SEM - Search Engine Marketing Guide

Social Media Beginners

2010-10-25T09:36:00.000-07:00

Social Media Beginners: Using SEO and Social Media to Build Brand Authority (Part 1)

ou may be at a point where your site has lots of usable and compelling content. Unfortunately this isn't always enough to gain new readers and revenue. It could be time to build a link strategy to boost your brand authority and site ranking. The way to begin is by making partnerships, starting conversations and trading links so more webmasters (and their readers) know who you are.

Why? The majority of computers and much of the media are now social, so it's time for you to break out of your bubble. Getting your site optimized can be time consuming and often you won't see the results of the labor for a few weeks, if not months. A site that ranks well is the outcome of shrewd planning and lots of effort with few shortcuts. You have to make good decisions early in the process to gain a good amount of momentum. Basic SEO strategy is a lengthy process, and you can find out smart ways to begin here.

Similarly, incorporating social media into the public face of your business is a long process that will take time to reach its potential. Success in social media relies on cooperation and engagement with your clients and customers (and sometimes even your competitors). Where do you begin?

Basic Inbound Links: Inbound links are widely regarded as a necessity for high ranking in the search engine listings. Search engines view links to web sites as a vote in favor of their importance. If popular sites like your site, then search engines like your site. It resembles how high school cliques are formed. What this means is the more authoritative a site, the more powerful their link seems to search engines. If the link goes to your site, then search engines think your site also holds part of that authority. The authority of a site is gauged by its page rank (PR). This is a standard 1 to 10 scale Google assigns to pages based on hundreds of qualifications, 10 being the highest rank with most authority.

Part of best practices in building page rank and authority is submitting to directoríes and sites that point back to your site. But don't waste much time sending tons of random links out to directories with very low PR. Your time is better spent sending a few well-optimized links to popular sites that share context with content on your site. For example, if your business sells consumer electronics, then you want links from authoritative sites that review electronics brands you sell.

Other important aspects of in-bound links are:

Don't do too much too fast. The rate of growth for incoming links should not ever be more than 20% per month. If too many inbound links pop up at once, search engines get nervous and your authority may suffer.
The links should contain phrase-rich descriptors (page descriptions, alt tags for photo links, and/or your business name). The link structures should vary from site to site - they don't have to be wildly different, just dissimilar.
Avoid lots of effort (but not all) directed at link building on sites that feature a "no follow" rule for back links. This eliminates most SEO value to your link. You can see which sites do this by investigating the source code, and no-follow commands are usually within a javascript applet.

Social Media can be a powerful tool in building both traffic and PR for your website if you adhere to a few rules. More about that later.

What are the Main Inbound Link Types?

Directional Links: These are standard links back to your site from a variety of web sites and directories that include a combination of title, short description, and/or a business logo.

Content Links: These are links to your site found within the body of content authored by you. The content is usually several paragraphs of text and infographics such as a press release, a blog post, research and white papers, or other information-based articles.

Social Media Links: Using social media sites like Facebook, MySpace, Twitter and others are a great way to see who is saying something about you, but also a good way to tell others what you're doing. You can also provide your services as an industry resource or expert who gives advice to those who need it. The overall requirement is simple, but time-consuming: participate in conversations, don't just sell.

Social Sharing Links: These are referenced from media objects (e.g. videos, images, etc) that serve to indicate the author of the object. This strategy can include posting of "how to" videos on your related topics as well as creating a variety of directional links from bookmarking sites like StumbleUpon or De.licio.us.

In the next chapter, we'll discuss Directional Links and Content Links and where you can begin building them for inbound traffic boosts.

The world as the eagle - Google Updates

2010-10-17T17:20:00.000-07:00

One-hundred and fifty years ago today, on October 13, 1860, James Wallace Black shot the earliest still-existing aerial photograph in the U.S. He took the picture from a hot air balloon suspended above Boston Common, and the result, titled "Boston as the Eagle and the Wild Goose See It," is truly beautiful. The photo is part of the archive at the venerable Boston Public Library, along with other important historical images of the Boston area, and is particularly significant because most of the area visible in the photo was destroyed by the Great Fire of 1872.

James Wallace Black, Balloon View of Boston, 1860.

From the collections of the Boston Public Library, Print Department, Boston Pictorial Archive.

Flash forward 150 years: Aerial imagery is widely available and used in countless professions, from archaeology to conceptual art. The folks who created Google Earth devised a way to stitch aerial and satellite imagery together into a seamless, searchable map of the world and make it available to anyone with a computer. On top of that basemap of imagery, Google Earth users have contributed to the creation of a 3D, photo-realistic virtual world by using tools like Google Building Maker, which makes it easy for anyone to use aerial imagery to model 3D buildings for display in Google Earth.

We at Google owe James Wallace Black a debt of gratitude; without his early experimentation with aerial imagery, Google Earth may never have come to be.

In a happy coincidence, October 13 is also the first anniversary of Building Maker, and we’re taking the opportunity to celebrate the contributions of a dedicated community of 3D modelers in the 101 cities around the world where Building Maker is available. Here’s a look at two of our top modelers and their creations:

Peter Sih (aka PeterX), lives in San Jose, Calif., but has created models all over the world. He tells us: “Modeling with Building Maker you get almost instant gratification. I learn a lot by modeling places I don't know as well as places I know well. Modeling for GE ties together my lifelong fascination with geography, architecture, travel, photography and computers."

Pavilhão Carlos Lopes - Lisbon, Portugal

Grant Firl (aka Grant F) lives in Fort Collins, Colo., but concentrates most of his modeling efforts on Albuquerque, N.M. He tells us: “I choose to model with 3D Building Maker for many reasons. Principally, I think that the 3D buildings layer is a very worthwhile tool and I view it as both a privilege and a kind of duty to help fill in content. Secondly, it is both fun and rewarding to create models of physical buildings, especially given the opportunity to share them to Google's users for their use and enjoyment. Thirdly, the 3D buildings layer provides a unique way to preserve and share the hard work and inspiration of actual builders and architects.”

Albuquerque Plaza - Albuquerque, N.M.

If you haven’t tried Building Maker yet, it’s very easy and fun. You pick a building and construct a model of it using aerial photos and simple 3D shapes—both of which we provide. When you're done, we take a look at your model. If it looks right, and if a better model doesn't already exist, we add it to the 3D Buildings layer in Google Earth. You can make a whole building in a few minutes.

Technology has come a long way since James Wallace Black took his photo of Boston, and glass-plate-negative box cameras in hot air balloons have given way to airplanes with mounted camera arrays. But what hasn’t changed is how technology gives us new ways to look at out world. Check out Google Building Maker and build the picture of your world.

New Facebook Groups

2010-10-11T09:06:00.000-07:00

Why Not Everyone is a Fan of the New Facebook Groups

Facebook Groups Draw Mixed Reviews

Some people really like Facebook's new Groups feature. Influential tech blogger Robert Scoble could hardly praise the feature enough. He used the phrase "massively cool" more than once in his description. He's not alone. Many are welcoming the opportunity to separate their friends into different groups and communicate in different ways with them (like chat, email lists, and integration with third-party apps).

Some are less than thrilled with the new feature, however.The feature was announced during an event based around the concept of giving users more control, but it appears that more control doesn't necessarily mean complete control. Jason Calacanis, for example, found out the hard way that anyone can be added to a group, regardless of whether or not they actually opted in (hat tip to Matthew Ingram). The group creator has the ability to make the group open, closed, or secret.

Calacanis found out he was added to a Facebook group for NAMBLA (the North American Man-Boy Love Association), along with TechCrunch founder Michael Arrington. At Calacanis.com, Jason posted an email he sent to Facebook informing them of what happened. He closed with, "If you guys want to run these new features by me before you launch them, I can probably save you from a couple of privacy law suits each year."

This is really the kind of thing you would think Facebook would want to avoid after all of the privacy brouhaha earlier this year. Of course not everyone is going to have people adding them to questionable groups, but if it can be done, some people just aren't going to be comfortable with it.

Finding Marketing Value in the Cloud

It's not much different from tagging in Facebook Photos, a feature that I've frankly had issues with myself. It's nice that anyone can tag you in a photo and have that show up first thing in the photos on your profile isn't it? Groups adds that extra layer of association though, which some my find even more objectionable, as with Calacanis' case. With this kind of functionality, people could be made to look like they're Nazis, KKK members, pedophiles, Justin Bieber fans, or anything else. Granted, users can report groups to Facebok:

I can definitely see the feature being abused for politics. It's probably already happening.

The feature does appear to only let you add people who you are friends with to Groups, so you may want to choose your friends carefully. It may not be a good idea to be friends with just anybody, and if you are, at least keep up with your notifications. You will be notified when you've been added to a group.

The email feature has received some criticism as well. If you are added to a group and you don't keep up with your notifications, you may find your inbox getting filled up by people in that group posting things. You can put an end to this by opting out, but some feel you should have to opt in to this feature to begin with.

What do you think of the new Facebook Groups? Let us know.

Hulu Should Be Better at What it Does

Chris Crum | Staff Writer

Why Doesn't FOX Want Us to Watch Its Programming?

Late last week, a deal between FOX and DISH Network came to an end, leaving DISH Network subscribers without FX, FOX Sports, and the National Geographic Channel. FOX raised their rates and DISH didn't want to pay. While the two companies continue negotiations, some of us wonder how we are going to watch the shows that we regularly enjoy.

There are at least 5 shows I regularly watch on FX, and I have DISH Network, so naturally, this presents a problem for me. 3 of these shows are currently in mid-season. Now, I get to figure out where to watch the next episodes. My first thought was Hulu. They have FOX and (FOX-owned) FX content. I remember watching full episodes of "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia" there some time ago. I remember that they even had episodes a week after they aired. I can deal with that if I have to.

Too bad they don't do that anymore.

Looking at that show's page now, there are no full episodes available, let alone the newest ones. Now the show's page on Hulu says they're able to post new episodes 30 days after they air, starting later this month. The same goes for "The League". The Same goes for the "Sons of Anarchy". Awesome. Thanks Hulu. Thanks FOX.

AdAge has an interesting and timely article about a speech given by Hulu CEO Jason Kilar this week. According to the article, he basically told the "big media" to either serve consumers or lose them. AdAge's Nate Ives reports:

That's particularly true because media consumption is basically an optional activity, he said. It's habitual and important for most of us, he argued, but no one's going to actually die if they don't see the latest episode of "30 Rock." And within media, as the magazine publishers in the room were well aware, mushrooming options mean you've got to serve consumers or lose them. It's no sure thing that a young person's going to watch "The Amazing Race" instead of visiting Facebook. "Content is discretionary, so you better focus on convenience," he told the audience.

Convenience. What a concept. It seems like FOX is going out of its way to make it as inconvenient as possible for me to see the shows I watch. Meanwhile, DISH claims to be keeping up the fight.

"We regret that FOX Networks, the owner of some Regional Sports Networks, FX and National Geographic Channel, removed their channels from the DISH Network line-up," the company says. "FOX has demanded a rate increase of more than 50%. An increase this large would force DISH Network to pass these costs on to our customers, which we are unwilling to do during these tough economic times."

"DISH Network will continue to work tirelessly for a fair agreement in order to bring these channels back at the earliest possible time." Maybe we'll get lucky and they'll bring the channels back in time to see episodes that haven't even aired on Hulu yet, so we'll either have to DVR them while we wait to be caught up.

Google Apps highlights – 10/8/2010

2010-10-10T07:05:00.000-07:00

This is part of a regular series of Google Apps updates that we post every couple of weeks. Look for the label "Google Apps highlights" and subscribe to the series. - Ed.

Over the last couple weeks, we rolled out new settings in Gmail for email traditionalists, and some features in Google Docs to make it easier to work with document revisions and imported spreadsheet data. We also had big news to share about bringing Google Apps to all K-12 students in New York state.

Try Gmail without conversation view

We think conversation view in Gmail is a big time saver, because it automatically groups related messages into neatly organized discussions. But over the years we’ve heard from many people accustomed to a traditional inbox that conversation view drives them nuts. Last Wednesday we introduced the option for people to turn conversation view off or on in Gmail Settings if they’d like. With this option, messages are delivered to the inbox individually, like you see in most email applications. Threaded or unthreaded—now it’s your choice.

Better revision history in Google documents

One of the ways Google Docs is different from other office software is its ability to automatically save and display every revision ever made, even if multiple people have edited a file together. Last week we made revision history in Google documents even better, by simplifying how revision time stamps are displayed, speeding up how fast you can flip through sequential revisions, and highlighting changes made by different editors with different colors, so you can quickly scan for who changed what. Go to “File” > “See revision history” to try it out.

Better data import in Google spreadsheets

We also improved Google spreadsheets recently with better data import options. For example, if you’re importing information from a .csv file, you can create a whole new spreadsheet, append to the current sheet, add a new sheet to your existing spreadsheet or even replace your entire spreadsheet with the new version. We also upgraded the import preview pane to show a snapshot of how your spreadsheet will look after import, so you can verify that things are set the way you want.

Who’s gone Google?

Tens of thousands of businesses, schools and organizations have made the switch to Gmail and Google Apps since our last update. And on Tuesday, we announced a new agreement with the state of New York to bring Google Apps, including training and support to 697 public school districts, as well as all non-public and charter schools across the state. New York is the fifth and largest state to “go Google” throughout their K-12 system, joining Oregon, Iowa, Colorado and Maryland. We’re unbelievably excited about the opportunity to enrich the classroom for more than 3.1 million students and hundreds of thousands of teachers in New York.

We hope these updates help you and your organization get even more from Google Apps. For details and the latest news in this area, check out the Google Apps Blog.

Social Media Marketing is Dying

2010-10-03T09:37:00.000-07:00

If nothing is certain, one thing is - social media is losing its magic. What once was a new and improved way to keep in touch with your closest loved ones has become just another sales pitch to convince you to sign up to another dreadful business prospect, newsletter, product, or service. There is no opening or closing - simply raw advertisements that lack sincerity. The people advertising their products don't care about you or your general interests. They're too set on the idea that you're going to sign up and turn them into a success.

What's wrong with this picture? Could it be that the advertisements lack taste and real value, or could it be that the people who want your business care less about who you are and what you are interested in?

[Links From PR9 Sites!]

What business entrepreneurs are forgetting is that they are on the other side of the fence of social media. They are on the advertising end, which means without a real connection to the "the people," they are getting nowhere. At some point, a real connection needs to be established or otherwise all efforts to make a sale or spread the word are pointless.

The truth? No one cares about you unless you care about them, particularly when it comes to social media. Let's say that you've got an account with Facebook. Each day when you see those tiny red notifications, you're dead sure that they signify a message from your friends or family. Unfortunately, you open your inbox and all you see are loud advertisements. What do you do? You delete them, and you do so automatically without any interest whatsoever about what they say.

[1000 Visitors to Your Site!]

Advertising gurus are no longer "gurus," they are simply annoying spammers who have no clue what they are doing. Business owners are missing the point. If their emails are getting read, it's only by other advertisers just so they can compare tactics and techniques. Another sad part of it all is that no one is coming up with new techniques. Everybody is following someone who they think is successful, but in reality, no one is making any money because of their lack of effort and knowledge.

If you haven't noticed (and you most likely have), all online entrepreneurs go about advertising their businesses in the same way. First, they request you as a fríend or become a follower (Twitter). Some of them may greet you with a "thanks for the request" or some other similar phrase, while others jump straight to the point and start bombarding you with their "winníng" sales pitch. Who are you more likely to communicate with? Nothing screams "delete" louder and faster than a sales pitch.

[Forget Expensive PPC Advertising - There is an Alternative!]

Some of the "thanks for the request" people might actually make it, as long as they don't jump the gun too quickly. Unfortunately, the majority of them end it right there and automatically go on a link-posting frenzy, and immediately begin flooding your inbox with details about their products with no mention of how they might benefit you individually. It's almost as if they are "demanding" that you purchase from them without any clear reason as to why.

On the other hand, some people are making sales. They are the ones who take their time in getting to know people. They ask questions and take a true interest in their prospects. Developing customer relationships is the most important part of advertising on social media because in the real world, customer relationships are a must.

It helps to wear the shoe on the other foot. Picture walking into a store with workers that aren't friendly and don't seem to have your interest anywhere in their top priorities. They are anxious for you to purchase something and that is it. They don't care what you purchase or why, they just want your money. When you leave, they want you to come back over and over, even if you're not interested in what they've got. It's a horrible experience for both you and them.

When you look at it from a different perspective, it helps to see why social media is dying for your company. What people want is warmth and a display of interest in who they are, not lousy sales pitches. As soon as business professionals establish a connection, then they might have a chance, but until then, it's best to just stick to more familiar means of advertising and leave social media to what it was always meant for. Bring common sense back to your marketing.

What does the future of display advertising look like?

2010-09-30T13:19:00.000-07:00

This afternoon, we gave a keynote address at the Interactive Advertising Bureau’s MIXX Conference in New York, entitled “Display 2015: Smart and Sexy.”

As you know by now, we’re investing significantly to make display advertising better for users, advertisers and publishers. Display advertising really is at the heart of what we’re doing at Google these days. 99 percent of our top 1,000 clients are now running campaigns on the Google Display Network. And last year, they increased their spending on display advertising by over 75 percent.

Today, we explained why we think display advertising is about to go through the biggest and most important revolution in its history. We made seven predictions about where display advertising will be in 2015:

 50 percent of ad campaigns will include video ads bought on a cost-per-view basis (that means that the user will choose whether to watch the ad or not, and the advertiser will only pay if the user watches). That’s up from very little today.

 Today, advertisers are starting to deliver ads that are tailored to particular audiences. Many are using real-time bidding technology, so that they can bid on the ad space that they think is most valuable. In 2015, 50 percent of these ads will be bought using this real-time technology.

 With smartphone growth skyrocketing, mobile is going be the number one screen through which users engage with advertisers’ digital brands.
 Today, the “click” is the most important way that advertisers measure their display ad campaigns, but it’s not always the best measure—especially if an ad campaign is designed to boost things like brand awareness or recall. With new measurement technologies emerging, in five years, there will be five metrics that advertisers commonly regard as more important than the click.
 Just like most news articles on the web today can be commented on, shared, discussed, subscribed to and recommended, in 2015, 75 percent of ads on the web will be “social” in nature—across dozens of formats, sites and social communities.

 Rich media formats work. They enable great creativity and interaction between users and advertisers, but today they only represent about 6 percent of total display ad impressions. That will increase to 50 percent, for brand-building ad campaigns.

 All the investments that are making display advertising smarter and sexier will help publishers increase their revenues. Display advertising is going to grow to a $50 billion industry in five years.
We also wanted to visualize the face of the display advertising revolution, so we demonstrated four exciting new technologies:
 We demonstrated some new video ad formats we’ve been testing on YouTube that we’re calling “TrueView.” These will roll out later this year. These ad formats give people the option to skip an ad if they don’t want to watch, or to choose from multiple ads the one they want to watch. Importantly, advertisers only pay if the user chooses to watch their ad.

 We showed some of the things that are becoming possible with our new Teracent technology. This technology can dynamically alter the creative elements of an ad in real-time to make it more relevant and effective, depending on factors like geographic location, language, the content of the website and the time of day.

 You might be familiar with Google Goggles, a way to search the web on mobile devices just by taking a picture. We gave a preview of some experimental uses of Google Goggles that could one day enable advertisers to deliver great display ads to users. Imagine pointing your phone’s camera at an ad for a car in a magazine, and having the car appear in 3D in your mobile device. Or pointing at a movie poster and having the movie trailer play in the device, right in your hand. No QR codes, no downloads!

 We even showed a fun example of what rich media can do—our speech was broadcast live in a number of expandable ad units across the web, and was updated with tweets in real time.

Google adwords Reports that have moved to the Campaigns tab

2010-09-26T11:42:00.000-07:00

To make it easier for you to analyze your account's performance, we're adding more advanced reporting options, previously only accessible through the Report Center, to the Campaigns tab. With these changes, you can manage your campaigns and analyze their performance all in one place.

The following report types are already available on the Campaigns tab:

If you have these types of reports saved in the Report Center, they'll soon be copied to the Control panel and library , a new area on the Campaigns tab where all your reports will be stored. Once they've been copied to the panel, please start using the Campaigns tab if you want to create new versions of these reports.

Enable the Ad Extensions tab in Google Adwords

2010-09-23T17:38:00.000-07:00

The Ad Extensions tab shows you detailed data about the ad extensions that you've created within a specific campaign. It also allows you to add, edit or delete your ad extensions.

The tab automatically appears in your account when you've enabled ad extensions in at least one campaign.You can enable or disable the tab for your account view by clicking the arrow button next to your existing tabs above your performance table. When enabled, the tab appears in three places in your account:

The "All Online Campaigns" overview screen: The tab will show all extensions for all your campaigns (or "rollup view").
The campaign details page: The tab will show all extensions for the selected campaign (or "campaign view").
The ad group details page: The tab will show all campaign-level extensions that apply to the selected ad group. You'll also see ad-specific extensions, if applicable.

PPC Tips, Tricks and Resources

2010-09-16T15:35:00.000-07:00

Whether you're new to search engine marketing (SEM) or if you simply need to brush up on your optimization skills, you can use the below list of key performance indicators and possible solutions to troubleshoot any issues that you may spot in your own campaigns. Keep in mind that the bullet points below aren't meant to be used all together as an across-the-board cure-all; you will need to use your own discretion to determine which adjustments may be most beneficial to your particular campaigns.

Low Click-Through Rate (CTR)
• Test multiple ads
• Use dynamic text
• Make ad groups more focused
• Make ads more relevant (to keywords and landing pages)
• Adjust match types:
- Use phrase match instead of exact match
- Use broad match instead of phrase match
• Add negative keywords
• Implement demographic targeting

Previous posts on low CTR:

High Cost-Per-Click / Low Return-on-Investment (ROI)
• Ensure landing page URLs are current (no broken links)
• Revise ad copy; make it more concise, mention special offers, use calls to action (e.g. “buy”, “shop”, etc.)
• Adjust bids (lower)
• Match types: bid on broad, phrase, exact
• Add negative keywords
• Set daily limit to monthly budget

Previous posts on cost-per-click and ROI:

Low Page Position
• Increase base bid
• Review keywords and ad copy relevancy
• Dynamic text in ad title, text, display URL

Previous posts on page position:

Low Traffic
• Shorter keyword phrases
• Expand keywords (try Microsoft Advertising Intelligence)
• Increase bids to improve page position
• Use broad match
• Remove or expand geographical targeting

Previous posts on traffic:

Low Conversion Rate
• Update landing pages
• Bid higher on the keywords that perform the best

Previous posts on conversion tracking:

A Google Health update

2010-09-15T11:59:00.000-07:00

Google Health launched a bit over two years ago, and since then it's been listening to the users, analyzing feedback and conducting research. google’ve learned a lot from You! You’ve confirmed that having a central place online to store and share medical data with whomever you want is important and a step in the right direction. And google’ve added a number of features based on what you’ve asked for so far. But you’ve also told to google that it’s not enough; that you’re also looking for tools that will help you act on all your health and wellness concerns. Google’ve heard you ask for easier data tracking, more personalization and the ability to set and track progress toward your health goals. Google listened, and today they’re announcing a new design and new features for Google Health.

So what’s new? Well, Google’ve developed an easier-to-use dashboard that brings together even more of your health and wellness information in one place and makes it easier for you to organize and act on that information. they’ve also heard from you that focusing on wellness, and wellness goals, is a big part of the solution, and that it’s important to record your daily experience and set goals

So our new re-design better organizes your medical information, while creating a more welcoming place to set goals for yourself and check in daily on your progress. For example, you might want to set a goal around walking more each day or to lower your cholesterol over time. With our new design, you can easily monitor your path to success with a visual graph that shows your progress towards your personalized goal. You can even create custom trackers for other things that you want to monitor like daily sleep, exercise, pregnancy or even how many cups of coffee you drink a day.

We’ve also integrated with several new partners to make it easier for you to collect the data you need to track your progress, including Fitbit, maker of a wearable device that captures health and wellness data such as steps taken, calories burned and sleep quality; and CardioTrainer, one of the top mobile apps for tracking fitness activity and weight loss. In the two weeks since CardioTrainer’s integration went live, CardioTrainer developer WorkSmart Labs reports that users have already uploaded more than 150,000 workouts to Google Health, where they can more easily view, track and set goals around their workouts and monitor them along with other health and wellness information.

Besides tracking progress toward your health goals, our new design also gives you the ability to take notes or keep a journal on your progress for each health condition or medication you’re taking. The new design also delivers information that is more personalized to your particular set of medical conditions or specific medications. You can access improved content links for each medical condition, medication or lab result you have in your Google Health profile. And they’ve made the Google Health profile easier to read and customize, with the ability to hide past items or sections that are outdated or no longer relevant. All of this helps you keep your dashboard up-to-date with current, relevant information, while still letting you maintain a complete health history.

In addition to redesigning the product and forming new partnerships with device and mobile apps developers, they’ve continued to expand our more traditional integrations with hospitals and other healthcare data providers. Three recent highlights include Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital at Stanford, University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC) and Sharp HealthCare.

With this update, they’ve made Google Health an even more powerful tool for organizing all your health information online, and also for achieving your health and wellness goals. We think you’ll find that organized, measurable and engaging information helps make it easier to achieve better health and wellness.

http://www.google.com/intl/en-US/health/about/

Gist Gadget in Gmail

2010-09-14T10:36:00.000-07:00

See the Gist Gadget work with Gmail

View customer success stories

Try it!

Gist Gadget - Rich Business Profiles by Gist, Inc

Get latest contact details, news, and updates about anyone in your inbox right inside Gmail. The Gist Gadget creates a business profile for anyone in the "From" or "CC" fields.

See contact details, work information, and updates

Request profiles to build direct connections

Search across all your contacts in your network

Gist helps you prepare for a meeting, make an introduction, or just find a better way to connect with others by bringing together your contacts with related content about them to provide important context in your interactions.

Gist constantly generates updates for individual and company profiles with the latest from social networks like Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter, over 20 million blogs, and over 50,000 news sources. The Gist Gadget then brings all of this social data together and prioritizes it for quick consumption and action right inside Gmail.

"More context, less clicks." ReadWriteWeb
"?find out way more about the people in your inbox, directly from Gmail." Mashable
"?an easy, intuitive CRM app." Gist user

Users can experience Gist as a feature rich web application, as an add-in to leading email applications like Gmail, Microsoft Outlook, and Lotus Notes or on a mobile device with both iPhone and Android applications available.

The Gist Promise:
- Your data is wholly owned and controlled by you. At no time is your data shared unless specifically granted by you.
- Your data is secure. We take great lengths to secure all user data and ensure your data privacy and confidentiality.
- The level of data integration that Gist performs is fully under your control.
- We will never use your data to reach out to your contacts.

Youtube Video Targeting - integrated, targeted and measurable campaigns

2010-09-12T11:35:00.000-07:00

Much of our recent work at YouTube has focused on making it easy for advertisers and agencies to run integrated, targeted and measurable campaigns across the internet. This has involved a lot of product, sales and back-end integration with Google products (like AdWords and TV ads), so we can build easy-to-use, scalable options for advertisers on YouTube.

Today we're taking another step in this direction, by allowing advertisers to start testing a new Video Targeting tool on YouTube. Video Targeting is modeled after similar Google planning tools and pretty much does what it says: it gives advertisers more control of their ad campaigns by letting them choose specific YouTube partner content they'd like to target. The tool is flexible and helps advertisers discover videos relevant to their campaign and their target audience: it suggests videos based on keywords (like politics or fashion), viewer demographics (like age and gender), interest-based categories, or some combination of the three. Or, if an advertiser has a video in mind, they can see if it's available to target specifically. The result is a marketplace of video targeting options that results in extra control and better brand safety for display advertisers, and more useful and relevant ads on YouTube.

Our goal is to create an easy-to-use, self-service targeting tool for any advertiser who wants to run ads on YouTube. As this first version is in beta (and is being updated every day), it's missing a few features, as well as content from some of our partners -- like those who sell their own ads, for example. So it's currently intended for advertisers who work closely with sales representatives at YouTube. But if you want a sneak peek, you can check it now out at www.google.com/videotargeting.

AdSense Product Ideas page

2010-09-10T09:25:00.000-07:00

A few months ago, we created a Product Ideas page for AdSense, where you could tell us what product and feature updates you’d like to see. We received over 600 ideas from publishers all around the world, with ideas ranging from ad filtering options to increased transparency, and more detailed reporting to easier account management.

Our product and engineering teams have been hard at work to bring you ideas from the wishlist. We still have more to do, but wanted to share some of the progress so far:

You asked for...More transparency about how much you’re earning from AdSense.
What we’ve delivered...The AdSense for content and AdSense for search revenue shares are now publicly shared.

You asked for...The ability to block certain categories of ads, like religion and dating.
What we’ve delivered...Category blocking (previously known as category filtering) is now available in 13 languages. You can filter up to 11 ad categories, including religion, dating, politics and weight loss.

We’ve also been developing a new version of the AdSense interface. Although the interface is currently in beta, it addresses many of the requests we saw on the Product Ideas page. Take a look at the improvements that the new interface offers:

You asked for...Make it easy to change addresses when we move from one location to a new one.
What we’ve delivered...You can make requests to change the country of your payment address directly in the new AdSense interface. (Due to legal and system constraints, some country updates will still require you to create a new account.)

You asked for...Automatic revenue tracking to quickly and easily compare performance of ads of different sizes and types.
What we’ve delivered...The new AdSense interface offers Ad units, Ad sizes, and Ad types reports in the Performance Reports tab. These detailed reports can help you understand which individual ad units, ad sizes, and ad types perform best on your site.

You asked for...The ability to view data for a custom date range, similar to Google Analytics.
What we’ve delivered...The new AdSense interface includes a date range selector just like Google Analytics. Plus, to see how your earnings have changed over time, we also have a feature that allows you to compare two date ranges. Simply select the date range you want to compare, check “Compare to other dates”, fill in the start date, and we’ll fill in the end date for you!

You asked for...More time frames for analyzing metrics. Specifically we heard the wish to “select the same period of time and say group by week or month to see the trend.”
What we’ve delivered...Reports by week and month, in addition to by day, are available in the Performance Reports page. Along with reports for “Entire account by day” you can choose from weeks and months.

If you’d like the new beta interface enabled in your account, you can make a request.

Thanks for all your ideas and votes. Your ideas and feedback help our teams determine where we should be spending our time, so keep them coming!

Bing Search with Search Suggestions on your Firefox browser

2010-09-09T21:59:00.000-07:00

If you would like to add the Bing Search on your Firefox browser, check out this firefox add-on which can instantly show up search suggestions for the keywords you type in.

Bing provides great general search results, relevance, a big index and speed — all of the hallmarks of a good search engine. However, because sorting through search results can often be time consuming, Bing organizes popular results in a different way, designed to help you get the answers you’re looking for without having to guess the right way to phrase a search term.

Let me know with your experiance using this search engine and the results you get while searching for something.

FaceBook v/s Google

2010-09-08T12:08:00.000-07:00

Rumors have erupted recently about the web giant Google locking horns with Facebook in direct competition. The new social media platform Google is working on is tentatively dubbed Google Me by bloggers.

The tweet by Kevin Rose, founder of Digg stating that Google was launching “Google Me” to compete with Facebook started the rumor mills churning on June 28 and even though the message was deleted soon thereafter, others have taken up to add more grist to the mill.

The news is confirmed by ex-CTO of Facebook – Adam D’Angelo. He stated confidently that the ‘Google Me’ project was real and not a rumor and that through reliable sources he had learned that a large number of personnel are working to make it happen.

Google felt that their current product ‘Google Buzz’ apparently was not strong enough to compete with Facebook. It was too slow compared to the growth rate of Facebook, and so they have decided to build a top class social networking site, modeled on the lines of Facebook. Insiders have stated that this is a top priority project at Google.

“Google Me’ is estimated to be having a huge potential and expected to give Facebook a keen competition. Jason Kincaid of TechCrunch feels it is not that simple to create a new Facebook and it will be a daunting task for Google to face off with Facebook on the battle of social networking.

Many people in the search engine industry are in consensus about one thing – that the competition between Google and Facebook will usher in a new era and bring about balance due to one player trying to gain ground and become dominant in their fight to popularity and success. And there are those that are leery of the new service to be launched. They feel that Facebook has made inroads into people’s daily lives to such a great extent that no competitor would be able to gain ground and make any headway the way Facebook did.

Google has not been able to confirm the rumors of challenging Facebook, but off the record, people in the know about both Facebook and Google have been confirming that there is indeed something of the sort in the offing.

Though it seems like a tedious and uphill climb to even come up to the level of Facebook, it is also anticipated that Google cannot afford to fail. If they do fail, Facebook will retain its top-notch position as the best social networking site to date.

Why Publish SEO Press Releases?

2010-09-07T14:22:00.000-07:00

There are plenty of benefits of SEO press releases if you do them correctly:

Backlinks from credible news sites which increases the ranking of your website or blog for your keywords
Visibility in search engines
Ranking in Google News and Yahoo News for your keywords
Tens of thousands of headline impressions across hundreds of blogs, websites, and news sites that run RSS headlines
Potential media coverage
Can help your new website escape from the “Google Sandbox” quickly

Wordpress tags auto link for Better SEO

2010-09-06T15:27:00.000-07:00

Do you have the latest version of wordpress on our blog? If yes you can find the in built Tags feature which can be used in each of your blog posts. Now you can use these tags as a great Internal pages link building tools but using a wordpress plugin called as – Wordpress Plugin Tags Autolink

You just need to add a minimum of 2 Tags in each of your post and a maximum of 6 Tags and this plugin finds similar tags in other posts and links to it. For example if you tag a post with wordpress , this plugin searches for all posts with the word ‘wordpress’ and automatically links to the Tags page. This option would save a lot of your time by automatically doing the link building for your blog and giving the tag pages more relevant backlinks.

Here is the link to the wordpress plugin – wordpress tags auto link which you just need to download and activate to get started.

20+ Ways to Build Backlinks

2010-09-03T12:01:00.000-07:00

Link Building is one of the greatest ways to increase traffic and get high ranking in search engines especially Google. It also helps your website get higher pagerank which results in more traffic to your website. Backlink plays an important role to get higher search rankings for your blog post, articles, etc. The more links you get to your site, the more quality visitors you’ll get from the search engines through the world.

It is all about building nice and quality backlinks to your blog or website. In search engine optimization (SEO), page rank is at least partially determined by the number of sites that link to yours.

1. Hubpages: It is very unpoliced and they’ll basically allow anything to stay on their site. Don’t forget to link to your website. The whole point of using HubPages to get links is to increase your site’s link juice, and ultimately its rankings. Hubpages does delete hubs and users who do not comply with the TOS.

2. Squidoo: Create a Squidoo page for your website or blog you like. Also include links to your website. It is great for creating solid links to your other Squidoo lenses or blogs because of the love that Google and other search engines shows Squidoo. When you create your content on either a Squidoo lens or blog, you need to make sure that you are targeting the people who would want to read it.

3. Social Bookmarking sites: These days social media is very popular source of backlinks. Create good content on your website, and submit to social bookmarking sites. Here is the list of 30+ Inspirational Social Bookmarking sites.

4. Give Testimonials: It is great way to get you a Backlink from a very authoritative site and has a big chance to drive you loads of traffic.

5. Article Directories: Article writing for building traffic and backlinks is a strategy that webmasters has been and still using effectively. The problem is that some website owners either ignores it or does not trust their writing skills. My favorites are eZineArticles and GoArticles.

6. Create a list post: I know list posts are old, but they still work great. Examples “10 Killer Ways to Make Money With Twitter”, “Top 5 Internet Marketing Gurus” or “99 Ways To Promote your blog”.

7. Guest Posting: This is the very popular way, especially between bloggers on the internet. Guest posting is not just about getting the backlinks but also to build your brand among the vast on-line users.

8. Blog commenting: Commenting on Do Follow Blogs is the easiest way to get backlinks. Use Follow List to find out blogs related to your niche.

9. Link exchange: It is a strategy used by webmasters where you give a website a link on your website and they give you a backlink to your website. It is not as effective as it was before.

10. Forum Posting: These days Many Forums provide Dofollow link via signatures of signed up users. If the forum is a popular one, a backlink can be extremely valuable. If you know the solution to a problem or the answer to a question and you feel your answer could benefit more users, put it on your website and direct the members to look at it at your website. In your signature, include the link to your website; with every post you get a backlink to your website.

11. Hold a contest: Run a contest on your blog like sushant is doing here. It tends to bring lots of backlinks and traffic.

12. Post at .gov and .edu forums: Submiting your links on edu links is a great way to boost backlinks, traffic and ranking on Search Engine that’s especially Google Search Engine. Edu and Gov links are still highest quality links that recommended by a lot of internet marketers.

* EDU Forums Including 200+ EDU Forums List

13. Press Release: It is widely understood that SEO press releases are an excellent source of backlinks and can greatly assist in an overall SEO marketing plan. To get these links, you need to include links within your press release your site. The most popular press releases website is prweb.com. Don’t forget to link to your website.

14. Release a Free WordPress Theme or Plugin: If you can make a custom WordPess theme or plugin then release it for free to your guests. WordPress themes and plugins are probably the easiest and fastest ways to build backlinks to your blog, with little effort. Don’t forget to add link back to your website in footer.

15. Buy a Review: If your product is good and unique enough, try to ask bloggers to review and blog about your website, product or services. You can also offer to pay them directly to review about your site, or you can buy posts through services like ReviewMe.

16. Link Baiting: Make good posts which will help you create lot of discussion and backlinks. Whether by creating good content on your blog or by offering something unique, you might have already created linkbaits without knowing that you have done so.

17. Buy Backlinks: Be careful where to buy from and make sure that the website hosting your link is worth it. Text-Link-Ads are most likely your best option.

Try SmartBloggerz For Backlinks!

18. Leave a comment here and get a backlink.

19. Top 7 commentators are rewarded with a backlink. The List Refreshes Every Month.

20. Three More Ways to quickly build thousands of backlinks.

Lastly, is there anything you find something to disagree with in this post or have an opinion on this topic? Please leave us a comment below

CMS Solution

2010-08-22T11:05:00.000-07:00

Joomla! Your Own CMS Solution

Joomla!, another widely used content management system, which is supported by its large community of developers, possesses all the features to suit any nature of business. No matter if you want to make a professional website, an online shop or a personal website you can do it all for through Joomla!

Its easy installation and powerful administrator's panel makes it winner amongst the other content management solutions. One can very easily add content, images & audio and manage the database of his website. Such a great popularity of this software is also due to the large numbers of available templates and extensions. Wide availability of its plug-ins also helps the owner to make the website the way it needs to be. The setting up of its navigation structure also can be managed with the help of auxiliary tools.

Being an open source it is free to all and can be used by anyone. Its extensions, which help you in customisation of your website, can be found on its website. Some are free and for others you need to pay to use. But still if you are not exactly getting the module or extension of your choice you can create it. There are various tutorials available online for Joomla. You can read and watch videos available on YouTube or other video sharing sites. To understand the codes, you just need to have little technical knowledge about HTML and PHP and then, even you would be able to work on its technicalities. Or, the best and the most feasible thing would be to hire a company providing Joomla! services and they will do it for you in a more professional manner.

Joomla! Benefits:

1: Since the software has database driven site engine, it helps you to separate content, design and code.

2: Control over content. You do not need to be a technical person to publish or edit content.

3: People, other than admin can also publish content i.e multiple logins/users/authors.

4: Easy customisation of layout or design without disturbing the content.

5: You can create polls/voting system and forum to measure readers' choice.

6: Thousands of 3rd Part Extension to make your customization easy.

7: Browser upload of images to your own library for use anywhere in the site.

So if you are planning to adopt any CMS solution for your website anytime soon then don't forget to keep Joomla! away from your consideration list.

Seopressor Best Word Press Plugin

2010-07-09T21:09:00.000-07:00

Click here to download SEOpressor Plugin!!

List of Best Adsense Revenue Sharing Websites

2010-02-18T22:27:00.000-08:00

List of Best Adsense Revenue Sharing Websites:

Forums/Communities:

KernalTrap.org
Work From Home Forums
NameSlot
HTTPPoint
Senserely
Zizula Forums
Webmasters.org
Community-Knowledge.com
MostlyAnimeFun.com
HubPages.com
InfoBarrel.com
Ad-Sensing.com – A forum on PPC advertising and more – 50%
Digital Point Forums – Search Engine Optimization and Marketing forum – 50%
Domain Name Portal – Domain name forum – 20-50%
Free Forum Hosting – Forum hosting and support – 50%
HTTPPoint – Webmaster forum, SERP and SEO forums – 50%
International Domain Names – 50%
Internet Marketing Forum – Marketing and advertising – 50%
Name Pros – Buy, sell, and discuss domain names – 50%
Revenue Source – Advertising discussion site – Unknown
SEO Meeting – SEO, webmaster forum – 100%
The Webmaster Forum – Webmaster forum – 50%
Total Web Talk Forum – Webmaster forum – 50%
Webdigity – SEO, webmaster, affiliate – 100%
Webmasters.org – Webmaster forum – 100%
Webmaster Talk – WMT.in is a webmaster discussion forum – 50%
Webmaster-Talk.com – A webmaster discussion forum – 40/10%
WebTalk Forums – WTF webmaster forum – 70%
Whooked Forum - Webmaster, SEO, etc – 80%

Article Directories:

Hot Web Tools
Oocuz.com
Xomba
Article Codex – Free article repository – 50%
Article Trader – Free articles for your site – 50%
Articles Revenue – Write articles for them – 100% *reduced later unknown percentage
DotNetSpider – Tutorial, articles, etc – 90%
GuideDawgs.com – User submitted advice and guidance articles – 40 to 55%
MeshPlex – Tutorial Database – 100%
Scratch Projects - Write articles – $50 per article, plus 50%
Share Your Expertise – An information sharing community – 100%

Blogging:

Cybersist
My Life Of Travel
YouSayToo
HYIP Blog
MyTripleDub
blogLipi
EverythingMom.com
BlogEvolve - Blogging community – 50%
Blogger Party – A blogging community that shares Adsense advertising revenue – 50%
Bloggeries Blog Forum – A blog forum – 50%
Writing Campus – Blogging community – 70%

Music:

SoundChilds – Music sales, forum – 90-95%

Rating Sites:

RateItAll – Consumer ratings and reviews – 50%
Music Nerds – CD Review Site – 100%

Others:

Simpy (bookmarking)
Downline Partners (online mktg)
Rummage4Money (search)
ScratchProjects (code)
RateItAll.com (opinions)
Flixya (video sharing)
Freerange Stock (stock photos)
MediaFlix.net (video sharing)
Boostpost.com (social networking)
GreenDOC.net (document creation)
ISell.com (classified ads)
MarineClassifiedAds.com (classified ads)
Qumon.com (IT Q&A)
TipsBase.com (tips)
Meshplex.org (tutorial wiki)

General:

AdSensigg – AdSensigg = AdSense + DIGG-like (interesting idea) – 50% Adsense Revenue Share
Dosh Dosh – Invite only revenue sharing community – Unknown
Free Ads with Adsense Revenue Sharing – Interesting link building venture – Unknown
FunAdvice – Advice and answers site – Unknown
Google Earth Hacks – Google Earth hacks forum – 75%
Hub Pages Publish information on a topic you love to write about – 10% (oh boy!)
Trend Hunter Report trends that you find – 100% New!
Senserely Yours – An entire community based around sharing Adsense Revenue – Unknown
That’s Pretty Dumb – Highlighting the stupidest things businesses do to us – 100%
QooForum – A general forum about anything and everything – 50%
Vubx.com – A gadgets article and blog site – 75%
You Say Too – Revenue Sharing Community – 50%

Home Improvement:

eFloor Plan – Home Improvement – 60%

News:

DotNetKicks.com – Microsoft .NET information, links, community – 50%
Kick.ie – Tracking the best of the Irish web – 50%
Value Investing News – Investor powered stock market news – 50%

Social Networking:

Google Knol – Wikipedia-like site by Google – 100%
FriendTrain – social media site – Unknown
Lensroll – Directory of Squidoo pages – 50%
Squidoo - An excellent social media site – Shares revenue based upon various criteria *very good source of revenue!
Qassia – Articles Submission and social media – 100% New!
Tagfoot - Excellent social bookmarking site – 50%+ New!
Xomba - Make posts, share links with other Xomba users – 50%

Sports:

Golf Nation – Golf, Golf, and more Golf – 75%
I Gotta Rant – Sports, Music, etc – 50%
The Sand Trap – More Golf – 50%

IT, Tech-related:
Kernel Trap – Kernel development and news – 80%
Scratch – Write Programming Tutorials for them – 50%
SpiceFuse Forums General computer forum – 75%
Tech Support Humor – Tech support humor site – 100%
Technology Parent – Info for parents about technology – 50%

Video and Photo:

Flixya – Share videos, photos, and blogs – 100%
Free Range Stock – Stock photo directory – 80%
Howcast - Video sharing – 50%
Rever – Video sharing – 50%
Stockvault.net – Photo directory for aspiring photographers – 100%

TubeImage.com – Free image hosting – 100%

The importance of the Meta Description tag

2009-12-05T18:31:00.000-08:00

How important is the meta description tag ?
-this is a very frequently asked question by blogger all around the world.

These days the importance of the meta description is less and less important. The meta description was originally and important factor for a higher position in search engines ranking. On that time search engines weren`t so "wise", and the meta descriptions where full of spammy keywords.

Now search engines are more wiser and spamming your meta description might can bring to get penalized or even banned. It`s not easy to recover your blog from a ban. Be aware, if you decide to use meta descriptions don`t make them look spammy and don`t stuff the them whit lots of keywords.

If you have a relevant meta description google may use it as a snippet for search results description , else it will use a piece of text from your content or instead google may use your ODP (DMOZ) directory description.

A well written meta description can attract more visitors through search engines search results , but be careful , don`t use the same description for all your pages ,google and some other search engines may threat this as duplicated content.
Try to keep your description tag bellow 150 characters (including spaces), don`t repeat any word more than twice ,a high keyword density may can bring to get penalized. Write accurate ,relevant and unique descriptions for each particular page, write them for humans instead of search engines.

In conclusion, the meta description tag is useless for your ranking. It has no weight in google algorithm.

Blogcatalog - a great traffic source

2009-12-04T23:04:00.000-08:00

Blogcatalog is a great blog directory which aggregates member activity across other popular networks. Blogcatalog offers many features ,you can follow other users and other users can follow you. By following someone you will see their updates (newest blog posts , profile changes , friends list updates...) on your dashboard. The bad part of this social blogger community is that the links are NoFollow , but using it well can bring you lots of visitors.

Sign up , it worth! Your blog will be ranked, with a higher rank you will be in a higher position on the blogs list in your category. Your score is depending on the number of reviews and the ratings what your profile visitors gave to your blog. Talk with other bloggers and get them to vote your blog. Following others and being active will help go gain followers and more traffic for you. Add your communities to your profile ,maybe some of your visitors will follow you on other networks ,too. The key to get traffic from social networks is to talk with others , make friend , join groups , to be active. For example if you are an addicted to blogging join my Blogcatalog Group: Bloggers Group

Blogger is a very large social blog directory with more than 125.000 blogs ranked, 4.500 groups to join and it`s in the top 1000 websites in the world with an Alexa rank of 294. According to Alexa.com Blogcatalog is online since 25-Apr-2004 and has 32.927 sites linking in.
Blogcatalog offers a large range of free widgets like Recent Readers Widget , News Feed Widget , Communities Widgets and more.

The Blogcatalog Community Blog is a place to highlight great blogs and bloggers, share the latest blogging and social media news, review tools for bloggers and keep you up to date on what's going on at Blogcatalog.

Change image on mouseover (hover)

2009-11-28T23:30:00.000-08:00

These days I spent many hours designing and creating my template because I want to make it look professional and beautiful. I`m still working on my template but soon it will be ready. During this time I used many effects like changing an image on mouseover (hover). This can be done with three methods ,one using a short javascript code and one using a bit longer CSS code, one using CSS sprites.

1. Using javascript
This code doesn`t need any CSS code , just change the URLs of the images.

2. Using CSS
This method is more advanced, place the first piece of code , the CSS part right before ]]> ,the HTML part of the code can be placed anywhere between and or even inside a gadget (sidebar).
The CSS part of the code:

.class-name {
display:block;
background-image:url(http://first-image.jpg);
width:100px;
height:100px;
}
.class-name:hover {
background-image:url(http://second-image.jpg);
}

The HTML part of the code:

NOTE: Use the same class name at both of codes , you can use any name. Change the width and height attributes to the size of you image , if the first and second images have different size place the width and height attribute of the second image after the line with the URL of the second image.

3. Using CSS Sprites
I will write more about this method in another post more detailed.

Cute comments area for blogger

2009-11-14T20:43:00.000-08:00

These days I was searching for problems of bloggers to solve when I noticed that none of Blogger blogs have the comment avatar images on the right side. Only Wordpress blogs have this feature to set the position of the avatar images. I`ve spent two days finding a solution when I decided to customize the entire comments area. I think my comments area is now pretty cool, but it`s difficult to install it. Please read with attention, follow the steps bellow carefully and BACK UP your template!

Here is an image about my comments area, later in this tutorial I will show you how to customize it:

Installing this comment area form
This is pretty difficult, read with attention!

1. Go to your Dashboard, Layout , Edit HTML and check in the Expand Widget Templates checkbox.

2. Find the following code (Ctrl + F and type in comments-block):

3. Replace the above code with the following one:

says:

BY SEO TIPS BLOGGER

4. Find the following codes and remove them:

Your code may be a little different , search for the starting tags

#comments-block {
margin:1em 0 1.5em;
line-height:1.6em;
}
#comments-block .comment-author {
margin:.5em 0;
}
#comments-block .comment-body {
margin:.25em 0 0;
}
#comments-block .comment-footer {
margin:-.25em 0 2em;
line-height: 1.4em;
text-transform:uppercase;
letter-spacing:.1em;
}
#comments-block .comment-body p {
margin:0 0 .75em;
}

Customizing the comments area

Find the ]]> line and place the following code BEFORE it!

#comments-block3 {
padding:0;
margin:0;
float:left;
overflow:hidden;
}
#comments {
padding:0;
margin:0;
}
#comment-name-url {
width:465px;
float:left;
}
#comment-date {
width:465px;
float:left;
}
#comment-header {
float:left;
border:1px dotted rgb(187, 187, 187);
padding:5px 0 5px 10px;
margin:5px;
background: rgb(238, 238, 238);
}
.avatar-image-container {
background:url(http://i645.photobucket.com/albums/uu178/coolboycsaba/no-avatar4.jpg);
width:48px;
height:48px;
float:right;
margin:5px 10px 5px 5px;
}
.avatar-image-container img {
border: 1px solid white;
width:48px;
height:48px;
}
a.comments-autor-name {
color:#088A08;
font-weight:bold;
font-size: 12px;
font-style: normal;
font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana;
}
a.says {
color:black;
font-weight:bold;
font-size: 12px;
font-style: normal;
font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana;
}
.says a:hover {
text-decoration: none;
}
a.comment-permalink {
color:#088A08;
font-weight:normal;
font-size: 10px;
font-style: normal;
font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana;
}

1. Change the size of the avatar image

Customize the size of the comments to fit to your template:

First change the size of the avatar images:

.avatar-image-container {
background:url(http://i645.photobucket.com/albums/uu178/coolboycsaba/no-avatar4.jpg);
width:48px;
height:48px;
float:right;
margin:5px 10px 5px 5px;
}
.avatar-image-container img {
border: 1px solid white;
width:48px;
height:48px;
}

To change the size of the avatar images replace the red marked values to any number of pixels. Use the same at all red marked code lines.

Now change the size of the comments area:

#comment-name-url {
width:465px;
float:left;
}
#comment-date {
width:465px;
float:left;
}

The size of the comments area is depending on the size of the main-wrapper and on the size of the avatar image: e.g:

(main-wrapper)550px - (avatar image)48px - (paddings , margins and borders)37px = 465px

The padding and margins size is in bold because it`s always 37px, calculate the size of your comments area size and use the result as the value of the red marked code lines.

2. Change the colors
To change the background color of the comments change the red code line , to change the color of the border change the blue code line to any color.

#comment-header {
float:left;
border:1px dotted rgb(187, 187, 187);
padding:5px 0 5px 10px;
margin:5px;
background: rgb(238, 238, 238);
}

e.g:

#comment-header {
float:left;
border:1px dotted red;
padding:5px 0 5px 10px;
margin:5px;
background:#FF00FF;

To change the color of the comment author name change the red marked code line , to change the color of the comment posted date change the blue marked code line, to change the color of the says word change the green marked code line.

a.comments-autor-name {
color:#088A08;
font-weight:bold;
font-size: 12px;
font-style: normal;
font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana;
}
a.says {
color:black;
font-weight:bold;
font-size: 12px;
font-style: normal;
font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana;
}
a.comment-permalink {
color:#088A08;
font-weight:normal;
font-size: 10px;
font-style: normal;
font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana;
}

3. Change the border types

Here are the border types to chose from, every comment have a border.

#comment-header {
float:left;
border:1px dotted rgb(187, 187, 187);
padding:5px 0 5px 10px;
margin:5px;
background: rgb(238, 238, 238);
}

Dotted

-this is the default , don`t change the red marked code

Dashed

-to use this type of borders change the value of the red marked word to dashed

Solid

-change the red marked word to solid

4. Change the No-Avatar image:

.avatar-image-container {
background:url(http://i645.photobucket.com/albums/uu178/coolboycsaba/no-avatar4.jpg);
width:48px;
height:48px;
float:right;
margin:5px 10px 5px 5px;
}

Change the URL (marked with red) with the URL of your image, please change it or download the image and upload it to your own host or photobucket , don`t steal my bandwidth!
Save your template!
Well done! If you have followed all the above steps carefully your comments area is pretty cool and it`s ready to use!
NOTE: Please don`t remove that small link at the end! Thanks my reading our blog!

Write a Guest Post

2009-10-31T21:51:00.000-07:00

Help us to grow our blog! Contribute to our community by interacting with us and by sending us your posts about your SEO experiences or blogger template editing.
Your name with the name of your website/blog will be displayed with a DoFollow link to your website/blog at the end of your article.
You will receive some visitors from this blog. More higher is the quality of your post than more higher will be the number of visitors.

The rules - read them!

Don`t submit duplicated or stolen articles!
Don`t submit the article to other blog ,select: submit only to this blog or if you have submitted allready to another blog please don`t submit it!
Write only about thinks what you know about ,write accurate post.

How to send an article:

Send your post via email to me:

Please send your article to seo_tips_blogger@yahoo.com

Please include:

your name
the name of your website/blog
the address of your website/blog
the title of your post
the content of your post

Thanks for contributing to OUR community!

How to change the background color of your blog

2009-10-29T00:36:00.000-07:00

Change the background of your blog to any color you want, or even change the color with an image. First you need to understand the structure of your blog template. The header, the sidebar, the posts and the footer are in the outer-wrapper. The rest of the page is the body. Changing the background color of the body will change the background of the outer-wrapper, too, but the background of the outer-wrapper can be changed separately ,so it`s possible to use different backgrounds for the body and the outer-wrapper.

1. First let`s change the background of the body: Go to Layout, Edit HTML Find the following code:

body { background:$bgcolor; margin:0; color:$textcolor; font:x-small Georgia Serif; font-size/* */:/**/small; font-size: /**/small; text-align: center; }

Look for the line what i have marked with red, the rest of the code may be different.

Replace the background:$bgcolor; tag (this may be different, just look for the first part of the code: background:) whit one of the following codes.

1. Use a color:

background:#000000;

background:rgb(0,0,0);

Here is a list of HEX and RGB colors to use.

2. Use an image:

background:url(http://the-url-of-the-image.jpg);

2. Now let`s set the background of the outer-wrapper:

Find the following code:

#outer-wrapper {
width: 660px;
margin:0 auto;
padding:10px;
text-align:$startSide;
font: $bodyfont;
}

Search for the first line of the code , the rest of the code may be different.

Now just do the same as at the body.

And don`t forget to save your template.

How to add a read more button to blogger posts - part 1

2009-10-21T17:10:00.000-07:00

A Read more... button is very useful if you have very long articles, because you can select the amount of text from the beginning of the post to display as a teaser. This post is the first part, in this post i will show you how to design your own read more button, because a stylish button is always better then a simple text link.

1. First we need an image to use as background for the button. I will use this image as example:

Please don`t use my image, try to create your own with any image editor program like Photoshop or even with Paint.

2. Now we need to place a code snippet inside of the template code :

Read more...

Place the code right after the following line:

This code snippet will place a simple Read more... link after all of your posts.

3. Now we will add some CSS code to customize the button:

#read-more-button {
background-color:white;
background-image:url(http://i645.photobucket.com/albums/uu178/coolboycsaba/read-more.png);
height:33px;
width:133px;
padding:2px 0 0 0;
background-repeat:no-repeat;
float:right;
}
a.read-more {
color:white;
font-size:18px;
color:white;
font-weight: normal;
margin:0 0 0 18px;
}

This is the code what i have used for my button. The first part of the code is responding for the button ,the second part for the text of the button. The height and width tags from the first part of the code are defining the size of the button, use the size of your image. The padding is the distance from the button and the objects around it. The first number is defining the top margin, the second number the right margin, the third is number the bottom ,and the last number the left margin. The padding is defining the space between the text inside the button, the values are the same as the margin. Place this code right BEFORE this code: ]]>

If you don`t understand something just ask!

Save your template and read the second part of the post: How to add a read more button to blogger posts -part 2

How to add a read more button to blogger posts - part 2

2009-10-20T12:21:00.000-07:00

In the first part of this tutorial I had explained how to add a the button after every post. Now I will show you how to show only a selected amount of text as a teaser from your posts. With this method you will need to select the amount of text to show for each post separately. If you Google for it you will found some automated methods but these are not working well, so it`s better to select the amount of text on your own, because you can select the most interesting part of your posts.

The concept of the code is very simple. The content of the post is placed in a div ,but without the select part of the text. The display of that div is set to hidden, so on the main page of the blog is visible just that part of the post what is not in that div. The full post is visible only on the post page. Here is the code:

I have used full-post as the name of that div. Place the code right after the line.

Save your template and now edit your posts in the following way:

This is the first part of the post , the teaser (the part of text showing up on the main page of the blog)
This is the rest of the post. This part of the post is visible only on the page of the post.

The red marked code snippets are the starting and the ending tags of the div called full-post. Place these tags in each of your posts in the same way as in my example.

NOTE: Don`t forget to close the div tag! If you don`t understand something just ask!

See how fast your blog is loading with WebWait

2009-10-17T00:28:00.000-07:00

WebWait is a free tool what checks the loading speed of a website or blog. The loading time is depending on many factors, like the speed of your host. If you have hosted your blog on blogger you can improve the host speed only by buying a faster host, but don`t worry , are many free ways, too. First check the loading speed of your blog, to check it just go to WebWait.com and type in your blog URL and click on the Time it! button.

The average loading time of my blog is 2.12. This is a good loading time , try to keep your loading time bellow 5s. You can improve the loading speed by removing some unnecessary gadgets and plugins. Use small images , don`t use large images scaled to a small size. Try to use a simple color as background or create a very small image and use the repeat tags. With this tool you can set the number of trials and the time between the checks. This tool shows the result of each individual check, too.

Remove unnecessary links

2009-10-13T23:57:00.000-07:00

Why remove unncessary links ?

Google Webmasters Guidelines tell us to don`t use more than 100 links on a single page.

Offer a site map to your users with links that point to the important parts of your site. If the site map is larger than 100 or so links, you may want to break the site map into separate pages.

Keep the links on a given page to a reasonable number (fewer than 100).

Whats are the risks of using more than 100 links on a single page?

By using more than 100 links you get a very small risk of getting black flagged or banned by google. The 100 links limit is more just a guideline, lots of high PR websites are using well beyond 100 links, but I think it`s better to listen to Google`s tips so if you have decided to remove some links read this post to see how to remove the links from labels and from timestamps.

#1 How to remove labels links ?

The easiest way to remove the labels links is to remove labels, but you can use the labels as keywords. Write your primary keywords of a post in

labels. Complete the bellow steps to remove only the links so we will have a simple text as labels. This method can drastically reduce the number of links.

1. Log in to Blogger and go to Layout >>> Edit HTML and check the Expand Widget Templates checkbox

2. Find the following code:

,

If you use Firefox press Ctrl + F and type some keywords from the above code in the search form to find the code easier. Here is an image from my test blog template code:

3. Remove the red marked pieces of code from the above code and save your template.

#2 How to remove timestamp link ?

Like at the labels you can simply remove the timestamp at all:

To totally remove the timestamp go to Layout , Page Elements , click on the Edit button from the Blog posts box and uncheck third checkbox:

This was the easiest way ,i have do the same for my blog, i think the timestamp is useles here is how to remove only the link so to have the timestamp as a simple text for those blogger who want to keep the timestamp:

1. Log in to Blogger and go to Layout >>> Edit HTML and check the Expand Widget Templatescheckbox

2. Find the following code:

expr:href='data:post.url' rel='bookmark' title='permanent link'>

You code may be a little different but, here is an image from my test blog template to help you:

3. Remove the red marked piece of code and save your template!

Automatic Sitemap Submission For Blogs And Websites

2009-08-17T11:34:00.000-07:00

You can directly submit your sitemaps to ;

Google,
Yahoo!,
Ask.com and
Moreover.com

Following are the steps for automatic sitemap submission :-

Open This URL - http://mypagerank.net/service_sn_index
Enter the sitemap address
Select Search Engines to submit
Click on submit button
Wait for engines response

How to use google search like a professional user

2009-08-13T21:36:00.000-07:00

How To Choose A Domain Name From An SEO Perspective

2009-06-25T11:47:00.000-07:00

Where SEO is concerned, the name of your web site is as important as many of the other SEO elements that you concentrate on.

Domain name must be related with content of your site :

Example - If your company name is ABC Company, but your business is selling Wooden Furniture, consider purchasing the domain name woodenfurniture.com, instead of ABC Company.com — ABC Company may not get you in the top of search rankings, but the very specific nature of your product probably will. And both the content of your site and your domain name will attract crawlers in the way you want. Using a domain name containing a keyword from your content usually improves your site ranking.

Domain Naming Tips :

Keep the name as short as possible. Too many characters in a name mean increased potential for misspellings. It also means that your site address will be much harder for users to remember unless it’s something really startling.

Avoid dashes, underscores, and other meaningless characters. If the domain name that you’re looking for is taken, don’t just add a random piece of punctuation or numerology to the name to “get close.” Instead, try to find another word that’s relevant, and possibly included in the list of keywords you’ll be using.

Opt for a .com name whenever possible. There are lots of domain extensions to choose from: info, biz, us, tv, names, jobs. However, if the .com version of your chosen domain name is available, that’s always the best choice. Users tend to think in terms of .com, and any other extension will be hard for them to remember. Com names also tend to receive higher rankings in search engines than web sites using other extensions.

Submit Your Website To Social Bookmarking Sites And Boost Your Page Rank

2009-06-21T17:35:00.000-07:00

Social bookmarking is a powerful tool in promoting a website. But going through all of those social bookmarking sites is very time-consuming and downloading all toolbars is madness. That's where SocialMarker.com comes in, the free service designed to reduce the time and effort needed to socially bookmark a website.

Requirements :-

Social Marker runs smoothly on all major web browsers, but we recommend downloading and using Firefox.

How To Submit Your Website To All Social Bookmarking Sites :-

All you need to do is simply drag this button to your Firefox bookmarks toolbar, in order to create a submission bookmarklet. When you are on a website that you want to socially mark, simply select the text and click the SocialMarker button to pre-populate the submission form with the selected information.

For all those of you who are new to the concept of social bookmarking or aren’t quite sure how to use Social Marker to its full potential, please take the time to look at the following video.

Good Website Design - Makes Your Site Very Popular

2009-06-18T17:07:00.000-07:00

Good Website Design is the first step to internet success. Website design is what determines the look and feel of your website.

Features Of A Good Website Design :-

Easy to use - Website design should be user friendly.

Easy to navigate - Website should not have complex menus or sub menus .

Easy to understand - Website content should be easy to understand.

Easy to read - Text should be easy to read. Maintain normal or large text size.

Attractive - Website background should be eye-catching but avoid using flash and videos.

Download Free Website Templates From Following Sites :-

freewebtemplates.com

freewebsitetemplates.com

freesitetemplates.com

freecsstemplates.org

metamorphozis.com

templateworld.com

interspire.com

Download Free Blogger Templates :-

btemplates.com

freetemplates.blogspot.com

freeblogger-templates.blogspot.com

blogger-templates.blogspot.com

eblogtemplates.com

mashable.com

blogcrowds.com

geckoandfly.com

ourblogtemplates.com

Download Free Wordpress Themes :-

freewpthemes.net

themes.rock-kitty.net

themelab.com

topwpthemes.com

blogohblog.com

wordpressthemesbase.com

themes2wp.com

fresheezy.com

wordpress.org

How To Manually Submit Websites To Alexa.com

2009-06-15T18:47:00.000-07:00

What is Alexa.com ?

Alexa's Web site is built on the notion that timely and relevant information is essential to a vital web experience.

Alexa Site Information - Alexa has built an unparalleled database of information about sites that includes statistics, related links and more. All of this information can be found on Alexa's Site Overview pages, Traffic Detail pages and Related Links pages. To access these pages, simply type the URL of any site into the Alexa Search box. If your website is not indexed by Alexa, then you can manually submit your site to Alexa.

How to manually submit website to Alexa ?

Copy and paste the following link in your browser and press Enter :
http://www.alexa.com/edit/crawlrequest/your~site~name.com

Please Note - Change this " your~blog~name.com " with your blog name, then copy paste the link in your browser and press enter.

How to Update contact information, site title, or description for your site ?

1) Copy and paste the following link in your browser and press Enter :
http://www.alexa.com/edit/contact/your~site~name.com

Please Note - Change this " your~blog~name.com " with your blog name, then copy paste the link in your browser and press enter.

2) Fill your website details in the form and press Continue.

3) Now your have to Enter your E-mail Address where the confirmation link will be sent.

4) Or, Place a file called info.txt on the root of your site.

5) Generally it takes 5 - 7 days to get listed in Alexa.com

How To Promote Websites And Blogs Using Free Classified Websites

2009-06-12T09:31:00.000-07:00

Simple and Easy way to drive traffic to your blog or website is to promote it through Free Online Classified Ad Portal. There are money free classified websites available online. Most of the websites offer this service for free. No need to pay to promote your website.

Tips on how to place ads on Classified Websites for better exposure :

Select relevant category where ad is to be placed. For Example : If you website is related with softwares then you can select the categories like Computers or Internet or Softwares etc.
Write appealing Titles of your advertisement. For Example : If your site is regarding softwares then you can use the titles like, Download Softwares For Free or Latest Software reviews.
Post the correct Description of your website. If possible, try to place Hyperlinked URL of your site in the description.
Do not post the same ad multiple times on the same website otherwise, it will regarded as spam and your ad may be removed by the concerned website.
Try to post ads on those Classifieds which have High Rankings. To check Page Rank you can download Alexa Toolbar. You can also find Related Website Links from Alexa Toolbar.

Top 10 UK Free Classified Websites :

ukclassifieds.co.uk

adoos.co.uk

freeukclassifieds.co.uk

craigslist.co.uk

vivastreet.co.uk

adflyer.co.uk

iclads.com

adtrader.co.uk

inetgiant.co.uk

uk.freeads.net

Top 10 USA Free Classified Websites :

usfreeads.com

backpage.com

classifiedsforfree.com

classifiedads.com

kijiji.com

domesticsale.com

adoos.us

bestwayclassifieds.com

webclassifieds.us

geo.craigslist.org/iso/us

Top 10 AUSTRALIA Free Classified Websites :

ozfreeonline.com

cracker.com.au

freead.com.au

adoos.com.au

aussielocal.com.au

yousell.com.au

elist.com.au

geo.craigslist.org/iso/au

aufreeads.com

ockalist.com.au

Top 10 CANADA Free Classified Websites :

isell.com

canetads.com

kijiji.ca

redleafads.com

tradepoint.ca

olx.ca

freeadvertisingforum.com

ontarioclassified.com

porkypost.com

geo.craigslist.org/iso/ca

Top 10 INDIA Free Classified Websites :

indialist.com

adoos.in

clickindia.com

click.in

vivastreet.co.in

locanto.in

in.88db.com

kugli.com

quikr.com

geo.craigslist.org/iso/in

Top 10 PAKISTAN Free Classified Websites :

adverts.pk

olx.com.pk

locanto.com.pk

classads.com.pk

pakclassified.com

pk.anuncioo.com

pakistan.craigslist.org

bazarapna.biz

classifiedspk.com

pakavenue.com

Further you can search Google.com to find more Free Local Classifieds...

Difference Between BLOG And WEBSITE From SEO Point Of View

2009-06-11T11:09:00.000-07:00

What is a BLOG ?

A BLOG is also known as WEB LOG. It is a shared on-line journal where people can post diary entries about their personal experiences and hobbies.

What is a WEBSITE ?

A Web site is a related collection of World Wide Web (WWW) files that includes a beginning file called a home page.

BLOG Vs. WEBSITE (SEO Point Of View)

A BLOG is easy to update as compared to a WEBSITE. It is very easy to post any content such as text, image, audio or video in a Blog. Therefore, BLOG is considered to be AUTHOR or PUBLISHER Friendly.
RSS Feed (Really Simple Syndication) - RSS works in conjunction with XML code, which continuously checks the contents of a blog for updates. If updates are found, they are broadcast to all the subscribers of the blog through a feed. This feature is missing in Websites. Therefore, a BLOG tend to have more visitors as compared to a WEBSITE.
It is easy to interact with visitors through the availability of comment form at the bottom of every post in a blog. On the other hand, Websites lack this feature of Comment Form. Therefore, a BLOG is considered to be more USER FRIENDLY than a website.
Blogs are more SEARCH ENGINE FRIENDLY than websites because Blogs are designed in such a way that these can be easily accessed by Search Engines.

BLOG = BETTER LISTING OVER GOOGLE

Top 3 Blog Service Providers :

Blogger.com - Blogger is a free blog publishing tool from Google for easily sharing your thoughts with the world. Blogger makes it simple to post text, photos and video onto your personal or team blog.
Wordpress.com - WordPress.com is brought to you by some of the same folks who work on the open source blogging software available at WordPress.org. Open source WordPress has been incredibly successful and risen from a handful of users to the most-used blog tool in its category.
Typepad.com - TypePad is the world's premier blogging service, hosting the leading blogs and small business websites and powering the most influential voices on the social web.

Comparison Between BLOGGER, WORDPRESS And TYPEPAD :

Check Position Of Your Website In Search Engine Result Pages For Specific Keywords

2009-06-09T23:10:00.000-07:00

Search Engine Placement Check - Check your website's ranking in major search engine like google, yahoo and msn for targeted keywords.

Follow These Steps To Check Your Website's Placement In Search Engines :

You have to use Firefox version 2 or higher to get this to work. If you have not yet used Firefox go Download Firefox, and then come back to this page using Firefox as your web browser.
If you are already using Firefox version 2 or higher then Download Rank Checker Tool, Firefox add-on.
After this you need to restart Firefox.
After restarting, you will see icon of Rank Checker Tool in Firefox Status Bar (bottom, right side).
Double click this icon, type your Domain Name And Keyword and press ADD button.
Now press START button.
After 10 - 15 seconds results will be displayed and you will see position of your website in google, yahoo and msn.
If your website is not listed in top 200 results of any search engine then you will see a Dash Sign ( - ).

Snapshot Of Rank Checker Tool

Rank Checker Tool - Download And Installation Instructions

Add Social Bookmarking Tools In Your Websites And Blogs

2009-06-08T17:43:00.000-07:00

What is Social Bookmarking ?

Social bookmarking is a method to store, organize, search, and manage bookmarks of web pages on the Internet. There are several websites which provides social bookmarking services.

What are the benefits of Social Bookmarking ?

It helps you get a lot of backlinks.

It helps you increase your traffic.

Your link gets indexed by Google in a matter of minutes.

Best of all, it's free!

What are Social Bookmarking Tools ?

Generally going through all of those social bookmarking sites is very time consuming process. Social Bookmarking Tools are designed to reduce the time and effort needed to socially bookmark a website.

How To Install Social Bookmarking Tools In Websites or Blogs ?

Copy and paste any of the following html code in the HTML of your web page :

#1 Bookmarking Tool - HTML Code