The importance of Google Webmaster Tools

Let me tell you this: If you have not already used Google Webmaster Tools for your site(s), you have made a huge mistake. But it is not too late. You still have time.

Google Webmaster Tools is a service provided by the search engine giant Google that lets you manage your sites. It is complete free to use and it comes with several advantages.

First of all, you can easily submit your website's sitemap to Google search engine in few simple steps. This is very important as it makes it easier for Google to crawl your website and index your pages. The easier it is for Google, the better it is for you and your website.

Secondly, You can check your backlinks. One of the major factors for determining PageRank is number of backlinks so if you want to keep track of them, Google Webmaster Tools is a good place to do so.

Thirdly, you can also monitor your SERPs and your keywords so that you know which keywords is being ranked highest at Google and which ones are bringing you the most traffic.

Google Webmaster Tools is a really helpful service for webmasters. I highly recommend you to use it.


Posted by Dan at SEO and Blogging Tips.
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what is the definition of twitter patted

"what is the definition of twitter patted"

Now you might be wondering what in the world I am going to write about and why is that my post title. The reason is traffic. Twitter is a very popular social networking site which is now worth $1 billion. A lot of searches conducted at search engines are related to Twitter these days. So I was using a keyword tool that was telling me how many searches are conducted specific to keywords. I found several popular keywords such as "what is twitter", "what is twittering" etc. So why did I land at this keyword: "what is the definition of twitter patted". The answer is low competition. If you search it on Google, you will see that there are fewer search results compared to when you search the other keywords. Fewer search results mean low competition and that means that there are better chances of SEO and Blogging Tips appearing on one of the first few search result pages.

Try this trick with some popular but less competitive keywords and enjoy the results.


Posted by Dan at SEO and Blogging Tips.
If you liked this post, then please subscribe to my RSS Feed or subscribe via email. Thanks.

5 Important Steps You Should Take Before Exchanging Links

This month has been really busy for me and that is why I have not been able to update my blogs as regularly as I have always wanted to. Nonetheless, I try my best to keep sharing my experiences and knowledge about SEO, Blogging, Marketing and Moneymaking with you guys. Today, I am going to talk about exchanging links. As webmasters, we all know that link exchanges are good ways to drive traffic to your own website or blog, get backlinks and thus boost your website's PageRank. However, one needs to be very careful when exchanging links with other webmasters.

Link Exchange - What is it?
For those who do not know, link exchange is when two webmasters decided to put each other's website's link on their own websites. This is a common type of link exchange known as two way link exchange. The second type of link exchange is known as three way link exchange. In such a link exchange, a webmaster places his website A's link on the other webmaster's website B. In return, website A's webmaster places webmaster B's link on his website C. Thus, there are a total of three websites involved.

5 steps you should take before exchanging links

1. Carefully check the content of the website - You always want to exchange links with only quality websites that are regularly updated. Make sure that the content is interesting. Also, you do not want to exchange links with sites that contain adult material (and other content that Google does not like).
   
2. Check the website's PageRank - While content is important, a lot of webmasters also consider PageRank before exchanging links. Why? Just so that they can get a nice backlink for their site and thus boost its PageRank.
3. Verify the PageRank - If you consider PageRank as a major factor then I strongly suggest that you verify the website's PageRank. There are several ways to generate a false PageRank and you need to know how to detect fake PageRank.
   
4. Check if the website is a link farm - A lot of webmasters just create websites and then try to put as many links as possible on their website. Such sites with numerous irrelevant links are considered as link farms and linking to such sites can hurt your website's PageRank.
5. Check where your link will be placed - You don't want your link to be placed somewhere in the corner at the bottom of the page where no one will see it. Your link should be placed in a proper place where the visitors can easily see it.

Finally, I would like to say that sometimes you should not care about PageRank very much when exchanging links. PageRank is a good factor but it is never permanent. A website that has a PageRank of 6 today can completely lose it in the next update. Thus, try to get backlinks from websites with relevant and interesting content as well.

Image Source
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Some Useful Links:
Voting tools for volunteers on the go - Google Blog
Make a date with data in Google Analytics - Inside Adsense

Posted by Dan at SEO and Blogging Tips.
If you liked this post, then please subscribe to my RSS Feed or subscribe via email. Thanks.

Google PageRank Update August 08 Is Here

Google just updated all the PageRank values recently few weeks ago. I was not very happy with it because one of my blogs which has PageRank 3 didn't notice any change even though I had been working so hard to get backlinks. But still I didn't mind much because I thought the blog would gain PageRank in the next update. However, when I came back home from work and noticed the PageRank of SEO and Blogging Tips, I was completely shocked!

My PageRank dropped from 4 to 1. That's from PageRank 4 to PageRank 1. How could that be possible? I checked my Firefox plug-in and it kept showing 1. I went to a PageRank checker website to verify and it is true. I have lost my PageRank. Not by one...not by two....but by three. I have heard that the PageRank update has just started few hours ago so there are chances that my PageRank might be returned to me by the end but the chances are very few.

Not many people know about this update so I wanted to give you a heads up on it so that you can go and check your websites' PageRank. Let me know how this mini update turned out for you. Did you lose your PageRank or gained it? What are you going to do about it now?


I am not going to be too concerned about PageRank from now on. I have realized that sometimes it can be completely random and false. I am going to focus even more on my content and work harder to increase traffic to SEO and Blogging Tips. Afterall, content and traffic matters the most.

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Submitting Websites To Other Search Engines: Is It Worth It?

There are many webmasters out there who believe that there is no point in submitting your websites to search engines. They get crawled sooner or later anyways, so what's the point in submitting them? Then there are others who only submit their websites and blogs to Google. Let me tell you that both of these types of webmasters are idiots....now let me tell you why.

Right now, I don't want to talk about why it is important to submit your website to search engines directly rather than wait for the bots to crawl it for you. Today, I would like to talk about submitting websites to other search engines besides Google. According to Hitwise, Google received over 70% of the searches in US while Yahoo and received 18.65% and MSN got only 5.36%.

*Click on the image to enlarge it

As you can see in the image above, Google has been dominating the market in July 08, June 08 and July 07. Basically, Google is the king of the search market for the time being and a lot of people believe that submitting websites to Yahoo and MSN is not worth it.

But lets not forget that Yahoo and MSN own around a quarter of the search market. Google may be the king but Yahoo and MSN still hold some value and can definitely be a good source for traffic to your website or blog.

Take a look at the traffic statistics for a celebrity blog over the last month (July 19 - August 18). I would use the stats from this blog but I don't have sufficient data available from Google Analytics yet.

The blog has received a total of 4,714 visitors from search engines only. From those visits, 4,254 came only from Google while the rest came from a collection of other search engines. Take a look at the detailed stats below:

As you can see, the blog got 90% traffic from Google, 6% from Yahoo and 4% from other search engines. Now you might be thinking that if most of the traffic comes from Google, then why should submitting to other search engines matter. The reason is that every traffic counts and even 320 visitors in a month is better than nothing. Overall the blog gets 460 visitors from other search engines which means that around 15 visitors come every day from those search engines. Now I am only talking about a mediocre blog. Consider big websites with lots of traffic. The number will be huge this time and they will matter a lot.

While it is good to submit to Google, submitting to other search engines does not take more than a couple of minutes and can guarantee some great long run benefits. In conclusion, I will say that each site needs traffic even if it is famous and all the other search engines can definitely increase the popularity of your website. Don't forget that Google is not the only search engine. And what if it disappears tomorrow? You always need to have a backup plan. Never put all your marbles in one bag!

Here are some search engine you can submit your websites/blogs to:

• Google
• Yahoo!
• Live Search

Hopefully, you learned something important from this post. If you would like to receives more post like this in future then please subscribe to my RSS feed or subscribe via email.

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The "Writing New Blog Posts For More Traffic" Problem For Bloggers

Today, while I was discussing a topic at a forum with some members and came up on a problem that bloggers usually face when coming up with search engine friendly blog posts. So what is this problem?

Problem

Well, most of the times bloggers are always thinking of new stuff to write about on their blog. But smart bloggers are always thinking of some new topics that can get them good ranking at search engines and increase traffic. Thus, you do not want to write about something that has been written several times before because that just means you have tons of competition to deal with and who has time to do that? We just want to write a post and get to top and that can easily be done if there is not much competition. But hold on a second! We don't just want to write about any topic with less competition. Can you see where this is going? We gotta write about a popular topic that not many people have written about.


So suppose I choose to write about "email hosting" because according to SEO Book tool, 8448 searches are made at Google everyday...and that's just one search engine! In total, 11,919 searches are made everyday using that keyword. So if you write a post about email hosting, there are good chances that you will get some traffic. But wait up, how will you get that traffic if your blog/website appears on the third or fourth page of the search results because of all the competition that exists. I am sure tons of people have already written about email hosting!

So, if you want to write a post that would bring you a lot of traffic from search engine, you have to come up with a topic that has less competition and is popular. Make sure you keep this in mind, the next time you sit in front of your old computer and start typing your latest post.

How to deal with it?

One way to deal with this problem is to write about recent popular topics. That way, the topic is still popular but it has only been popular for few days and thus not many people have writting about it so there is very few competition. But how do you find about such topics? There are several tools that you can use online and Google Trends and Insights are some really good ones. These tools will let you see what the world is searching for and then you can look through them to find some recent terms and write about them. For example, a really hot topic right now is michael phelps wardrobe malfunction. Write about that and you will definitely get some traffic (but only for limited time!).

Another way is to just keep thinking and wait till you get a brilliant idea that will make your blog receive thousands of traffic instantly but as we all know, chances are very slim!

What do you think is a good way to deal with this problem? Do you have an answer?

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Leaving Comments That Will Generate Traffic And Improve PageRank

Most SEO experts will always tell you that leaving comments on other (dofollow) blogs is a great way to not only bring some traffic to your own site but also improve your website's PageRank. So you tried doing that but your traffic seemed unaffected. You wait for the next PageRank update and do not notice any difference either. So what is it that's going wrong? Is it pointless to leave comments on other blogs or are you just not doing it correctly? I will tell you right now that it is the comments that you are leaving and not the method.

A lot of (popular) bloggers moderate the comments before publishing them on their blog to block spammy comments. Thus, just because you left a comment does not necessarily mean that it got published. This is why you need to make sure that you leave comments that always get approved by other bloggers and I am here to present you with some tips that will help you write such comments.


DON'T include links

Memorize this and swear to never forget it. Trust me with this one. Never leave your website's link in a comment unless the blog owner is your cousin. There is nothing worse than seeing a comment on your blog with a link. Regardless of how well the comment is written, webmasters are always prompted to reject the comment.

When you leave a comment, you have to enter some basic information including your name, email and URL. That is where you enter your website's URL address. If people want to visit your site, then they will click on your name which will direct them to the URL you entered before.

Some of you might be thinking of the situations when you want to include a link to one of your posts in the comment because you have to mention it to finish what you want to say. Well in that case, I would suggest that you write the title of your post and not include its URL. If people are interested in reading your post, then they will click on your name/URL and find the post with the title that you wrote. It's a lot more work for the readers but at least you do not seem like a spammer.

Be specific, not general

No one is interested in reading general comments that can be posted on any blog and any post. Such comments seem like spam. Here are some samples:

Nice post. Loved it!
Great work buddy. Keep it up!
Paris Hilton is hot and so is your post.
Some great tips you have there.

Comments like these show that you have not read the post completely and are just here to spam. Even though that might not be your intention, you have to stop leaving such comments. Ideal comments should be that challenge the writer or give him suggestions. You can also talk about the specific thing that you liked and what you did not.

Benefits of leaving such comments

Alright, so you have left comments on blogs like I mentioned but how exactly will they help you generate traffic and improve PageRank? First of all, whenever someone reads an interesting and intelligent comment, they are prompted to read some more of your articles. I know that I always do this! This brings significant amount of traffic to your blog.

Also, when the blog owner and/or readers see your post, they might want to exchange links with your sites and have more discussions with you. This helps you get a great friend in the immense blogging community. People are always interested in exchanging links with intelligent and dedicated bloggers. And we all know that exchanging links is a good way to improve PageRank.

These were some tips on leaving some good comments that will help you get traffic and improve PageRank. Remember, few comments like these will be more beneficial in the long run than lots of spammy comments.

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Some Useful Links:
Video units more widely available - Inside Adsense
Get your Google Calendar in 38 languages - Gmail Blog
Model your campus in Mexico using SketchUp - Google Blog
Where is Georgia on Google Maps? - Google Blog
Translations on your iPhone - Google Blog
Spice Up Your Blog with Google Gadgets! - Blogger Buzz
Keeping tabs on spam and viruses - Google Blog

Social Bookmarking Sites: How To Decide Which One Is The Best

It is a known fact that social bookmarking websites are a great way to bring some traffic to your blog/website. They can also be a great place to discover new interesting articles. However, in the past few years, a lot of bookmarking sites have emerged, making it almost impossible to submit your articles or post to all of them. So out of all these sites, how do you decide which ones you should use to share your articles with others?

What are Social Bookmarking websites?
For those who know little about social bookmarking sites, they are a great place to share and discover articles. Whenever you write a new article, you can submit it to such sites and share it with others and at the same time discover some new articles by other members. All social bookmarking sites have some sort of voting system to rank the articles. If your article is interested and others like it then they will vote for it. The articles that get the most votes are displayed on the homepage and thus gain more exposure. Some of the most famous bookmarking websites are Digg, Stumble Upon, Reddit, Sphinn etc.


Submitting articles to social bookmarking sites can bring you a lot of traffic in short amount of time and can also be beneficial in the long run. However, not all the bookmarking sites are as beneficial as others. Thus, you have to be careful about which ones you choose to submit your articles since that can save you a lot of time. I have complied a short list of some important factors that you should consider before submitting your article to social bookmarking sites.

1. Niche
Not all bookmarking sites are general. A lot of bookmarking sites are dedicated to a special niche or a group of topics. For example, Sphinn is only dedicated to sharing news related to internet marketing. Thus, it is important that you don't use it for celebrity gossips! You should use bookmarking sites that match your article's niche to get the best results.

2. PageRank
With so many outgoing links, having a backlink from social bookmarking sites with high PageRank does not hold a great value but is still important in the long run. Thus, you should consider checking the PageRank of social bookmarking sites to see which ones have the highest.

• Digg - PR 8
• Delicious - PR 9
  
• Furl - PR 7
  
• Stumble Upon - PR 8
  
• Sphinn - PR 7
• Reddit - PR 7

3. Users
Submitting articles to social bookmarking site with very few members is quite useless since your article will not be getting much exposure. You need to make sure that the bookmarking sites you use have a lot of members. If there are a lot of users then that means there are more chances of you blog/site will getting some good amount of traffic.

4. Community
Sometimes you need to consider the community before you submit your articles. Are the members respectful? Do they like your post? Bookmarking sites are SOCIAL sites so you need to build some kind of relationship with other members and become part of the community. Thus, it is important that social bookmarking sites have a good supportive community.

5. Search Engine Results Page (SERPs)
Digg submissions often appear in Google result pages and thus provide extra traffic to webmasters. Thus, it is important that you choose bookmarking sites that have good SERPs. You want your submission page to have good ranking! Take a look at the fourth result on this google seach page.

6. Traffic
The main reason for submitting to social bookmarking sites is probably to get traffic (permanent or temporary). Thus, you have to try some bookmarking sites yourself and see which sites work the best for you. You have to see which sites get you the most traffic. Some webmasters get tons of traffic from Stumble Upon while others struggle to get any.

I hope this list helped you decide which bookmarking sites you should use for your posts/articles. Remember, social bookmarking sites are great for getting traffic and building backlinks.

Now I am a little tired after writing this article so I am going to take some rest and watch some old episodes of F.R.I.E.N.D.S. See you guys later!!

Image Source
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Some Useful Links:
Translations on your iPhone - Google Blog
Keeping tabs on spam and viruses - Google Blog
Western Union expanded to additional countries - Inside Adsense
We feel your pain, and we're sorry - Gmail Blog
Spice Up Your Blog with Google Gadgets! - Blogger Buzz

Which Is More Important: SEO or Web Design?

Search Engine Optimization focuses on increasing traffic to a website while web design includes making the website presentable, easily accessible and attractive. One of the most heated webmasters' debates is the importance of SEO and web design. Which is more important? Should you consider spending more time on SEO or focus more on web design? Certainly, both are vital to a website's success but which is more essential?

The idea to write this post came into my mind when I read a thread on a webmaster's forum called Webcosmo forums. The thread received several interesting replies which I thought I should share with you guys. However, before we get into this debate, lets first start with some background information.


Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
What exactly does SEO do for a website? Simply, it gets you more traffic! With good SEO, your website will rank higher in SERPs and you will get more and more traffic. It is one of the cheapest way of marketing that never sleeps. Furthermore, your traffic will be targeted and thus will help you increase sales.

Web Design
Once a visitor reaches your site, good content is not always what he (lets assume it's a guy) will look for there. An attractive web design compels a visitor to stay longer and makes it easier for him to focus on the content without too many distractions.

So both SEO and web design have their own benefits but which one is more important? Without SEO your website will only get minimum amount of traffic regardless of what a great design your website has. Furthermore, without traffic all the hard work you put into the design will not even get appreciated. However, good SEO may get you a lot of traffic but a lot of that traffic may not stay longer than few seconds if your website has a horrible design.

Thus, I believe that both SEO and Web design are extremely important to make a website successful. However, since I have to choose one, I will pick SEO. But I am not saying that you should only focus on SEO and ignore web design. Take your time to build the website carefully. Spend sufficient amount of time on both but spend a little more time on SEO. This way you will get traffic and still have a reasonably attractive website.

This is just my opinion and I think that it would be better if I presented you with some different point of views.

I think those two are sort of different things, although design help SEO. I would prefer SEO. Because I have seen crapy looking sites make millions of dollars doing SEO right. For example Zappos.com is the biggest shoes, accessories site; looks crappy but they [make] millions every month.
By Manik (admin)

You can achieve both. An SEO site does not have to be dull looking at all.
By amritrr

SEO most likely...after all users search to get information..but we cant deny the web design helps a lot particularly in interface and user friendliness..to keep the user browse the page more.
By 2fk

It seems like most people support SEO over web design but still think that you should spend some time on design. Which view do you like the best and what's your own view? Please share it with us.

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Some Useful Links:
Seeing New Orleans through street view - Google Blog
Google in your language - Google Blog
You are not spam - Blogger Buzz
Tip: Customize your web clips - Gmail blog
Search quality, continued - Google Blog
More Transparency in Customized Search Results - Google Blog
A picture isn't always worth a thousand words - Inside Adsense

Submitting Websites To Directories - Worth The Trouble?

As most of you know, directories are a well organized collection of websites/blogs/forums that make it easier for users to find websites related to different content. Each link on a directory includes a short description of the website. Some directories also like to include traffic details and PageRank.

Submitting your websites and blogs to directories is a good way to get some backlinks and is recommended by many. Some also consider it a reasonable way to increase traffic. But is this really true? And if it is then is it actually worth the trouble? Should webmasters submit their websites to all the directories?

There are generally three types of directories: Free, Paid and Both. Free directories accept all links for free. Some directories may not ask you for money but may require you to add a reciprocal link to their directory on your website. Paid directories require you to pay to get your link approved. There are also other directories that are a combination of Free and Paid directories. They accept links for free as well as for money. You can pay to have your link listed as a featured link and thus gain more exposure.


Ideally, directories are supposed to provide you with useful backlinks and act as a relevant source of traffic but you rarely see that happen. Webmasters usually consider two factors before submitting their site to a directory: PageRank and Traffic. Does the directory have a high Pagerank and does it get a lot of traffic? Having a link on a directory with high PageRank and traffic can help improve your website's PageRank and can help you get traffic to your site.

However, it is not as simple as that and usually webmasters end up getting very less link juice (PageRank benefit) and traffic from directories. What are the reasons?

1. PageRank - Eventhough some directories may have high PageRank for their homepage, their innerpages, where your link will be placed, rarely have any PageRank. Thus, your website's PageRank does not get much boost.


2. Traffic - Ideally, whenever someone needs to find a website, they should go to directories and surf through the different categories. But who does that now? We have search engines to digg up websites for us without wasting any time. Thus, it is highly possible that your site won't get much traffic from directories because not many people visit them to look for websites.

So, lets get back to our main question: Is it worth the trouble? Yes! Submitting directories is still a good way to build some backlinks even if they may not boost your PageRank as much as you expected. Try to submit your websites/blogs to free directories whenever you have a chance. You do not need to pay and thus you are not wasting anything other than few minutes. Sooner or later, everything will all add up and you will notice the benefits. Remember, when it comes to SEO, every little thing counts!

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Some Useful Links:
Google in your language - Google Blog
You are not spam - Blogger Buzz
Search quality, continued - Google Blog
More Transparency in Customized Search Results - Google Blog
A picture isn't always worth a thousand words - Inside Adsense

NoDoFollow - A Firefox Extension To Distinguish DoFollow And NoFollow Links

Few weeks ago, I read about a very interesting and one of the most useful Firefox extensions called NoDoFollow on a website. After reading a short description, I decided to test it and see if it is really capable of doing that the developer claims. So what is this SEO tool that I am talking about? What does it do and how is it useful to us?

NoDoFollow is a simple 3 KB extension for Mozilla Firefox browser. The extension lets you know which links on a website are DoFollow and NoFollow. As most of you already know, the difference between DoFollow and NoFollow is very significant. Thus, sometimes it is very important for webmasters to know whether links on a blog or website are DoFollow or NoFollow.

How does it work?
The extension takes seconds to download and once downloaded you can easily use it. All you have to do after downloading is right click on any web page and then click on "NoDoFollow". Doing so will turn the extension on and all the links on the page will be highlited in either blue or pink color. The links in blue are DoFollow and the ones in red are NoFollow. Here is a screenshot to show you how it looks:

This small extansion is very useful to webmasters when they want to buy or exchange links. Buying a NoFollow link only provides you with traffic while a DoFollow link also helps improve your website's PageRank. Thus most webmasters check the attribute of the link before getting in any kind of deal.

Bloggers can also benefit from this tool as they can see which blogs have DoFollow attribute on and which blogs do not. Then, bloggers can comment on DoFollow blogs and leave their link to get some link juice.

Download NoDoFollow by Zacharyfox
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Some useful links:
Search quality, continued - Google Blog
More Transparency in Customized Search Results - Google Blog
A picture isn't always worth a thousand words - Inside Adsense
Back to school with more than 1 million users worldwide - Google Blog
Hello from A2 - Google Blog
We Knew The Web Was Big - Google Blog
Updates and Fixes for July 18th - Blogger Buzz
Easy as 1-2-3 - Adsense Blog

Google's PageRank Update Has Ended!

After Matt Cutt announced in his blog the latest PageRank update, the whole webmaster community stirred with thousands of new threads popping up at different forums. People were curious and nervous while others simply did not care. I was one of the first ones! I have several blogs and I have been working hard to build backlinks and post unique content since the last PageRank update.

The update finally began two-three days ago. Webmasters could notice their websites' PageRank changing. Some sites gained PageRank, others lost while some stayed the same. Most of my blogs did not see any change at all. Only one blog saw an increase from N/A to PR 1. I hardly spent any time on that blog and there are less than ten posts on it but still it got PR 1. However, my other blogs which have lots of backlinks from high PR sites did not notice any change.

One of my blogs got a PR 3 in the last update. That was when I was not interested in PageRank at all and hardly cared about backlinks. Since the last update, I decided to raise the PR to at least 4 or 5 from 3. I managed to exchange DoFollow links with a lot of high PageRank websites. Some of those sites even had PR4 and PR5! Furthermore, I submitted my blog to several famous directories but it seems like none of it worked.

Now when the update has ended, I am highly disappointed with Google. Their system seems to get less accurate in every update. Am I saying this only because I did not see a raise? Well, it is partially true but I have also seen other webmasters talk about it. Not many are happy with this update. Google needs to be more careful in future and reward websites that truly deserve it. I understand that being 100% accurate is very difficult but it is still important to manage some quality when ranking other websites. But this is only my opinion and you have all the right to disagree with it.

Fortunately, if I didn't gain any PageRank then I did not lose any either. I was a little nervous about SEO and Blogging Tips since I just started working on it. It managed to stick to its PageRank (4).

How did Google's PageRank update turn out for you? Did your websites' PageRank raise, drop or stay neutral? Are you happy with it or disappointed?

Image Source
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Some useful links:
More Transparency in Customized Search Results - Google Blog
Back to school with more than 1 million users worldwide - Google Blog
Hello from A2 - Google Blog
We Knew The Web Was Big - Google Blog
Knol Is Open to Everyone - Google Blog
Updates and Fixes for July 18th - Blogger Buzz
Easy as 1-2-3 - Adsense Blog

The Difference Between DoFollow and NoFollow links

While adding a link to an anchor text, you have the option of either using a DoFollow link or a NoFollow link. Most webmasters know the different between the DoFollow and NoFollow links but there are still many that don't. To many, the difference is very insignificant while to others it is very important. So how are these two different types of links different? What's their importance to Search Engine Optimisation? Lets start with some background info about Google PageRank.

Google PageRank
As you all know, Google has its own very famous ranking system called PageRank. This ranking system is used by several webmasters to determine the price of websites when buying or selling. But how is Google PageRank determined? Mainly, if your website has a good number of backlinks then you will have a high PR. Backlinks are links to your website from another site. Google consider each backlink as a vote from other webmasters to you. The more votes you have, the higher the PageRank you will receive.

The Difference
In 2005, Google's head of webspam team Matt Cutts and Jason Shellen came up with the concept of NoFollow.

nofollow is an HTML attribute value used to instruct some search engines that a hyperlink should not influence the link target's ranking in the search engine's index. It is intended to reduce the effectiveness of certain types of search engine spam, thereby improving the quality of search engine results and preventing spamdexing from occurring in the first place.

By Wikipedia

When other webmasters place a link on your site they can do it in two different ways. They can place either a DoFollow link or a NoFollow link. If they choose to place a DoFollow link to your site then you will receive their vote and that will improve your ranking. But if they use the NoFollow link then you will not receive any vote and your ranking will stay the same. Remember, it will not decrease your ranking but the backlink will simply not count.

Sometimes it is easy to manipulate Google PageRank. If you have a big budget then you can easily buy links on high PageRank websites and thus increase the chances of getting a good PageRank for your own website. Google does not like this and has been working hard to punish all those webmasters that sell and buy links by decreasing their websites' PageRank. Google does not have any problem with webmasters selling and buying links but Google asks them to use the NoFollow links when doing so in order to prevent PageRank manipulation.

Does that mean that you are not allowed to post DoFollow links on your websites? You are allowed but one thing that I find confusing is the process through which Google knows if a link is bought or not. How can Google tell if Webmsters are buying links or not?

How to put NoFollow and DoFollow links
By default all natural links are DoFollow so you don't have to do anything different to place a DoFollow link. Just place a link like you usually do and it will be a DoFollow link.

Here is how the code should look for each link:

DoFollow

NoFollow

Hopefully, this post has helped you understand the difference between two types of HTML attribute values: DoFollow and NoFollow. If you are buying links then you might want to check if a link is DoFollow or NoFollow before getting into any deal.

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Useful Links:

Ragogmakan (Google) goes to the Amazon - Google Blog
Knol is open to everyone - Google Blog
We knew the web was big... - Google Blog
Easy as 1-2-3 - Adsense Blog
Web Analytics by the Bay - Analytics Blog

Seven Most Popular Search Engine Ranking Myths

Few days ago, I read a post about search ranking myths which I really liked. Today, I have decided to share the most important points with you. The information helped me clarify a lot of doubts about search engine ranking and I am sure that you will learn a lot as well.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is extremely beneficial to almost all webmasters but only few are very good at it. Most have not even heard about it while others seem to have no interest. But the truth is that SEO can take your site to great lengths.

However, there is so much SEO information out there that it is hard to decide which to believe and which to ignore. Some SEO experts will tell you something while others will tell you something completely different. In this post, I will try to explain seven most popular search engine ranking myths.

Myth: Pay Per Click (PPC) ads can improve or damage your organic rankings.
Truth: PPC has nothing to do with organic rankings. PPC comes into a different category.

Myth: Ignoring Google’s guidelines can get your websites banned
Truth: Google recommends that you read their guidelines carefully but it is not mandatory that you do so. Ignoring Google’s guidelines does not mean that your website will be banned.

Myth: Your website will be banned if you buy links
Truth: NOPE! The links will simply not count. That’s it! Your website will not be banned.

Myth: You may only copy words that contain certain number of words, utilize specific keyword density and have bold or italicized keywords.
Truth: People used to believe that there was a limit to how many words could be used and how many keywords could be repeated but not anymore. They have no effect on ranking.

Myth: Having duplicate content will get your website banned
Truth: No! Your site will only get filtered and the copied content will not be considered.

Myth: Reciprocal links have no value
Truth: All links are important to some extent. Reciprocal links DO have value.

Myth: It is possible for SEO companies to increase your ranking without doing on-page work
Truth: “Run if an SEO company tells you this!”

I hope this post helped you clear some doubts regarding search ranking. If you have any questions, feel free to leave comments and I will try to answer them as quickly as possible.

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Useful links:
Knol is open to everyone - Google Blog
Hitting 40 languages - Google Blog
Celebrating young computer scientists - Google Blog
Introducing Knol - Blogger Buzz

Detecting Fake PageRank

Have you ever come across a site with a really high PR that you thought did not really deserve it? The site had very few backlinks, hardly any content and no life but still had a PR 6? Well then this is one of the cases of having FAKE PageRank. That's right! A lot of sites have tried to produce a fake pagerank for themselves and succeeded.

A fake pagerank can bring you a lot of money if you are smart enough to hide it properly. But there are always ways to detect a site that has a fake pagerank. I am not really sure right now if Google has taken any serious action against such sites or plans to take later on but right now it is on you to detect such sites before getting into any kind of deal (link exchanges, buying links etc) with them.

In this post, I will try my best to teach you how to tell if a website has a fake pagerank or not. Remember knowing this information can save you a lot of money since there are a lot of people that try to sell websites with fake pagerank.

Four Steps to Detect a Fake PageRank:

1. Check PageRank using a PageRank checker tool
2. Search: info:http://URL in Google
3. Look at the URL listed at the bottom of the first result in green
4. If the URL is different then the one that you put in first then it is a FAKE PageRank
   

I recently came across a website called John Doe's Blog that had a fake pagerank. So I will be using this site as an example. I do not want to provide a link to this website in this post because I do not want to give any backlinks to people who cheat others. The website can be found at "wearestjohns(dot)com". I will be referring to this site as JDB from now on.

Lets follow the four steps mentioned above in detail and see if JDB has a fake PageRank or not.

Step 1
If you go to any PageRank checking site then you will notice that JDB has a PageRank 6. Most people will just stop there and assume that JDB really has a PageRank 6.

Step 2, 3 and 4
Now go to Google and search info:http://wearestjohns.com. You will notice that the first result looks like this:



As you can see, the URL in green is different from JDB's URL. This means that the PageRank is fake. JDB has actually redirected Google(bot) to a high PageRank site such as the one shown in the image above and made it seem as if JDB has that PageRank.

Looking at a site with valid PageRank
My blog has a valid PageRank 4 currently and this is how I can prove it. Go to Google and search info:http://omarabid.blogspot.com and you will see this search result:



As you can see, the URL entered before is the same as the URL shown in green. Thus, the PageRank is valid.

After reading this post, most of you will also be interested in knowing how to get a fake pagerank even if you do not want to use it. I will publish another post later with all the information you need to get a fake pagerank. So subscribe to my feed and stay up-to-date with all the latest posts.

Explaining The Technology behind Google Ranking

All Google lovers get ready for some serious in-depth information about Technologies behind Google ranking. Google likes to share its information with its users and that's exactly what they did by publishing a post on their blog about technical foundation of Google Ranking.

I know that my last post was about Google Ranking as well but I also mentioned that soon their will be a followup post. I didn't expect it to be too soon but nonetheless, it's great! Amit Singhal once again provides us with some in depth knowledge about Google Ranking.

Search has evolved a lot in the past few years from "give me what I said" to "give me what I want." Google works hard to make its search results satisfy most of their customers if not all. To be good at their job, Google succeeds in understanding the pages, the queries and the users.

1. Understanding the Pages
You may have noticed during your searches that your query may not have been very detailed but Google still manages to provide you with excellent search results. For example, you might search for cool tech pc vancouver and still get www.cooltechpc.com even though the website does not mention it anywhere that they are located in Vancouver. Google manages to discover important information about a website even when it is not directly stated.

2. Understanding Queries
The second important technology that drives Google is their system that enables them to understand queries. Google has one of the best spelling checker, synonym system and an excellent concept analysis system.

A lot of users make the mistake of typing their queries incorrectly. But Google does its best to understand what the user really wants. For example someone searching for Kofee Anan is actually searching for Mr. Kofi Annan. Furthermore, someone searching for Kofee beans actually wants search results for coffee beans.

Moreover, a lot of times users do not know which words to use in their query. Some words may result in better and more useful search results than others. Thus, Google has a powerful synonym system in place to provide you with most relevant results regardless of what synonym you enter in the search box.

Furthermore, Google employs a concept identification system in its rankings. It does not only identify words in queries but also identifies concepts! For example, someone searching for new york times square search is actually searching for the famous church in Times Square, NY and not an articles from the newspaper New York Times.

3. Understanding Users
Google does its best to give its users what they really want. Results are provided to the individually differently sometimes. For example, if you search bank in Google US then you will get results with US banks but if you do the same search in Google UK then you will get links to Bank Fashion Line and UK banks. Search results in local Google are more specific and display what the user may really want.

Moreover, if users have signed up for Web History, then Google checks the users's past searches to see what type of results the user is mainly interested in.

A great example is when a user searches for chevrolet magnum. Magnum is a product of Dodge and not Chevrolet. Thus Google provides the user with results for dodge magnum.

This was a summary of what goes behind the Google Ranking. I hope you liked my version of the Google's post.

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Amit Singhal explains Google Ranking

Few days ago, Amit Singhal (Google's search researcher) published a post on Google's official blog called Introduction to Google Ranking. The post simply outlined three major factors that Google looks at to determine SERPs (Search Engine Result Pages). In my opinion, every webmaster should consider these factors before optimizing their webpages.

According to Amit, Google's "state-of-the-art" ranking system is based on three vital factors:

1. Best locally relevant results served globally
2. Keep it simple
3. No manual intervention

First of all, Amit talked about providing relevant search results to almost all queries. Google wants to make sure that all queries get good search results so that no searcher is left disappointed. However, Google does have search problems and Amit agreed to that. But they have a campaign called "No query left behind" which only motivates them further to do an even better job.

Secondly, Amit discussed the principle of "keep(ing) it simple". Google loves to be simple because that's how people want it to be. Amit talked about how Google has so much work to do when it comes to determine search rankings but nonetheless Google updates approximately 10 ranking changes every week. Their engineers don't play games; they know exactly what they are doing and why a page is ranked the way it is.

Finally, the third factor is "No Manual Intervention." Does Google actually edit the results manually? Amit answered this question by saying that internet is build up of human contribution and so are Google's search results. Google's famous algoritham heavily takes into consideration human contribution in order to decide SERPs. It is not manually determined by Google. Amit also said, that having an algoritham is beneficial since it is easier to make SERPs changes with it rather than doing them all manually if a problem occurs.

Before finishing, Amit mentioned that there will be a follow-up post about Google rankings so stay tuned. And he also concluded by saying, "our passion for search is stronger than ever - and as a search researcher, I have the best job in the world :-)".

4 SEO Steps To Take After Starting A Blog

Search Engine Optimization does not always have to be hard and only for technical gurus. Many times, it can be done easily for websites and blogs. There are several dimensions to SEO and some of them are a little more difficult than the others. Thus, the best approach for newbies would be to start with the easy ones.

Most of the times, bloggers try very little to optimize their blogs for search engines due to lack of knowledge. A lot of them do not even know the benefits of SEO but it is one of the most important thing if you want a successful blog. In this article, I will talk about first five steps that every blogger should take to optimize as soon as they create a blog.


1. Give it a title
The first thing that you must do after creating a blog is give it a nice title. Every blog must have a title. For example, you will notice that the title of my blog is SEO and Blogging Tips. The title is very important as it tells your readers and search engines what the blog is about. Make sure that your title is not something like "Mike's blog". Your title has to be descriptive and right to the point. Also, make sure that it is relatively short and easy to remember.

2. Add Meta Tags
Meta Tags are tags that are found in website codes that describe your pages to search engines. There are several types of meta tags. Some of them are important while others are simply optional. The most common types of Meta Tags are Description, Keywords and author. However, the ones that you MUST use are the first two: Description and Keywords tags. These two tags will provide an overview of your blog and list some important keywords relevant to your blog. You can create your Meta Tags from ORBlogs's Meta Tag Generator.

3. Submit your site to Google
Google has a service for webmasters called Google Webmasters that allows admins (webmasters) to submit their sites and blogs to Google search engine so that they can be indexed. It is very vital to get your blogs indexed because that will bring you a lot of organic traffic - traffic from search engines. All you have to do is use your Google account to log into Google Webmaster and submit your site. That's it!

4. Submit your Sitemap
Submitting blog to Google will help bring you organic traffic but it will not be very helpful if you do not submit your sitemap. For those who do not know, sitemap is a list of links of pages on your blog. This list helps search engines figure out which links to crawl. Submitting a sitemap will increase the chances of getting your pages indexed. You can use Google Webmasters tool again to submit your sitemap.

Once you have followed all these four steps, you will start noticing good results. However, if you want your blog to grow then make sure that you continue doing SEO and reading this blog!

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Top 5 factors that determine PageRank

Most of you are probably familiar with Google's PageRank. For those who do not know a lot about PageRank, it is a ranking system by Google which ranks individual sites from 0 to 10...10 being the highest. Google's ranking system is probably the most used rank system on the Internet. It is used by advertisers to determine the importance of a page they want to advertise on. It is used by domain buyers and sellers to determine the value of a website. Furthermore, it is also used by common people to determine the popularity of a web page.


Note: Some site owners might see "N/A" when they check their Page Rank. This means that your site is new and that you would have to wait till the next Page Rank update to get your page rank.

Without any further delay, lets start with the Top 5 factors that determine PageRank. Please note that the factors are not ranked in any particular order. Fifth factor may not be any less important than the first factor!


1. Backlinks
You would have noticed that websites have a "link" section and blogs commonly have a "Blogroll" or "Friends" section. Why is that? It is a technique to increase your Page Rank. If site A has a link to Site B then according to Google, site A is voting for site B. The more the votes a site has, the higher the page rank will be. One important thing to note is that not all links/votes are worth the same. If you get your link on Google (highly impossible) then that will impact your page rank greatly compared to your link on a cheap new blog. Thus you should always try to get backlinks from sites that have a higher PR than you or have at least the same PR.

2. Traffic
It is important to have high amount of traffic coming to a website in order to have a good PR. It is highly unlikely that a site with low PR will get a lot of traffic but there are sometimes when that happens. Most of the time, good PageRank and high traffic go hand in hand. So if you want to increase your PageRank then you would have to first increase your traffic through different marketing techniques. I would not elaborate any further on this factor since I think it is very obvious.

3. Keywords
Keywords is a very broad term when it comes to Search Engine Optimization but what do I really mean here? Keywords are a set of words that describe your site. For example, my blog has keywords "SEO", "Marketing", "Blogging", "Moneymaking" etc. Your site may have something else depending on your content. Keywords at different places have different importance. You can place keywords in URL, title of your main page, description meta tag, headings etc. You would actually need to have a lot of knowledge about SEO to get this one completely. The first thing that you should do is add a meta tag description to your site or blog.

4. Pages indexed
This is also a very important factor when it comes to determining PageRank. The greater the number of pages indexed by search engines (especially Google), the greater your PR. To get your pages indexed, you will have to manually submit your pages to search engines. Doing this will not only help you get a higher PageRank but will also drive more traffic to your site.

5. Unique Content
Yup believe it or not, but content is extremely important. Do not expect to start a useless blog and get a high PageRank even after submitting your sites to search engines and getting a lot of links. This technique may have worked for some but it may not work for you. You must write unique and interesting content on your site or blog in order to have a good PR. Remember, if you keep writing copied content then it is possible that your site may possibly get banned by search engines completely and then you will be left with hardly any organic traffic. Furthermore, unique articles will encourage other bloggers or webmasters to link to your site or articles and thus will get you more backlinks.

This was my list of 5 factors that I think are most important when it comes to determining pagerank. One thing to always remember is that all these factors are interconnected. For example, if you write unique content then you will get more visitors and your site's popularity will increase which will help you get a higher PageRank.

There are tons of other factors that are useful in determining a websites's PageRank. If you think that there are some other factor(s) that are more important then the once mentioned then please express your opinion.

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More Info about Google Ranking

Google swallow double click

Google is a giant that continue devastating any thing that seems to be in his way.
After you tube, Blogger and writer it's time for Double Click!
It's strange but do you think that Google can continue this expansion.
In 2002 Google was 400 million$ only and now it's more than 13 billion$!
Do you think that Google may loose all its power in short time (break down)??
I wait your comments :)