<body><script type="text/javascript"> function setAttributeOnload(object, attribute, val) { if(window.addEventListener) { window.addEventListener("load", function(){ object[attribute] = val; }, false); } else { window.attachEvent('onload', function(){ object[attribute] = val; }); } } </script> <iframe src="http://www.blogger.com/navbar.g?targetBlogID=31017763&amp;blogName=Blogging+to+Fame%21&amp;publishMode=PUBLISH_MODE_BLOGSPOT&amp;navbarType=TAN&amp;layoutType=CLASSIC&amp;homepageUrl=http%3A%2F%2Fblogandpingtutorial.blogspot.com%2F&amp;searchRoot=http%3A%2F%2Fblogandpingtutorial.blogspot.com%2Fsearch" marginwidth="0" marginheight="0" scrolling="no" frameborder="0" height="30px" width="100%" id="navbar-iframe" title="Blogger Navigation and Search"></iframe> <div></div>

Stay Away from Fake SEO

Sunday, November 09, 2008

I do not acclaim to be a SEO Guru but I am working for few clients who need SEO consultation. This brings me in contact with many companies who provide SEO and other online promotion stuff. There are a lot of website owners I know who are still wondering how to go about their online marketing.

They are not aware of what tools should be used for online promotions, how effective they can be to attract target audience. Everything for them boils down to SEO and SEM. These are overwhelming terms and the way they are presented, it’s easy to get exited and at the same time confused.

Here are telltale signs that are good enough to hint to jump away from those companies and better look out for someone who have better understanding of SEO:

1. Self-acclaimed Expertise with due display of expertise: Those who are good most of times will be able to show their involvement with active community of SEO world instead of quoting "proprietary" insights and strategies. They would often display testimonials from the experts who you would have never heard, or recommendations from website owners who would be rarely searchable on internet.

2. Inflating Keyword Densities: Few days back, at a coffee lounge I just over heard a company discussing about their client’s online SEO strategy. They were discussing about infusing the content of the website with keywords to get the website, rank good for those keywords. According to it content should be written in a way that desired keywords are equally distributed all over the page uniformly.

Unfortunately Search Engines are much ahead. Beware anything over 5% of keyword density can make Google be more skeptical about your web pages. Onpage optimization is important, but keyword stuffing is good indication to smell something wrong. A professional SEO firm wont even discuss such a thing.

3. Search engine and Directory Submissions: Many SEO firms suggest that they will submit your website to 100's and 1000's of directories and search engines. The matter of fact is that even if they do, these hundred thousand directories and search engines wont even give you a single visitor. Though there are some very cool industry specific directories and search engines who get best of information from particular industry. But they should be well researched. Save money and save time by staying away from organizations with such suggestions.

4. Link Buying: Link buying for me is an advertising strategy than a SEO. A natural link can never be replaced by purchased one and is easily identified by present search engines. It is expensive and not a sign of good SEO firm, as anyone with very little knowledge and efforts can buy links or rarely good links. The benefit is temporary and you need to keep renewing the contract (Read- Spending Money) to keep them in place. A good SEO firm should be able to cultivate good quality links that you don’t need to buy.

5. Amateur Social Media Strategy: Many SEO firms state in their packages that they will submit your website to many Social Media websites like Digg, Netvibes, Delicious, or StumbleUpon. But as these sites have millions of active users, an equally huge amount of content is updated on these websites, so just submission or bit of push does not work if they are not having an expert to monitor and optimize your website for such Social Media websites. Jump away if you can find any amateur claims like getting votes or favours for your website. Any mistake can easily get your website being continuously banned by such Social Media Websites. Otherwise these social media sites can be of great tool for effective SEO for your website and a great tool to get to your target audience.

6. Malicious SEO Practices: Any blackhat techniques like putting hidden text, different landing pages for search engines, redirects and different content for users. Stay away, as sooner than later your website will be banned for such activities.

7. Complicated Strategies: For all the strategies, that have no logical reasoning to suffice your doubts, except proprietary strategy, it would be better to not involve yourself. Though SEO is tricky, its no rocket science and every strategy needs to be backed by logical reasoning, which should be in lines of best practices personalized effectively for your website.

For any SEO firm that tries to outsmart Search Engines, you know the answer.
So if you are looking for an SEO firm, do read SEO journals and blogs to know whats in and whats correct.

Bookmark this article:- BlinkList del.icio.us digg Furl NewsVine Netvouz Reddit Shadows YahooMyWeb

Technorati Tags:-
posted by Divya Uttam, 7:47 AM | link | 1 comments |


Your Blog will fail IF!

Saturday, November 01, 2008

It’s time to understand the essence of your Blog. Whether personal, niche or corporate blog, whether you post it yourself or have multiple authors, it is very essential that your blog has a soul of its own.

Now answer these questions:


What separates and makes your Blog standout?

What is that thing which adds individuality and essence to it?

Is it your style? Or is it the knowledge you own. May be it’s your experience.

You own the blog, but are you there in it?

Blending yourself in your blog will come up some time of your blogging, as you learn that what excites your readers and what you they try to find in your blog.

Your blog will fail if... IT’S NOT YOUR BLOG...


What is not you?

It's when you are too obvious like a news channel, or you have lots of syndicated posts without your opinions or trying to be similar like some other successful blog. Just like any writing, when you're first starting out you will most likely look at blogs of others for example sake, and whether you know it or not, will emulate them in some form or fashion. After you've begun to blog for a while, however, you'll find your voice starting to creep out and eventually taking over, but, only if you are passionate about what you write.


It's always a challenge to write exciting blog posts. Getting your inner voice that is unique as well what excites your reader is demanding and comes with time. But it's almost essential, an absolute necessity when you expect to build an authority blog.When I started this blog, things were a bit different. It just happened when I was trying my hands in blogging hence the URL of the blog: "blogandpingtutorial.blogspot.com". Now do not laugh. :)


Surprisingly it started to happen and this blog saw some good days, and this blog is among the biggest community at MyBLOGLOG, and obviously you are welcome to join it here. But now it is being too tutorialistic and I am not able to get my passion out.


I found a new voice... Ya the one I am talking in...Do you want to find yours? Keep Tuning in...

Or Subscribe it.

Bookmark this article:- BlinkList del.icio.us digg Furl NewsVine Netvouz Reddit Shadows YahooMyWeb

Technorati Tags:-

Labels:

posted by Divya Uttam, 11:11 AM | link | 3 comments |


Basic Blog Optimization Important Factors

Sunday, October 05, 2008

Blogs, have more optimization opportunities compared to a regular web site. As discussed earlier I expect by now you must have chosen the keywords, you want to target. According to a research done by EntireWeb, 31% of the people search using two word phrases, 25% uses three word phrases and only 19% try it with one word. Also, keep in mind the following:

1. Popular keywords will bring you untargeted traffic.

2. Do not choose keywords that you have no chance ranking for.

3. Do not choose keywords that no one looks for.

4. Do not choose a keyword that does not relate to your content.

5. Do not use words that may get your blog filtered or banned from search engines.

6. For best results, optimize one post for one keyword.



Let’s talk about a few simple yet very effective steps you should take towards optimizing your blog.

Title Tag- Undeniably, the most important aspect of blog optimization is Title Tags.

Your blog’s title tag should carry the major keywords you are targeting and should give an idea of the subject your blog is based on. Do not make it very long. Anything more than the Google’s Limit of 63 characters is superfluous. Although Yahoo displays up to 112 and MSN up to 70 characters, 63 characters would be able to cover your major keywords, and will make sure search engines display whole of your title tag.

Do not worry while using stop words like the, a, is, an- they are generally omitted by search engines, but make the title more palatable for humans.

A trick that you can use to shorten the length- Suppose the two major keywords you want to target is Blogging Strategies and Business Blogging. You can save up to 10 characters by combining them and using Business Blogging Strategies. This will be as effective as using them separately and will give you space to include another word.

As a general rule, the closer you place your keyword to the beginning of the title tag, the better the ranking advantage. However, bear in mind that we've seen fluctuations on this element from engine to engine and even from month to month. Regardless, on the whole, you can expect better results by placing your keywords first in your title tag.

Each of the post-page should carry a title tag including keywords you want to target.

Make sure to make your title tag consumable by humans... otherwise anyone would hardly click your link!

Writing Related Content- The most important part of blogging is fresh, interesting content, for both your readers and the search engines. Blog search engines sometimes display results chronologically. If you wrote about "apple iphone" half an hour ago, but someone else wrote about "apple iphone" twenty minutes ago, they get listed first in a search for "apple iphone".

So, whatever keyword you are targeting try and write good content on that keyword and its parallel ones, often.

Optimize Categories-

When you create categories for your blog, be sure to consider keywords in the titles. This will help not only search engines but also your audience to get to relevant content. So whenever you post, be sure to default to a general category that is relevant no matter what the post is about. Choose multiple categories on each post whenever appropriate.

Getting in Blog Directories-

To get registered in any directory, you should write at least one post today, at least five posts the current week, and your blog should be at least 3 months old. If this is not suitable for you, you can still get into some search engines and directories, but not all.

Personal bloggers should try to post every day at least once. Business blogs should post slightly more often than their competitors. New posts will need to be made at least three times a week for some search engines to list a blog at all.

Posting daily or more than that may not be feasible so post as often as you and your blog's audience can comfortably handle.

Social Bookmarking-

Social bookmarking is the practice of saving bookmarks to a public Web site and “tagging” them with keywords. Visitors to social bookmarking sites can search for resources by keyword, person, or popularity and see the public bookmarks, tags, and classification schemes that registered users have created and saved. Social Bookmarking sites can be excellent sources of traffic to your blog, so be sure to make it easy for readers to bookmark your blog posts.

Here are some bookmarking sites:
  1. Digg
  2. Del.icio.us
  3. StumbleUpon
  4. Reddit
  5. Squidoo
  6. Furl
  7. BlinkList
  8. Blogmarks.net
  9. Ma.gnolia
  10. Simpy
  11. Spurl
  12. BlinkBits
  13. Shadows
  14. Raw Sugar
  15. Yahoo MyWeb
It’s important to realize that there are other factors also that can play into how successfully your blog gets indexed and how well the search engines treat it. We will discuss them in the coming posts.
posted by Divya Uttam, 9:03 AM | link | 0 comments |


Blog Optimization- Holistic approach to Optimizing your blog

Sunday, September 07, 2008

I plan to run a Blog Optimization series this month covering as many aspects as possible in the following posts:

  1. Basic Blog Optimization
  2. On Page Blog Optimization
  3. Off Page Blog Optimization
  4. Optimizing Blog Posts
  5. Optimizing Blog Feeds

  6. Some Specifics like:

  7. Getting more Search Engines Traffic to your Blog
  8. Getting more Links to your Blog
  9. Using Google Analytics for Better Blog Optimization
  10. 9. Using Social Media for Blog Optimization
  11. 10. Advanced Blog Optimization

Before we begin with it, I would like you to do some homework...

For Optimizing any existing website or blog we follow the approach below and for new blogs, we follow the approach below. Yes, there is one and only approach towards blog optimization and that is this:
















A Little Brain Storming-
When you are ready to optimize your blog, you will need to make a list of keywords you are targeting. Include all keywords broad and narrow related to your niche. You can use Google Keyword Tool to find keywords related to your niche. After you have the list, get all the keywords with high searches. This will give you an idea about the topics people need information.
If you are trying to optimize your blog for the first time, it is not advisable to target main keywords in round one, because of the competition you will face.

For example-

You have a blog about fashion you keyword list will look like:
Searches performed on Keyword Fashion in month of August is 673,000, but targeting it may not lead you anywhere near to first two SERPs(Search Engine Result Pages) because Google returns highly targeted 565,000,000 results for this search. If you target keywords like Fashion Trends with 8100 searches but lesser competitors, and appear on a prominent position in the first SERP, you have a possibility of attracting 8100 to your site per month for this single keyword, and that is not bad for a starting.
Once you start getting traffic for the shortlisted keywords you will be able to perform better on broader ones.

Now that we have the list, we are equipped for basic blog optimization. See you soon with the post. :)
posted by Divya Uttam, 12:31 AM | link | 4 comments |


What is the largest page size that Google's spider will crawl?

Friday, August 29, 2008

I recently got visitors searching for the largest page size that a Google’s Spider may crawl. There is no set limit existing for the same. Google may crawl very large pages if it believes them to be worthwhile. You may consider following:

No Duplicate Content: The content is what matters most, for Google as well as your readers. It should be fresh, unique for Google, and informative for your readers.

Back Links Content: As known to all, Google gives lots of value to Quality Back Links. Therefore, if you have some insight on your blog, you can share it with other bloggers and talk about it in forums, and the blogosphere will love to link you back.

Make the spider feel your effort is warranted and there is no stopping it from indexing the whole content, even unusually large documents.

Bookmark this article:- BlinkList del.icio.us digg Furl NewsVine Netvouz Reddit Shadows YahooMyWeb

Technorati Tags:-

Labels:

posted by Divya Uttam, 12:03 PM | link | 0 comments |


Social Media: Whats Your Flavor?

Saturday, August 23, 2008

Social media has brought the world together, yet a few earthlings do not understand its importance, and the way it can effect their business.

In today’s rapidly changing advertising and communication media, a unidimensional
approach to branding can no more sustain a brand. Companies must understand new technologies and the role that they play in influencing customer preferences, and embrace them.

Its the era where every brand needs to be connected to its consumers and the way they feel about a product. Consumers speak, trend starts, businesses grow‐ or they are doomed‐ with a click of the mouse or push of a send button. In order to succeed today, one must not only understand what their consumers want, but how they find that information, validate it and make decisions. With social media, the power has decidedly shifted away from marketers to consumers; citizen journalists influence a brand’s reputation, and customer perceptions influence a brand’s image more
than ever before.

The sooner this is understood, the better :)

Labels:

posted by Divya Uttam, 1:59 PM | link | 0 comments |


Keep it Simple, make it user-friendly-

Thursday, August 21, 2008

No heavy introduction or description about the post, because keeping your blog simple yet innovative is itself a heavy task. It will help you build an online community, gain and retain readership and ultimately create a memorable brand for yourself and your business.

So let us take the first few basic elements to start-

Blog URL and name: Should define your goal. Do not make a mistake I made, with such a big URL. People hardly remember it. Blog.yourcompanyname.com does work fine if you are planning to integrate it with the site. In addition, the name of your blog should be attractive and memorable and something that should relate to the topic of the blog. The name is going to carry the blog's brand forward.

Blog loading time: At times when most of us go for shared hosting, we may not get speed for our blogs what we really wish. Websites on new technologies based on SSI (server side include). Lower the quality of graphics a little bit sometimes effects your loading time.

Blog content: People start real blogs because they think about something a lot. Blogging is about writing engaging and compelling content. It about encouraging people to think about the subject you are writing. What you should remember, is writing good content does not finish the deal. Good content and regular content should be posted. You may not find lots of time to come up with long and very informative posts. Keep them short, crisp with adequate amount of information, and your readers will even love you for that. (I promise to write more often from now onwards :) ).

Blog navigation: Navigation is obviously one of the most critical aspects of usability, especially for blogs where there is frequent addition of content. In order to improve the navigation of your blog you will need to address several key issues, like ability to find older content in an effective way. This will need a whole post to go in detail, but remember to make decisions according to what will help visitors find what they are looking for, and what will allow you to maintain efficiency with managing the blog.

Contact information: Keeping a form between your visitors and you is annoying. Give them some direct contact number or at least your email id if not your direct postal address. It builds trust and a proof of your existence. Contact forms make people go away many times before they could contact you.

HTML Hassles: Even a blog on wordpress, blogspot etc you might have problems, if you have tweaked with templates and inserted ads in columns. You should check if the website is loading perfectly on all browsers. This is important to keep your visitors away from any problems while they browse their blog.

To be continued... in details.

Labels:

posted by Divya Uttam, 1:54 PM | link | 2 comments |