Is Facebook taking over social bookmarking sites?

When was the last time that you used a social bookmarking site like Digg, Stumble Upon or Reddit?

Recently, social bookmarking sites have been increasing noticeable drop in their traffic and user activity. Social bookmarking sites used to be very popular but every since Facebook entered the market, their popularity deteriorated. People seem to like sharing articles on Facebook more than they like doing it on Digg or Reddit.

Why is that the case?

It could simply be the idea of sharing the links with your friends and family and not total strangers. Of course, some people like to share their articles with strangers to get a variety of perspectives. But others prefer engaging in discussions and revealing any details only to people they know.

How does that affect webmasters?

Well, when you share articles with your friends on Facebook, they are only seen by your friends and probably their friends. When you share articles on social bookmarking sites like Digg, they are seen by millions. You get my point. But don't get upset, there are other ways to utilize Facebook to gain traffic like Facebook Pages.

Your Opinion.

So what do you think about the affect of Facebook on social bookmarking sites? Are people really using them less? Do you think Facebook will eventually take over them? Share your thoughts.

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Posted by Dan at SEO And Blogging Tips.

Why I left Bluehost hosting

Besides managing SEO and Blogging Tips, I also manage three other sites that use Wordpress and are hosted independently. I got independent hosting about 2 years ago. An online friend of mine offered me his own hosting. Since it was my first hosting and the price was very low, I agreed. But due to poor support and uptime, I moved to another host. This time I wanted to have a trusted hosting that wouldn't disappoint me even if it meant that I had to pay couple of bucks extra. So, I picked Bluehost.

Bluehost wasn't very expensive. I paid approximately $65 for one year. This was a discounted price. The regular price is much higher than this. Anyways, I was really satisfied with Bluehost. I am not an expert with hostings but I still found Bluehost fairly easy to use. They have a lot of features and they make it really easy for you to take advantage of them. I would go into the details of all the features they have to offer but it's pretty much the same as any other hosting nowadays. Bottom line: it's much easier to use Bluehost and things are easy to figure out.

So why did I leave Bluehost? Well, I just completed my one year with them and was kindly asked by them to renew my account. So, I went to their page to do it and it turned out that the price had been raised to $107 per year. I was shocked and thought there had been some mistake because I paid almost half of that before. So, I contacted their support for an explanation. Apparently, the coupon that I had used to get the discounted price is only for one year and doesn't carry. This is what pissed me off because I hadn't seen that written anywhere. Don't get me wrong, I like Bluehost but why should I pay so much for hosting some simple blogs? Bluehost was charging me $6.95 per month while there are other trusted hosting services that only charge around $4-5 per month?

This is why I decided to move to another hosting. It's a pain to transfer all your files but I am willing to go through the trouble if it means that I save around $40 a year. Yup, my new hosting is iPage where I only paid $54 for a year of hosting and this is their regular price.

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Posted by Dan at SEO And Blogging Tips.

5 ways to be a successful blogger

Few years ago, there were very few bloggers on the internet and take a look now. Blogging has turned into a trend, a sort of fashion that is almost mandatory for today's generation. Blogging can be of many forms such as a teenage writing a note on Facebook, a stay-at-home mom sharing food recipes, a 14 year old girl sharing her fashion sense and a 50 year old discussing finance to his fellow readers. Whatever the age, niche or purpose, every blogger wants some kind of appreciation for the amount of time he/she is dedicating to their blog. So how do you become a successful blogger? Lets find out!

5 ways to become a successful blogger

1. Be subjective - blogs are not a place to demonstrate your objective side. Your viewers come to your blog to see what a common person like them thinks about a certain thing. They want your personal opinion, your own take on a matter.
   
2. Do some reading - Don't just write about anything without doing some research first. Make sure to do your homework, before you publish a post. You don't want to anger your readers by posting inaccurate information.
3. Stay in touch - A blog is a platform for discussions and arguments. Don't simply write posts and then forget about it. Read the comments and reply to them in a timely manner. It will keep your readers happy and can get you some regular readers.
4. Listen carefully - Many times you will get requests from your readers to talk about a certain topic or to share some insight about some issue. If you want to be a successful blogger, you need to make sure that you meet these demands as much as possible.
   
5. Talk to other bloggers - It's time to realize that you are not the only blogger in this universe. There are several of them like you and you need to connect with them. You need to read their blogs, comment on their articles and build cyber relationships. This can be easy for blogs on niche while difficult for others.

Folks, these very some quick tips about how to be a successful blogger. The list is not complete. Of course, you have to do a lot more stuff to succeed but these are some good starting tips that you should take into consideration.

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Posted by Dan at SEO And Blogging Tips.

Google PageRank updates become more unpredictable

Google PageRank can be very important to some bloggers/webmasters. For many, it's a good source of some cash. I the past, Google PageRank updates used to occur approximately 4 times a year with 3 month gap. However, nowadays the updates seem to be happening at unpredictable times. Some updates take 6-7 months to happen while some happen right away.

I have been investing a lot of my time in getting backlinks for 3 websites that I own since last year and during this time, I hardly saw a major Google PageRank update. There were some minor ones but they only applied to some websites. I have worked hard on obtaining backlinks but my PageRank for those three sites still has not changed at all.

What do you guys think about Google PageRank and it's recent behavior regarding updates? Are you guys satisfied? Have you seen any major changes in your site's PageRank?


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.