In line to boost the Android Market, Google has released a new G1 handset especially targeted at Android Developers.

This new phone is both SIM and hardware unlocked and available for all developers registered at Android Market. In short, Android Market is an open distribution system for the applications developed by developers to the handset users. Here, you can read more about the Android Market program.

Following is an extract from the announcement in the Talk Android blog, regarding the new handset:

The Android Dev Phone 1 is a SIM-unlocked and hardware-unlocked device that is designed for advanced developers. The device ships with a system image that is fully compatible with Android 1.0, so you can rely on it when developing your applications. You can use any SIM in the device and can flash custom Android builds that will work with the unlocked bootloader. Unlike the bootloader on retail devices, the bootloader on the Android Dev Phone 1 does not enforce signed system images. The Android Dev Phone 1 should also appeal to developers who live outside of T-Mobile geographies.

This Dev Phone is priced at $399 and available in 18 countries, including India.

Anchor text

Anchor text is a clickable text on a HTML page, that takes the user to another HTML pages either within the same site or a different site.  This is usually achieved using the HTML tag.

Better the anchor text is, easier it is for the users to navigate and simpler for the Search engine to understand the page that is being linked.

Some good practices for anchor text as per Google SEO Starter guide:

• Choose descriptive text - Avoid text like “click here”, “this” etc. for Anchor tags
• Write concise text - don’t use anchor tags for a complete sentence or a paragraph
• Format links so that they are easy to spot - avoid CSS styles that make links look like normal text
• Remember these tips while linking for internal pages too - this will help the Search engine to navigate your site better

Images

Bloggers use images a lot in their posts.  Some of these images do serve as hyperlinks, taking the user to other pages.
A HTML developer definitely knows about an attribute named “alt” in the HTML tag.  The primary purpose of this attribute is to display an alternate text, if the image could not be displayed for any reason.  But with reference to SEO, the “alt” text serves some additional purposes:

• “alt” text serves the same purpose as a Hyperlink text, if the image is an Hyperlink - This helps the Search Engine to understand the target location
• Optimizing Image file names and the “alt” text makes it easier for Image search projects like Google Image Search

Again, following is an excerpt from Google SEO Starter guide for good practices with images:

• Use brief, but descriptive filenames and “alt” text
• Supply “alt” texts, especially when using images as links
• Store images in a directory of their own - example, http://domain.com/images
• Use commonly supported file types - JPEG, GIF, PNG, BMP

Keep watching this space for further tips.

Previous Posts in this series:

• Starting with SEO - #1
• Starting with SEO #2 - Page Titles and Meta Tags