Tag: Blogging tips

Minimal things every Blogger should know about web spam

Web spam is more viral than email spam.

In email spam they target only known email id, which they get from various sources like small consultancies or from training institutes or by doing some social engineering ;). Mail providers like Gmail, Yahoo are too intelligent to send it to spam folder without giving you trouble. So, you are somehow safe in case of email spam.
But in case of web spam, they want us to browse their website to buy or advertise their products. Web Spammers main motto is only to earn money. We need to be sure before any comment or post is getting published in our website. In worst case you may lose permanent genuine readers too!, which will ultimately affect your site and your revenue if any.

 

Web spammers are techie and hire social engineers too

Web spammers are not always automated bots or scripts. Now a days even employees from that target brand do web spamming. They are very good a SEO and know what to write to pass various anti-spamming modules. They will write like authentic commenters and will insert one link somewhere or will post the link as their homepage.

I have seen many such cases in WordPress and Drupal. After seeing the comment manually, sometimes you would get confused that “are they real reader who are writing such a good and almost real comments!”  You would approve the comments most of the time, if you are not so much techie and well aware of such tricky spams. Specially, non-tech bloggers become victims of it.

So, make every comment under moderation or use some useful anti-spam plugin like Akismet (For WordPress users) and review it manually. Check every url and text. If you find anything irrelevant to your post or site, simply ignore it. Don’t show any temptation to show-off thousands of spammy comments in your site, rather have very few but original and worthy comments only. Like my site is for technical purpose then why to entertain shoes, apartment, bikes advertisements even though they seem real?

Stop Web spammers from advertising through your site/blog

You may not feel or experience that your site is being spammed (advertised in other terms) without your permission to other people/companies (through spammers). How do they do it? It’s very simple! They will approach you for guest blogging related to your site’s niche and will insert one or two external links, which is nothing but the advertisements through your site. Whatever money they will earn by selling those links, they will keep 100% of it and you will get nothing in return. In return, it may hamper your PR, Alexa Rank and genuine users too! So, think before you allow such spammers


Verify first even if they ask for just backlinks.

As I said, if someone approaches you 2 way backlinks, to boost mutual traffic and involve each other’s sites, then also verify first. I t should not harm your site, your readers and your PR.
But, if it is simply a kind of guest post with one or two links either in the content or at Author Bio section at the bottom. Be very careful before approving such links. You should allow only when it is of same niche as yours, should not be any malware or any non-related links. This trick is being used to redirect traffic from your website to their sites through those links.
IMHO, you should approve such posts very carefully and put it under paid post and charge them. Once, you will charge minimal amount, they would think before posting, because they are now barred from free advertisement.
 

Spammers are human being and employ human being.

When we hear the word like spams, malware etc we think they are just automated scripts/programs. But, its not always true in case of web spammers. They are human being and employers hire very skilled technical/content writer to write very specific suited for your website. But ultimately, it is nothing but the spam.

Usually those paid employess are low paid or unemployed students, professionals (who are having low educational background) or SEO people. Companies hire them for temporary purpose to advertise its own company’s new product or newly launched website. This way they can be viral and capture the market easily. Try to avoid being exploited by such web spammers.

I am not allowing any guest post now and if they approach, I would follow all above said steps and would charge and will stick to my and my site’s ethics to make it unharmed and popular for my trusted readers.

 

Source: http://akismet.com

Top 8 Reasons Why Your Business Needs a Blog

  • admin
  • September 25, 2013
  • 0

If you are just starting a business or just haven't implemented a blog into it yet, then you should really consider starting a blog. They have proven to be extremely beneficial to all types of companies and could generate a limitless amount of new customers. We are going to go over 8 reasons why your business should have a blog.


New Customers
We all need new customers to make our businesses thrive and that is one thing that blogging helps us get. Blogging introduces new people to our content, which then attracts them to our services and products. You don't need to blog about your actual products to get people interested, you just need to provide relevant content that attracts people who would be interested in your products.

Customer Loyalty and Trust
As  you blog and gain authority within your niche, the more trust you will gain in your readership. It is important to have a loyal audience that will continue to come back to your blog for more content because it shows newer viewers that other people are also interested in what you have to say. The more loyalty and trust you get, the easier it will be to convert your readers into customers.

Customer Communication
A big benefit about blogging is that you are able to interact with your readers and can get an abundance of information from them. A large aspect for any business is customer feedback and their thoughts about how to make your business better, and with a blog you will never run short of their comments and/or messages. They will let you know what they like, what they don't like, and the more you communicate with them, the easier it will be to convince them to be a customer.

More Overall Traffic
The main reason most businesses start blogging is to get more traffic to their site. Whether it be through SEO, guest posting, or any other strategy, blogs increase traffic. The more traffic you have, the higher chance you will have at more sales.

Search Engine Rankings
Blogs are great for getting your website ranking higher in search engines. The more content you put out, the more the search engine will review your site and rank you accordingly. There are a lot of different ways to make your content search engine friendly and it is important to try and implement as many as you can.

Good Link Building Tool
Link building is good for a few different reasons. First, the more links you have out on the internet increase the amount of overall visibility your website has. Second, having a good link profile will help you rank higher in search engines. Third, if you decide to do a guest posting campaign, you will be able to communicate with other audiences and get to know your niche community much better. The more links you have to your content and to your home page, the better. You want to make sure and keep as many links looking natural because major search engines have been punishing people who have been placing their links where they don't belong.

Visibility
Blogs increase your overall business's visibility, which is highly important for attracting new customers and keeping a proper public image. The more places you can promote your blog's content, the better. Use social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter to get started, but in general, blogs are easy to promote and will get more people to look at your website.

Branding
You can use blogs to help brand your company as an authority in your niche or however you want to brand it. You have full control over the content that represents your company, so use this to your advantage to brand your company in a way that will attract your target demographic.

There are many other reasons why blogging will benefit your business but these 8 should give you the boost you need to finally get one up and running. Just remember to start out by providing quality content that your target audience would love to view, then once you have a large readership, start using them to your advantage.

Best SEO Tips to Make Money With E-mail Marketing

Best SEO Tips to Make Money With E-mail Marketing
Remember the more people that get your reports and the more people that read your reports, the more money you will make because of the links in the back of the report. Also, to passively grow your list that will make your income explode as you grow your business. You build your list while you make these reports and then your list grows.


Your list gets bigger and bigger and bigger and you can send out e-mails of new reports to your list. You can offer affiliate promotions and make money with your list and the list money is where the real money is.

Marketing Means Money
It will start making you money within days… within days of your first report being released. We want you to make money right away so get your first report done. Get it out there. Follow the steps and get your first commissions or your first payments coming in right away. That’s the goal with this system!


1. Here’s the weekly action plan to help you achieve those goals. First off, write the report. Next, create the squeeze page. Now this is only… the squeeze page is if you’re going to do the squeeze page, right, if you’re going to do the list building.

2. This is the list building and maximum earnings action plan. Write the report, then create the squeeze page. Write five to ten articles on the same topic that the report is on – just different subjects within that topic or different focuses within that topic.

3. Do this while that report is fresh in your mind because then the articles are easier to write. You already have all that information still fresh in your mind. Then distribute the report using the passive distribution strategies taught in the distribution video. Next, mail the new report to your list – even if you only have a few people on it just go ahead and mail it out there because every little bit helps.

4. Then promote the squeeze page. Use all your marketing efforts, your articles and everything to promote your squeeze page. Then arrange an ad swap. Okay, now this is your weekly action plan meaning you should do steps one through seven each week. Week one – you write the first report and you follow these steps. Week two – you start a new report and you follow those steps for the new report.

5. Every week you should be writing a report, creating a squeeze page, writing five to ten articles, distributing the report and mailing to the new prospects, mailing to your list, promoting the squeeze page and arranging an ad swap. Every week you do this.
By the end of the year, you’ll have 52 reports, 52 squeeze pages all out there making you money and you’ll have done 52 ad swaps. Your list will have grown and you will be making some serious money online if you stick to this action plan.

Author Bio
Charles West is a professional content writer and blogger since last 2 years. I have writing expertise in technology and certification topics specially. I love to share that recently I passed my 350-030 exam from SAS institute and 642-994 exam from VMware. Thanks for reading.
 

Don’t do these mistakes while blogging

We have discussed “Steps to make your website popular” and this article will also do the same thing for by telling you that what you should avoid while writing blog so that you will not get punished by users and search engines.
There are lots of free web services providers like wordpress.com, blogspot.in, tumblr, freewebs, co.cc where people create their blogs and just start posting stuffs without thinking that what’s going on under the hood of that. So, we usually do some mistakes, which may hamper our Google page rank, search results, and indirectly affect our users too!

If you know what those common mistakes are and how can try to avoid those till minimum level you may gain an edge over the other bloggers from the same. Let’s have a look, what we can do to make our website more search and user friendly by avoiding those mistakes.

  1. Don’t use such title and tags which will get punished
Most of the bloggers include fancy, informative keywords in the title and description tags but do not even bother to make them interesting or forget to proof the title and tags by explaining it in simpler words. Once your article ranks in the search engines, visitors will click on your link in the Search Engine.

It may happen that you may get high end traffic due to title and tag for temporary purpose but in long term it will get punished by search engines specially Google. Once users find it irrelevant to what you tried to explain in title, they will never come back to your website even you write very useful stuffs in future. So, think twice before using title and tags.

  1. Don’t use Keywords used casually, it has it’s own importance
For SEO purpose, it is most important that what keywords you are going to use to support your article which will make it competitive over Google search. Never do a mistake by adding keywords which doesn’t support even 5% of your content. Keywords used should be well researched and easily searchable that will not just reflect the quality content of your site but will draw more genuine traffic and you will be popular too with your website.

Take some time before posting article on keywords, title, tags which will be very fruitful in long run. You can get these entire things by using third party tool like SEO stats for WordPress. It will help you in finding some of the most searched keywords that can fetch you good traffic which might miss while doing it yourself manually. (If you are expert in SEO then no need of such tools 😀 )

  1. Try to avoid using heavy graphics to make the site beautiful
I can’t deny that an image is worth of 1000 words but using heavy graphics, for your website will make it slow and will get punished by crawlers, even users will get bored and will move on. Try to use png or gif format of exact size what you need and try to use minimal image required to support your website. Exceptions are game sites, photo studio based sites etc.

Anyways search engines look for text not for images. So, try to avoid adding images where you need to provide information to the search engine or use alternate text if image is necessary to be used. Try to use text in the headers that will help search engines find you easily, if its flash based website specially.

  1. Never ever think of Less quality more quantity
I have already discussed this point in my previous article “6 Minimal Steps to make your site popular”. Here is the teaser for that:
  • You might have observed that there are many sites which are having hundreds of posts but not even listed in top 10 pages of Google Search. And there are few website which are having very few articles but are very popular over the internet. What matters is “Quality not the Quantity”.
  • Try to write/post such contents which is worthy for users.  Your contents should be unique. It should not be just copy-paste from other websites. It may degrade your website ranking.
  • Before writing any content, try to do some Google work to see if such articles are already there in market. How you can make your article unique and how you can compete with existing article over the internet.

5.Update Broken Links time to time

If you are a regular blogger then you would two things for sure while writing a blog you would refer your older blogs which will support your present article and you website will grow day by day. It may happen that you might change the way permlinks should get displayed using different alias method or you may change your CMS platform like from SMF to phpbb or WordPress. In that case links can be broken and would not be accessible to the previous link that search engine would show. Sometimes, it may happen that whatever outbound link you provided doesn’t exist anymore. So keep track of all these inbound, outbound links time to time.

So, always give some time to check if there is any broken link or not and try to fix at earliest else not only user would hate this but search engine would rate negatively. There are various plug-in available for famous CMS like Drupal, WordPress, Joomla etc.

6.Don’t do mistake by providing links of lower page rank

It is difficult to explain in few words that how it affects your website if you provide backlink or lower Google page rank. I would try to explain “How Google Page Rank works” and “How you can increase your Google Page Rank” in near future. But for the time being, just keep in mind that try to avoid providing any reference link whose Alexa rank and Google page rank is not so much good or lesser than yours unless and until you find that providing that link would increase traffic for your website and quality of content is at par.

7.Must avoid Plagiarism always else quit blogging!

Let me be very clear here that copyright infringement and Plagiarism are not same but both have legal case to face if caught. It’s not just for a website; it’s my personal advice to you that if someone helps you knowingly or unknowingly; try to give some credit to that person. That would not make you honest and trustworthy but the helper would feel great and would try to help in future too without expecting anything but just thanks and your smile. Same applies for the website.

When you are copying anything from someone’s website like images, quotes and even full content; try to give credit to original author who have done lots of hard work to publish original content over the network. It is taken seriously in term of academics, websites and will lead to worst consequences if you are still ignoring this!
I hope it would help the majority of the bloggers (although its common and most of you would know already).

Please leave your feedback/suggestion/critics as comment to this post.
Image Source: www.leadership-idn.com

Tips to Get Links from Trusted Websites

Tips to Get Links from Trusted Websites
Trusted sites, particularly government and academic sites, present some real difficulties for the link builder. They can be bureaucratic and reluctant to link to commercial businesses, which mean that your approach must be well thought out.

Common Business Blogging Mistakes and Ways to Avoid It

Business blogs are too important to be ignored. They open the windows to visitors, and give readers the insights to understand what is in store for them when they visit your professional website. Since they are very important to your business, you must take special care to see that you give visitors the most you can.

Blogging Tips-3 Things to Avoid While Writing Content

Blogging Tips – 3 Things to Avoid While Writing Content

Avoid Font Sizes Smaller Than 14 pixels
Ideally, body copy should be set at 16 pixels (or above). Yes, the default size. There’s a good reason this is the universal default: on typical screens, 16 pixels text is displayed at a similar size to printed 12 point text—the default for word processors. These are the defaults because they’re the most legible sizes for the majority of people. If your reader is over 40, using small fonts is like putting a bullet in your foot. (Remember, too, that a screen is generally positioned further from the reader than something like a magazine or book.)

Learn to Set up E-Commerce Tracking in Google Analytics

  • admin
  • August 18, 2012
  • 51

e-commerce logoLearn to Set up E-Commerce Tracking in Google Analytics
Have you ever considered establishing your business on the Web?
If you have not, maybe these statistics will show you the importance of taking your marketing platform to the next level.
 
The Facts
 
According to an international study by a manufacturing company and polling firm, around 98% of buyers in the UK, South Korea, and Germany have purchased online. Approximately 91% of consumers in the U.S. and in Brazil do too. The customers in Australia and China are not behind the times since 92% and 94% (respectively) of them have also bought merchandise and obtained services on the Internet.

Not only that, the research have discovered that some of the products frequently sought after by the shoppers include computer software and hardware, videos, books, consumer electronics, footwear, and apparel. Of course, this range differs by country.
 
Leverage Google’s Huge Popularity
 But, perhaps, the biggest reason for setting up an ecommerce site is the whopping number of individuals—billions—going online. A digital marketing insight has reported that Google alone garners an estimated 1.5 billion total visits.
 
Looking at this figure, you can just imagine the stream of people browsing the Web. Now that is just for one search engine. Bing and Yahoo have over 200 million visits each.
 
All these details point out that if you want to be one of the enterprises that these consumers spot, whenever they search for goods or services, you need to establish a business website.
 
Use Google Analytics
 
Google Analytics
Let us say that you already have a website. Now, you must not stop at page development, design, and SEO. You must also measure your performance. You can do this without too much hassle by using Google Analytics (GA), which allows you to do the following:
 

  • Gauge your conversions and sales
  • Find out the users’ activities on your site
  • Learn their means of landing on your site
  • Come up with methods to make them visit repeatedly
 
Of course, these are just general functions. Other than these, you can do more with the help of real-time data, customised reports, and powerful tools. Speaking of which, you are going to benefit greatly from this GA feature.
 
Ecommerce Tracking
 
One of its greatest advantages is that you can set it up as a Web and/or app property. Since the focus of our topic is to organise the former, you can read about Google Mobile App Analytics here (Android) and here (iOS).
 
Before you can actually monitor the transactions happening on your website, you need to enable the feature using these steps.
 
1. Go to the “Admin” tab, which is at your account’s top right section, and click on it.
NOTE: Choose the “All Accounts” link, which you can find under the menu bar, if you are not on the “Account Administration” page.
 
2. Select the account name and then, the property name that consists of the profile you wish to permit tracking.
NOTE: You can click on the drop down box, which is at the left area of the menu bar, to look for a particular profile if you have plenty of properties or accounts.
 
3. Proceed to the “Profile Settings” tab after picking out your preferred profile from the “Profile” menu.
 
4. Choose “Yes, an E-Commerce Site/App” once you are on the “E-Commerce Settings” section.
 
5. Hit on “Apply”.
 
Cross-Domain Tracking
What is this?
You need this function if another portal is hosting your shopping cart or if you wish to monitor transactions across different domains.
 
Generally, setting it up requires you to adjust the code. To do this, you must have basic JavaScript and HTML knowledge to perform the steps well. You can read further about cross-domain tracking on this page.
 
Conclusion
What do you think? Are you ready to keep a close eye on your ecommerce transactions?
If you think that you still have a lot to learn, then you can always ask for the assistance of an expert. This way, you won’t have any problem using GA.
 
About the Author: Emma Tomlinson is the Head of Retail at Smart Traffic SEO Company, which offers technical resources and solutions to SMEs (small to medium-sized enterprises) and major companies worldwide. 

Brief Analysis on Google Search Engine

There are lots of Search Engines are there in the market. But Google was and is the best Search Engine over the internet till date. It has more than 80% of market share in US over other search engines.
Microsoft launched Bing, but it is still at bottom 5 list of top search engines. I personally never liked Bing too. Once upon a time Lycos was very famous but Google just killed it!
Yahoo Search Engine also plays an important role to make our search easier by serving better results. But then also it just covers 6% approx. of total queries search over the internet amongst all search engines. Baidu from China is now becoming popular too, because it's widely used in China.

How can a blogger think like an entrepreneur?

  • admin
  • February 6, 2012
  • 0

Enterpreneur BloggingAs a blogger you might have the capability to deliver best in class articles. If your blogging horizon is limited to fulfill your writing flair, you should be satisfied enough with the comments posted by your friends and known circles.

However, if you would like to generate money from your online venture, you should turn your articles into crowd pulling articles not only to attract known audience but also unknown visitors. In order to convert your blog into a money generating machine, you should have entrepreneurial skills. We shall check how you can fit into an entrepreneur with being a blogger.

Research

Before the launch a project, you should have done the initial homework about the prospects of various products that you would like to undertake. You can come into the market either with a new product or an existing product. In either case, sufficient groundwork should be done to realize the potential for the product.

You should know the existing products and you should know with whom you are going to compete. You should know the areas or gaps that are to be filled. As this is important for the success or failure of any kind of business even in case of blogging, spending quality time in this aspect will help you launch your product with a solid foundation. You will come with a concrete action plan that makes your product launch a smooth sailing.

Business perspective

A successful entrepreneur will have a business plan. It is required to pull the resources like capital, land, machinery, and material and man power. Fortunately for a blogger, the capital requirement is negligible or nil. If it is a one man army, all the tasks are carried out by a single person. From the blog conception to the delivery all the tasks can be carried out by a single person especially in the initial weeks or months.

As the blog grows, you may need to deploy dedicated personnel to accomplish various tasks. If you are serious about turning your blog into revenue generating platform, you should have a blue-print of your business. For an entrepreneur, it is not only the resources but the product that is going to be launched is more important.

Ultimately that makes the difference in business. Hence, every article that you deliver should be focused to reach the intended audience. You should be able to learn from your audience. You should be able to learn from your competitors. You should be able to learn about new technologies that can better present your content. It is also important to dispatch products to areas where customers are eagerly waiting for your products. Enhanced promotion is required to achieve this goal.

Marketing perspective

However good your product might be or however good your article might be it should be adapted to the current market conditions. The prevailing trends in the markets are very important. If suddenly your entire crowd has shifted from Facebook to Google+, you should be able to catch your audience at Google+ by enhancing your promotions to this end. To achieve this, you should continuously monitor the statistics.

The demographic changes should be analyzed and accordingly you should spread your promotions. You should spice up your articles to attract visitors so that in addition to the value the content delivers, it will add humor or entertainment proportion. Another important factor is the appeasement of search engines.

Since traffic produced through search engines is the major source of income for your blog, you should not ignore the fact that all your articles should be optimized for search engine algorithms. Optimized content will bring optimized results. As the number of visitors to your site increase, you will be able to get more revenue from your blog.

Reaching audience

You should never ignore the fact that customer are lifeline for any business. It is the chain of customers that drives any business. A blogger should recognize this fact and accordingly should participate in entertaining them by replying their comments. You should have presence in forums and discussion groups where you can encash opportunities to convert queries into sales. The impact will be more as large number of quality audience will participate in various forums.

Assessment

Every business should have assessment at the end of every month or every quarter. This will help analyze the direction of business. Similarly, a blogger should be able to quantify skills and various inputs spent towards blogging and then should be to compare the output with the income generated. As happens with any kind of business, profit figures may not be seen in the initial months as these will be compensated in the coming months by vigorous launch of quality articles coupled with consistent business perspective.

About Guest Author:
Jane also writes for a blog that shares webhostingpad, register.com and other related discount deals. If you are interested in web hosting services you can check out hosting discounts as that of webhostingpad special offer code and register.com offer code.

Image source: techmaish.com