Blogging to Fame!

Social Again Launched

2010-03-25T23:21:00.000-07:00

“Social media offers new opportunities to activate…brand enthusiasm.” said Stacy DeBroff, founder and CEO of Mom Central.

Social Again connects the dots to explore the reason why is it important for companies to go social, not only by creating compelling content but by engaging with people, encouraging them to share their ideas and knowledge. Also, Social Again will talk about latest industry trends, product reviews, events, blogging ;) , campaigns, communities, and lots more... I know you get the point.

I would be cross posting what we write on social again here. Having said that you can visit Social Again now.

Book Review: The Social Media Marketing Book from O’Reily - Dan Zarrella

2010-02-15T21:42:00.001-08:00

Dan Zarrella with his book “The Social Media Marketing Book” introduces social media and guides on how best to use this media for the marketing of your business. Almost anyone can practice the workable solutions provided in the book, and make sense of the complicated social media environment.

For anybody who is new to social media marketing Zarrella introduces each basic building blocks of social media, including blogs; multi-media; microblogging; social networking; social news and bookmarking, in different sections. Within each section, Zarrella introduces a tool, talks about its history, and describes the protocols, features and functionality with the help of screenshots, graphs, and visual explanations.

The book is lean and with 224 pages of which half of them are screenshots and images, it is indeed a highly-tactical guide of significant value to any individual or organization looking to get into social media. The book also does a good job of showing the difference between different social media sites, such as pure networking (LinkedIn, Facebook), media sharing (YouTube, Flickr), blogs, microblogging, and bookmarking (Reddit, Delicious, Digg) and more.

Throughout the book, there is good advice and it tells you what works and does not work. Zarrella makes an observation that is crucial to ones success for a business use of Facebook. He notes that for businesses, the best social media marketing is always going to be done by your fans, not by you. on the topic of forums, he reiterates the importance of fans, writing that a business should not underestimate the power of networks of niche forums to drive impressive numbers of visitors to your site. Once again, the best promotion comes not from the business, but from its fans.

The chapters on strategy and measurement have some good piece of advice. He discusses of "call to action" (CTA) in which the marketer, tries to engage visitors on the website. He also stresses on the importance of goals and describes several tools you can use to measure return on investment and engagement as a result of your social media marketing efforts.

The book does justice to social media tools but could have also emphasized more on the social graph (people, relationships and conversations) the focal point of social media. The human element of social media could have been better explained on the interaction with consumers, clients, and potential leads through social media tools.

There are loads of interesting and useful tips in this book. Zarrella also provides anecdotes from various social media gurus and notables to share their wisdom along with classic examples of Comcast, Zappos and Dell.

About Dan Zarrella

Dan Zarrella currently works as a marketing product owner at HubSpot. He has written extensively about the science of viral marketing, memetics and social media on his own blog (danzarrella.com) and for a variety of popular industry blogs.

"There is a lack of practical, tactical advice on marketing bookshelves concerning social media," says Zarrella (@DanZarrella). Rather than talk about just 'engaging in the conversation' I wanted to give readers a hands-on introduction to the social web and what it can do to impact their business's bottom line."

He continues: "Young people today are spending enormous amounts of time on social networks and in the changing world of marketing their status as digital natives can make them valuable assets to businesses. This book can be the first step for turning social networking addiction into a marketable skill."

Guy Kawasaki, co-founder of Alltop.com truly says "Let Zarrella take you to social-media marketing school. You'll learn more from reading this book than a month of research on the Internet."

This is from my post in 2020Social Blog.

Social Business by Design

2009-09-09T22:49:00.000-07:00

Social Business By Design

View more documents from David Armano.

Ways to avoid scams...

2009-07-11T13:22:00.000-07:00

Some people will not just stop fooling others. The more brilliant internet platforms prosper the

more scams you will find related to it.

I recently saw a banner ad below:

Curiously I clicked on the banner and which took me to the site of “Washington Reporter”...(http://washington-reporter.com/college-dropout-shares-secret-fb/?keyword=KAT_728_01) Sounds like a credible URL. To my surprize it was a scam from

someone promotin Twitter Cash Kit.

A not so intelligent search on Mike Steadman brought up the following results...

It’s strange that somebody will give you $25 per link you post even if you have absolutely no twitter followers.

Twitter Cash Kit is being promoted at all possible places in all possible ways, and even on twitter. The strange point is some people actually bought it.

I will put it as another scam which could only have a few people interested. If you do a quick search you will find people who bought it complaining on different forums like Get Saqtisfaction.

I can point many scams that are going on, in the online space, but I would rather let you know how not to fall prey to such spammers, specially if their is cash invloved.

Before buying a product, always research about the company or individual selling it. You may try putting product's name in quotes + scam. For example- "Twitter Cash kit" + Scam. And for a change you will find yourself learning from other's mistakes :)
Do not fall pray to "Your distant relative died and left you cash" emails, and don't ever send your personal information to them.
While making a payment always do so through secure payment gateway.
One of the most famous scams are Job Scams. One explained above may fall in this category. Avoid jobs that ask you to buy something or pay a security before you can join. These will turn out to be scams or otherwise worthless anyways.
Do a search on Scam.com for the name of the company, which is a great forum where people complain about being scammed.

Hopefully this post will get atleast one person saved from getting scammed. Go get your luck out there.

How to Revive a Dead Blog?

2009-02-02T05:44:00.000-08:00

Citing a Gartner study there are eventually "200 million people call themselves ex-bloggers." That's a ton of dead blogs but it won't matter to most blog readers. Lots of these ex-bloggers want to get back to scene. Quoting a question by David-

So, I am not sure how to go about this, but I need to know what everyone thinks. I have a few blogs that I have let fade away, but I really want to revive them, and over the next two weeks especially, I feel like I have the time, energy and hopefully continual focus to make them part of my daily routine.

Do I just start writing on them again and act like they never faded? Do I give up on them, and start again fresh without any of the baggage and the apparent break in posting? What do you think? What is the best way to revive a dead blog?

To start with- This post is about reviving your old blog… and Not starting Afresh.

You may not have been blogging well for a year. Or Your blog has been one of the known blogs of its time, but now everybody seems to have forgotten it. Even I did not blog at regular intervals and other things in life took priority. What happened to “blogging to fame” could have happened to anybody in the blogosphere.

Now you want your readers back. You want them to know about your coming back to the blogosphere. What do you do to revive your dead blog?

Do this and bring your blog back to life…

1. Start Blogging- A No-Brainer you would say… It may sound obvious, but, it takes time. Bringing a blog back to life is not easy. It needs the same energy and enthusiasm that you started your blog once with. Give your blog some time.

2. Reconnect with fellow Bloggers- Blogging is all about relationships. Make your old fellow bloggers remember you. Talk to them, comment on their blogs, and re-build your relationships. Oh great! If you have already kept the friendship alive, but if not, now is the time to do so.

3. Blog Networks- If you blogged earlier, you would be most probably be a member of sites like MyBlogLog and BlogCatalogue. Spend time on them (the site), and with them (the blogger members). Use Twitter, and other sites to get your voice up and going, and trust me, you are definitely going to feel good about it.

4. Redesign for a fresh feel- A full facelift. Like starting a new day, this will help you to get your creativity to flow again. This is totally your choice. You can continue with the old one.

And this time maintain your commitment to blogging... :)

It is time…

2009-01-28T22:38:00.000-08:00

All the time that I got busy with something else… My blog suffered the most.

New Year did not get any special post and neither did I declare my resolutions till now. But if now this blog does not get the love it deserves it will soon be dead. Which, I will never let happen.

I pledge to remove my laziness and give my blogging a tequila shot… Cheers to a new day… A New Year and ways to go forward...

Merry Christmas- The Internet Way

2008-12-24T22:55:00.000-08:00

Three Sutras of Blogging

2008-12-24T22:31:00.000-08:00

Think Beyond Optimization

Define Objectives: Plan effectively, develop your funnel, be motivated.

Million of blogs take birth and die. This is because bloggers do not define their objectives properly. After the initial push, they find other priorities, and interests.

Blog is not about posting articles. Sometimes a well researched post and thoughtful content may not be enough to make the blog successful. The need is to define the very reason of the existence of the blog, and communicating with your readers.

Blog don't Splog

One can splog for various reasons- for earning money, for bringing search engine traffic or for building backlinks. Whatever your reason be, do NOT do it.

If your objective is to make money, sell your product/service or you want to sell affiliate products, a blog cannot be your online store. Internet is great direct selling machine, but unfortunately Blog is NOT. Blogging is not a sales channel but a marketing one. Most successful blogs which are monetized are done essentially from advertisement.

To do this you need to work to get articles (truth actually need not to be very original, but need to be very you)

If you want get traffic or build backlinks, there are ethical ways to do it. You will be able to find lots of articles online to follow. Any splogging in the long run do not benefit anyways.

Understand SEO vs Social Media

As one of the very popular posts of this Blog on Search Engine Domination, things eventually came true. SEO is good if you can dominate in search engine rankings on popular and on demand keywords. You have a great inflow of targeted traffic. But if not SMO can help you out.

As Rohit Bhargava said “The concept behind SMO is simple: implement changes to optimize a site so that it is more easily linked to, more highly visible in social media searches on custom search engines (such as Technorati), and more frequently included in relevant posts on blogs, podcasts and vlogs.”

It helps you increase linkability and helps your content flow to the people interested. If you are interested to know the rules of SMO, please go through “5 Rules of SMO”.

Stay Away from Fake SEO

2008-11-09T07:47:00.001-08:00

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.

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Technorati Tags:- Blog Optimization

Your Blog will fail IF!

2008-11-01T11:11:00.000-07:00

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.

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Technorati Tags:- Better Blogging

Basic Blog Optimization Important Factors

2008-10-05T09:03:00.000-07:00

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:

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.

Blog Optimization- Holistic approach to Optimizing your blog

2008-09-07T00:31:00.000-07:00

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

Basic Blog Optimization
On Page Blog Optimization
Off Page Blog Optimization
Optimizing Blog Posts
Optimizing Blog Feeds

Getting more Search Engines Traffic to your Blog
Getting more Links to your Blog
Using Google Analytics for Better Blog Optimization
9. Using Social Media for Blog Optimization
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. :)

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

2008-08-29T12:03:00.000-07:00

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.

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Technorati Tags:- Blog Optimization

Social Media: Whats Your Flavor?

2008-08-23T13:59:00.001-07:00

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 :)

Keep it Simple, make it user-friendly-

2008-08-21T13:54:00.000-07:00

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.

4 websites to find blogging jobs

2008-07-04T12:02:00.000-07:00

If you are not present online, the question is- Do you even exist?

A businessperson who does not own a website or run a blog is perhaps losing his business to somebody else in his niche. So many people out there want to get themselves on search engine results, and want to establish customer relationships through blogging. Entrepreneurs have realized that websites with static pages no more do the trick.

You like writing (obviously, every blogger does), have some free time, want to earn a little extra cash (who does not), shake your pen and storm your brain, find yourself a job as a blogger.

Try these out-

1) Indeed-

A Powerful search engine to narrow down your search. For finding a blogging job try clicking on this link, or go to Indeed.com and search blogger or related keywords. You are sure to find good numbers of well paying jobs.

2) Problogger

Our all time favourite Problogger has a job board specially dedicated to blogging jobs. When you talk about Darren Rowse, all that comes to your mind is "making money through blogging". he is one guy who knows how to earn moolah.

A cool place to find some cool jobs.

3) BloggerJobs

A site typically dedicated to help bloggers succeed, making blogging their career. You can subscribe their feed to stay updated about all upcoming jobs. You will find a few jobs here, which you will find nowhere else. Highly recommended.

4) Jobster

Jobster, the famous job search engine may find you more techie jobs related to

blogging. You will have to search for keywords related to blogging to find jobs that suit your purpose.

Enjoy Blogging

Blogging- The wrong perspective…

2008-06-22T06:20:00.000-07:00

Blogging for several years have seen a high growth and now over 90 million blogs are registered with Technorati, but what is so depressing is that about 83% of these blogs are dying a slow death, or are already in their graves (not updated in past 90 days). A more astonishing number is projected by Gartner which estimated that there are more than 200 million former bloggers who have ceased posting to their online diaries, creating an exponential rise in the amount of "dotsam" and "netsam" — that is to say, unwanted objects on the Web.

Why is blogging in such a pitiful state? Because bloggers who stop wearing this honourable tag, have got it all wrong since the beginning or got entangled in the middle. They started blogging with a wrong perspective or developed one somewhere in between...

The Broken Myths:

• I will earn enough to leave my Day job (Not every one gets lucky)
• I will get as famous as Problogger on Day One or even on Day 100.
• Just because it is easy setting up your own blog, everybody should blog.
• Posting does not take more than 10 minutes.
• Everybody will read my blog and leave a comment.
• It is the best way to pass time.
• My neighbours will improve if I rant about them on internet.

My one and only sugesstion: ONLY BLOG IF YOU REALLY LOVE TO BLOG and blog only about the thing you love in life. No one can keep on reproducing what has already been written.

Get your reason in place...

Well, the good news is that Blog readers continue to rise, this classic tech cycle of hype and maturity is good news for the remaining blogs. Those left standing are the influencers that attract audiences and advertisers.

And remember almost every blog goes through a bleak period, like this one right now, but then the author eventually picks up. A blog needs a constant push from the blogger to survive. So if you are in a position where you are procastinating whether you should or shouldn’t leave blogging- Relax, give yourself time to think. The answer will come to you...

Local Search Engine Optimization

2008-06-06T07:55:00.000-07:00

Local search engine optimization has been in talks lately. Many local and small business companies that are catering to their local clientèle find it hard to SEO for local markets despite targeting the best keywords. Appearing in Search result pages has been a gruesome task for new and local businesses, because with millions of companies competing for top 10 placements for their products and services, local search engine optimization provides a competitive advantage as well as allows consumers to conveniently shop locally as a result of using the web to locate the best deals.

Search engines do what they know the best and that is delivering most relevant results. So, when it comes to Local Search Engine Optimization, it uses a little more creativity. If you are a local pizza delivery shop it will be of less use appearing in world results of Pizza Delivery. If you own a big company and run local delivery offices it might sound useful to you to appear in local searches.

The crux of the matter here is SEO for local markets is only a small part of larger marketing exercises, with certain twists, to get exposure with local locations.

In a study performed by comScore Networks it was found that in 2007 local search grew at a rate of 24%, compared to 14% for general search. Today local search accounts for roughly 40% of all searches and at the current pace of growth local search will pass general search in the next few years, especially considering the increase of internet access on mobile devices. Local SEO is a way to appear in search results when someone types in “Chicago suburb Chartered Accountant” or “Ohama Shoes”.

By NOT focusing and targeting locally, you run the risk of missing out on a lot of great opportunities that just happen to be closer to home and may actually come with a lower cost of conversion. Why? Because its easy for people to trust someone who has closer proximity and is working from their town. It is human tendency to try and find links and relationships with everyone they meet. Users searching for local terms are more likely to convert than someone who figured you when searching for the term “Blogging”.

Search engines are getting smarter and have already started including local results if they find regional modifiers attached to it. Opportunities for local search are growing by leaps and bounds.

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Technorati Tags:- Search Engine Optimization

5 ways to Monetize your blog

2008-05-25T05:04:00.000-07:00

Blogging may be a primary source of income for a few but a secondary source of income for many. Some people have strong personal feelings with respect to making money from their blogs. If you think commercializing your blog is unethical, greedy, obnoxious, or anything along those lines, then don’t commercialize it.

If you want to succeed, you must be congruent. Generating income from your blog is challenging enough. If you want to make money from your blog and you have a reasonable amount of traffic then the methods of advertising you use will quickly become an important topic to you. There are a lot of different ways to monetize a blog, and it would be damaging of me to try and tell you exactly what method will work without knowing at least a little about your blog. However, there are some things we will willingly share.

However one of these tips will surely help you to have a better productivity and results

Advertising- is easily the most popular blog monetization tactic, easy to implement and still well paid. The ads you place in your blog can either be contextual ads, or display ads.
Contextual ads are provided by various services, the most common one being Google Adsense. The other options are Yahoo Publisher Network, Clicksor, Adsonar and Chitika. My sincere advice is not to limit your blog to a particular type of ad network. Though most of the bloggers think Adsense is best for them, it may not gel well with every niche topic, and it’s not easy to manually test all these. Using a ad network management tool like RMX Direct can help you manage, evaluate, and control your various ad networks.

Don't Sell Out – Services like Pay per Post and Sponsored Reviews may sound appealing for earning a few dollars, but my only suggestion can be summed up in one or two words- “Don’t” or “Do Not”. There's a temptation for those with more mature blogs to write a post and review an item, website, or service and get paid for doing so. You might have the best intentions and might think that you can write a genuinely informative piece and be completely unbiased, open and honest without your readers ever realizing what you are doing but it is highly unlikely that this is the case.

Sponsorship – Getting sponsorship for your blog, is a great way of monetizing them. If you own a niche sensitive blog, more focused to a topic, it will be likely that you bag sponsored ads as it will be a viable advertising solution for advertisers.

Affiliate Links – If you cover a particular niche in your blog, there is a large chance of finding products which are interesting and helpful to your users. You can recommend the products you think will do well for your users after becoming the product’s affiliate member. Providing them affiliate links will earn you some nice income recommending or linking to those products.

Merchandising- If you're a well-loved blogger, there's a good chance that your readers would like to show their support. Give them what they want and make money by taking advantage of merchandising opportunities. Cafepress allows you to write innovative quotes and makes it easy for you to put your blog's logo on shirts, bags, coasters and other items. Companies like Goodstorm, Lulu, and others make it easy by creating the products based on your design and letting you set up a shop. There is no risk to bloggers, which makes it a great opportunity.

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Technorati Tags:- Blog Monetization

5 basic rules of Blogging

2008-03-02T12:07:00.000-08:00

Blogging is not just about writing posts it also involves driving targeted audience (people who are interested in what you write), to your blog. This traffic then has to be guided through the blogging funnel i.e. it has to be engaged, well informed and more than satisfied, only then it becomes your lifetime fan following.

Traffic + Blogging Funnel= Fan following

Keeping this formula in your mind will help you in your blogging because you will realize that you not only have to generate traffic, but also turn those visitors into fans.

Furthermore, here are 5 basic rules to follow when aplying this formula. These rules are relevant to all forms of blogging but are especially important for the new bloggers who can put in lots of effort without moving in the right direction and can become easily discouraged.

1. All Blogging involves RISK.

I expect all your eyes fixed on this one. This may not be a direct financial or physical risk, but will be equivalent if you’re a serious blogger. Its obvious if you blog, you will attract attention and for good. Whatever you write and how you potray stuff, defines your online character.

Apart from the risk of forming a negative public image, or losing your job because you said something that annoyed your boss, you may also risk your private life to strangers. Think twice before you write your heart out.

2. Start with default templates first.

If you have just entered blogging field or looking forward to(without much HTML knowledge), my sincere advice is to start with a default template provided by the blogging, you are using. This will help in getting your blog more organised and you will be able to concentrate on the writing part of it.

Once you get accustomed to the blogging world, customize your template. Your blog should look personalized and not like everyone else’s.

3. Be Consistent.

Successful bloggers write something in their each post that takes them a little forward in the relationship with their readers. And do not do a vanishing act like I did- being out of scene for two months without informing your readers- sorry for it :(. Being consistent in writing good posts and then writing at all will always help you gain more popularity and yes, ofcourse traffic.

4. Diversify

Writing about one topic may soon leave you with nothing to write at the end. Spread yourself over your niche- If you write about golf playing tips, talk about golf accessories and recent golf events or try to get interview of some local golf stars.

5. Learn how to write effective copy.

The skill that will make or break in you in your blogging. It is really important learn how to write effective headlines. There is a ton of good information online that is free regarding copywriting, just do a google search.

I have seen very simple changes that increase the productivity of blogs. It’s not only amazing, but also a lot of fun! Blogging takes work. You simply cannot get something for nothing. So take action and do not be afraid to change.

Organic Search engine optimization

2007-12-29T10:59:00.000-08:00

Search Engine optimization is an ongoing process rather than being a technique. It is the process of making your blog more relevant for both your visitors and search engines. Organic search engine optimization is a process for optimizing your blog that do not involve any paid advertisement.

It delivers results for long time means visitors visit your websites without paying for it. If you follow the rules and guidelines of search engines and read it carefully, it is not very difficult for you to get listed on top.

There are two ways of reaching your destination. One would be very easy and other may seem too hard to follow. Easy Road may seem to be paying results early, but it would be the tough and the less taken path that would actually lead you to your desired goal.

Before we further talk about how to do SEO organically, keep in mind the following things:

1. Do not use hidden text.
2. Ignore flash and java script in the code.
3. Use meta tags relevant to the page. No keyword stuffing.
4. Use sitemap and add the link of all the web pages and connect it with home page.
5. Do not use copied or duplicate content on the website.

These will discount you from search results and you may never appear on the top no matter how hard you try.

Search engine optimization is a process that is ever changing and evolving. With every day something new comes to the table, a new method of organic SEO. This changing information is what you need to stay in tune with in order to stay ahead of your competition. A good way to stay on top of this is through forums, news developments that are related to the niche, newsletters and networking within your niche.

Search engines need to see the relevance and importance of your blog within your niche so that it can display the search results relevantly. Making sure that your blog is easily accessible and navigable by the search engines, will help you appear in the SERPs(Search engine result pages).

Webmasters want search engine spiders to be able to explore the content of their website deeply, to get more of their content indexed. Having a blog make such things a bit easier. Jut keep in mind to design it in a manner that allows the search engine robots to easily get follow through the network of your blog to explore the content.

We will talk about this more over the next year…

Happy Holidays and best wishes for New Year!
Have fun-Enjoy Life

Divya

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Merry Christmas

2007-12-24T21:12:00.000-08:00

Increase your Blog popularity by Word of Mouth Marketing

2007-12-18T16:32:00.000-08:00

Word of Mouth marketing(WOMM) is not as simple as its name. Though Word of Mouth has been there with us forever, WOMM is a new specialty which can be planned, acted upon and tracked. If done efficiently, be sure to see high returns on your investment.

When it comes to WOMM, it involves various techniques within it- Viral Marketing, Blogs, Community building, and other ways to get people talking about you.

When it comes to getting attention to your blog WOMM can play a very dramatic role. A live example of it is Dosh Dosh. Maki got people talking about her so much that she is now in Technorati top 100 blogs at 28^th place.

Putting up a blog may be as simple as getting hitched, but like the actual marriage the real work comes later. It is more than plug and play.

At many places Word of Mouth isn’t marketing at all. It is a fan following and a satisfied reader base, where your readers love to talk about you and your techniques, and how you have helped them. Just as important, WOM can never be deceptive. People only talk about you on two extremes, either they love you for being helpful or they hate you for being deceptive to them. As much as that WOM can really be helpful for branding of your blog but it can also take it all away. Be careful before opting in to follow this.

Word of Mouth Marketing is to be cultivated:

Building your business through word-of-mouth is about cultivating relationships with people who get to know you and trust you- Your Readers. People do business with people they have confidence in.

“All the thing being equal people will buy from a friend. All things being not quite so equal, people will still buy from a friend.”

So if people have already heard about you in a positive feedback, they will trust you more, and are more likely to be a part of your permanent reader-base. WOMM is not about how many you know, but how well you know them. Satisfied audience delivers far better results than any other form of marketing.

Go Out, Be Heard:

Our blogging lives get so busy after a while that we tend forget we are a part of the blogosphere and blogging has always been a two-way relationship.

What every blogger should know is, blogging is not just about writing posts, but the relationships you build through them. If you want to build your blog through word-of-mouth, you have to be visible and active in the community by participating in various networking groups. Well do not forget to give your valuable comments to other bloggers.

Develop your contact spheres:

Contact Spheres are blogs that are symbiotic and noncompetitive to you. You may like to consider ones from parallel niches which have the similar audience but cater to their different and related needs. They can all work with you and refer each other easily. Now consider a wedding planner’s blog. He can easily associate with a florist, a photographer, a traveling agent and a jeweler, each recommending others’ services. Start developing relationships with bloggers and you may never ever have to ask for a referral favor.

Have fun,
Enjoy Blogging,
Divya

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Learn from your competitors and get more traffic

2007-12-02T06:42:00.000-08:00

Blogging is as friendly as it sounds, and blogosphere the little place everybody shares on internet, helping each other, sharing thoughts and recommending good links.

There are times though, when everybody wants more traffic, more comments, more authority, and more fan following. You might have seen at times there are blogs who get 30-50 comments per post, readers ranging in thousands and some might struggle to even get one.

Now one thing you can do for your blog is studying your competitors(other blogger targeting the same niche), and learn from them.

Why does a blogger consistently rank higher than you for important terms? What content, and link building strategies are they using to help attain those rankings? Answer those questions and you'll be one step closer to out-ranking them and bringing that traffic and those comments to your blog.

Whom should you study?

Do not go in after everybody writing about your niche, you will get caught in “Paralysis by analysis”. Instead I would suggest to limit your analysis to 10 blogs or less. You might already know a few already, add them to your list. Fill the rest of your list with blogs that constantly rank higher than you in search engines.

What information should you collect?

There are a plenty of potential metrics that can be used to gauge the competition.

Y! Links -- the number of backlinks the domain has in Yahoo. As you probably already know by now, the quantity and quality of links pointing to a site is extremely relevant in determining how high it ranks. Looking at the particular links that your competition has serves as one of the best ways to learn how they market their blog. It is also one of the best ways to brainstorm potential link building ideas for you’re your own. Get the list of blogs that link to their blog, these become your target to work on.

Last indexed -- this is the date of the last time Google visited the home page of the site. Ideally your blog should be indexed every single day, but it usually depends on how frequently you update your content. If you update content regularly, you should be being indexed at least once per week. You can find this date by clicking the "Cached" link next to any Google search result.

Strongest Pages -- SEOmoz has a great strongest pages tool that will list off the most important pages on a domain, based on number of links pointing to it and its current rankings. This gives you an idea of what content on their domain is causing the high rankings. Is it their popular articles? Whatever their strongest pages, you should take note and use those pages as guidelines for potential additions and modifications to your blog.

Social Networking Sites they use- This is one of the most valuable experiences I had a beginner in blogging. I was to one of my favorite blogs, and saw all the faces appearing on his site. Remember I was new to blogging and Mybloglog had not gained popularity till then. The curiousness took me to MBL and I registered myself. There was no turning back from that moment. That was where BTF gained all its popularity from.
If you have a chance, find out what social network sites and influential circle your competitors have.

Using the information to your advantage
Pretty quickly you'll start to realize that all of the blogs you're analyzing have been around for a few years, are indexed frequently and thoroughly, and have a lot of quality backlinks. So how do you get there? Well there's nothing you can do about the age, but the rest are very much in your control: you can model title tags and page headings after the competition, you can structure your blog and categorize it properly the way that they do, you can add sections related to topics that they rank high for, and you can most definitely expand your link building plan by studying what has worked for them. Ultimately, analyzing and understanding your competition will reduce your learning curve and accelerate the growth of your blog.

Divya

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Blog Design- Little things matter a lot

2007-11-20T12:48:00.000-08:00

Apart from focusing on content as we discussed earlier, one of the most important things is User Experience on your blog. As soon as a site is called a blog one usually forgets the user centered design requirements. If you keep track of little things it can enhance your reader experience greatly.

You may question how many readers actually bother about where links are placed and what kind of navigation do you have in your blog. What gets noticed is not the presence but the lack of it.

Reduce Sidebar Clutter- Place the widgets, only which are important to your blog and are serving a purpose. Think innovatively while placing ads, don’t overdo them in your sidebar. Latest blog design trends are putting archives and other navigational links at the bottom of the page to unclutter the sidebar( I personally do not like to scroll down as far to browse categories, and find other posts). So it is important to offer your reader a way to navigate through the blog from a place that is as important as sidebar.

Blog Width- Building your blog to a set width and satisfying all your users isn’t the possibility. A number of other solutions exist, with the most popular being the liquid layout. It expands based on the size of the browser window. Ideally, this means that everyone will view the webpage at the largest possible width.

Though the drawback is with very large or very small resolutions, the design can become very haphazard. The length of line will either become too long or all the content will be squashed into a very small space.

The best way to deal with this will be to set the maximum and minimum length of the content.

Links- First of all, links should always look like links. Don’t make it hard for your readers to find out where to click. This is the least thing they will want to put their brains into.

Now to answer should the links be opening in new windows or not- people have different opinions about it. To do or not to do depends your individual thinking.

The right view-

Users browsing your content will right click and make the link open in a new tab(as I like it) or a new window. Forcing multiple windows won’t make your blog sticky. Rather try to get people back to your blog by making the content more engaging and hard to live without.

The Left View-

Keeping Blog readers on your page and not loosing them to an external link can be one of them. Sometimes its hard for readers to remember how they got to particular webpage, and have to click the BACK button a zillion times to find the navigational source, they would just ignore and move ahead.

It is also distracting for your reader to navigate away in the middle of the article.

The Libran view(My view)-

As a browser I find it too hard to manage a hundred windows all at one time when I am trying to do a five hundred things at one time. So I prefer links opening in tabs.

As a blogger I would suggest to go an extra mile to make it easier for your readers by providing links to PDF files and large images to open in different window. Also if you have some external links in the middle of the article let it open in a new window.

Rest can be left on users choice of opening the links as per their requirement.

I would love to listen to your point here.

Enjoy Blogging,

Divya

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Technorati Tags:- Blog Design

Google is still the BIG Boss

2007-11-01T11:55:00.000-07:00

Is it a new algorithm or is Google playing a new game? I have nothing to blame, as our blog goes from Page Rank 4 to Page Rank 5. But many authority sites like Search Engine Journal, WashingtonPost, Forbes got a shock on 24th October.

Others that face the same plight includes problogger.net, copyblogger, engadget and many more. With such an outcome should A-List bloggers be forced to worry about their position on internet? In my earlier posts, I had written about page rank not being the criteria to judge the trust of a search engine on a site. The sites suffering from lowering of page rank have seen increase of traffic sent to them through search engines. The line between Page Rank and the quality of sites is very thin.

For people who think Page Rank is the end of it all better tune themselves to a wider perspective of search engines and Google. Getting paid links for your site will no longer pay back. PageRank has undergone a lot of change since first published. As suggested the algorithm might now be addressing the growth of internet.

So some google algorithm ranks the quality of your blog- not your readers/subscribers and your fans. With all the frenzy of what happened last week due to Google Dance and the new assigned authority(read page rank), Google still seems to boss around the blogs/sites and their quality. Stop worrying about what google thinks of you, instead go ahead and do everything to make your blog a better place for your readers.

Design Your blog to get most out of it

2007-10-09T09:15:00.000-07:00

Complying with the trend has been the most efficient way of a business to survive. Since Web2.0 has arrived blogs have been ruling, but as we have discussed it earlier, the ampleness of them have made it even more difficult for bloggers to make a mark on the industry. So here is Blogging to Fame with another series about Blog Design...

Content is supreme but apart from the content and the amount of information you put in, you need to make it more accessible and consumable. Like they say, Food that Looks and Smells better, Tastes better. Anyways the look and the smell also increase the appetite! What Say you Foodies?

Focus on Content-

Lets get the First thing First. Content is Supreme. However creatively you design your blog the main point of blogging and its essence lies in the content it holds. The food Should always taste Good, whatever way it is dressed.

A blog’s design should allow your user to focus on it and make sure not to divert his attention. Huge headers that take the whole space above the fold can be one reason for it. Next can be using lots of graphics and banner ads.

Place links to most popular articles or recent entries where readers would first see when they visit your blog. This makes the rest of your blog more accessible and the older content will eventually get consumed.

Deck them up…

This for all the users who are still using pre-made themes by Blogging Platforms and other designers. If you are a beginner you should concentrate on the content, but the next step is always the presentation. Using pre-defined themes makes you look the same as everybody else’s on Blogger and Wordpress.

Pre-defined themes are free, and easily available on net, but remember the good ones get more frequently used. You can get unique themes at a price as low as $300 and as high as $6000.

If you cannot spend that amount, here is a tip-

To make a non-unique theme to a unique one get your favorite pre-defined theme and modify it to an extent that it does not resemble the original anymore. With a little knowledge of HTML it would be really easy to tweak changes. Change the Color combination, and the picture used in the header. You can also change the placement of elements and graphics. Do it till you are satisfied...

Catch Ya with more Soon...
Divya

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Technorati Tags:- Business Blogging

If you wonder what to blog...

2007-09-29T10:33:00.000-07:00

Is it one of those days when you do not have anything to write atall in your blog? Don’t hit yourself on the wall. It is inevitable. Whether your blog is about some niche or about yourself you’ll find days or even weeks when you do not have something to talk about with your readers.

Don’t give it up, here is what you can do-
1. Surf the web and find what others are talking about- It might give you some really exciting new idea. Friendly debates are good, go ahead and present your views, on the topic. If the blog has track back enabled, you and the other blogger will have exchange of visitors, bringing you new ones. This will not only bring traffic to your blog, but attention from people who would like to read the comments from both sides.
2. Newsletters help- If you are like me, you would have subscribed to newsletters, but have never opened them to read. Go to your inbox and find something insightful. Newsletters often bring lots of articles in them. You just hit a jackpot. Do not plagiarize, borrow the idea. Its like the dish you will need to re-cook to it your own. Spice it up with your special dash of lemon.
3. Favorite articles- There might be articles that have helped you with solutions for your problems, help your readers with them. Link to a few of these, write a little summary and how they helped you. You are ready with a very good post of your own.
4. Pick again the topics you already talked about- Now you can either add some more information to what you already have talked about or play the devil’s advocate. Talk about the same thing from the ‘other’ angle. There are many ways to talk about the same thing. Prooving it by a different angle may give your reader clearer picture and you a definitely thought-provoking article.
5. Feature a Site, review a blog- Once a week or a month, you can feature a site or a blog related to your niche. Review a tool that is helpful, your readers will love you for introducing it to them.
6. Invite a guest blogger- Let someone, whose writing style, you like take the charge. You can also post an article that offers free reprint rights. You can let the guest to promote their site, and leave the resource box intact. If you have problems like “I cannot give away visitors” or “I don’t want anybody else to take the credit”, I would like to make you realize something that you consciously or unconsciously know- readers leave your site anyways. They either shut down their computer or take some other steps to leave. So why not give them a reason to return. And that one reason is quality. They will always return back for it- if you give them quality.

Happy Blogging!

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Technorati Tags:- Business Blogging

Are you an SEO expert

2007-09-20T06:09:00.000-07:00

84%
I got across this very informative and interesting Quiz at SEOMoz. 84% ain't a bad score I think. Wat Say? Well before you go through the answers below, take the quiz and get your score. Here is where I went wrong...

#1 Which of the following is the least important area in which to include your keyword(s)?

Your Answer: Internal Anchor Text

Correct Answer: Meta Keywords

The meta keywords tag is least important among these because search engines do not consider it in ranking calculations and it's never seen by visitors or searchers (unlike the meta description tag, which displays beneath listings in the SERPs).
#2 Which of the following would be the best choice of URL structure (for both search engines and humans)?

Your Answer: www.wildlifeonline.com/animals/crocodile

Correct Answer: www.wildlifeonline.com/animals/crocodile

The best choice would be www.wildlifeonline.com/animals/crocodile - it provides the most semantic information, the best description of the content on the page and contains no parameters or subdomains that could cause issues at the engines. For more on URL structuring, see this post on SEOmoz.
#3 When linking to external websites, a good strategy to move up in the rankings is to use the keywords you're attempting to rank for on that page as the anchor text of the external-pointing links. For example, if you were attempting to rank a page for the phrase "hulk smash" you would want to use that phrase, "hulk smash" as the anchor text of a link pointing to a web page on another domain.

Your Answer: False

Correct Answer: False

The biggest problem with linking out to other websites with your targeted keyword phrases in the anchor text is that it creates additional competition for your page in the search results, as you give relevance through anchor text and link juice to a competing page on a competing site. Thus, FALSE is the correct answer.
#4 Which of the following is the best way to maximize the frequency with which your site/page is crawled by the search engines?

Your Answer: Frequently add new content

Correct Answer: Frequently add new content

Adding new content on a regular basis is the only one of the methods listed that will promote more frequent spidering and indexing. Tags like crawl delay have never been shown to be effective (and aren't even supported by many of the major engines). The other "partially" correct answer would be to turn up crawl frequency inside Webmaster Central at Google, but this only works if Google wants to crawl your site more actively and is restricted from doing so.
#5 Which of the following is a legitimate technique to improve rankings & traffic from search engines?

Your Answer: Re-writing title tags on your pages to reflect high search volume, relevant keywords

Correct Answer: Re-writing title tags on your pages to reflect high search volume, relevant keywords

Of the choices, only the option to change title tags to reflect better keywords is a legitimate and effective SEO technique.
#6 Danny Sullivan is best known (in the field of web search) as:

Your Answer: The recently-promoted CEO of Ask.com

Correct Answer: A journalist and pundit who covers the field of web search

Although there's an answer we'd love to choose :), the correct answer is that Danny's a journalist and pundit on web search who currently operates the SearchEngineLand blog and runs the SearchMarketingExpo event series.
#7 Which of the following is the WORST criteria for estimating the value of a link to your page/site?

Your Answer: The popularity of the domain on which the page is hosted according to Alexa

Correct Answer: The popularity of the domain on which the page is hosted according to Alexa

Since Alexa data is typically less useful than monkey's throwing darts at a laptop, that's the obvious choice for worst metric. The others can all contribute at least some valuable insight into the value a link might pass.
#8 How can Meta Description tags help with the practice of search engine optimization?

Your Answer: They serve as the copy that will entice searchers to click on your listing

Correct Answer: They serve as the copy that will entice searchers to click on your listing

The correct answer is that they serve as the copy in the SERPs and are thus valuable for influencing click-through rates.
#9 Which of the following content types is most easily crawled by the major web search engines (Google, Yahoo!, MSN/Live & Ask.com)?

Your Answer: XHTML

Correct Answer: XHTML

XHTML is the obvious choice as the other file types all create problems for search engine spiders.
#10 Which of the following sources is considered to be the best for acquiring competitive link data?

Your Answer: Google

Correct Answer: Yahoo!

Since Yahoo! is the only engine still providing in-depth, comprehensive link data for both sites and pages, it's the obvious choice. Link commands have been disabled at MSN, throttled at Google, never existed at Ask.com and provide only a tiny subset of data at Alexa.
#11 Which of the following site architecture issues MOST impedes the ability of search engine spiders to crawl a site?

Your Answer: Web pages that employ iFrames

Correct Answer: Pages that require form submission to reach database content

Since search engines will assume a site is crawlable if it has no robots.txt file, doesn't have any crawl-specific issues with paid links, can read iFrames perfectly well and is able to spider and index plenty of pages with multiple URL parameters, the correct answer is clear. Pages that require form submission effectively block spiders, as automated bots will not complete form submissions to attempt to discover web content.
#12 What is the generally accepted difference between SEO and SEM?

Your Answer: SEO refers to organic/natural listings while SEM covers PPC, or paid search

Correct Answer: SEO focuses on organic/natural search rankings, SEM encompasses all aspects of search marketing

SEO - Search Engine Optimization - refers to the practice of ranking pages in the organic results at the search engines. SEM - Search Engine Marketing - refers to all practices that leverage search engines for traffic, branding, advertising & marketing.
#13 Which of these is NOT generally considered to be a highly important factor for ranking for a particular search term?

Your Answer: HTML Validation (according to W3C standards) of a page

Correct Answer: HTML Validation (according to W3C standards) of a page

As this document would indicate, W3C validation is clearly the odd man out in this bunch.
#14 When creating a "flat architecture" for a site, you attempt to minimize what?

Your Answer: The number of tabs/windows that open during normal navigation

Correct Answer: The number of links a search engine must follow to reach content pages

Flat site architecture refers to the link structure of the site, and thus, the only answer is "the number of links a search engine must follow to reach content pages."
#15 In the search marketing industry, what is traditionally represented by this graph?

Your Answer: The "long tail" theory of keyword demand

Correct Answer: The "long tail" theory of keyword demand

The graph shown represents the long tail concept, which is most frequently applied to keyword demand in the search marketing world. The theory is explained in detail here.
#16 Which of the following is NOT a "best practice" for creating high quality title tags?

Your Answer: Include an exhaustive list of keywords

Correct Answer: Include an exhaustive list of keywords

Since all the rest are very good ideas for title tag optimization (see this post for more), the outlier is to include an exhaustive list of keywords. Title tags are meant to describe the content on the page and to target 1-2 keyword phrases in the search engines, and thus, it would be terribly unwise to stuff many terms/phrases into the tag.
#17 Which of the following character limits is the best choice to use when limiting the length of title tags (assuming you want those tags to fully display in the search results at the major engines)?

Your Answer: 65

Correct Answer: 65

As Google & Yahoo! both display between 62-68 characters (there appears to be some various depending on both the country of origin of the search and the exact query), and MSN/Live hovers between 65-69, the best answer is... 65!
#18 PageRank is so named because it was created by Larry Page, not because it ranks pages.

Your Answer: TRUE

Correct Answer: TRUE

As you can read on Google's fun facts page, PageRank was named for its co-creator, Larry.
#19 A page on your site that serves as a "sitemap," linking to other pages on your domain in an organized, list format, is important because...

Your Answer: It may help search engine crawlers to easily access many pages on your site

Correct Answer: It may help search engine crawlers to easily access many pages on your site

As none of the others are remotely true, the only correct answer is that a sitemap page may help search engine crawlers easily access many pages on your site, particularly if your link structure is otherwise problematic.
#20 Which of the following search engines patented the concept of "TrustRank" as a methodology for ranking web sites & pages?

Your Answer: Google

Correct Answer: Yahoo!

The correct answer comes via the patent guru himself, Bill Slawski, who notes:

The citation that I’ve seen most commonly pointed at regarding trustrank is this paper - Combating Web Spam with TrustRank (pdf).

The authors listed on that paper are the named inventors on this Yahoo patent application:

1 Link-based spam detection (20060095416)

The remaining four describe an expansion of the trustrank process, referred to as dual trustrank, which adds elements of the social graph to the use of trustrank.

2 Using community annotations as anchortext (20060294085)

3 Realtime indexing and search in large, rapidly changing document collections (20060294086)

4 Trust propagation through both explicit and implicit social networks (20060294134)

5 Search engine with augmented relevance ranking by community participation (20070112761)
#21 Why are absolute (http://www.mysite.com/my-category)URLs better than relative ("/my-category") URLs for on-page internal linking?

Your Answer: They provide more keyword context for search engines judging internal links

Correct Answer: When scraped and copied on other domains, they provide a link back to the website

None of the answers makes sense, except that which refers to scrapers, who often copy pages without changing links and will thus link back to your site, helping to reduce duplicate content issues, and potentially provide some link value as well.
#22 How can you avoid the duplicate content problems that often accompany temporal pagination issues (where content moves down a page and from page to page, as is often seen in lists of articles, multi-page articles and blogs)?

Your Answer: Add a meta robots tag with "noindex, follow" to the paginated pages

Correct Answer: Add a meta robots tag with "noindex, follow" to the paginated pages

The only method listed in the answers that's effective is to use "noindex, follow" on the paginated, non-canonical pages.
#23 If you update your site's URL structure to create new versions of your pages, what should you do with the old URLs?

Your Answer: 301 redirect them to the new URLs

Correct Answer: 301 redirect them to the new URLs

The correct move is to 301 the pages so they pass link juice and visitors to the new, proper locations.
#24 When you have multiple-pages targeting the same keywords on a domain, which of the following is the best way to avoid keyword cannibalization?

Your Answer: Place links on all the secondary pages back to the page you most want ranking for the term/phrase using the primary keywords as the anchor text of those links

Correct Answer: Place links on all the secondary pages back to the page you most want ranking for the term/phrase using the primary keywords as the anchor text of those links

As this blog post explains, it's best to "place links on all the secondary pages back to the page you most want ranking for the term/phrase using the primary keywords as the anchor text of those links."
#25 The de-facto version of a page located on the primary URL you want associated with the content is known as:

Your Answer: Canonical Version

Correct Answer: Canonical Version

The only answer that is generally accepted in the search community is "canonical version."
#26 Which domain extensions are more often associated with greater trust and authority in the search engines?

Your Answer: .edu, .mil and .gov

Correct Answer: .edu, .mil and .gov

Although the search engines themselves have said there are no specific algorithmic elements that make domains from .gov, .edu and .mil more trustworthy or authoritative, these sites, due to the restriction of the TLD licensing, certainly have an association with more trust in webmaster's eyes (and, very often, the search results).
#27 High quality links to a site's homepage will help to increase the ranking ability of deeper pages on the same domain.

Your Answer: TRUE

Correct Answer: TRUE

The answer is "TRUE" as the properties of PageRank, domain trust, authority and many other search ranking factors will cause internal pages on a well-linked-to domain to rank more highly.
#28 The practice of showing one version of content on a URL to search engines, and another, different version to human visitors of the same URL is known as?

Your Answer: Cloaking

Correct Answer: Cloaking

As WebmasterWorld notes, this practice is called cloaking.
#29 Which HTTP server response code indicates a file/folder that no longer exists?

Your Answer: 404

Correct Answer: 404

The W3C standards for HTTP status codes tells us that 404 is the correct answer.
#30 Spammy sites or blogs begin linking to your site. What effect is this likely to have on your search engine rankings?

Your Answer: It may negatively affect your rankings as search engines associate your site with bad neighborhoods on the web

Correct Answer: A very slight positive effect is most likely, as search engines are not perfectly able to discount the link value of all spammy sites

The correct answer is that a very slight positive effect is most likely. This is because search engines do NOT want to penalize for the acquisition of spammy links, as this would simply encourage sites to point low quality links at their competition in order to knock them out of the results. The slight positive effect is typical because not all engines are 100% perfect at removing the link value from spam.
#31 A link from a PageRank "3" page (according to the Google toolbar) hosted on a very strong, trusted domain can be more valuable than a link from a PageRank "4" page hosted on a weaker domain.

Your Answer: TRUE

Correct Answer: TRUE

Since PageRank is not nearly the overwhelmingly strong factor influencing search rankings at Google these days, the answer is definitely "TRUE."
#32 What's the largest page size that Google's spider will crawl?

Your Answer: No set limit exists - Google may crawl very large pages if it believes them to be worthwhile

Correct Answer: No set limit exists - Google may crawl very large pages if it believes them to be worthwhile

As evidenced by many of the 500-100K+ pages in Google's index, there is no set limit, and the search engine may spider unusually large documents if it feels the effort is warranted (particularly if many important links point to a page).
#33 Is it generally considered acceptable to have the same content resolve on both www and non-www URLs of a website?

Your Answer: Yes, the search engines recognize they're the same thing

Correct Answer: No, this may cause negative indexing/ranking issues

This is generally considered a bad idea, and may have negative effects if the search engines do not properly count links to both versions (the most common issue) or even view the two as duplicate, competing content (unlikely, though possible).
#34 Which HTTP server response code indicates a page that has been temporarily relocated and links to the old location will not pass influence to the new location?

Your Answer: 302

Correct Answer: 302

The W3C standards for HTTP status codes tells us that 302 is the correct answer.
#35 Which of these is least likely to have difficulty ranking for its targeted terms/phrases in Google?

Your Answer: A new domain that has received significant buzz and attention in the online and offline media, along with tens of thousands of natural links

Correct Answer: A new domain that has received significant buzz and attention in the online and offline media, along with tens of thousands of natural links

This is a tough question, and the answer is even somewhat debatable. However, as phrased, the MOST correct answer is almost certainly - "A new domain that has received significant buzz and attention in the online and offline media, along with tens of thousands of natural links" - as each of the other situations have many examples of having very difficult times ranking well.
#36 What is the advantage of putting all of your important keywords in the Meta Keywords tag?

Your Answer: There is no specific advantage for search engines

Correct Answer: There is no specific advantage for search engines

The answer is that no advantage is conferred upon sites who include their terms in the meta keywords tag. For more on the subject, read Danny Sullivan's excellent post.
#37 Which of the following link building tactics do search engines tacitly endorse?

Your Answer: Viral content creation & promotion

Correct Answer: Viral content creation & promotion

As representatives from each of the major engines have acknowledged publicly, viral content creation and promotion is viewed as a legitimate and preferred tactic for link acquisition.
#38 Which HTTP server response code indicates a page that has been permanently relocated and all links to the old page will pass their influence to the new page location?

Your Answer: 301

Correct Answer: 301

The W3C standards for HTTP status codes tells us that 301 is the correct answer.
#39 Which of the following factors is considered when search engines assign value to links?

Your Answer: The date/time the link was created and the temporal relationship between that link's appearance and other time-sensitive criteria

Correct Answer: The date/time the link was created and the temporal relationship between that link's appearance and other time-sensitive criteria

The only one of these that search engines would consider (and have mentioned in patent applications like this one) is the temporal data.
#40 There is no apparent search engine rankings benefit to having a keyword-matched domain name (eg www.example.com for keyword "example").

Your Answer: FALSE

Correct Answer: FALSE

This is "FALSE," as many examples of keyword-targeted domains have been shown to have a phenomenal amount of ranking success in the engines, despite other factors not being nearly as strong as the competition.
#41 If you want a page to pass value through its links, but stay out of the search engines' indices, which of the following tags should you place in the header?

Your Answer: Use meta robots="noindex, follow"

Correct Answer: Use meta robots="noindex, follow"

As Google tells us here, the proper format would be to use meta robots="noindex, follow"
#42 Which of these factors is LEAST likely to decrease the value of a link?

Your Answer: The linked-to domain has a link somewhere that points at the linking domain (each domain link to pages on the other's site)

Correct Answer: The linked-to domain has a link somewhere that points at the linking domain (each domain link to pages on the other's site)

The right answer is "a link from the domain being linked to pointing at the linking site already exists (each domain link to pages on the other's site)." This is because despite the fact that these links are technically "reciprocal," they don't fit any pattern of penalization for such links (such as being listed on link list style pages). The search engines are least likely to devalue these because of all the natural patterns in which such linking occurs (blogrolls, news sites, forums, hobbyists, schools, etc.)
#43 Which of the following is a requirement for getting in the Google Local listings?

Your Answer: A physical mail address in your claimed location

Correct Answer: A physical mail address in your claimed location

The only one that's a must-have is the physical mailing address.
#44 Which of the following engines offers paid inclusion services for their main web index (not advertising):

Your Answer: Yahoo!

Correct Answer: Yahoo!

Currently, only Yahoo! offers paid inclusion through their search submit program.
#45 When is it advisable to leave the meta description off of a page?

Your Answer: When a large amount of pages exist and the options are between using a single meta description for all of the pages vs. leaving them with none at all

Correct Answer: When a large amount of pages exist and the options are between using a single meta description for all of the pages vs. leaving them with none at all

The correct answer is "When a large amount of pages exist and the options are between using a single meta description for all of the pages vs. leaving them with none at all." Duplicate meta description tags aren't the worst thing in the world, but they're certainly not providing any value and may have downsides from a duplicate content perspective (particularly if page content is very similar). Besides that, the other answers simply don't make sense :)
#46 A domain will not be hurt by having a penalized site or page 301'd to it.

Your Answer: TRUE

Correct Answer: TRUE

This is "TRUE," and has been tested by many a black hat. The danger here is that, once again, crafty spammers could use this technique to hurt their competitors if the search engines did penalize the receiving domain.
#47 Which of the following strategies is the best way to lift a page out of Google's supplemental index?

Your Answer: Link to it internally from strong pages

Correct Answer: Link to it internally from strong pages

As "supplemental" has been defined by engineers at Google as being a page with very little PageRank, the best way to lift it out, from the options given, is to link to it internally from strong pages.
#48 Which of the following is NOT speculated to be a contributing factor in achieving "breakout" site results in Google?

A sample of "breakout" results for the query, Comedy Central, at Google

Your Answer: Having an active AdWords campaign

Correct Answer: Having an active AdWords campaign

The only one that doesn't fit is the use of an AdWords campaign, which Google has said has no impact on organic listings.
#49 Which of the following is the best method to insure that a page does not get crawled or indexed by a search engine?

Your Answer: Restrict the page using robots.txt

Correct Answer: Restrict the page using robots.txt

The clear best method above, and the one prescribed by the engines, is to use the robots.txt file to restrict access.
#50 If you want to rank for a country specific TLD/Top-Level-Domain extension (such as Yahoo.jp or Google.ca) which of the following is NOT important?

Your Answer: Linking out only to other sites with the targeted TLD extension

Correct Answer: Linking out only to other sites with the targeted TLD extension

Linking out only to other sites with the targeted TLD extension is certainly not a requirement nor a suggested method for inclusion into a country-specific search engine's results. See this recent video for more.
#51 Which of the following CANNOT get you penalized at the major search engines?

Your Answer: Selling links that pass value

Correct Answer: Using "nofollow" internally on your site to control the flow of link juice

As Matt Cutts has noted recently, using "nofollow" to sculpt the flow of link juice is perfectly acceptable.
#52 Which of the following directories had its ability to pass link value removed?

Your Answer: www.bluefind.org - The Bluefind Web Directory

Correct Answer: www.bluefind.org - The Bluefind Web Directory

Only BlueFind suffered this penalty - having had its ability to pass link value removed by Google, ostensibly for "selling PageRank."
#53 Which of the following is an acceptable way to show HTML text to search engines while creating a graphical image to display to users?

Your Answer: CSS image replacement - create a rule in the CSS file that replaces the text with an image based on a given class

Correct Answer: CSS image replacement - create a rule in the CSS file that replaces the text with an image based on a given class

The only method that's approved by search engines is to use CSS image replacement with the exact copy in both the image and the HTML text.
#54 For high-volume search phrases, the Search Engines usually will not differentiate between singular and plural versions of a term (eg "cell phone" vs. "cell phones" or "bird feeder" vs. "bird feeders").

Your Answer: FALSE

Correct Answer: FALSE

As we can see from searches on the various phrases - cell phone vs. cell phones and bird feeder vs. bird feeders - this is FALSE. There are clear differentiations.
#55 If your site is ranked in the #1 organic position for a given query, advertising in the top paid position for that search result will generally not produce an additional volume of search traffic.

Your Answer: FALSE

Correct Answer: FALSE

Research from several sources, including this eye-tracking research report from MarketingSherpa, indicates that the correct answer is FALSE. You get more traffic and click-throughs with both the top paid and organic results than either individually.
#56 What's likely to happen if multiple accounts on a single IP address vote up a story at Digg in a short time period?

Your Answer: Your accounts will be suspended

Correct Answer: Your accounts will be suspended

The most likely result, particularly if this is done multiple times, is to have the accounts suspended.
#57 Let's assume that you're running SEO for an auction website with many listings, sorted by categories and subcategories. To achieve the maximum search engine traffic benefit, what should you do with individual product/auction pages after the auction has expired and the product is no longer available?

Your Answer: 301 redirect them to the most appropriate category page associated with the product

Correct Answer: 301 redirect them to the most appropriate category page associated with the product

The "best" answer of the choices given is to 301 redirect the pages to the most appropriate category page associated with the product - this ensures that link value won't be lost, and visitors who come to the old page will get the best user experience as well.
#58 Which factor is most likely to decrease the ranking value of a link?

Your Answer: Comes from a page with many reciprocal and paid links

Correct Answer: Comes from a page with many reciprocal and paid links

All of the answers can provide significant link value except "comes from a page with many reciprocal and paid links," which is very likely to have a strong negative affect on the value of the link.
#59 Which of the following search engine and country combination does not represent the most popular search engine in that country?

Your Answer: Japan / Yahoo

Correct Answer: Japan / Yahoo

All of the above are correct, except Japan, where Google appears to now have a dominant search market share, despite Yahoo! getting more web traffic and visits. See also this piece from Multilingual-Search.com.
#60 Where do search engines consider content inside an iFrame to be located?

Your Answer: On the source page the iFrame pulls from

Correct Answer: On the source page the iFrame pulls from

Engines judge iframe content the same way browsers do, and consider them to be part of the source page the iFrame pulls from (not the URL displaying the iFrame content).
#61 If the company you buy links from gets "busted" (discovered and penalized) by a search engine, the links you have from them will:

Your Answer: Stop passing link value

Correct Answer: Stop passing link value

Since search engines don't want to give webmasters the ability to knock their competitors out with paid links, they will simply devalue the links they discover to be part of paid networks, such that they no longer pass value.
#62 Which of these queries would not have an "Instant Answer" or "Onebox Result" on Google?

Your Answer: Best Chinese Restaurant in San Francisco

Correct Answer: Best Chinese Restaurant in San Francisco

No surprisingly, the only correct answer is "Best Chinese Restaurant in San Francisco."
#63 Which major search engine serves advertising listings (paid search results) from the PPC program of one of the other major engines?

Your Answer: Ask.com

Correct Answer: Ask.com

Ask.com is the only major engine that shows ad results from another engine - specifically, Google.
#64 Duplicate content is primarily an off-site issue, created through content licensing deals and copyright violations of scraped and re-published content, rather than a site-internal problem.

Your Answer: FALSE

Correct Answer: FALSE

The answer is FALSE, as on-site duplicate content issues can be serious and cause plenty of problems in the search engines.
#65 Links from 'noindex, follow' pages are treated exactly the same as links from default ('index, follow') pages.

Your Answer: TRUE

Correct Answer: TRUE

This is TRUE - according to Matt Cutts in a comment here, links on pages with "noindex, follow" are treated exactly the same as links from default ("index, follow") pages.
#66 Which metric is NOT used by the major search engines to measure relevance or popularity in their ranking algorithms?

Your Answer: Keyword density in text on the page

Correct Answer: Keyword density in text on the page

Keyword density is the outlier here. Dr. Garcia explains why search engines don't use the metric here.
#67 If they have the same content, the Search Engines will consider example.com/avocado and example.com/avocado/ to be the same page.

Your Answer: TRUE

Correct Answer: TRUE

The answer is TRUE, as engines don't consider the trailing slash to create a different page (examples here and here).
#68 Which Search Engines currently allow the 'nocontent' attribute?

Your Answer: Yahoo!

Correct Answer: Yahoo!

To date, only Yahoo! has implemented the nocontent parameter.
#69 In which of the following countries does Ask.com have the most significant percentage of search engine market share?

Your Answer: United States

Correct Answer: United States

Surprisingly, the answer is the US, where Ask.com has an estimated 5% market share.
#70 For search engine rankings & traffic in Google & Yahoo!, it is generally better to have many, small, single topic focused sites with links spread out between them than one, large, inclusive site with all the links pointing to that single domain.

Your Answer: FALSE

Correct Answer: FALSE

This is FALSE, primarily because the search engines' current algorithms places a great deal of weight on large, trusted domains, rather than small, niche sites.
#71 The 4 major search engines - Google, Yahoo!, MSN/Live and Ask serve what approximate percentage of all searches performed in the US?

Your Answer: ~95%

Correct Answer: ~95%

According to nearly every study reported (including ComScore's), the four major networks, when AOL is included (serving Google results), provide ~95% of all searches in the US.
#72 The linkfromdomain operator displays what information and is available at which search engine(s)?

Your Answer: Data on what websites are linked-to from a given domain - available at MSN/Live only

Correct Answer: Data on what websites are linked-to from a given domain - available at MSN/Live only

As can be seen here, Microsoft/Live is the only engine to provide the command and it shows what pages are linked-to by a given domain.
#73 Which of the following social media websites is the least popular (as measured by active users & visitors)?

Your Answer: Newsvine

Correct Answer: Newsvine

Newsvine is the smallest of the above, both in terms of traffic and users.
#74 Which of the following pieces of information is NOT available from current keyword research sources?

Your Answer: Cost per click paid by PPC advertisers

Correct Answer: Cost per click paid by PPC advertisers

Since all of the current search engines have blind bid systems, the cost-per-click paid by advertisers is currently unavailable anywhere.
#75 The use of AJAX presents what common problem for search engines and websites?

Your Answer: It creates multiple pages with unique content without enabling new, spiderable, linkable URLs

Correct Answer: It creates multiple pages with unique content without enabling new, spiderable, linkable URLs

The largest problem for search engines is that AJAX frequently "creates multiple pages with unique content without enabling new, spiderable, linkable URLs."

Tired Of Blogging- Stop it then...

2007-09-08T04:02:00.000-07:00

Technorati tracks around 86 million blogs, and according to an online survey by only 1% of them are active. Now that is a matter to be worried. I understand it takes an extra effort to put together information, reading, writing, churning it to produce a piece of literally genius,(your readers deserve none the less). Meaty posts, are harder to write, that gives your reader an insight into the unique way you see and understand issues.

Bloggers who are extremely passionate often tend to lose track of time, reading, writing and updating their blogs. More serious business bloggers have 2-3 blogs and they update them simultaneously. But if you are blogging addict and are burning out the hours that are needed by the rest of your life, you need to set your priorities right.

Bloggers love the fruit of their labor they put in their blogs in terms of traffic, comments, and other attraction it brings along. Blogging also brings in some side income and lets you stay corporately active. It increases your knowledge in the subject you love and blog about.

When you should give it up entirely?

Answer the following questions- Why do you blog? Is it just a hobby or is it going to achieve personal or business objectives for you? When you are clear with the reasons of why you started or about to start blogging it will never become a tedious job. Do not ever Blog just for the sake of it. It Reflects in your writing.

Are some of your blogs dieing a silent death? Do not try to give extra time to them. Instead maintain those who are hail and hearty(I read a few medical journals lately). Giving time to blogs that do not receive traffic anymore or was about a time sensitive topic which is no more hot(Like Cricket World Cup 2007). The time you are giving to such blogs may be deserved by a blog that people love to read. Give them a silent burial.

If your blog is not serving a purpose that it meant to be, you should really look for a cause. Do not follow the blogging trend. There may be more profitable ways that can enhance and promote your business. Stop wasting your time. Lots of blogs are abandoned everyday because they stopped serving their purpose, or more often, because the bloggers just grew up and moved to greener pastures.

Daily Dose of Spam

2007-08-22T14:45:00.000-07:00

According to Wikipedia-“Spamming is the abuse of electronic messaging systems to indiscriminately send unsolicited bulk messages.” If you search for the term spam on wikipedia it will offer you to know different kinds of spam, what and how of it.

Spam is anything that tries to manipulate the user for ones own benefits. Spamming being economically viable and take lesser efforts, lull people in doing so.

Spam exists in places where there is a possibility of monetary gain or other benefits like appearing in Search Engine results. Spam’s existence lies in the abundance of it. Interestingly enough we all receive our Daily Dose of Spam whether in terms of Unsolicited mail, messages or advertisements. Generally all will offer you something to purchase, sometimes even such solutions that are freely available. Internet users need to be more aware of using such links. Systems need to be developed where spammers should be automatically dropped.

People tend to spam competitor’s sites to get them more negative rankings from search engines or even to get them banned. Google Bowling is a term that appeared in Forbes lists in "The Saboteurs of Search". It deals with framing of Competitors site to appear in Google’s Spam radars. Google would drop the ranking of the targeted site once it is convinced of the spamming issues. It can be done by generating many links to the targeted site, at one time, from bad neighbours, using special software. Anchor text used in such cases is always the same. That completes the whole spam circle and the guilty is either gets penalised in SERPs or totally dropped from Google results.

Recent News from BBC says that Job Site Monster.com suffered a massive Trojan attack using stolen log-in information. Security firm Symantec said the program was used to gather names, email addresses, home addresses and phone numbers, and could be used to send phishing and spam emails. The security firm said: "This remote server held over 1.6 million entries with personal information belonging to several hundred thousands candidates, mainly based in the U.S., who had posted their resumes to the Monster.com Web site."

Can we Stop Spam?

With Spam taking such serious turns, each individual should be responsible to report spam to concerned authorities of the system they are using. We at Blogging to Fame have given the facility to individual profile owners to report message spam, and also encourage users to inform us of plagiarism and other related issues. A rating system is thus started to actually come up with quality ratings, which would affect overall ranking of the blogger.

Spam can only be reduced with each internet user awakens to such issues and do not knowingly or unknowingly encourage spam. Service providers will have to provide their users with facility of reporting spam. One common example of it is email service providers. Usage of technology filters (think of how Gmail filters spam) and banning of spammers may pose some help. But Human intervention is necessary at all stages- That is You and me.

Divya

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Technorati Tags:- Spam

What's in a name?

2007-08-10T14:10:00.000-07:00

Did your parents name you Skygirl, TomBoy, Tolly64, SuperMom?

Imagine your office colleagues calling you by the user name you put on your blog. It might soon as well happen. Blogging has taken over a serious turn and bloggers are known by their blogs. Where blogs add a qualification in your resumes, you might as well know the importance of where to use your original name and where not.

When we talk about corporate or business blogging it gets more important to include your name than just a recognition issue.

Popularity Strike- The time and efforts you put in your blog may bring you to the edge of the success and fame. Regretting at that point won’t help, where nobody will actually know you with your real name. You might reach a point where you receive a call from New York Times and they call you FunkyPolly. Trying to induce your real name will not be easy. A company hiring you might also need a proof of your blog been authored by your real name. We have the same problem when approving blogs for Blogging to Fame contest.

Credibility- When serious blogging and advisory blogs are concerned, your readers trust your ability to provide credible information and solutions they are looking for. Your identity builds credibility. Providing your original details helps people to believe you, and help you to lay foundation of taking your online career to the next step.

It is easy to be an expert of your niche as you read and write about it all the time. If you blog under pseudonym you will never get the credit you deserve from it. Moreover, people like to hear from you than your expert online disguise.

Fake Name Issues- In the age of technology and social media, where you build connections, networks and integrate you work life with your personal, you will often get stuck with the two name issue. Dual identity has always fragmented trust, and it can go as far to get you considered as unauthentic. It does not have to be that way, but that is how people will generally tend to take it. Do not create walls between you and your readers with a pseudonym.

Sexual harassment- If you think a username can hide you from online sexual harassment, think again. It is very true that women bloggers get harassed more than men do, but then office harassment is more serious than online. So when you do not stop going to office then why hide under a fake name. The harassment will anyways subject to you, whether under a pseudonym or not. Girls have got smart with experience to handle harassment. Real life teaches them this since they are twelve and a street Romeo winks or whistles at them.

One Place that should hold details about you is the ‘About Me’ Page.

About us/me- The ‘About us’ should hold details of your offline career as well. Do not lie about yourself or your qualifications. Your experience can help somebody. Write about your hobbies and interest. Give it a personal touch. It should reflect your identity and yet your seriousness about the subject you are blogging about. You can include a little about your experiences regarding the same. Use your creativity to define your style.

If your visitor likes your way of your writing and bringing up issues, he would definitely like to know more about you. If you use any analytics service you would often notice that more often than not people click your ‘about me’ page. Finding no information about you may make them think about your credibility. But there are still certain places where it is my sincere advice not to use your name at all.

It’s a time of change, a time to be true to yourself and your readers. They give you their most important thing- TRUST.

Divya

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Technorati Tags:- Business Blogging

The Reality of Business Blogging- Conversations to Connections

2007-07-25T01:53:00.000-07:00

Why do people blog? To share, to experience, to generate ideas.

Blogging starts with a conversation with its readers and ends with it. Business Blogging is when these expressions and relations take a more a serious turn. Where your readers are also your prospects, and your relationship with them is more than that of a friend. You are their guide, and their adviser.

At Better Business Blog Mark talks about making connections. He says

"[…] with business blogs, we need to go further.

Meaningful dialogue on a business blog, I believe, is different. It is about taking that one step extra. It's still built on the basis that people prefer to do business with people they like and trust, but surely that means going above and beyond a simple conversation. In business, it's only when these conversations lead somewhere that they become truly useful in commercial terms. For me, that is about creating connections.[…]"

Mark justifies…

"[…]a connection is when communication on business blogs makes an impact or really strikes a chord with those reading them. The type of connection when something "clicks" as you talk with someone … at whatever level. Ideas, commitment, personality, integrity, presentation perhaps. It's the type of link up which actually signifies something because of the mutual interest it creates. It's this which indicates an intention to make contact with that person again rather than a conversational exchange and then a parting of ways[…]"

Conversations in business are as important as otherwise. Conversation is exchange of thoughts, ideas, opinions and feelings, and that is the essence of blogging. Business Blogging should make more sense and provide more value. So in short, business blogging cannot be restricted to creating impact, but a much better platform to get inputs from your client side.

Blogging is not to create impact what used to be done with conventional websites and also what our ads are doing from ages. Blogs provide a unique platform to get connect and understand your market. A post in your business blog would help your market know your company and you more closely, help you convey something to them.

I understand that most of the companies are still trying to use internet effectively, and using Blogosphere is still far from it. One thing should be taken very seriously at-least for blog-o-sphere. No one can push things here. It won't take them far. So Business blogging should focus involving and making connection by bringing more people into your conversation circle.

As far as connections are concerned, only a meaningful conversation, can take you to the level. Things only click when one is able to convey right and useful information across in a business. I consider conversations and connections to be two stations to a destination called business. Where every connection can only be reached when it is started with a proper level of conversation. All the description that Mark made would be an en route from Conversation and Connection.

Where business blogging is concerned, blogs speak for themselves. They provide information and maintain customer relations. Business Blogging is in its nascent stage. Blogging was involved into the business scenario to build relationships with customers and prospects. By providing and assisting him and communicating with them.

Successful connections automatically takes place after one is able to create a helpful communication. Where you have to leave an impact on your reader and touching him on strings important to him, or as Mark said striking the right Chord, call conversation as a medium of attaining end result called Connection.

Understand your market, do a little research. It would be easy to find the problems your clients are going through. Give them the kind of solutions they are looking for. Develop a relationship with your readers. The trust and belief you will build through such an conversation, they would love to be customers. Remember as per P.T. Barnum, "A customer is Born every minute", you just have to convey it to him.

Divya Uttam

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Comic Blogging: A different expression…

2007-07-21T00:31:00.000-07:00

As kids we have always been fond of comic strips. As adults we are still fond of them. Its easy to gear up imagination and present a point using comic strips. You can make sticky marketing materials. It makes them an interesting and witty deal.

When we talk about viral marketing, your brand would be popular if you project it. Both online and offline, companies have focused on using the little cartoon characters to bring them more consumers.

Been to Blaugh? This is one way to make a statement using comic strips. Blaugh is famous for what it does- hiding their remarks on companies and services under the veil of humor. It gives you thinking material from time to time and still keeps your interest.

It’s Easy.

At ToonDoo- You do have Ideas but you think producing strips will take in a lot of sketching and stuff. Think again. At Toondoo you can just have it done really easy. The above strip as you might have well noticed is made using Toondoo. It’s a really simple task. They provide you backgrounds, characters, props, you just have to customize them according to your need. It provides you a flash interface and all you have to do is drag and drop on the canvas. Add speech bubbles to make your characters speak. You can upload your own pictures and have fun with them.

At QuickToon- This service is in the beta stage and provides you with similar abilities as ToonDoo but with a lot less options, and you cannot upload your own pictures. But again the choice is yours and whichever you find it easier to work with.

At Mai’Nada ComicSketcher- If you are good at mouse handling(read as Sketching online) you can go in for this service. It lets you draw online and the good part is you can obviously let your imagination go wild and haywire. With comic strips you got to.

Al these services will let you embed the strips in your blogs and share them with your friends.

Other Services you can check out are- StripGenerator and StripCreator

So bloggers get there and get creative. Unleash the child within you.

Divya Uttam.

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Light Blogging: Witty Slogans

2007-07-18T11:14:00.000-07:00

Let’s start afresh with light blogging, something to get us back in mood, after such a long break. Here are some slogans I found Really Witty…

“I get enough exercise just pushing my luck.”

“ Few women admit their age. Few men act theirs.”

“Eat right, exercise regularly, die anyway. “

“All I have to do is win the lottery!”

“I don't have a solution, but I admire your problem.”

“Living right doesn't really make you live longer, it just seems like longer!”

“A man is known by the company he avoids.”

“Due to budget cuts, the light at the end of the tunnel has been turned off.”

“Growing old is inevitable. Growing up is optional.”

“If love was the answer, can you please repeat the question”

“A mind is like a parachute: it only functions when it is open.”

“The more I drink, the better you look!”

“I'm not 40, I'm 18 with 22 years experience!”

“Education is an investment and not an expense”

“Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it's time to pause and reflect.”

“If you tell the truth, you don't have to remember anything.”

“Progress is made by lazy men looking for easier ways to do things.”

“VENI, VEDI, VISA. I came, I saw, I did a little shopping.”

“I'm too sexy for my hair, that's why it isn't there.”

“A wish is a desire without an attempt.”

The last one is-

“Seen it all, done it all, can't remember most of it.”

But take along a lesson. I hope they would leave to think about something and still leave a smile on your face.

Happy Blogging,

Divya

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Blogging to Fame Updates for the Last time

2007-07-13T02:56:00.000-07:00

1)Results for 3^rd week were announced way back. Have a look here.

2)From now onwards this blog is stopping to take any responsibilities for the site. It will be done by the Official one.

3)We have received wonderful audience for our Official Blog. Yes its up and going.

4)A new message System has been uploaded, now you can block the sender, reply to the message, and delete the message.

The best part is This Blog will have its own Identity as before. The new week will see the older identity. Lots of experience to share and lots to information on board.

Stay regular and expect for more, from Monday.

Divya Uttam

2nd Week's Results Announced.

2007-07-03T08:52:00.000-07:00

Results for second week 24^th June to 30^th June, 2007 has been announced. Congrats to the selected members.

Visit Pre Selections… to know the results.

Start working on your blogging, take my words it will take more than “Fame me- Fame you Attitude”. As said before Contest now will be tougher.

Get on your toes as soon as possible, get blogging.

Best of Luck.
Divya Uttam

First week Slections- 50 Blogs at Blogging to Fame

2007-06-26T02:00:00.000-07:00

A step further to Blogging to Fame…

Short listed 50 blogs for the week 17 Jun, 2007 to 23 Jun, 2007 have been announced, and they can be found at pre-selections… These blogs will be part of the 500 blogs for the final Blogging to Fame Awards Contest.

While the Jury and the team were looking into the results, the cut off was lowered down to 28. ( One blog per author is selected if more than one blog was their in the top 40 list. Other blogs may get selected in subsequent weeks.) The blogs for the first week are:-

Life in the Fast Lane
CinePlaneta
Maryannaville
Electronic Village
Greg Lunger.com
GamesMaisBr
eWritings - Online Public Relations
Interesting Observations
The Thinking Blog
Duty Of Human Being
Sir Paul McCartney & The Beatles guest band Purplemelon
THE HALF-WIDOWS OF KASHMIR
Espreson
My Article World
Escape The Room
Necessary Skills
TopBlogMag
Blog-Op
Upper Fort Stewart
Rumble of Thoughts
BE THE CHANGE YOU WANT TO SEE IN YOURSELF
PoeARTica
Dosh Dosh
MiLeStOnE
My View of "It"
Untwisted Vortex
Today is that Day
Technacular : Home for all things technical
Marina's Bloggariffic
Debo Hobo
My Marrakesh
Make Money Online with a 13-year Old
The Friday Traffic Report
MedTempus
Estralato - O site das estrelas
Lisa Lorenz Studio Blog
1 Million Love Messages
Made to Be Great
Big Paw Blog
The Far Corner
eJabs...for knowledge!
Stresskill.net
Mind, Body, Spirit And Fluttering Thoughts
Polliwogs Pond
Gurushabad
Smart Indian
Conceive, Believe, Achieve
Eleanorblog
The Diet Pulpit
Computer Mobile Corner (CMC)

Congratulations to the Selected ones...

If you are not here do not worry, there are 9 more weeks to go. Collect more fame for yourself and work your blog's Quality.

The blogs which are already selected need to work harder now as the competition is going to be tougher.

Keep on Blogging to Fame,
Best of Luck,
Divya Uttam.

Selection Process begins for First week

2007-06-20T06:13:00.000-07:00

Its been time that I have written any post and I do apologise for not giving much Quality content...

Things have been busy lately, there are a lot many ideas I am working on to make the event better. So here is a little update about the Contest-

As been told previously, and for a reminder the contest is divided into two parts-
1) For Blogs
2) For Bloggers

The Contest for bloggers will go on till 1st November, 2007 where you can keep collecting fame for yourself till then. The selection for the bloggers will depend on their-
a) Social Popularity
b) Blog Popularity
c) Style of writing
The 5 Bloggers who will win the contest will get $5000 each.

The Contest for Blogs is a bit complex, where in there would be a selection of 500 blogs in an ongoing process of 10 weeks. After it, we will assign 100 blogs each to 5 Jury members and the rest can be read at the Contest rules. These would be eligible for winning the grand award of $25,000 and three $10,000 awards.

As for our final 500 blogs and 10 weeks process, Week 1 has started and selection is going on for first 50, wherein the fames collected and the quality are both taken into consideration.

The Process Is Defined as Following:

1) All Blogs who have fames above 30 automatically come in our selection criteria, out of which Top 40 will be selected.

2) 10 will be selected from the rest on their Quality. Quality parameters have been decided with the Jury.

So you may even get selected if you have just entered the competition and have only a few fames for your blog depending upon how you write and quality you maintain at your blog.
The results for the first week would be announced at the site on 25th June, 2007.

Get there and get going, collect more Fame for yourself and increase your chances of becoming an A-List Blogger.

Best of Luck for the Contest.
Divya Uttam

Blogging to Fame Jury Members 1

2007-06-10T12:03:00.000-07:00

Why do you need a Jury?

1. Jury Members will help in the selection of your blogs and to take the competition to the final stage. Blogging to Fame has decided to have Jury so the selection of blogs may not be biased and prejudiced. The selection of your blogs will take place under the strict invigilation of the eminent Jury members.

2. We have always talked about writing quality posts, but there are no rules to define quality, not at least in blogs. One may argue, what might be quality to him, might not be to someone else. So we have Jury members to decide unanimously about the quality your blog holds.

3. Apart from selecting blogs Jury will also provide tips and tricks to the 500 selected bloggers and ways to improve their blogging. Having a Jury panel gives us the privilege to share their knowledge, experience and expertise.

Introducing Our first two Jury Members-

Our first two Jury members are Mike Sansone and Jeremy Jacobs. Experts in creating conversation and public relations they make interactive enthralling persona. And the best part is they both are bloggers.

Who is Mike Sansone?

Mike with 2100+ readers has been into blogging from only a little more than one year. He coaches business leaders to promote blogging and using Social Media to Converse with their customers and amplify their business.
From his Biography:

“Mike Sansone is an independent business consultant specializing in business blogs and conversational copywriting. His experience in public speaking, sales and marketing, writing, and real-time online communication are strengths Mike relies upon in his role as a Conversation Conductor. Prior to starting his own business, Mike helped to build thriving online communities with America Online, Real Fans Sports Network, Ignite Sports Media and HeyMax. He also has coordinated the growth of offline communities as a property manager, volunteer, and minister.”

Popular posts: A Blog Posting Mantra
The RBI of Blogging

Who is Jeremy Jacobs?

Jeremy has joined the blogging league pretty recently, and proves his expertise in his Niche of Public Speaking. He also has been actively involved with Breast Cancer Campaign.

From his Biography:

“Jeremy’s experience lends itself to a variety of professional arenas. With success at the BBC, on-going requests from Public Sector bodies and large corporate clients, Jeremy is establishing himself as a versatile presenter and speaker. Be it via TV, corporate video; radio, motivational speech; MC, meeting facilitator or Chairman, Jeremy has experience of each. For example, his time spent as a sports reporter for BBC local radio and Capital Gold. His strengths? A real ‘home grown’ talent with the versatility to inspire viewers and listeners. A deep, authoritative but friendly voice and an authenticity built on meeting life’s challenges and opportunities spanning 25 years in business-to-business sales.
A winner of hearts and stimulator of minds Jeremy’s take on presenting is. “The presenter is key to getting your message over yet the Message is the most important element of any communication and that is my focus, finding a way that works best.” ”

Popular posts: 4 Types of Public Speakers
Presentation & Public Speaking Tips

So all the best for the Blogging to Fame Contest. If you have yet not Registered, do it now.

Cheers,
Divya

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What makes a blog great?

2007-05-31T10:46:00.000-07:00

And how you can have one of them.

The author who benefits you most is the one who tells you something you did not know before, but the one who gives expression to the truth that has been dumbly struggling in you for utterance. - Oswald Chambers.

We bloggers are so much addicted to our blogs, our community, and try to give our best to Internet. We are the source of great user developed content on Internet that has helped many people. Before us Internet was such a dull place.

I tried to write this post with some serious matters like Link Building, Link Bating, Web2.o and a few case studies on how great blogs are made in short time. But I scrapped the paper and threw it into the bin. Because optimization doesn’t make a blog GREAT. It’s that SIMPLE. So stop wasting your precious time and working too hard on optimization( a little is useful, a lot is a waste).

Blogging is meant to be interactive and thought provoking. It’s time we need to grow from bloggers, to great influencers for people coming to Internet, looking for direction.
I recently did a post on why you now need to be different otherwise you can’t be anywhere in the picture. Check out the post here.

You might be happy with your links, and might have a good Technorati ranking, but did you check your traffic statistics? HOW MANY VISITORS does each link send you daily? Most of them send you spiders. I still wonder how much juice that spider gets me from that link. I suggest you that you can still work less and get links, which actually send you visitors. REAL people.

Great blogs definitely influence our lives online and offline, and we unknowingly create paths to send them our readers, through links and forum discussions. That’s the way it is meant to be.

Go to these blogs, by their outstanding authors and you would feel the difference .

1.Life in the Fast Lane- Deborah discusses art, news and business, but she has been good enough to work for a cause. Check out the post about Kids with Cancer society.

2. Upper Fort Stewart- A blog about books, bookish things and Libraries and yet Stewart’s style of writing keeps it lively and fun to go through. Note that he does not sell you any Amazon books, though might refer them.

3. Cre8buzz- Take some seduction from ant man. A Great blog. From personal experience, I don’t care how many people link here. Neither I bother about page rank of this blog. But I always go and read it. And the obvious reason is it’s sheer quality.

Normally bloggers forget that blog is a best platform to influence people by their thoughts, experience, or in their way of thinking. There is a big mistake by throwing ads on their visitors. How can you let a visitor get out of your influential circle for few cents?

Everybody is predicting, a soon to be coming REVOLUTION in blogging. As the long tail of bloggers is getting thicker, it’s a definite place where big corporate companies will be looking for bloggers start focusing for their online presence.

Now if you seriously think blogging and a few bucks really don’t matter to you, then start challenging yourself. There is a need to grow your influential circle, and try to keep each and every visitor coming back to, giving value to your words.

Why is this important?

Not all are going to be successful. Only few best are going to be in serious business.
So it’s always better to first establish yourself as an acceptable blogger as well as your blog in the blogosphere before thinking for monetizing your blogs.

We can expect Network blogging to come up more effectively, more optimized content management solutions, with some more breakthroughs to happen in coming time.

Now its time for you to get out there and provide content worth you reader’s time. I can assure you he will keep coming back to you and bring in more of his friends, and will repay you with link love. Link exchanges and memes are out. You are going to be loved for your quality and efforts to help other with the information you provide.

Be Contagious, and make your blog addictive and be ready to get more Fame.

Register here for Blogging to Fame Contest.

Best Of Luck,
Divya Uttam.

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New Widgets to your fame.

2007-05-27T12:24:00.000-07:00

We have got new widgets which can easily go with every post of yours. My friend Ilker Yoldas of the The Thinking Blog proved his graphic design skills again. A big thanks to him for he has designed these cute widgets for your fame. Grab these to make yourself more famous, and increase your chances to win the contest.

Using Blogging to Fame widgets will help you readers go to your profile, and rise high in the popularity index. What are you waiting for???

Rush and register your blog… Receive the fame you deserve!

Divya Uttam

Why it is so tough to be an A-List Blogger the Google Way?

2007-05-22T13:56:00.000-07:00

A New blogger works hard to get to the top of Google on his selected keywords which are more often than not, tough keywords to compete. Such keywords are generally dominated by the already established A list bloggers, which have a hold of Search engine Optimization, and a number of quality incoming links. Whereas Google gives importance to your blog just not by its content but by the Number of links, coming to your site, naturally, as well as the quality of those links and anchor text used for the links. It also gives importance whether the link is coming to your home page or some specific post. The visibility of your blog improves when you get inbound links to specific posts. If you start new and you read so many books on SEO, link building and everything to improve your online visibility, nothing seems to work. You always wonder why?

The reason is quite obvious. It’s the already existent blogs which keep on attracting more links, more response and eventually more web2.0 traffic. Their posts keep on getting them more comments and more viewers even if a new blogger provides much better content. So whatever you do and whatever you try, it would be very tough for a common blogger to compete with the well established blogs in terms of web Traffic, recognition, revenue generation from their blogs. All these things effect the overall quality of their blog.

Moreover most newbie bloggers try to get their links either by participating or starting kinds of Memes or links exchange through blogrolls which do not pull the quality of the blog. It neither helps them in search engine positioning and rarely get them some good traffic, just helping them to rope a bit in Technorati points. Whereas, A list bloggers get varied links, from good web2.0 sites , journals, other A List Blogs, and not just from blogrolls and memes. New bloggers need to learn how to make their graph much steeper.

Bloggers need to participate in other platforms, that can bring Fame and Traffic to their blog. One Such Platform is BLoggingtoFame.com

Do not forget to give fame to your favorite blogs and nominate your blogs here.

Related Post: Creating Vision for Bloggers Generation Next

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Blogging to Fame Updates- Detailed Selection Criteria and Widgets

2007-05-18T14:05:00.000-07:00

We have already provided a brief description of the Selection Criteria for blogs and bloggers on the site, here is a transparent process with detailed schedule of the selection procedure.

Following are the steps for selection of the Super and Famed blogs:

1. The selection process starts from 11th June 2007, where 50 blogs are going to be selected on the basis of overall votes obtained by them, every week.

2. The aforementioned process will continue for 10 weeks(i.e. up to 20th August 2007), resulting into top 500 blogs.

3. Now these 500 Blogs, will be distributed among the 5 Jury members(100 blogs per jury member), who will further pick 5 blogs per week each from their assigned blogs.

4. These Hot Picks (jury selected blogs) will appear in the individual Jury’s Hot pick pages. These Hot picks will help the selected blogs to get more fames for themselves.

5. The process will go on for next 5 weeks and will end on 30th Sep, 2007.

6. On 15th Oct,2007, out of the top 20 most famed blogs selected on the basis of overall votes, 4 blogs entitled for the awards will be announced on the site.

7. The winners will be send tickets to Chicago and reservations for the hotel would be made.

8. The Super Blogger would be announced of the above selected 4 at the venue. Surprise, Surprise.

Following are the steps for selection of Famed bloggers:

1. The selection process will start as soon as you nominate a blog, and will continue till 15th October, 2007. Blog nomination is mandatory to be a part of this section of contest as only this defines you to be a blogger.

2. The selection would be 60% based on the no. of fames collected by you, and 40% on the Jury decision, which will be on the quality of blogs you maintain, your style of writing and how sociable you are.

3. Results would be announced on 15th October, 2007 as mentioned above, and your tickets would be sent to you with reservations made.

New widgets for more fame-

Sorry for the inconvenience caused by the bugs, and non working widgets, we have got the problem solved and are providing you with some fresh ones. Use these widgets to send your visitor to your profile and your blog profile to fame you. You can visit your profile page and opt for Fame tools. Select the widget you want, generate code and copy and paste it onto your blog's code wherever you want it to appear.

For any further queries contact us.

Best of Luck,
Divya Uttam

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Blogging to Fame Updates- A few more FAQs

2007-05-13T14:15:00.000-07:00

Why Blogging to Fame is stressing upon making A-List Bloggers?

As we all know Internet is stepping into New Genre, Blogosphere is ever increasing and blogging seems to have all the opportunities for bloggers. Blogging provides a platform for better customer relationships and online promotion. There will be a demand of trained bloggers who can bring in traffic and keep it coming back. Companies would require bloggers for image building, and are likely to hire professional bloggers for the same.

Apart from the need of the industry there are a lot of bloggers who deserve to be more famous, have the mix of passion and quality in them and yet are not able to gain popularity.

How is Blogging to Fame Contest different from other contests?

Blogs which had a higher readership and more supporters, have an upper hand in the contests. We are making sure that we do not have already existing A-list Bloggers in the contest. The already established do not require as much fame as upcoming bloggers do. We are trying here to upgrade the quality of blogging and providing the right fame to people who deserve it. We would manually select quality blogs every week. Don’t worry if you do not make it there. We will Fame you in the Famed by Jury section(soon coming up) where you’ll stay for a week and gain popularity. We will also be archiving the pages, so you’ll have traffic coming in.

If you want to appear in this section you can leave us a request.

Apart from the cash awards, you also win yourself a free consultation and blog re-launching from us, where we will help you utilize the fame you get and improve your business. We do not just give you a Blogging Trophy in front of best of bloggers in Chicago but also To and Fro tickets and the stay to make sure you attend it and meet others.

Here playing the game benefits everyone.

Who are the Sponsors?

Well that’s a question we may not like to answer now. You can be assured of big names associated with this but to disclose it at this stage would be a little difficult. We are still into finding bugs and improving the site. Once the site is final, we will announce them. Be assured this is Big.

What are the other Developments going on?

1) We are fixing bugs to provide you a confusion free interface.
2) More Fame tools, so more fame
3) A few more features to get it more interesting, and fun for the contestants
4) Finalization process for the Blogging to Fame Chicago Convention-2007

You can put in your Questions here if you have some related to the Site. Feedback is also welcome.

Divya Uttam

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Blogging to Fame Launches today

2007-05-10T13:46:00.000-07:00

Have you been to it already? Or are you planning to soon? Yes 10th of May is Here, the day for launching of Blogging to Fame, and its up and moving. Don’t hang around, visit BloggingtoFame.com and Nominate your blogs.

Get in real soon. Start early and make it easier for your blog to get selected in the first short list of 50 for final 500 blogs. More features will be added soon.

You can have a look at Contest Rules here.

As a winner you would be eligible to receive $100,000 in Cash and Kind.

Best Wishes,
Divya Uttam

Blogging To Fame Launching

2007-05-03T12:01:00.001-07:00

The Secret is out. Blogging to Fame is launching on 10th May,2007 and will be open for nominations and participation.Winners will get awards more than US $100,000.

8 A-list Blogger in making, you can be one of them

2007-04-17T09:17:00.000-07:00

It has been enough of keeping 'The Surprise' for myself and not sharing it with you. I know you want it out NOW, and you want it BIG. For the beginning it’s about giving and getting Fame from all those who matter to you.

I don’t want to tell you anymore about how to drive traffic to your blog and how to increase your fame factor. Everybody writes about that right, but this definitely requires a much deeper and detailed study. Every blog out there including mine, till date, has been telling you stuff.

I am not going to stop giving you information and advices about blogging . Every new thing around and all the strategies that I benefit from are there for you to know. But Here is how it will be different. What I am gonna do is, to give you something that will increase both your traffic as well as your Fame Factor.

Blogosphere is too big and its growing, its time we start identifying who can leave footprints for others to follow, and create public appeal. After the first phase of selection, estimated it will run for two months, 500 would be short listed. 8 A list bloggers would be in making. There would be a general voting system to democratically bring the good blogs into lime-light, but the final judgment would be done by our review team.

All you need to be is a socialite, who understands SEO as well as Web2.0 environments, a person who understands what we have already discussed.

It is a quest of making A list blogger who have capability and vision to build multi dollar business, using blog to give energy to their readers. Prizes would be given in every six months and we will provide them complete team and infrastructure to build their online business. Even if you don’t make it to the final nominations, there would be many benefits on your way. The first session is only for bloggers, but would be available to many other professionals in coming time.

You can provide your ideas here. I will disclose how you can be a part of it, create name, fame and a great business for yourself on internet. The best part is that you can participate in this, absolutely Free.

Why is it different-

All the awards till now have been declaring you winners but you received only that little hour of fame and self satisfaction.

Here you have U.S. $80,000+ in total, for winning bloggers, as well as providing full support towards building your business.

Yes you heard it right. There is a U.S. $80,000 at stake. The best blogger goes with U.S$25,000.

You will not only receive the money and the Blogging to Fame Trophy but also the nominees would be a part of Blogging to Fame Award Ceremony at Chicago later this year and receive their award in front of Best of bloggers. Can you imagine the name you will create for yourself. So here comes the part with media coverage. As things get more popular, you will be Interviewed by Blogging to Fame, which will increase your online presence and dominance. All fame for you to Handle.

Wait this is just the beginning, there is more to come, more benefits and larger steps towards fame.

So Blogging to Fame, Are you?

And do not forget to Subscribe the Feeds, if you want instant updates on the event...

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Creating Vision for Bloggers Generation Next

2007-04-12T11:41:00.000-07:00

I made a promise in my last post to give out the Secret, and have started a countdown, but don’t you think Secrets are revealed at the end of it.

Marketing is done most effectively when endorsed by celebrities and people having Good Fan Following. Similarly a Blogger’s success depends upon his readership, people following his advice, and how much persuasive he is. With Blogging crossing the age of adolescence and becoming mature a blogger’s job is no more a toddler’s play. A more professional and organized and focused mindset is required for getting any success in blogging. A successful blogger should be able to grab Big Blogging job opportunities and much more. So before I open up my so called ‘Secret’, here is my present definition for those who want to be called as Famous Bloggers.

An outlook of what a Famous Blogger should:-
1) Build Recognition for his employer of a project/contract he gets.
2) Have High persuasion Capabilities
3) Marketing Mind and Strong Understanding with his traffic
4) Know how to brand himself as well as products he is marketing
5) Know the Art to make fan followings.

We have seen the development of high traffic generating sites in the past, precisely called Evolution of Web2.0. Tapping the best of traffic from the social media is not as simple as stated by most internet marketing gurus. All the above mentioned mediums drive oodles of traffic which can be highly targeted and with persuasion capabilities you can easily develop regular readership. It definitely require Think Tank and a proper channel to get maximum out of this traffic. Now with the increase influence of internet in the markets and development of social media, its time to get more talented bloggers into lime light and make them celebrities.

The Quest which I’ll be launching soon, would be the first phase of finding and upbringing the finest bloggers who are willing to tap blogging as a big career as well as business opportunity into a great business model and to establish their dominance and prove their celebrity status.

So Guys are you all ready? Just have a little patience, and Yes there would be a lot to take home with you and the most Obvious FAME for many.

P.S. Only Great bloggers can make blogging jobs a profitable option for any business firm. Be one of them.

7...6...5...

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This is going to Rock the Blogosphere

2007-04-09T11:00:00.000-07:00

I know I have been inconsistent in posting from a few days... And my readers annoyed of it. I will tell you why now...

I have been working on something that is going to rock the blogosphere and that’s a promise.

With the growth of so many dedicated bloggers, there is a high need for recognition. It's so more demanding and its high time to bring in more Recognition and opportunities for the upcoming blogs who deserve to be there. Its expected that all blogsphere would prove their existence as more as collective democratic unit in the world of diverse Internet.

1000's of reviews and millions of diggs, so many spams and many so controversies makes this blogsphere so very interesting, now it is time to Rock it.

Firstly Before I Leak out the Secret, I will take this space to thank all my readers who have been still sticking with me and my irregularities.

With this blog I have made so many good friends and contacts like JimDWalton, Antman, ...and never to forget Lordmatt, Franciov n Dave White. I would like to give special mention to Amanda who many times asked to host my blog in her servers free of cost, which ir really appreciated. All those people who joined my Blog community and made this, a very simple blog among Top 50 blogs of MyBlogLog.

I may not have at certain times done the tag posts but it's really makes one feel good when you are tagged and these are those who have tagged me recently-

Best Blog Basket
Now
Necessary Skills
Today Is That Day
Financial Independence

I have been working to watch all the upcoming blogs, the good and the not so professional ones, and to be true many have amazed me. The passion we bloggers have towards our blogs(read as children) and pain we take to bring them up to the level of maturity needs more appreciation, and Fame. Now I would expect similar love and appreciation from the blogsphere, and most my efforts would be to bring more worth to newbies as well as established bloggers.

Be the Part of Revolution.

I know I have not still let out the BIG WHY and HOW and WHAT but I will do that in the next post...

AND one more thing there are going to be all important updates here in coming weeks so expect lesser of tutorials here at least for now. I will recommend one more thing... Subscribe the feeds there would be plenty of updates, Because the countdown has Started.

10...9...8...

Divya Uttam

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Technorati Tags:- Blogging Fame

Forums can earn you traffic you have always wanted-

2007-04-04T11:10:00.000-07:00

Forums can add that extra mileage to your blog and help you get targeted traffic, but then you would require a little patience and a good knowledge about your subject, a little more research and lots of energy. If you are equipped with these go for it.

Earning requires efforts and forums need your equivalent attention. Remember, it is one place you get what you actually deserve. It wont be as simple as- Join a forum and leave a little signature. I am not making this hide behind a veil of comfort and easily to acquire process, because it is simply not. As in real world it takes time to get reputed, it is same in the blogosphere, and traffic is the most required commodity to survive. To get that edge you have to put in the hard work it requires, and I promise you would be satisfied with the results.

Choosing the right forum to participate-

The first step needs research but it can define your blog destiny. Join forums that are popular, have more than 500 members online at a time and most obviously related to your field. Dominating your niche means being it not around it. There are forums out there that cover your niche. Here are some good ones-

You can here more at DoshDosh’s Blog.

Building your reputation and positioning yourself-

This would need a little foresight here. How much will you trust a newbie or a person who keeps on getting into troubles and asking about it. It is better to use a second account for using others help. Be professional and do not make any guesswork while answering questions. It is good to assign yourself a slogan or a direction, or an image that you want to build on. Start with an end in mind. The little signature and the link below it is going to bring you all the traffic. People participating in forums normally are searching for information and love to explore links. Remember to make their visit worthwhile.
Don’t Sell your blog but market it-

The point itself is clear. Never ask anyone to visit your blog, or project in anyway that you are there to gain traffic. Helping people with their queries will soon earn you fans and they would always look forward to your advise. That is exactly the difference between selling and marketing same as manipulating and influencing. Those out there can easily make out the difference.

Reply to every message promptly-

Replying should always be started by replying to new and fresh threads. After posing a question, everybody is eager to find an answer soon. Every answer of yours is a permanent source of traffic for you, and do not forget to answer all those personal messages you receive. Remember there is an reputation to build.

Establish that Expertise-

Keep up with latest developments that happen on daily basis in the virtual world. You need to establish your voice in every forum you participate, so participate only those you can manage. I agree it will take a little time, so start working towards it from the day you make your profile page. Try answering as many threads as possible. Give good explanations and explain in details wherever needed. Your help will tempt them to visit you and make you establish yourself.

To Summarize tips-

TIP 1: Contribute helpful information often to the forums.
TIP 2: Include links to your sites or references to helpful sites.
TIP 3: Join multiple forums to increase your referral links and page ranking.
TIP 4: Get involved in the communities within the forum and become a trusted and respected member.
TIP 5: Answer questions and help fellow forum members with their problems.

Divya

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Technorati Tags:- Blogging Traffic, Forum Traffic

Ten Quotes for Bloggers about blogging…

2007-04-01T12:25:00.000-07:00

Why should bloggers lack behind? Here are a few nice quotes, enjoy them, take them as advice and have fun… You can also put in yours if you wish.

1). "Link to your enemies. Link to your competitors. Link to everyone. Instead of being sticky, be linky." - Scoble, Israel, Naked Conversations

2).This notion of self-publishing, which is what Blogger and blogging are really about, is the next big wave of human communication. The last big wave was Web activity. Before that one it was e-mail. Instant messaging was an extension of e-mail.
Eric Schmidt

3)“If an organization isn’t already in place where openness and transparency in communication exists and is practiced, then using tools like blogs will be unlikely to do anything positive for the organization. If your openness/transparency foundation isn’t there, don’t blog.” Neville Hobson - Scoble, Israel, Naked Conversations

4)"Fame is the Spur that the clear spirt doth raise
To scorn delights, and live laborious days"

5)Spend the hour blogging, and you will discover many more free hours during the day.
Mickey Kaus

6)Blogging was another important way of solving the freedom of expression and flow of information I was after and there was Six Apart.
Joichi Ito

7)I sincerely believe blogging can save America.
John Jay Hooker

8)Our passionate advice is that the time to join the conversation is now. The barriers to entry are miniscule, the benefits great, and blogging just happens to be fun." - Scoble, Israel, Naked Conversations

9) Is it a book you would even wish your wife or your servants to read?
Griffith Jones, Mervyn
Same goes with your blog.

Last one from me-
10)100s of Bloggers would spend 1000 of hours to be famous and millionaire, but not even one hour which would make their blog a million dollar worth.-Divya Uttam, Blogging to Fame

I hope you enjoyed...
Divya,
Happy Blogging.

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Technorati Tags:- Blogging Quote

Reviews- A mere Link Building and Money Making Tactics.

2007-03-28T21:04:00.000-07:00

Hey I am doing reviews for a $100. You will get a permanent link from my blog, and lots of fame and traffic. Alright here is another deal, give me a reciprocal review and we can exchange links in a cool way. Oh wait, I am running a review me contest. I will give you life changing makeover.

Yes, this is a good and appreciable way of making money and increasing your Technorati ranking, but did you think about this...

Viewers

How many of you read these reviews? Do you trust them to give you back true details? Or do you feel such reviews are cheating you? About myself I do not even care to give a look. Getting any favor in return, takes out the authenticity from the core of it.

Reviews- What and Why?

Reviews were originally written to give a fair opinion about a product, a service, or any website/blog. Where you, the reader got an insight or authors mind, the good stuff and even the bad about the thing being reviewed. Where things were being examined by a serious eye, appreciated, criticized, commented and corrected. A good review helps others find the products or helpful links that are best for them. You can help inform someone about a product or service or blog/website you have experience with, and find useful or not worth it. Remember, your reviews hold your evaluation.

Reviewers

AutoCar Magazine *(this is just used as an example which obviously is a built up scenario and contains no truth, hence no legal liabilities)* is going to adopt the same method now. It is going to review for cars and other vehicles, for $10,000,000 which most obviously would be in praise. So how many of you are going to read it for true insight about cars. How will this step effect its reputation? For the blogs who review for money or a link back, do you know your readers trust you? It may even put a bad mark on your position in front of them. First of all, nobody as far as my opinion is concerned will be interested in reading biased reports and secondly if the review turns out to be too good, than what actually the site or the product is, it will put a question mark on your image.

When its such a worst case scenario why do they do it?

Sites which pay or ask for reviews in return of some favors want to gain popularity and inward links, without even realizing the fact that except a layer of superficial fame and a bit better Technorati ranking they have nothing to gain. This is no strategy but a short term tactic. You may think it is mutually agreeable for those reviewing and those getting reviewed, so there is no point to raise, but then this may hamper general opinion of the reader about you. Atleast in my case it does. The moment I realize the exact motive behind a biased review, it turns me off. It raises unworthy opinions about both writers and the people being written about.

What do you think? Do you like reading paid reviews?Are you amongst the people practicing it, and have a reason for it? Be open, share it here. Its your opinion, come out with it. Tell the blogosphere what you want to read about.

Divya

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Technorati Tags:- Blogging Trend, Blogging Tactics

Making it Big with Opportunities

2007-03-24T23:05:00.000-07:00

A famous Saying- “Opportunity knocks on your door only once.” Successful are those people who shirk of their inhibitions and grab it. Does being an Opportunist- the key to Success? A friend of mine popularly known as the Antman, has written a well thought article on being The True Opportunist. He has made us notice what a opportunist is like and what it takes to be one. In short are the following points he took up:-

1. Be open to thoughts, changes and opportunities. Remember the single knock on your door.
2. Being accessible to people, you would only get a knock when you have a door, better still keep your doors open to let opportunities walk right in.
3. When you think you know it all, you are out of the game, because this attitude makes you immune towards learning new developments.
4. Do not be in a defensive position, but take an attacking edge. People who play the game with an attitude of not loosing, never win.

A well written post but it kept me wondering about what kind of and how many opportunities should one grab. It is not possible to go for each and everyone of them, and then giving your full metal to it. Opportunities have to be worked upon to create business out of them. Grabbing every by neck wont help you solve anything or get anywhere. Being accessible and open will help you stay update with the daily happenings near you and you will always gain a piece of knowledge added to you after every such circumstance.

Opportunities come and go but going forward with the right ones, is where you need to expertise in and making it a success is your responsibility. Being an opportunist also brings in the habit of jumping from one to another without fulfill the destiny of first one.

Consider a scenario where you own an advertising company and are working on an assignment, but while doing so you receive a call from Adobe. They want you to make an ad for their printers. You should actually go forward and say yes to it. If you take time to think about it, it will go away. Your reaction should be instant. But before you start working on it, make sure you have completed and wound up the job you had at hand.

Now in case you gain popularity, and new doors keep on opening up for you, it is upon you to decide where to set a line. Seeking opportunities also mean lots of work and lots of new responsibilities. You have to decide how much you and your company can handle at one time. Its not always about taking opportunities when they come, but changing them into Business. What you cannot do is leaving the present one for the next one, its about taking up a project and shaping it into your future.

Happy Blogging,
Divya Uttam

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Technorati Tags:- Opportunities

Create successful Contests for more Traffic.

2007-03-21T03:00:00.000-07:00

How many contests have you participated in? How many have you won? Have you created one as a blogger? I have seen many bloggers organizing contests and awarding expensive gifts, but yet not able to attract enough participants. Here is how to make it a Success.

Why to create contests?

Adding liveliness to your blog is one thing, but the inner motives of bloggers are getting more links and popularity through their Blog. The main factor on which online businesses depend is Traffic. With a right blend of usefulness and promotion you can do wonders with contests. You can get incoming links, free traffic, more subscribers and a name under your pocket. What more does a blogger wants? Contests provide a good platform for Viral Marketing. It depends upon you how to cash it.

How to chose the right Topic?

This is the most tricky part. Choosing a topic, is the first step to a Successful Contest. Any topic could be a right topic if its self propagating, and the end result is useful to its readers. Review my blog and win the contest, directly seems self promoting and adds no value to the blog of the participant. As a contest holder, tell me how many of you read paid reviews or ‘You review me, and I review you’ posts. This seems a direct way to gain popularity and increase your Technorati ranking. Rather than running a contest pay your reviewers straight away, or exchange links.

Your topic should be such that a maximum number of people can participate. It should not be irrelevant to your niche, like your favorite car when you actually are involved with Garments industry, but it can be on “How to produce World’s Best Roses” if you blog about Gardening. The Topics can Vary from Health, Life Improvement, User experience, and anything related or interesting.

Your contests can revolve around Advices, Benefits, Usability, Design and others. Anything that evokes the thought process and creativity. These would not only be helpful to the participants but also their readers. Make it Fun for your visitors.

Prizes- The major Attraction

Now this is the investment part. Prizes generally are the main reason why people would participate in your contests and help you promote it. You can also provide a benefit for the highest promoter of the contest. When deciding about the prizes look for Return on Investment. If your blog gives you a $10000 per month spending $1000 on your readers will benefit you all the more and may increase your traffic ten-folds. Organizing such contests show that you care.

Get Sponsors if you want it to be done for free. It will be an advertising opportunity for them, a link for a lifetime from your blog and getting the traffic from your blog. Getting Sponsors will also help you provide an otherwise expensive affair done easily, and with much fanfare, which is absolutely necessary for its promotion.

How to Participation Guidelines, a Deadline and Prize Announcement-

1. Decide clearly about the guidelines and what you want your participants to do.
2. A formal posting of rules should be done, with all the clauses.
3. There should be a definite deadline, something like when ‘I will achieve 500 subscribers’ is a big ‘No No’.
4. State the benefits along with the guidelines.
5. Prize Announcement should be a different section and it is not to be merged along.
6. State you Sponsors and give them a link.
7. Provide any limitations if defined for receiving gifts, for example to get gift vouchers cashed within one month of winner announcements.

Promote it highly

Any contest which does not have participants is of no use. When you organize an event like this make sure to promote it properly. Ask your sponsors to promote it at their end, and your participants should also help you in the task. The more it is promoted, the more it will fulfill its existence.

If you want an example you can visit Problogger- A Case Study. It is a perfect example on how Contests should be organized.

Happy Blogging,
Divya Uttam

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Technorati Tags:- Blog Traffic, Blog Contest

Design is to attract, Usability is to engage- Part 3

2007-03-18T10:33:00.000-07:00

Usability is about making things accessible and easy to use. You like to stay in a place and spend time with someone whom you are comfortable with. One of the main factors that Usability comprises of is the comfort level you provide your visitors. Don’t make them think about they should not and how they can reach what they want without having to think where from. Search boxes and site navigation should not be an issue for the visitors to resolve.

13. State clearly even if you have to repeat things- You get new visitors daily, and which ever post they might be landing on would be presented to them for the first time. Many people think that they should not repeat what they have already written about, without realizing that their first time visitors have not read any piece of their work before. If relevant speak again of the important points, and provide necessary links to the posts where the topic of your post is discussed before. This way even you would decrease the monotony from your posts and still your first time visitors would not feel that you have missed specific points.

14. Bullets and numbered Lists- Like paragraphs, bullets and numbered lists help you to give a clear presentation. It will also help you gain attention of skimmers and jumpers. It removes monotony from the post, giving it an organized look, as well. This will also save time of your users and they will thank you for it.

15. Home page linking and other Links- More often than not, most of the traffic lands on interior pages rather than the home page which makes a link to your homepage an absolute necessity on every page whether you have a blog or a website.

Other Links included in you posts whether internal or outbound should say where they go. Will you Like to Click here and Here without knowing where you’ll go. Providing a brief information where they lead to or a link title will be of help to your visitors and will inform them where they are headed to. This will help you make your visitors click where you want them to click. Have you ever heard about a Fear of unknown. This is it.

16. Make it easy to Subscribe- Essential part of your return traffic should consists of your subscriber traffic. How effective your blog is equally proportional to how many people want to read it on a regular basis. These are who subscribe your feed, and because subscribers are such an important part of blogging success, you need to make it easy for users to sign up. Offer both email and RSS options. Services like Feedburner help make you make your feed compatible to both RSS and Atom Aggregators.

17. Browser Compatibility- One thing that people often forget while personalizing their blog design is to check the appearance on different browsers. What may look right on Firefox may not look the same in Internet Explorer. The placement of widgets specially can cause blunders.

Get into the shoes of your reader and evaluate it. If you want, taking your friend's help is also a good option. Improve your reader's expereince and make your blog sticky.

Happy Blogging,
Divya

Related Posts:-
Design is to Attract, Usability is to Engage-Part 2
Design is to Attract, Usability is to Engage- Part I

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Technorati Tags:- Blog Usability

Is your Blog Obsolete

2007-03-15T11:16:00.000-07:00

Simple ways can save your blog being getting lost in the crowd of over 60 million blogs

Blog is an extension to your online marketing efforts, a tool to bring in life to your static website and maintaining relationships with your customers. Blog is also for individual bloggers those wish to make their blogs as their online income source monetizing them either by using Adsense or by affiliate marketing. As Technorati has been telling us that there are over 55 million blogs and have been increasing on every passing second. It has been recommended by every blogging guru, companies big or small will come up with one soon. Can you imagine the amount of user generated content available on net. With such an abundance of the facilities available on net to come up with a free blog it will be soon equivalent to having an email account.

So where as a Blogger you are going to Stand?

Have you made you space in the Blogosphere?

Have you ever thought that there can be a Time when it can start a dinosaur era, where survival of the fittest will be the only policy.

Blogs aren’t going to go anywhere. They are here to stay, anyways. But their abundance can abandon you as a blogger, if you do not wake up to the realization of giving quality to your blog. It is only quality can win over quantity.

Have you ever noticed that amongst a billion humans roaming around, its still hard to find good leaders whom you love to follow. Survival of your blog depends on how fit you are to lead people to something useful and of help to them.

Building trust and earning credibility would get more difficult soon. I have read a few articles which said that blogging has no future, it wont benefit anyone. Don’t get angry fellow bloggers, it has a bright future but if you promise to yourself to blog for a reason and that reason is not just earning money. This is a very short post but if you are able to understand the point I have raised here, you may as well appreciate it.

It’s a time to take your blog to the next level.

What do you predict about Blogging Future? What’s your say about saving your blog? So what are you doing about it?

Safe Blogging,
Divya Uttam

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Technorati Tags:- Blogging Trends

Design is to Attract, Usability is to Engage-Part 2

2007-03-12T12:27:00.000-07:00

There were a lot of obvious things we talked about in the first part, here are a few more. Obvious because after going through you may realize, How Could Have I missed that? Or I knew about this, but is it that necessary? Every point we talked about or would be talking here may be known to each one of you, but as humans we tend to miss out important things without realizing. Read out the comments and you will know what I mean. Here are a few more points that can seriously effect your blogs performance.

8. Don’t make your blog a junk-yard- Widgets are nice little decorations and plugins for your blog often used by bloggers in their sidebars. If you feel one is actually relevant or shows your site stats like traffic, go ahead with it. Overdose of everything is bad. Lots of badges, animations your favorite actors hinder your projected professionalism and you would passed of as a newbie or a regular blogger. This can actually take down your blogs performance.

9. Niche Sensitivity- Blogging on different topics will make you jack of all and master of none. Entertainment blogs do good, yes even here you are going to sacrifice your seriousness as well as search engine rankings. If you really want to sometimes blog apart from your niche, what you can do is, create an entertainment/miscellaneous or other related category and add such posts to it. If you find your niche to be very tight, try covering your parallel niches. Remember this is very important for traffic from search engines also.

10. Domain Name- Don’t look at mine here. Blogandpintutorial.blogspot.com is certainly one of the worst ones you can have. Blogs ending in a blogspot.com, typepad.com will be soon equivalent to having an @gmail.com email address. This is not a campaign against free services but its like giving away the fruits of your own hard work. When you are using someone else’s domain name, you are actually letting somebody else smarter than you to cash in your publicity and links.

Before further telling you about domain names let me tell you I am a firm believer of this and like to follow what I teach. Soon you will find yourself at BloggingtoFame.com. I cannot stress more importance of it.

The time you get serious about blogging remember to shift your blog to its very own domain name and in ideal circumstances it won’t cost you more than $8 per year. The longer you delay, the more you will feel the pain doing it and the actual pressure to do so. You have to be the in charge of your destiny, do not hand it to somebody else. Keep your fingers crossed that somebody else has not parked your domain. I’ll soon do a post on how to choose a correct domain name for your blog and why to do so.

11. Post Titles- What do you read when you first pick up the Newspaper? Headline is as important to a newspaper as a Good Post Title is to your Post. That is the first thing that your visitor will read and it is the one that will encourage your visitor to read your post. Put in a Hypnotic and descriptive title. Your readers as well as the search engines will love you for it.

The most important function of a post title is to get attention, something that invokes a thought. That is why its always bigger than rest of the text. You can ask an open ended question, or let your title lead into a story. Your aim is to gain your visitors attention and later on trust. Your post should be apt to your title.

How about the Headline- The Death of Search Engine Dominance in Web2.0.
The death factor still works!

12. Post frequency- When we talk about web usability, we refer to reach out and fulfill your visitors expectations, so do not delay posts from your frequency. Post regularly, nobody wants to read stale information. Schedule your posts and publish them accordingly. Whatever it may be it should be evenly paced out. Its not necessary to post daily. You cannot create quality content on daily basis. Posting twice a week or on alternate days is also fine. Once you have made out your choices, it will help your readers to come back to your blog according to your schedule. Do not post when you have nothing valuable to say, but do not also let months go by without a single post. This will make your blog loose its visitors. Out of Sight Out of Mind, As you know.

There is one last important post to it. Stick through and wish me luck for my BloggingToFame.com

Happy Blogging,
Divya

Related Posts:-
Design is to Attract, Usability is to Engage- Part I
Design is to attract, Usability is to engage- Part 3

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Technorati Tags:- Blog Usability

Design is to Attract, Usability is to Engage- Part I

2007-03-09T08:48:00.000-08:00

Your Blog is to be read, so leave a mark on your reader providing him an experience of your organizing skills as well as knowledge. Providing an Optimal reader experience do not take much but little important points that are often forgotten. Get better than your competition and make your visitors your readers. Reach out to your readers and renew their reading experience, check your blog on the following points.

1. Personalized template- What do you see when the first window opens after entering the URL. The appearance of the site. It matters. Not a lot, but you cannot ignore it. If you are using blogging platforms for instance blogger(like me), wordpress and typepad, would you like others having the same look as your blog does. It will be if you are using default templates that these services are providing, or templates from net which are free to use without personalizing them. This would also help in projecting your own thinking. The more professional it is the better.

Also about personalizing, I saw a blog on blogspot which gives good information about finance, the blogger has tried to add personal touch to it and have added a few widgets. A picture in her side-bar displays her favorite actor. Well, personalizing is fine then to this extent destructs the professionalism. Imagine Darren Rowse of ProBlogger displaying Tom Cruise or Brad Pitt in the sidebar of his blog.

2. Categories- One of the most important feature of a blog that you should take care of is dividing your posts into categories or tagging them. This makes it easier for your visitor to search each of your post written on the topic he is searching for. It will not only get your blog more organized but also your posts more visible and accessible. You should generally place these categories along with the rest of navigation provided.

3. Search Box and Archives- Do not Omit a Search Box. This is most easily forgotten by the bloggers. Returning visitors might want to read a post they found the last time. If there is no search box, it would be very difficult for him to locate the post of his interest. They might also want to check their own comment or a about particular topic, so it is very necessary to place a search box in a prominent position.

A professional blog’s archive should be by title in date order so that it is easier to skim through. An archive by date, month or year can never be user friendly. You may also want to dedicate a separate page for the following. Whatever you do, remember you do not want your articles should be hidden behind the layers of time and not accessible by the user at all.

Other navigation should include recent posts, most read or commented, recent comments which are available as blog software plugins. This is a good way to bring in notice of the readers the master pieces of your blog. Going through 100 and more posts may not be everybody’s choice, so your posts should be organized accordingly to self promote and best pieces should get more attention value.

4. Profile Page- You may not be aware of this but your profile is one of the most visited links. Like companies have an about us page, every blogger should have a profile page which should talk about his qualifications. While going through your profile page your visitor should realize your authority over the subject you are writing about, without being directly told. Even if you are not a professional you can share about your informal experiences, and why are you passionate about the subject. It gives a sense of familiarity to your visitors, a sense of agreeing to the known. People do not like to follow anonymous advices. Will you like to pop a pill on recommendation of Dr. Jack without knowing that his qualifications or why is he a Doctor you should look forward to? Your advice is like a doctor’s prescription to your visitors, a solution for their problems. Its their right to know about you. Be honest in your writings though.

Don’t forget to put your own image in your profile page. It will give you a physical base, a personable impression to your virtual existence. You will enhance your credibility just by showing that you are not trying to hide.

5. Inward linking through posts- While writing posts try and link your previous articles wherever relevant. It is yet another method to give your other posts visibility and blog stays better interconnected. This way your readers will be provided with more information, and they will stick longer to appreciate your insight :)

This is one point that would help you bring a little more traffic to your site. How? When other blogs pick up your RSS feeds to display on their own, readers there would come to your blog to read further entries. When your Feeds are read through the RSS aggregator or in Email, these would bring your subscribers to your blog. How About That?

6. Make your Blog Legible- As always recommended, Dark background with light text or anything that makes your blog uneasy to read should be avoided. Low contrast and busy patterns will weaken concentration levels as well as give your reader an eyestrain(you can think of better gifts). Much of red even on white background, combination of black and red, or even white text on black background can give serious headaches. I hope you understood what I meant…

Use enough space for your content. No spacing and paragraph divisions would make your content to cluster and again increase visibility noise. Give proper spacing and paragraph divisions, with bigger or bolded headings. It would help to give structure to your article.

7. Use pictures in posts- Oh should I repeat that a picture is worth a thousand words, or do I show you one. Involving pictures makes your article more expressive and lively. It not only removes monotony from your post but something to scanners that would catch their eye and if its interesting enough they will read what you have to say after all.

There is lots more to come. Stay tuned.

Divya Uttam,
Happy Blogging.

Related Posts:-
Design is to Attract, Usability is to Engage-Part 2
Design is to attract, Usability is to Engage- Part 3

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Technorati Tags:- Blog Usability

Get noticed by an A-Lister: for Traffic and for Fame

2007-03-06T04:14:00.000-08:00

Now that’s a post everybody is waiting for. I have two questions for you before you start reading.

Q1. Do you want to get noticed by an A-Lister? I know it is why you are spending your time to read about it, so that hardly is an question.

But then reply to this:-

Q2. Why do you want to be noticed by an A-List Blogger? Think Hard.

The answer would be one amongst the following, choose yours:-

1. To gain popularity because they have a voice and 1000s of visitors listen to it.
2. To funnel the traffic they are getting to your own blog, either to earn more revenue or increasing Feed Subscribers.
3. Get a link from their High Page blog or to increase your Google Juice..
4. To rub shoulders with the other famous bloggers.
5. To create awareness or gain attention to work or services
6. Creating a Buzz.
7. Becoming an A-List Blogger gradually.

You can also consider these to be the end results of getting noticed by an celebrity bloggers.

What Not to Do?

Forgetting about their business for getting Famous

People are often so passionate in getting noticed for their work and spend so much efforts running after being famous that they have no energies left for their actual work.

Linking A-List Bloggers just for the sake of Reciprocal Linking

Some bloggers are under impression that linking A-Listers might get them in notice and a link back. A-List Bloggers get 100 people linking to them on daily basis, which makes it practically impossible for them to go through each and every post which is written about them.

What Will actually get you Noted by an A-List Blogger?

What will bring you Real Fame?

I can answer that question in just two words- Your Business. But that won’t satisfy your reading urge neither my point. We have already talked a lot about being different, building relationship with others by commenting on their posts, being an expert in your niche, writing passionately and stuff. These are all very important but will it get you noticed by an A-Lister lets say after an year or two, because all of this is a long-term strategy and a continuous process. Another thing you can go for is Viral Marketing and Linkbaiting, where with a click of an idea you can have everybody talking about you. Remember our recent favorite 2000 bloggers project. It has done wonders, and that Z-List has increased everybody’s Technorati ranking. Yes, they created a Buzz in the blogosphere and gathered lots of fame for their inventors. As they say an Idea can make the difference.

There is another option though which may take lots of initial hard work, an innovative approach and a business strategy, but may prove worthy enough to let your generations may live on it. When you think about having your name mentioned in a 8 page rank blog, you are going the wrong way. Renowned entrepreneurs do not work for getting noticed but for the Success.

Have you heard about Go2Web2.0. You must have. The first review that Techcrunch did on it was on its launch in September 2006 and after they upgraded there was another. Why? Because Go2Web2.0 has an innovative and structured idea. They have an attractive product. They did not have to struggle for 2 years to get it done. They even have 2K+ subscribers in exactly one year of their blogspot blog.

My point is if you are the best in your business and have put thoughts into your product and marketing, if it helps others and is attractive enough, A-Listers would automatically love to talk about you. Even if you are a whole sole blogger, and do not own a company, another website or a product. This should not give you a reason to lack behind. Don’t forget the Z-list and 2000 bloggers project I mentioned above. They did not have a service, product or a company to support them, but they still got famous.

Get Thinking, be innovative and Break the Rules. Remember its only You who is stopping You. Get Aggressive.

Best of Luck,
Happy Blogging,
Divya Uttam.

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How you can give more to Your Readers

2007-03-03T10:31:00.000-08:00

I want to make a point here, so do go through every word of this post.

There is a clause though, you’ll have to change, change the way you think. If you are going to read this post you have to be flexible enough to adapt to it to change the future of your blog, the way you look at your traffic. Renew your philosophical approach to change your relationship with your readers.

The traffic you receive may how minimal it would be, repeat visitors should form at least 50% of it. Let me repeat this more bluntly. You are actually loosing a lot if you do not have repeat visitors. Giving your visitors to turn into readers take great effort. Remember, what you have been told since childhood in one way or the other- Treat others like you want to be treated. Its about treating your visitors and giving them a reason to return.

People who come to you, and read your posts, see you and your company as advisors. Now you have to see yourself as trusted, respected and expert advisors. This means you can do nothing less than what an professional is supposed to do. Its your responsibility and obligation to counsel them about what’s best for them. You would never try to manipulate them to benefit you in return either by buying something from you, giving you monetary help or joining your community. Its when you lack the professionalism, these things come into play. You’ll always be aware of the fact that the more value you add, that is perceived by them the more success will it give you and making more of blogging sense.

Your Readers are not your Customers.

There is difference between customers and clients. Don’t let yourself believe the wrong thing. Customers are people who buy a commodity or service from you, but it is the client with whom you have a relationship, who is under your care and protection, who will look up to you for anything. These are your readers, your repeat visitors.

Internet is a place where you can portray yourself as giant as Coke Company and even your competition can do the same. If you understand your visitor and do not just try to make customers but clients, where your ultimate passion lies in your niche, and you provide the very best, the richest information which is more enjoyable, profitable, productive, a wholesome enriching experience, you are going to rule your Niche, because your competitors do not look in the same way. Its your own Attitude that matters.

You can put this as a long term strategy and among the best examples I could give you is SEOMoz.org and the amazing way they have developed business. Seomoz.org are among those blogs, who are able to build a successful business out of a blog, implementing not only linkbaiting but a system to get more repeat visitors.

Why did I ask you to change in the beginning? In a race where everybody is doing the same thing, its you who should draw a line and differentiate yourself, and only who are able to do this get as big as TechCrunch and SearchEngineWatch. The way to do this is change your attitude towards your visitors, and yourself. Start thinking about your relationship with them. Provide them with an experience of a life time. Your Time Starts now…

Happy Blogging,
Divya

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Are you an SEO expert

#1 Which of the following is the least important area in which to include your keyword(s)?

#2 Which of the following would be the best choice of URL structure (for both search engines and humans)?

#4 Which of the following is the best way to maximize the frequency with which your site/page is crawled by the search engines?

#5 Which of the following is a legitimate technique to improve rankings & traffic from search engines?

#6 Danny Sullivan is best known (in the field of web search) as:

#7 Which of the following is the WORST criteria for estimating the value of a link to your page/site?

#8 How can Meta Description tags help with the practice of search engine optimization?

#9 Which of the following content types is most easily crawled by the major web search engines (Google, Yahoo!, MSN/Live & Ask.com)?

#10 Which of the following sources is considered to be the best for acquiring competitive link data?

#11 Which of the following site architecture issues MOST impedes the ability of search engine spiders to crawl a site?

#12 What is the generally accepted difference between SEO and SEM?

#13 Which of these is NOT generally considered to be a highly important factor for ranking for a particular search term?

#14 When creating a "flat architecture" for a site, you attempt to minimize what?

#15 In the search marketing industry, what is traditionally represented by this graph?

#16 Which of the following is NOT a "best practice" for creating high quality title tags?

#17 Which of the following character limits is the best choice to use when limiting the length of title tags (assuming you want those tags to fully display in the search results at the major engines)?

#18 PageRank is so named because it was created by Larry Page, not because it ranks pages.

#19 A page on your site that serves as a "sitemap," linking to other pages on your domain in an organized, list format, is important because...

#20 Which of the following search engines patented the concept of "TrustRank" as a methodology for ranking web sites & pages?

#21 Why are absolute (http://www.mysite.com/my-category)URLs better than relative ("/my-category") URLs for on-page internal linking?

#22 How can you avoid the duplicate content problems that often accompany temporal pagination issues (where content moves down a page and from page to page, as is often seen in lists of articles, multi-page articles and blogs)?

#23 If you update your site's URL structure to create new versions of your pages, what should you do with the old URLs?

#24 When you have multiple-pages targeting the same keywords on a domain, which of the following is the best way to avoid keyword cannibalization?

#25 The de-facto version of a page located on the primary URL you want associated with the content is known as:

#26 Which domain extensions are more often associated with greater trust and authority in the search engines?

#27 High quality links to a site's homepage will help to increase the ranking ability of deeper pages on the same domain.

#28 The practice of showing one version of content on a URL to search engines, and another, different version to human visitors of the same URL is known as?

#29 Which HTTP server response code indicates a file/folder that no longer exists?

#30 Spammy sites or blogs begin linking to your site. What effect is this likely to have on your search engine rankings?

#31 A link from a PageRank "3" page (according to the Google toolbar) hosted on a very strong, trusted domain can be more valuable than a link from a PageRank "4" page hosted on a weaker domain.

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

#33 Is it generally considered acceptable to have the same content resolve on both www and non-www URLs of a website?

#34 Which HTTP server response code indicates a page that has been temporarily relocated and links to the old location will not pass influence to the new location?

#35 Which of these is least likely to have difficulty ranking for its targeted terms/phrases in Google?

#36 What is the advantage of putting all of your important keywords in the Meta Keywords tag?

#37 Which of the following link building tactics do search engines tacitly endorse?

#38 Which HTTP server response code indicates a page that has been permanently relocated and all links to the old page will pass their influence to the new page location?

#39 Which of the following factors is considered when search engines assign value to links?

#40 There is no apparent search engine rankings benefit to having a keyword-matched domain name (eg www.example.com for keyword "example").

#41 If you want a page to pass value through its links, but stay out of the search engines' indices, which of the following tags should you place in the header?

#42 Which of these factors is LEAST likely to decrease the value of a link?

#43 Which of the following is a requirement for getting in the Google Local listings?

#44 Which of the following engines offers paid inclusion services for their main web index (not advertising):

#45 When is it advisable to leave the meta description off of a page?

#46 A domain will not be hurt by having a penalized site or page 301'd to it.

#47 Which of the following strategies is the best way to lift a page out of Google's supplemental index?

#48 Which of the following is NOT speculated to be a contributing factor in achieving "breakout" site results in Google?A sample of "breakout" results for the query, Comedy Central, at Google

#49 Which of the following is the best method to insure that a page does not get crawled or indexed by a search engine?

#50 If you want to rank for a country specific TLD/Top-Level-Domain extension (such as Yahoo.jp or Google.ca) which of the following is NOT important?

#51 Which of the following CANNOT get you penalized at the major search engines?

#48 Which of the following is NOT speculated to be a contributing factor in achieving "breakout" site results in Google?

A sample of "breakout" results for the query, Comedy Central, at Google