Dharamshala but it was very hygienic and clean. The prices are very reasonable but lack any facilities for food or beverages. We had to depend on the tea stall right outside the Dharamshala. Once checked in by 4:00 P.M. we moved on to visit the Koteshwar temple.

Koteshwar Temple near Narayan Sarovar, Koteshwar

It is believed that the Shiva Linga with immense spiritual power which was gifted to Ravana by Shiva and he accidently dropped it here. In order to punish Ravana for this mistake, identical Lingas were formed in numbers of thousands. Unable to identify the original, Ravana picked up the wrong one and left the original here around which the temple was built.

There is also a checkpoint of BSF here at Koteshwar with a jetty built at the end of the land mass which is closed for civilians. We talked to the BSF jawans guarding the checkpoint and learnt about the hardship that they go through by staying at guard even in freezing temperature and chilling winds. They were very happy to talk with us and they shared one interesting fact – the lights that people believe are that of Karachi, Pakistan are actually shipping boats of our country. Pakistan is about 70 Km far from Koteshwar and Kori Creek and Sir Creek are easily seen from here on a clear day. We saw some boats on the beach which were captured fishing boats of Pakistani fishermen who had drifted to the Indian waters while deep sea fishing.

We went back to the Dharamshala and had our food which we had packed from home. Shops close by around 7:30 so plan accordingly if you need any water bottles or soft drinks. You will not need to worry about keeping them cold as the low temperature will do that job for you.

While on the way to Koteshwar I had identified a nice spot far away from the light pollution from where we could enjoy the night sky. This spot is just outside the arch gate on way to Koteshwar and it was a wonderful sight to gaze at the cluster of stars which you cannot get to see in the light polluted cities. At around 11:30 P.M. we headed back to the rooms in Dharamshala and slept like logs – tired and exhausted.

Day 3 – Thursday, 29^th December, 2011

It was an early morning call that woke us up. We had a chance of visiting the BSF camp and talk to the officers there. I cannot name people here or describe this experience in detail as there are promises to keep. We learnt a lot about their living conditions and the duties they performed while sipping hot tea made by a jawan. It was for the first time in my life that I had the privilege of shaking hands with a jawan who was from Gujarat and a Gujarati. While leaving the place, I saluted the Indian flag and thought of all those who had sacrificed their lives to keep it soaring in the blue sky with such majesty, pride and independence. With a heavy heart I bid goodbye to the officers and jawans and thanked them from the bottom of my heart for their unconditional sacrifices.

We collected our luggage from the Dharamshala and checked out to move onwards to Lakhpat at around 10:00 A.M. It is about 35 Km from Narayan Sarovar and about 60 min. drive as the road is a single track and you cannot speed up here. The road runs parallel to Kori Creek facing North across the Great Rann of Kutch towards Pakistan. Lakhpat was once a great port city mainly for export of rice but is now abandoned since around 200 years as a major earthquake in 1819 changed the course of Indus River further towards West thus drying up the Rann of Kutch and also Lakhpat.

Lakhpat fort with it's massive walls

The 7 km fort walls, erected in 1801 by Jamadar Fateh Muhammed, are still nearly intact and offer tremendous views out over the Great Rann. Once again we came across a BSF check post in one of the fort corners guarded by two jawans. It was again a pleasure talking to them and we gifted some sweets to which they said, “Aap jaise bahut kaam log aate hai aur hamse baat karte hai varna civilian to military wardi dekh ke door baghte hai. Aap se bate karke hame bahut acha laga.” (People like you are very rare to find here as most of the time civilians after seeing a man in military uniform are afraid to come closer. It was really good to talk to you.)

Upon asking about the infiliators, the jawan got a bit emotional about the politics that our politicians play and how within a matter of seconds for their own goodwill the politicians dishonor the hard work of the jawans that it cannot be described here. One should simply hear it from the horse’s mouth to experience the feeling.

We visited the Gurudwara in Lakhpat where it is believed that Guru Nanak, the founder of Sikhism, reportedly camped here on his journey to Mecca and it also houses some of his possessions that he had left behind. The Gurudwara has bagged the UNESCO Asia-Pacific Heritage Conservation Award for the year 2004. We also walked in to a Ghost house which was abandoned before we said goodbye to Lakhpat and moved onwards to our next destination Bhuj via Mata No Madh. For those who plan to stay overnight at Narayan Sarovar or Lakhpat (inside the Gurudwara) can plan to visit the Siyot Caves which reflect the Buddhist footprints in Gujarat.

Mata no Madh – popularly known as “Mata Jo Madh” in Kachhi language is where the famous temple of Ashapura Mata, the head deity of Kutch resides. The original temple was built in 14th century and now there are two temples, the original old temple above the hill, which lies abandoned after the earthquake of 1819 and a new temple below the hill, which now houses the deity and is in use ever since. On way to Mata No Madh we saw the mines of Gujarat Mineral Development Corporation Ltd (GMDC), a Government of Gujarat undertaking where three of the coals, Gypsum, Kutch Bauxite and Lignite are being mined. At about 5:00 P.M. in the evening we were through with our visit and ready to move onwards to Bhuj where we had planned our night stay.

On reaching Bhuj we checked in to Hotel Ilark which is on station road and considered one of the best hotels in Bhuj. The tariff is around Rs.3,500/- for a double occupancy room per day but it was worth checking in here as all of us needed a good and comfortable sleep. We dined in the restaurant of the hotel and retired to bed early as the next day was once again an onward journey to the much awaited Rann Utsav in the white desert of the Great Rann of Kutch.

Day 4 – Friday, 30^th December, 2011

We checked out of the hotel at around 10:00 A.M. with a “no rush” attitude as the White Rann of Kutch is just about 95 Km from Bhuj. On way we had to still acquire the permit to entire the White Rann of Kutch from the Tourist Facilitation Center. The hotel manager at Ilark had already handed us forms which we needed to submit for acquiring the permit but when we actually reached the spot, the forms were rejected by the officials and we had to fill in a new form. Finally we had our permits ready after paying the fees of Rs.100/- per person and Rs.100/- per car and we moved on towards Dhordo where the Rann Utsav camps were setup. We reached there around 12:00 P.M. and checked in to Kutch Safari Camps.

Kutch Safari Camp tents in Rann Utsav

Since we had time before the lunch was to be served, we moved on to check out the White desert for which we all were very anxious. The drive from the Rann Utsav camps to the White Desert is full of adventure as the sand is very tricky and if you are not careful while driving, the car can easily get stuck which then needs to be pulled out by a tractor. Thanks to my SUV – Tata Safari – we never had to take that assistance.

The white rann is a marshy layer of salt deposited on a huge area of desert and we had heard that it is almost heavenly to see the white desert turn into silver and then blue on a full moon night. At that very moment we decided to come back in the evening to watch the sun set against the white land and again early in the morning to view the sun rise. With our anxiety satisfied we headed back to the tents for our lunch.

At around 2:00 P.M. we started to visit Hodka Village which is about 15 Km from the camp site. The Hodka Village is famous for the traditional Kutchi motifs, leather craft and the exquisite Kutchi embroidery styles practiced by women. While talking to a villager he said, “While the men of the village are away grazing the cattle, the women spend about 16-18 hours of work daily.” He also invited me in to his house made of mud or matti which is popularly known as Bhunga (circular hut). The kids in the village kept on following me as I roamed about carrying my camera and shooting pictures. There was a sweet girl who pulled mildly on my shirt and kept on repeating – “Photo…Rupees…Photo…Rupees?”.

The girl on right followed me everywhere in the village

I pulled out couple of greens and handed it over to her. I then asked my wife to fetch some sweets from the car and distribute them. Unfortunately we had exhausted the stock of the same and so we were left with no choice but to distribute the Chikkis that we had.

Kids enjoying the chikki we distributed

We headed back to the camp site at around 5:00 P.M. with a plan to be in the desert at 6:00 P.M. to witness the magnificent sunset. We had a quick round of tea and snacks and headed back for the desert.

Sunset in White Rann of Kutch

The sunset was an amazing experience and we decided to stay back till it was a complete night fall to enjoy the clear night sky and photograph some star trails that I always wanted to do. Do remember to carry lots of woolens with you as it gets very cold in the desert at nights.

We came back from the desert at around 8:00 P.M. and went to check out the various exhibits and shops setup at the Rann Utsav. Back in the tents at 9:30 we had our dinner and tucked in the beds by 10:30 with a plan to get up at 5:30 A.M. to photograph the sunrise in the desert.

Day 5- Saturday, 31^st December, 2011

Even before the rooster could wake up, we were out of bed and wrapped in heavy woolens. The temperature was 4^o C and the chilly winds from the desert made it worse. The hues in the sky before the sunrise were an amazing experience and while shivering I managed to click some great photographs of the sunrise.

It was 7:30 A.M. when we headed back to the tents for a nice warm bath but to our surprise and shock there was no warm water. Before the warm water could make it to buckets from the central heating system, it got cold in the metal pipes and we had to skip a regular bath and do with a French bath instead.

We had our breakfast and checked out of the Kutch Safari camp to visit Kalo Dungar. We had to reach there before 12:00 P.M. as we had heard about a tradition where the locals used to feed Jackals before they cooked their own food and ate it. Interesting it sounded but we were sure it would be more fun checking it out. On way to Kalo Dungar we stopped at Khavda as there were lot of migratory birds – Flamingos, Siberian Cranes, Pelicans as well as Mallards, Ducks, Steppe Eagles, Hawks and more. Due to the tight schedule we decided to check out the place in more detail on the way back.

The Black Hills or Kalo Dungar is the highest point in Kutch at 462 meters above sea level. From here, the entire northern horizon vanishes into the Great Rann, the desert and sky often becoming indistinguishable. The hill is also the site of a 400-year-old temple to Dattatreya, the three-headed incarnation of Lord Brahma, Lord Vishnu and Lord Shiva in the same body. We did a quick round of the scenic viewpoints and headed straight to the place where they rang bells at 12:00 P.M. to call upon the jackals and invite them for food. The bells rang, the local placed the food on a platform and within minutes a jackal sprung on to the platform and started gobbling up the sweet rice.

Jackal feeding on sweet rice at Kalo Dungar

The show was over and it was time for us to head back to the main highway and visit India Bridge.

India Bridge is one of the places where a civilian can get close to the Pakistan border beyond which only military personnel are allowed. Special permission is required from BSF Headquarters at Bhuj to cross India Bridge and visit the Indo – Pak border. We had none!

We requested the BSF jawan and he asked for permission from his captain who was sitting in a check point across the bridge. The answer was a “YES” and we were delighted. The gate was opened and we drove down across the bridge to be greeted by the BSF officer. Once again it was a long talk and he explained what lies ahead across this cordoned area and how this bridge is the only connecting motor-able medium. He added that the last observation point of BSF is 70 Km further inside from India Bridge. Since photography is strictly prohibited I adhered to the same and kept my promise to the officer by not stealing any pictures of the bridge.

We had plans to visit Dholavira but due to heavy rains this season, the road from the Little Rann was closed and so we dropped the idea. We moved on to Khavda and stopped over the spot where we had spotted the migratory birds.

Greater flamingos near India Bridge

It was time to take out the camera and indulge in to some photography before moving on to our next destination – Bhujodi.

Bhujodi is a small town just 8 Km of Bhuj and is a major textile center of Kutch.  There is a place called “Shrujan” which is a local non-profit set up 40 years ago to allow women to market their work better and earn a better living from it. The Shrujan campus is an interesting place to visit, with embroidery exhibits, a production center and excellent examples of local architecture with environmental awareness in mind. By the time we had finished checking out this place, it was 4:30 P.M.

It was a long drive back and by the time we reached Ahmedabad it was 1:00 A.M. Exhausted and having driven almost 1680 Km in the entire trip, I hit the bed with the memories of the trip bringing a smile on my face while I was sleeping.

 When it comes to serious photography, photographers from around the world either prefer a Canon or a Nikon. But the question is: which one is the better of the two?

To answer in one word: “Depends”.

In more elaborated sense: “Both Canon and Nikon make cameras and lenses that are so good and so reliable that it is impossible to make a statement of which manufacturer makes better cameras or lenses.”

From my perspective: “I’m a Canon fan.”

Keeping aside the emotional factors, let’s examine some facts:

• Canon was established in August 10, 1937 while Nikon was established in July 25, 1910
• Canon’s first camera was christened ‘Hansa Canon’ in 1934 while Nikon launched Nikon I in 1948
• Both companies have their headquarters in Tokyo, Japan
• Nikon and Canon are both imaging and optical product manufacturing companies
• Most Nikon camera and lenses made since 1959 are compatible with each other
• Canon’s EOS range goes back to 1987 and Nikon’s F mount range of lenses go all the way back until 1959
• All of the EOS lenses from Canon will autofocus, but only the Nikon AF-S lenses will autofocus with Nikon
• Canon came out with a full frame sensor much earlier and it is only recently that Nikon has come out with one and at a much higher price
• Canon has IS- Image stabilization, which is called VR- Vibration Reduction in Nikon
• Automatic sensor cleaning was introduced for the first time in canon and much later followed by Nikon
• Nikon is very convenient to use with every button at the right place while Canon has started getting it right few years back
• Flash and exposure systems of Nikon is very good compared to that of Canon
• At some point, Canon cameras used the optical lenses manufactured by Nikon, but Canon was the first to make and market Japan’s first 35 mm camera, with a focal plane shutter and rangefinder, in 1934
• It was Nikon that created the first DSLR
• You can use Nikon lenses on Canon but not vice versa
• Canon has a larger global market share compared to Nikon as a company

It is almost a seesaw battle between the two giants, with one product matching the other. Check out this interesting infographic that I scooped up while Gooooogling.

Buying your first DSLR is very challenging and choosing between Canon or Nikon is even tougher. It’s like choosing between Coke and Pepsi or being a Mac or a PC fan.

The choice is not an easy one to make. The best thing to do is before buying one is to actually go out to the shop, hold the cameras, do some trial shots and see what you are comfortable with. A good photographer with the correct exposure settings can make wonders with even a phone camera.

While having a casual talk over a cup of coffee, one renowned IAS officer and an avid photographer quoted, “Choosing between Canon and Nikon is as difficult as choosing a life partner – once you are married, you have to live with it the entire life.”

But did you know that data can still be retrieved from a formatted hard disk or storage media? Imagine if the data falls in the wrong hands of a Scammer and then that data can be used to learn about your browsing habits, your personal information, banking data and more. Scary isn’t it?

I know it is scary, but with the right kind of tools you can save yourself this fright. But before we take a peep in to some of my favourite tools, let’s understand a bit about how data is stored and what happens when you delete or format a disk.

Tossing files into the computers Recycle Bin and then emptying the trash deletes the record of the file, but not the actual data the file points to. Think of it as removing the labels from folders in a file cabinet. The folders and information in them still exist, even if retrieving the data takes more time and effort. When you delete a file from your computer, it’s not really gone until the areas of the disk it used are overwritten by new information. If you use the normal Windows delete function, the “deleted” file is sent to the Recycle Bin until the space it uses is required by other files. If you use Shift-Delete to bypass the Recycle Bin, the space occupied by the file is marked as available for other files. However, the file could be recovered days or even weeks later with third-party data recovery software. As long as the operating system does not reuse the space occupied by a file with another file, the “deleted” file can be recovered.

The same is true if you format a hard drive. It is still possible for someone with the right tools to retrieve data on the drive. Yikes!

The same goes with formatting a hard drive. The kind of formatting that we do normally is high level formatting. What high level formatting does is set up the file system from scratch and in the process the information where files were stored is removed. In short, high level formatting is the process of writing the file system structures on the disk that let the disk to be used for storing programs and data. Formatting a disk this way removes all information about the pointers in the File Allocation Table (FAT) which point to the location of a file on the disk. This means that old data still remains loaming in the dark.

Low level formatting on the other hand re-initializes the disk and resets the values of each and every one bit, to zero. Remember, data is stored in digital format as 1 & 0? Low level formatting is the process of outlining the positions of the tracks and sectors on the hard disk and writing the control structures that define where the tracks and sectors are. This is often called a “true” formatting operation because it really creates the physical format that defines where the data is stored on the disk.

Here are some tools that would help you to safely and securely wipe out the slate clean before you sell it or recycle it.

Darik’s Boot and Nuke: Darik’s Boot and Nuke (“DBAN”) is a self-contained boot disk that securely wipes the hard disks of most computers. DBAN will automatically and completely delete the contents of any hard disk that it can detect, which makes it an appropriate utility for bulk or emergency data destruction.

DBAN is a means of ensuring due diligence in computer recycling, a way of preventing identity theft if you want to sell a computer and a good way to totally clean a Microsoft Windows installation of viruses and spyware. DBAN prevents or thoroughly hinders all known techniques of hard disk forensic analysis.

DBAN is a free software product that can be used at home or in a business at zero cost.

URL: http://www.dban.org/

SDelete: Good old Microsoft with their free command line utility called SDelete. SDelete is a command line utility that takes a number of options. SDelete (Secure Delete) implements the Department of Defense clearing and sanitizing standard DOD 5220.22-M, to give you confidence that once deleted with SDelete, your file data is gone forever.

URL: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb897443.aspx

Eraser: Eraser is a freeware and open source security tool to completely remove data from your hard drive. Eraser is an advanced security tool for Windows which allows you to completely remove sensitive data from your hard drive by overwriting it several times with carefully selected patterns.

URL: http://www.heidi.ie/eraser/

Evidence Nuker: This piece of software allows you to choose which items would you like to erase such as Address Bar History, Browser Cache, Cookies, Documents History and much more. Evidence Nuker features several shredding methods, including 5220.22-M, the military standard set by the Department of Defense.

URL: http://www.evidencenuker.com/

The next time you think of selling your laptop, desktop or dump your USB Pen drive, make sure that the data on the storage medium is properly erased and not just deleted.

Remember, protecting data sometimes means erasing it.

If you know of any more tools that you think will benefit the computing community, do share them as part of the comment. Many will surely benefit from it.

###Exchange Mailbox Statistics Script

###Modify Variable Data
$FromAddress = "noreply@domain.com"
$ToAddress = "administrator@domain.com"
$MessageSubject = "Exchange Mailbox Report"
$MessageBody = "Mailbox Statistics of Exchange Server is attached with this email."
$SendingServer = "exchangeserver.yourdomain.com"

####DO NOT EDIT BELOW THIS LINE

###Get Stats and Prepare Text File
Get-MailboxStatistics | Sort-Object TotalItemSize -Descending | ft DisplayName,@{label="TotalItemSize(MB)";expression={$_.TotalItemSize.Value.ToMB()}}, ItemCount, StorageLimitStatus > mailboxes.txt

###Create Email and Attach Report
$SMTPMessage = New-Object System.Net.Mail.MailMessage $FromAddress, $ToAddress,
$MessageSubject, $MessageBody
$Attachment = New-Object Net.Mail.Attachment("mailboxes.txt")
$SMTPMessage.Attachments.Add($Attachment)

###Send Email
$SMTPClient = New-Object System.Net.Mail.SMTPClient $SendingServer
$SMTPClient.Send($SMTPMessage)

Hope the above script helps and saves the administration time.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO), also known as search engine positioning or organic (natural) SEO, means to optimize website content as well as search engine popularity to gain high search engine visibility. The ultimate goal is to attract more potential customers to visit your website.

The start point of SEO services is generally at the stage when the website is ready for launch. But actually, this should be moved right to the planning stage of the website and the design of the website should be made such that the website becomes search engine friendly. Many web designers start designing the website but they hardly know what SEO and what ideas they can implement in the early stages of web designing. If this is done at the early stages, the final outcome would be a website which the search engines cannot stop falling in love with. Here are some points which web designers or people looking at getting a website can keep in mind while designing websites:

• Flash not too Flashy – Use of Flash in websites is good but do not overdo it. Flash can be SEO-friendly and web accessible, however, open web languages like HTML, CSS and JavaScript serve the best purpose. Flash is good for providing a nice interactive experience to the visitor on the site, but then again search engines are not too good at reading the content in a Flash movie. In case, if you are using Flash, ensure that the HTML page contains vital information on your site links and these are not embedded in the Flash file. Avoid using Flash for navigation menu. Instead try DHTML (Dynamic HTML).
• Main Text – Search engines use a text based reader called a “spider”. These spiders read a web page from left to right and from top to bottom all the while ignoring the design aspects. All they are interested in is the text – specially the top 20 lines of your webpage. Make full use of this early paragraph area to include relevant keywords. The numbers vary from engine to engine, but you can assume the first 50 words are crucial, the next 50 are important; the 50 following that are likely to be read. Try to get the important keywords — the expressions you expect your visitors to use in their searches — included in the first 150 lines of the text.
• Directory Structure - Many a times web designers tend to keep a flat directory structure where they have all the website pages in the ROOT folder. This is good if the website is small and there are not many pages to maintain. But when it comes to big websites, breaking down the webpages in different sections works the best. For example (see figure), a website selling books may have their home page in the root folder while segregating each books webpage in their respective directories like Science-Fiction, Adventure, Cooking, etc.

A quick tip: do not plan to put your webpages more than three levels deep. A good hierarchal structure can play a significant role in how well the site gets spidered and pages re-indexed in the search engines.

• File Names - The filenames in a website play a crucial role. Using a file name for a web page like “first-page.html” or “xyz.html” would load the page fine when accessed, but will certainly take away a chance of stuffing a keyword. Try to name the pages such that it carries the Title of the webpage instead of “page1.html”, “page2.html” and so on. Taking the earlier example of a website selling books; it would be a good idea to name the web page selling a book on cocktail recipes as “cocktail-recipes.html” instead of “page1.html”. Some other points to keep in mind are:
  • Do not use space in the file names as a space is denoted as %20 when it is rendered in a URL. So a page like “my web page.html” would look alright when you see it in your computer but when called from a browser would be rendered as “www.yoursitename.com/my%20web%20page.html”. This makes it difficult for people to remember the URL.
  • Separate the words in your file name with hyphen (-). Since we are not able to use a space to separate the words in a file name, use a hyphen to split the words so that it becomes easy to read and identify. Moreover, the hyphen character is regarded by search engines as a word separator, much the way a space is.
  • Use lowercase to name your files. Under Windows OS, you may have got used to the fact that “MyWebPage.html” refers to the same file as “mywebpage.html”. This is not the case with all operating systems. For example, Unix-based systems like Linux and FreeBSD consider them to be two different files.
• Image Names - Now this is one of the common mistakes that has been found in websites. Many webmasters or graphic designers prepare the design in software like Adobe Photoshop and then use the automatic slicing tool to slice the images. Next they bring this in to a static HTML and replace the places for text with actual text and white spaces with spacers to reduce the file size of the web page. But they tend to forget that the images carry names like “image01.jpg”, image02.jpg” and so on. For those who take care to rename the images, many a times, rename them as “logo.jpg” for the company logo or “header.jpg” for a header image. This should be avoided. The idea is to name the actual file correctly by giving it a key term. For example “blue-tshirt.jpg” would yield better results than using some random name like “image01.jpg” because this gives the site extra context. Also make sure that when these images are put in to the website, necessary ALT tag content is also provided. The benefit is that sites like Google Images can index them better and after all that is another way of getting traffic to the website.
• Sitemap - A sitemap is a tool that aids search engine crawlers’ gain contextual meaning about a site’s web page. Create a site map that links to the major sections and sub-sections of the website. Sitemaps are a useful tool for making sites built in Flash and other non-html languages searchable. Preferably the site map should be linked to from every page and the recommend file names for the site map are “sitemap.html” or “site-map.html.” You can even use online sitemap generators which crawls the website and prepare an XML sitemap. Google recommends using this and submitting the same in Google Webmaster Tools.
• Anchor Text - The anchor text is the text inside the “A” tags that links to other pages either inside the website or to some other website. It is important for the anchor text to contain a description of where the link is taking the visitor but this is even more important for search engines because it tells its crawlers where the link is going. Avoid using words like “Click Here” as an anchor text. Instead use a relevant keyword for that web page or website.
• Title - It can be said that the Title of the website is one of the most important factors for a successful search engine optimized website. The title is nothing but the text that you see in the reverse bar on the left side of your browser. The title is very crucial for the ranking of your website as it is this Title tag that is used by the search engines to show your listing in the search results. For example, a website of a book store in Ahmedabad carrying a title tag like “Welcome to ACME” will not mean much. People probably won’t click on that link because they don’t know who you are. It would be a better idea to rephrase the title to read “Buy books online on adventure, cooking, science fiction and more in Ahmedabad”. It is also a good idea to have each page in the web site use a unique title and should reflect keywords that are relevant to that page. Remember that it is not only the home page that will lead a visitor to your website and so it is important that each page in the website is properly optimized.
• META Tags - Meta elements are typically used to specify page description, keywords, author of the document, last modified and other metadata. Here is an explanation of the common meta tags:
  • Description: The description is displayed in the search engine result page and helps to distinguish your site from the others in the list. The description tag should be written in such way that it will show what information your website contains or what your website is about. Write short and clear sentences that will not confuse your visitors.
  • Keyword: The keyword tags should contain between 4 and 10 keywords or key phrases. They should be listed with commas and should correspond to the major search phrases you are targeting. Every word in this tag should appear somewhere in the body, or the website might get penalized for irrelevance. No single word should appear more than twice or it may be considered spam.
  • Robots: One other Meta tag worth mentioning is the robots tag. This lets you specify that a particular page or a directory should NOT be indexed by a search engine or which pages in your website should the spiders follow and index.
• Valid Code - Many webmasters or designers overlook a very important aspect of website design – the validity of the HTML code. Search engines have to parse the HTML code on the website to find the relevant content. If the HTML code contains errors, search engines might not be able to find everything on the page. Search engine crawler programs obey the HTML standard and they can only index the web site if it is compliant to the HTML standards. After the website is designed and the relevant HTML generated, validate the html and CSS code and make the code W3C standard. A quick tool to validate the html code can be found at http://validator.w3.org and to validate the CSS code, visit http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator

Graphic and web designers love beautiful websites and SEO experts love optimized content and code. Neither should be ignored as these days, both are equally important. What good it would be if you have a nice and flashy design but no one to visit the site as it is not loved by the search engines? Keeping in mind some basic web designing principles during the planning stage would give immediate benefits and reduce the work load of SEO companies or experts.

Do you have any tips or techniques you use while designing websites in a search engine friendly manner? If so, do leave a comment as it would help many as it is always a good idea to share knowledge.