Page Rank Update (Unexpected): December 2013

At last after 10 months, Google has rolled out an unexpected PageRank update yesterday(6th DEC 2013). Last Page rank update was on 4th February 2013.

This is really an unexpected Update. Many webmaster didn't expected that the PageRank update would happened within 2013. Just a couple months ago Matt Cutts said he would be surprised to see an update to Google Toolbar PageRank by the end of this year.

Even through it is an surprise update. I'm happy with this update. After a long time Page Rank for BTNT is increased from PR3 to PR4. BTNT got PR3 on November 2012. After that there has been no change in the PR of BTNT.
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Infographic: How to Choose a Domain Name

In all areas of your business, you put time and consideration into the decisions you make, and when it comes to your domain name, consideration is key. Choosing a brand name is one of the most important things you can do for your business. And not just a brand name, but a domain name, as well. Whether you use your company's name or a different name when you set up your website, you have to take many things into consideration. Your brand should convey a great deal of information about you company, your product or service, your goals, and your personality, as well.

Any trademarks, logos, and images that are a part of your website and marketing scheme should be considered when choosing your domain name, and understanding the importance of the extension (whether .com, .net, .org, or another option), as well. If you're only selling in a specific country your domain name extension will be different than if you're selling internationally, for instance.
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5 Reasons Why Bloggers Fail To Make Money

Do you make serious money from your blog?

Do you make any money?

About 90 percent of bloggers will answer no to the first question, and many of those will also answer no to the second. Making money online has never been more difficult. All of the methods we used a few years ago have become incredibly ineffective, leaving bloggers scrambling for new ways to earn. Many of them have stopped blogging completely.

You don't want to stop blogging, do you?

The good news is that you can, indeed, earn a decent income while blogging. In a recent guest post I talked about getting people to buy from your blog, which is a great way to turn traffic into money. But today the focus is not on how to make money from your blog, but rather why you're not making money right now.
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6 Most Horrible Design Mistakes That Bloggers Make

Blogging and designing are two totally different things and sweet thing is that mostly designers are not bloggers, but bloggers are always designers.

Bloggers do a lot of designing to their blogs without anyone's help, which is certainly a good thing. But bad thing is that while they do this, they make a lot of horrible mistakes which will let to the failure of the blog.

Now you must be thinking about your blog and questioning your designing ability and your creativity so without further I do, here are some horrible design mistakes that bloggers make no matter knowingly or unknowingly.
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Depositphotos Review: A Best Place to Buy and Sell Premium Royalty-free Stock Photos

When we think that which one is important for a successful blog, of course it's content But The only thing which your readers notice before reading your blog content is the images used in the article/content.

A picture is worth a thousand words

Images are one of the best way of sharing information around the online world. Each day thousands of photos get uploaded on the internet, and more than a million likes and shares are done on Facebook for images.

The above given information clearly shows the importance of photos on the internet. I have personally seen that a lot of bloggers ignore the importance of images and they do not add images in their blog posts which will have a drastic impact on the engagement of their blog.

Whether you�re a blogger, a designer or an Advertiser, Everyone needs high quality royalty-free photos. But what if you couldn't make photos for your blog post? What if you are not an illustrator? What will you do now?

In that case the best option is to get some services which provides you lot of professional images that you can use in your blog. Today we are going to see one of such service called Depositphotos.

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Elice - A Responsive Blogger Template

Elice a responsive blogger template, This theme is the first free theme fully designed by me. All the themes Previously published in BTNT are WordPress themes which is converted to blogger Templates. From This theme I've stopped converting other themes to blogger template and publishing it for free (Theme conversion will be made for clients, I haven't made any any changes to services). In future All The free themes from BTNT are fully designed by me. ;) I Hope you like my own designs and give your support to me like you did before.

Elice is a Elegant looking theme with a custom opt-in form on the top of the homepage and sidebar in post page, Fast loading, SEO Optimized and much more...

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Ramadan Kareem Mubarak With our 1000th Post!

Let us wish our beloved readers a Happy Ramadan Kareem 2013, a month full of blessings, peace, tranquility and refrainment from all self desires (The Nafs). It is 11th July today,  a time in lunar calendar when Saudi Arab is holding their Second Fast today and people in Pakistan and India are holding their first Fast. This is our 5th successful year of celebrating Ramadan with Blogosphere since 2009 and amazingly today's post marks the 1000th Blog Post on this small community blog! I was a teenager when I started serving Google blogger back in late 2008 and today running STC Network thanks to continuous love and support from all of you. Ramadan is the only month when we stop accepting New Service orders from Clients and we dedicate our full time to worship and also in serving visitors with interesting tutorials and widgets to glitter their online journals. Do you know why 2 Billion Muslims across the globe hold fasting in the month of Ramadan?

 

Importance of Ramadan for Muslims

Ramadan is the 9th month of the Islamic or Lunar Calendar. It is the month when the last and final revelation came down to Earth in the shape of Holy Quran. Muslims believe that Prophet Mohammad (PBUH) is the last and final messenger sent to mankind and Holy Quran is the last of the Devine revelations which came down in Ramadan.

"Ramadan is the month in which the Quran was revealed as guidance and clarification to humankind, and a distinction between right and wrong. So, whoever from among you witnesses the month should fast it." (2: 185

There is a night amongst the last ten odd nights of this month (i.e. 21st, 23rd, 25th... 29th) which is called Laylat al- Qadr, it's termed as the night of Power when Quran Kareem was first revealed. The following are first 5 verses which were revealed on Mohammad (PBUH):

We have indeed revealed this (Message) in the Night of Power: And what will explain to thee what the night of power is? The Night of Power is better than a thousand months. Therein come down the angels and the Spirit by Allah's permission, on every errand: Peace!...This until the rise of dawn! � Sura 97 (Al-Qadr), ayat 1-5[5]

This is the night which every Muslim looks for and searches for it like searching for a treasure. One who is fortunate enough to worship in this night will be rewarded an eternal place in Heaven.

Why Muslims Fast?

Christians hold fasting in Lent Season, Jews on 10th of Tishri, Hindus hold upavaasa and Muslims hold fasting for a full month in Ramadan. People from different religions hold fasting but the Muslim Way is completely different from the west. In existing religions, believers will drink only water for a day, or eat only fruit, or stay away from sexual relations, or leave alcohol for a period of time but in Islam Muslims are forbidden to all sorts of drinking and food and even taking medicines. Muslims are strictly guided to refrain from all sorts of unethical acts, sexual desires, useless discussion, gathering and talks with opposite-gender and dedicate all their time to worship because the aim of fasting is to get yourself closer to Allah and not to waste it in sleep, festivities and entertainment.

What are Tarawih Prayers?

Tarawih are nafal prayers which are an important part of Ramadan. They are offered each night after Isha Prayer. The aim of this prayer is to recite Holy Quran and end recitation of all its 114 chapters by the end of Ramadan. Muslims offer tarawih a total 30 days and complete entire recitation of the holy book.

Read all about it and watch live tarawih Prayer by going here:

• Watch Live Tarawih Prayer

What is Eid?

Muslims have only two Festivals and that is Eid ul Fiter (that marks the end of Ramadan) and Eid -ul- Azha (the grand sacrifice day, marking end of Pilgrimage). In EID Muslims are forbidden to hold Fast and they are commanded to wear new cloths, do required shopping and spend time with relatives by sharing love and affection. In short EID is the final gift given to Believers who refrained from all sorts of self desires just for the will of their Lord. In EID they are allowed to eat as good a food as possible and share this beautiful day of happiness with friends and family.

How TV Media has Spoiled Ramadan Spirit?

In regions like India, Middle East and Pakistan. Profit Motivated Media has spoiled the true meaning and essence of Ramadan with their Shiny Advertisement campaigns.  Those Fancy bearded TV scholars and Female Model anchors who sit and guide people with true teachings of Islam, are amongst the first who are just Muslims by name and not by practice. TV scholars who sit in front of a Female anchor and talk of modesty are only puppets who don't understand the spiritual meaning of Fasting. They have turned Ramadan into a Festival with large mixed na-mahram audiences. TV ads project Ramadan as an event where people meet and greet relatives, eat and drink luxurious food and spend most of the time in acts that are for self enjoyment. True essence of this holy month should not be interpreted from the misguided media but the Holy book and Sunnah.

Ramadan in simple words is giving more time to your God, if you are watching a TV program or sleeping, you are only wasting time and wasting those precious hours. True Muslims spend most of their time reciting Holy Quran, offering nafals, doing zikr of their Lord and sending Durood on the last Prophet PBUH. While the weak Muslims live Ramadan with their Favorite TV Program Anchors, Outgoings, Shopping and Sleeping. 

Happy Ramadan!

We are pleased to announce that we just published our 1000th post today and this means a Heaven for us. MBT is feeding a large online community since 2009 with delicious tutorials on web development, blogging and SEO. If there is anything that gives me more happiness then it is seeing every MBT reader turning into an entrepreneur. MBT has introduced several new bloggers Online who are making a living today and we will continue educating several new teenagers to the best of our knowledge.

MBT has is now the Parent blog of STC Network and currently the country's First Registered company of professional Bloggers which pay regular Income Taxes. Yes we are good citizens now! :p

Don't forget to read about the launching ceremony of our third Major blog Project!

Ramadan Kareem Mubarak to all of you buddies. Wish you peace and blessings always! :)

30 Recommended SEO Settings for Blogger

Learning SEO is important for every webmaster and blogger. Why? Because no matter how great the content on your site is, you're not getting any of it into search results if you don't apply SEO tactics. SEO makes your content visible to the outside world. Therefore, for your content to actually bring in any traffic, you need SEO. We have previously shared various posts on search engine optimization, but today, I'd like to share some SEO settings that every blogger should apply on their blog. These are specific to Blogger, but that doesn't mean you can't apply some of them to other platforms.

Before writing a post

1. Choose your topic carefully

Choosing the post topic is the most important part of creating content. The topic you choose should be compliant with what your users want. It should be unique and original, and should offer something of value to the users. Then, as you're constructing your post, you should ask yourself some questions regarding the topic and content (see Number 20 below).

2. Check out competition

Always check to see what your competitors are doing; what topics they're posting about, what strategies they're using, and most importantly, what's hot on their websites. I'm not saying that you go ahead and copy them. But take a general hint before coming up with your own content ideas.

3. Check out latest trends

Make sure you follow the latest trends and news on various social media networks. Write about what's hot. Writing on the most recent trends not only brings in a lot of readers, it also tells search engines that your website is dynamic, and provides fresh and latest content to its users.

4. Keyword research before post!

So, you've decided to write about something. But you're looking for words to explain? You have to learn how to do some keyword research first. You will need keywords for various different things, such as titles, meta descriptions, tags, and so on. Check out this article on doing keyword research to find out more about it.

5. The difference between a writer and a blogger

A good blogger might be a good writer, but the vice-versa isn't always true. A good writer might know how to write for readers, but a blogger also knows how to write for search engines. To be a good blogger, you need to adopt a technical style of writing, keep a consistent approach, and a lot more. Check out this post on creating great content that applies to readers as well as search engines.

6. Recommended word limit

There's no such thing as an 'ideal word limit' for a blog post. It purely depends on the number of posts you publish, and the post topic. But SEO experts agree on a minimum of 300 words to avoid penalties. We would recommend a range of 500-700 words on average, since that seems to be the magic number when it comes to readers - neither too short so as to miss out on important things, nor too long for it to get boring.

• The ideal word limit for a blog post

While writing a post

7. The title is the king!

The title is the most important part of a blog post, since it is the one that actually brings in the clicks. Optimizing post titles is a part of being a good blogger. Check out this post to learn all about creating search engine friendly post titles.

8. Optimize Permalink

Always keep permalinks short. Use custom permalinks of around 4-5 words at max, and separate each word a hyphen "-". Make sure you capture your most important keyword in the permalink (your focus keyword).

9. Intro with keywords

Keep all the keywords you can up with at the start in mind, and use them all in your introductory paragraph. It doesn't matter how many keywords you use in the content. But you must use them all at least once in the intro paragraph.

10. Headings and subheadings

Always use a combination of different headings. Usually, blog titles are H1s, so never use H1s. Post titles are usually H2s, so don't use H2s either. Use them only rarely. For the most part, use a combination of H3s and H4s in your post to specify a clear hierarchy in your content.

11. Typography

Typography refers to the styling of your content. It is almost as important as the content itself. Try to use different colored headings; use italic and bold text to emphasise your keywords, Also, once you're done writing your content, select all by pressing Ctrl + A, and then justify its alignment, so that the text looks neat at both ends.

12. Meta descriptions

The Meta description is the second-most important part of your post (after post title), as it is what users will see on a search engine (along with your title). Write a very short description of at most 170-180 characters, and make sure to include all the important keywords in it which you came up with before writing the actual post.

• Why Meta Descriptions appear in all search results


• Meta tag generator for Blogger

Linking

13. Inter link

Every post on your blog must have an internal link to another relevant post. This is one of the many ways to improve our rank. Try to at create at least two internal links within your intro paragraph, and at least one or two more in the rest of content. For a detailed guide, read the following post.

• How to smartly interlink your posts

14. Be careful with Anchor texts

An anchor text is the text you use to link to another page, and it is what users click to get to that other page. Choosing anchor text is a very important part of linking. Never use a single word anchor text. Always use a phrase. Usually, a three-word phrase is the best option. Always use a keyword phrase as anchor text.

Also, keep in mind to never use the same anchor text twice for the same link. It is considered as keyword stuffing, and/or spamming. Whether on your site or another, always vary the anchor text.

15. Nofollow vs dofollow links

A nofollow attribute in a link tells a search crawler not to 'follow' a link. First of all, when linking to external pages, always link to a page that has a better rank than yours. But if you must link to a lower quality page, always us the rel="nofollow" attribute with the link tag. But never do this for reputable sites, like Google, Wikipedia etc, nor for linking to your own pages.

• When to add a nofollow tag?


• When should you tag external links as nofollow


• more articles on the nofollow tag.....

Visuals

16. Use visual content to enhance your posts

Images, videos, infographics, animations; such things spice up your content. If you have a video related to your content, that's great. Otherwise, try to include at least one image in you blog post. And depending upon the topic, you can add many. But make sure you don't add too many, so much so that the textual content gets snuffed out.

17. Naming files and images

Before uploading a video, audio, or image file, always make sure you rename it. Use meaningful keywords, and separate them with dashes. This way, users and search engines can tell what the file is about just by its file path!

18. Optimize images before uploading

Suppose you want to display an image that is 500 pixels wide and 300 pixels high. There's no point in uploading a 1200x720 image. It'll take up space on your server, and rendering time at the user's end. Do everybody a favour, and scale down your images before uploading them.

19. Image Title and Alt text

Always tag images with Titles and Alt text. And always use relevant keywords. We've compiled some posts for you regarding image optimization. Make sure you check them out!

• How ti tag images to drive traffic


• How to optimize images

After writing a post

20. Basic questions to ask about your content

So you've created really awesome content. Great! But before it is internet-worthy, you need to ask yourself a few questions about. If the answer to any of the questions below is no, then there's something wrong with the content!

• Does the content make sense?


• Have I used good grimmer and punctuation and made little spelling mistakes?


• Is the content useful?


• It is unique/original?


• It it worth sharing and linking?


• Is it appropriately detailed?


• Does it have visual content, such as images or videos?


• Does it have examples, references, unique ideas?


• Is it interactive enough with the readers?


• Are there enough calls to action to invoke engagement?


• Does it ask readers questions about their own experiences?

21. Blog labels

Organize your blog's structure into a series of Labels (or tags and categories if you're using WordPress). Use at least one, and at max three labels for one blog post. And keep the total number of labels between 15 and 20 (for Blogger blogs, but same for categories in WordPress).

• What are blog labels?

22. Synchronize posts with the traffic

Don't publish your blog 

posts as you complete them. Always schedule them for an appropriate time. For example, monitor your traffic stats and see what time do you get the most amount of traffic. You might want to schedule your posts for around that time. But try to be consistent about your timing. Pick a timing that works for you, and stick to it!

23. Posting frequency

There are no restrictions when it comes to posting frequency. But the more, the better. Try to keep up with at least one post a day. You may write as many as you can per day though. There's no limit. You can even write a hundred if you can afford to :)

Other settings

24. Create a sitemap

A sitemap is a listing of all the pages on your site. Often times, search crawlers might miss out on a page because you might not have linked to it in any other page. So to tell search engines to index that isolated page, you have to submit a sitemap to them. You could use a plugin for generating a sitemap, or read our post on Blogger Sitemap Generator for more details.

25. Blog load time

The blog load time is the most important when it comes to user-friendliness. The slower a blog loads, the more users tend to leave it before it's done loading. So always try to keep your load time to a minimum. Here are some tips that should help;

• 11 Useful Tips to help reduce your blog load time

26. Sitelinks

Sitelinks appear on blogs that have PR 2 or above, and they are a collection of some of the links on your blog that appear in Google search results. They make your blog look more professional. Check out our post on how to tell Google what links to display in sitelinks.

27. Social bookmarking widgets

Add social bookmarking widgets on your blog to improve your social rankings. Search engines like it when they find links to your social profiles. Besides, such widgets make it easier for users to share your content.

28. Directory submissions

Submitting your blog to directories such as DMoz increases the number of backlinks you have, and in turn, your website's rank.

• Why submit blog posts to the top 10 article directories?


• Submit your blog to bloggers directories now!

29. Working on your PageRank

PageRank is Google's way of ranking websites. The higher your PR, the better chances you have of getting into search results, and the faster your index rate will be. Read the following post to learn a lot more about PageRank, and how to improve it.

• Reasons why your PageRank is not improving

30. Avoiding SEO penalties

In the end, avoid using shady SEO tactics to jump your rank. Always use Search engine friendly techniques to avoid algorithmic penalties. Check out the following posts for more info.

• Recovering from Google Penguin update Penalty


• 10 Link Building techniques Google Penguin won't mind

Got any questions? Or maybe, have something to add? Please leave a comment below and tell us what you're thinking. Cheers :)

3 Secret SEO Techniques to Turn Images Into Backlinks

Here at MBT, we have talked a lot about how important backlinks are, and how to score great ones. But while we have discussed text-based links at a great length, we haven't really gotten around to talk about images, except from a search engine performance aspect. Yes, images are great for landing organic visitors, but you can get images to do a lot more for you, such as scoring you backlinks! Here are some of the ways you can use images to get great backlinks for your blog!

Create an infographic

Infographics are a great way to get backlinks from great authority sites like the NYTimes, and Business Insider etc. Normally, such websites won't even respond to your request. But throw in a quality infographic, and you can instantly sweeten the deal. Such websites dig quality infographics that provide some insightful information to the users. Now we will cover the topic of creating infographics that work in detail in a future post, it should be sufficient for you know that there are many tools available that easily let you create your own infographics. One of them is Visual.ly. Fiddle around with it, and you'll soon become a pro at making your own infographics.

Image directories

You can also get backlinks from Image directories. Whether you're a photographer, or a graphics designer, you can use many of the online directories available. Even if you aren't, you can still learn by making small graphics, such as small icons etc. Or, you can hire someone at Fiverr to do your job for you.

Here are a few image directories for your benefit.

• http://www.dreamstime.com/ (Clipart)


• http://openclipart.org/ (Clipart)


• http://www.corbisimages.com/ (Stock Photography)


• http://www.istockphoto.com/ (Stock Photography)


• http://www.iconfinder.com/ (Icons)


• http://www.iconarchive.com/ (Icons)

To yourself a backlink or two, upload your icons or clip-arts or photos in an archive form on your website, and then show these sites what you've got. You have a very good chance of getting through their selection process if the images you provide are useful. Always check the "Popular" section to see what sort of images are hot.

Now, on most sites, you can set the license to free. In that case, you will get a link to your credit as an author. And this is basically how you get backlinks. Whenever someone wants your image(s) or icons, they will get your link, which will give you instant traffic as well, not to mention a high quality backlink from a high PR website.

Searching by Image

Sometimes, people will like the images you put up on your website so much, that they'll copy it and put it up on their own website as well. And sometimes, they might even forget to, ehm, give credit for the image. Disturbed as you might be to see your image copied, don't panic! It's a great opportunity to get a backlink!

First, right click on the image on your website, and copy its URL. Then, go over to Google's image search, and click on the little image icon on the right of the search bar. This will allow you to search with an image. Paste your image's URL in the bar, and hit enter. You will see all search results for all sites that have used your image. Check each one to see if they've given you an attribution link. If not, then contact them, and ask them to. By now, the image is already sitting on their website, and they wouldn't want to remove it. Instead, most would simply go ahead and link to you to avoid any embarrassment.

Got any questions? Please feel free to ask in the comments section below. Cheers :)

Find Out When Someone Mentions You Without a Backlink!

Legitimate backlink building is one of the most important parts of building the reputation of a website or online business, Getting previous little backlinks from other sites is hard enough, and it really shows a great gesture when someone mentions you and links to you in their content. But often over the course of your name or brand's online lifespan, you will come across situations where your name or brand was mentioned, but you weren't linked. This is because some people just might not be willing to give out a link as easily, or they might just have overlooked it. In that case, you have to contact them personally and ask them for the favour. Today, we'll show you how you can find out when someone mentions you, but doesn't link to you.

After all, you never know what opportunities you might have been missing out on! Even a couple of 'missed' backlinks could save you hours of work on building new ones, and/or help you with your website's rank and authority.

Using Google Alerts

Now, I'd first like to introduce you to some Google Search tricks that some of you might already know, but most won't. In Google Search, you can use use some advanced search operators like AND, OR, site:, inurl:, intext:, and so on. The AND operator finds sites that have keywords written on both side of the AND operator. The OR operator finds sites that have either the phrases on the left of the operator, or the right of it, or both. This is handy, for example, if you want to search for both cars and bikes on the same site (Cars AND bikes), or if you want to search for either cars, or bikes, or both (Cars OR bikes).

Now, the site: operator will search for keywords only within the domain you specify after the site: part. For example, if I want to search for only windows 8 on Microsoft's website, I can type this in Google "site:microsoft.com Windows 8" (without the quotes), where Windows 8 is my keyword. Now, if you add a minus sign behind any operator or keyword, Google will give you all results that do not contain the result generated by the keyword or operator you put a minus sign to. For example, let's say I want to search for sites that have my name, excluding this site where I regularly contribute to. So the search query for it would be "-site:mybloggertricks.com Qasim Zaib". It will exclude all results from mybloggertricks.com.

Now, coming to the task at hand, we want to find out whenever someone mentions your name, your brand name, or a keyword specific to your site. All you have to do is, simply build a query, and set a Google Alert for it. Start by typing a query. Exclude all sites you contribute actively to, and enter the keywords you want to watch out for (maybe your name or URL). It would look something like this.

-site:mybloggertricks.com -site:smartearningmethods.com -site:richincomeways.com Qasim Zaib

Now go to Google Alerts, and enter your query there. Keep all the settings like you see in the image below.

Now, whenever new content that matches this query is found by Google, you will be emailed. In other words, I'll get an alert whenever someone mentions my name. As soon as Google finds that new mention, it will be listed in the query. And any changes in the query results trigger an email alert. You can then check up on each new mention to see if someone has linked to you or not.

This was one of the simplest approaches there are. We'll soon teach you how to use SEO software such as Screaming Frog to perform bulk actions, and automate many processes. Until then, stay tuned :)

10 LINK BUILDING TECHNIQUES Google Penguin wont Mind!

Link building has now suddenly came into focus once again, as Google is repeatedly trying to stamp out black-hat SEO practices. So the trend now is on building legitimate backlinks rather than buying them off a cheap package. Even so, Google Penguin is still pretty touchy, and you need to build links with care. We earlier shared some great ways to earn trusted backlinks, and ways to score relationship-based links. We'll continue on with that thread, and share some more tips, this time on building links the Penguin-friendly way!

Get listed in DMOZ

DMOZ is an online directory that has a very high PR. Getting a link from such a website can be invaluable. You can get your blog listed in the relevant categories. So if you want to build a link, start by getting listed on DMOZ. But keep one thing in mind. While considering a category to get listed in, always try to select the most relevant one, yet one that has the least number of out-bound links (indicated by the number in brackets next to each category). This is because even though each page on DMOZ might have the same PR, but not the same value. The more the links, the lesser the value. So your aim should be the least number of links for the most value.

Blog commenting

Now, this is a fairly common technique, so we're not going to squander much words on it. I would however, like to show you a couple tools that can help you with commenting on other blogs. We discussed about DropMyLink in an earlier post. You can use it to find relevant blogs you want to comment on. There's another handy tool called Scrapebox, which will help make blog commenting much easier and faster. Do give it a try, and see how it can speed up your work!

Find sites with the Disqus commenting system

The advantage of Disqus over other commenting systems is, it is really easy to use, and comments that you make appear instantly. Furthermore, you can post them on Facebook as well, so that your friends can see what you've been upto - hence giving you more referral traffic. So to find such sites with the Disqus commenting system, you first have to create an account. Your username will be the anchor text for your links, so you might want to create more than one account for each category you want to comment for.

Now, you can just search Google for keywords, combined with the phrase "powered by disqus" (with quotes). You will land upon some blogs using disqus. Open a few you like, and check if they have a high PR (we recommend you install the SEOQuake toolbar). Find a high quality blog, and start commenting on it. Additionally, narrow down your search to the last two weeks or so using Google's advanced search. Commenting on pages that have no comments is recommended, because that'll give you some referral traffic as well.

Use your Twitter profile

There are certain sites that use Twitter data for real-time search, ascertaining social authority, Twitter lists, and so on. These sites use links found in your profile, especially in your bio, and use those links in their listings. So if you have your website links in your profile bio, and a Twitter handle as well, you'll be automatically building links! Some such sites are listed below. You can add yourself to them, and build some more links!

• http://klout.com/home


• http://www.twellow.com/


• http://twitaholic.com/


• http://twittercounter.com/


• http://tweetlevel.edelman.com/


• http://twtbizcard.com/

Copy/Pasting link building

Ever seen a mysterious link along with some text appear as you copied some text from a website? It is called 'attribution text', and you can do it for your website too. You'll be getting links as people copy and paste your content around the internet. Read the following guide to learn how to add attribution text.

• Add attribution links to text copied from your blog

Find out when someone has mentioned you without linking

Often times, people will talk about you, or mention your brand without actually linking to you. In such cases, you probably want them to link to you properly. To find out whenever this happens, you can set up Google Alerts.

In the Search query section, exclude all the websites you actively contribute to (by combining the minus - operator and the site: operator). Then, you can add a keyword (such as your name, etc). For example,

• -site:mybloggertricks.com -site:smartearningmethods.com -site:richincomeways.com -site:techeclipse.com Qasim Zaib

Set the 'Result type' to Everything, and 'How Often' to As it Happens. This way, whenever Google comes up with something new that fits into the search query, it will alert you. So if someone mentions me on their website, I'll get to know about it via email as soon as Google finds that content. I can then contact them, and ask for a link (refer to our post on relationship-based backlinking for details on how to do this).

Recovering lost links

This tip is a lot like the previous one, but in this case, you want to look for an actual mention of your url instead of your name or keyword. For example, someone might have mentioned mybloggertricks.com without actually linking to it. In that case, you don't need a Google Alert, since you want to find mentions that've already happened (you could set up alerts too if you like, as in the previous tip). Simply search Google for something like "intext:mybloggertricks.com -site:mybloggertricks.com", and you'll get a list of all the sites that match the search.

Now, you can export the search results using a bookmarklet such as SERPs redux. Export the list into text file, and then use the Screaming Frog tool to crawl those links. You will want to add filters, such as Does not contain link (that you mention, i.e. mybloggertricks.com). Now you already had a list of all the links that contained your website's URL in the text. Now some might have that as anchor text, which is what you wanted all along. So you needn't check such sites. But once you crawl the links using Screaming frog, you'll get a list of webpages that don't have your link in them, even though they have the text.

Second-level links

Here's the basic concept. In this technique, you basically help other websites (that are sending a lot of traffic to you) get a better rank in SERPs, so that in-turn, your own traffic increases. Now this might take a lot more time, but could be worth it if the traffic coming has a high conversion rate. For example, let's suppose we have a page where people purchase an eBook. Now, I can see from my analytics data, that a Blog 'X' is sending the most numbers of users, who are buying this eBook. Now if that blog 'X' doesn't rank #1 in SERPs for the specific keyword, I probably want it to rank #1, so that more people would visit blog 'X', and hence more people would come to our site to buy the eBook. See?

Second-level prospecting

The basic concept behind this technique is that, if it is too hard to get a related backlink from your niche influencer, or if it will take a lot of time, then you probably would want to get a backlink from the sites that your niche influencer links to.

To find such sites, you'll have to have the Screaming Frog tool we've talked about, and the SERP redux bookmarklet. First, enter the URL(s) of your niche influencer(s) in a text file in list format, and then import the file into Screaming Frog. Now, you'll have to crawl those URLs, but first, let's do a few settings. Make sure you check the 'Check External Links' option, along with the 'Follow External nofollow' and 'Ignore robots.txt' options. Also set the Search Depth Limit to 1. There, you'll get a list of all the websites your niche influencer links to. You'll benefit a lot from getting backlinks from those websites as well.

How did you like these techniques? Were they informative for you, or do you think there's more that can be added to them? Leave your intelligent responses in the comments section below. Cheers :)

5 Tips for RELATIONSHIP-BASED LINK BUILDING

Did you know, relationship-based backlinking is becoming popular again? What with Google rolling out updates to its Penguins, a lot of common (and often shady) SEO practices are being stamped out. And good old legit backlinking is now coming back, which is somewhat of a relief. We recently shared some great tips on getting high quality backlinks, so today, we decided to share some tips on relationship-based backlinking. A relationship-based backlink is a high quality backlink from a related authority site, or a niche influencer in other words. So suppose you have a site about SEO. What better backlink can there be than one from a reputed site such as SearchEngineLand or SEOMoz Blog? Here are 5 great tips for scoring relationship-based backlinks.

Identifying authority sites

Okay, to start off, you first have to know who the top influencers are in your niche. These are high ranking, high authority websites that have content similar to your site. But they lead the niche, such that other sites like yours look up to them. You're probably much better off with a single backlink from these high ranking websites, rather than from multiple backlinks, all from sites of the same calibre as yours.

To find niche influencers, you'll have to do a bit of homework. But there are tools that help the process. The FollowerWork tool by Moz, for example. is a good example. It is basically a Twitter analytics program, but you can use it to find profiles with a high social authority relevant to a specific keyword. All you have to do is, search for a keyword, and then rank the results according to Social Authority.

You can also use tools such as Topsy, and Twitter Following to the same effect. Combine these thee tools for maximum effect.

Get in touch

So now that you know who you want to target, you now should start working on building contacts. But don't go ahead and shoot an email. Try to be more subtle. You don't want to impose. You first have to make an impression before you ask for anything. Commenting on their blog posts is a very good idea. But please, for heaven's sake, don't leave the "I live this post" comments along with your signature link. It really buzzes the blog moderator and author off. Rack your brains, and think of something really insightful, so that the author would have to respond to your comment. An intelligent comment leave a pretty good impression.

You can then extend this to other platforms, such as social media. Comment on Facebook shares, Google Plus posts, and reply to Tweets. If the author sees you on these different platforms, it'll make your name stick in their brain. Keep this up until the author is able to recognize you by your name. You can then go ahead, and write emails of appreciation. A good and intelligent suggestion here would help.

Write for them!

Writing guests posts is a great way to score backlinks fast. Once you're sure that you know the other guy, and that he knows you too, you can offer to write a guest post for them. By now, they already know that you make insightful comments. They'd be interested to know what you have to offer. To be on the safe side though, first check if they accept guest posts at all. Their website might have a 'Write for us' section. If there is, go ahead and read the guidelines. And then ask for a guest posting opportunity. If you get the green light, you've struck gold.

Update their content!

Sounds weird? It might at first, but hear me out. Most bloggers don't look over at their old content, because it is too time consuming. Many won't update their content, and most won't update the links. And there's an opportunity for you right there. In all likelihood, there might be tonnes of external links in their posts that were working fine an year ago, but not the external site has moved, or is now dead. So what do you do? You offer to help!

Screaming Frog is a great tool that'll show you a list of all broken links on a page. First, find really old articles from the site you want a backlink from, and then start checking them using Screaming frog. Make a list of all the pages you check, the broken links you find in them, and find alternate links to those broken ones, so that the blogger you're going to contact has very little work to do. Email them this list, and you'll most probably fall into their good graces. Now, they might link to you, which is good. If they don't, you're still in a very good position to ask for a guest posting opportunity. If that's not an option, ask them for a link in return for some more broken-link correction from your side!

Use BuzzStream to track your relationship

BuzzStream is a great app that makes it easier to track your online relationships. Sign up for a free trial, and install their toolbar. Then add your site. After that, you can use the app in a lot of different ways.

For example, this tool will help you contact a site owner you'd like a backlink from by collecting the necessary contact information for you! And just like a productivity app, you can use this one to track your relationships, and your progress for each. Another great feature of this tool is, for Google Searches for which you enter keywords, it will collect contact information, and social media accounts information automatically! Hence, long story short, it's a pretty useful app for you if you're looking to try something new and different.

So, how do you like these tips? Hope you found them helpful. If you have questions, please feel free to shoot! Cheers :)

Google Payment Banned in Pakistan by Western Union

We just discovered that On 29th June 2013, Western Union issued a notice to all its franchises in Pakistan to stop payments and transactions made by Google Inc. Whether you are a Google employee or AdSense Publisher, unfortunately you can no longer receive payments from Google through Western Union Quick Cash. We discovered this news today when I was shown the official notice which stated that due to several fraud cases being reported, Western Union has decided to cut down all transactions made by Google in Pakistan. Neither can a customer send money to Google as Sender nor receive a payment as the receiving party. So far Publishers living in Pakistan especially in cities like Lahore, Karachi and Islamabad are not yet informed through any communication medium. Neither have we heard anything from Badar Khushnood, the Country Google consultant. The information is undisclosed and both parties are trying to keep things confidential. We have not heard any print or electronic media reports on this so far.

---

Update: Luckily the ban by western union on Google has been lifted. Bloggers can now withdraw their AdSense payment from any WU Franchise in Pakistan. The ban was lifted on 12th-13th July 2013. Then ban was put when WU found fake use of NIC cards and some hacking attempts but now things are all sort out and you can happily withdraw your hard earned money. Make sure you take Original NIC with you this time, duplicate copy wont be accepted as they have imposed strict rules now. We just withdraw it on 15th July! :)

---

 

I discovered this news today when I visited the nearest WU franchise near my home in order to withdraw our company's monthly AdSense payment. Somehow we are really disappointed to know how badly the country is losing its trust and credibility day by day. With up to 80% AdSense Accounts banned each year in Pakistan, this is yet another set of a horrible news that embraced us today.

Now its time for all bloggers and webmasters to edit the Payment method using AdSense Account. This tutorial is aimed to help publishers from Pakistan to continue receiving payments from Google without using Western Union Money transfer system.

Change Payment Settings in AdSense

1. Log in your AdSense account
2. Click Account settings
3. Under Payment settings click the link that says "edit payment method"

   

4. Under the check options you will see two radio buttons. Standard delivery checks are sent by regular country mail and it often takes around a month but if you want to receive the payment as quickly as possible within 4-5 days then choose the Secured Express Delivery however this includes a charge of $25 which is the processing fee.

Standard delivery is done by Pakistan Post but Secured delivery is often done by a reliable courier service which is often TCS and rarely DHL.

   5. We have chosen Express delivery option. You may choose as per your timely requirements. Hit continue and you are all done!

 

 

Why this alternative method Sucks? Updated Section:

Google payment checks are issued by Citibank Only. Pakistan is lucky in this case because CitiBank is offering services here for the past 50 years. But what will surprise you more is that  Google checks can not be cashed out, they can only be deposited! This creates problems for Students and for those who don't have their Bank accounts. But wait the story does not ends here. Unfortunately Google AdSense Checks sent to Pakistan are in US Dollars only which means you must have a Dollar account , transaction of Dollars can be made on a Dollar account only. PKR account wont work with Google Checks. 

Luckily in our case, we recently registered our company and have opened both PKR and Dollars accounts at Standard Chartered Bank. It takes only a day to open a Dollar account, you just need to fill up some formalities.

Will you be paid this month for your June Earnings?

Since AdSense has a strict policy for monthly payment cycles, therefore if you are editing the payment method today then you will get June and July payments together at the end of July. We are a little late because payment settings must be changed 15 days earlier before the closing month. Therefore finger crossed for June earnings but be glad that at least you have set an alternative payment method.

Why Google does not pay via PayPal or Bank Wire?

We still don't know the exact reasons to this but as far as we know, Google like many other big corporate firms don't use an Online Transaction method like PayPal in order to avoid hidden commission costs and charges. PayPal charges about 2.9% + $0.3 Per Transaction. On contrary WU charges much less i.e. Just $10 for a payment under $500. Google makes sense in case of PayPal but what about Online Bank Wire Transfer? Why can't publishers receive money straight in their bank accounts?  This is where AdSense doesn't make sense at all!

I just hope Google offers more flexible ways of Online transaction to its users and sort out this newly erupted problem in Western Union Pakistan.

When will Western Union Lift the Ban?

Not sure if this is a temporary ban or permanent, only time can tell. Since it's a matter of some serious fraud cases being caught and reported therefore unless Western Union recovers all the loses or make a new silent business policy deal with Google, we can't expect the ban to be lifted that soon.

Your Views?

Share your precious discoveries with us. What do you know forced WU to take such a big decision? Will this create problems for you or you don't care and enjoy to be paid via courier? Please share your precious views with us.

Peace and blessings buddies.

5 Smart Techniques to get .EDU AND .GOV BACKLINKS for your Blog?

Most people don't know how beneficial .GOV and .EDU backlinks can be, or whether they're useful at all for a website. It is easy to confuse their importance with that of other TLDs (Top Level Domains) such as .COM, .NET etc, and you'd figure that since .COMs are the most popular and the most expensive, ergo they're the most important. We'll, you'd be wrong to think that. A website's trust rating is far more important that what it cost to set it up. And as you can imagine, .GOV and .EDU top level domains enjoy a special level of trust which is regarded very highly by search providers such as Google, Bing and Yahoo. And backlinks from such domains can take your website's rank to another level. Here are some best techniques to get .GOV and .EDU backlinks for your site.

1. Comments

One of the many ways you can build backlinks is by commenting on other blogs. There's nothing quite like it when you get the conversation going. To start off creating a .gov and .edu backlink profile or your blog, start finding such blogs to comment on. A great website that'll help you do that is Drop My Link. You can search for blogs based on the desired keyword. But more importantly, you can select the type of blogs you want to see from the drop-down list. From there, you can choose .edu or .gov blogs, and get the relevant blogs based on your keyword!

You can then filter out your results. Go for blogs with a high PR first, because commenting takes time, and you don't want to waste time on low ranking blogs.

2. Recognize .edu bloggers

Aside from comments, getting a proper dofollow backlink from .edu and .gov blogs can be very difficult. One strategy is to feature some such bloggers in a post of yours, so that they'll link back to you in return out of gratification. For example, you could create a list of 'the best university bloggers', or 'the best students blogs in the U.S' etc. Small recognition awards like these are sure to get attention, and hopefully a backlink.



To find such blogs, here's a Google Search trick. If you search Google for <site:.edu> (without the angled brackets), you will run a search for all domains with a .edu extension. You can also search a specific site using this method <site:yoursite.com>. If you search Google for <inurl:blog> (again, without the brackets), you will land all webpages with the term "blog" in their url. You can combine the two to run a search for .edu blogs - <site:.edu inurl:blog>. Moreover, you can add individual search terms within quotes to refine your results according to keywords <site:.edu inurl:blog "technology news">. This way, you can feature 'top university technology blogs'

3. Find resource pages

If your website provides useful information on a particular subject, then you may use that to get inside a university's resource page. Resource pages are there for linking out to other sites where students can find useful information regarding a particular subject. So if you are a computer guru and know your way around Linux development for example, you could contact computing institutes' web team to put out a backlink to you.



You can use the same search trick you used earlier to find resource pages. For example, run a search for <site:.edu inurl:resources "technology"> or <site:.edu inurl:links "Linux"> (without brackets), and you'll find out plenty of universities you could contact.

4. Do some volunteer work

I mean not like charity work. But you can help some university web team design or improve a component on their website in return for a backlink. Now this, of course, requires you to have some web development skills, but you can hire a freelancer to do the job for you too.



All you have to do is, find a university or college site, and look through it if it looks poorly made. Not every university has a full time web design team. Often times, they only intend to give out valuable information, without caring much about how their webpages look. For example, I was recently reading about some research proceedings about a new type of lens technology in cameras at a university, and I couldn't help but notice the colourless, bland design. Now the webpage itself had a very high traffic and the university was very reputable. But in all fairness, researchers working behind the new camera technology most probably wouldn't know about web design, which makes it the perfect opportunity for people to contact them, and offer to redo their design in return for a backlinl. Such researchers wouldn't even care about the backlink, as long as they're getting a better design.

5. Hire college students

Now I know this one is unconventional, but hey, so long as it works! In some colleges and universities, students have access to .edu domains, where they are allowed sub-domains of their own. You can set someone up to create a student blog for their college, and then link back to your own website.



There are many ways you could hire a student to do your bidding. You can use the Reddit ForHire section to post your gig. You can also post a classified on Craigslsit. Or, you could always go to one of the many freelancing websites available, where you can post a job.



So, did you like these tips, or would like to add something to them? Feel free to jump on into the comments section below. Cheers :)

Add Twitter Cards to Blogger Correctly

Most of you asked how do we add a "View/Hide Summary" link below our tweets. If you click the summary link it will expand and show the post description snippet, along with a thumbnail image, Page title and twitter account attribution. We achieved it by integrating "Twitter Summary Cards" with Blogger. Twitter card is not a new name because they were introduced last year and the reason we never talked about it was due to unavailability of custom XML tags in blogger code library. The image thumbnail tag provided by blogger is of small resolution i.e. 72 x 72 pixels and unfortunately Twitter still has problems fetching the thumbnail correctly. This made it difficult to implement twitter cards for blogger.

The thumbnail displays fine on Twitter testing page but fails to appear on twitter page. Somehow we at least succeeded in fixing the problem with embedded tweets as you will see in demo.  Due to low resolution thumbnail sizes we can not install meta tags for Large Image Summary Card in Blogger but we can surely add Summary Card that works fine with small resolution images. We termed today's tutorial "correct" because most of the  methods that we found so far were not well wrapped in with conditional statements and this made the Template Header full of a large clutter of META Tags which is not good for SEO of any site. The same mistake is seen for OpenGraph Tags which I will be covering in another tutorial. Lets first read a little theory before jumping at the tutorial.

To see the demo visit our twitter page: @MyBloggerTricks

Below is a live demo for an embedded tweet:

AdSense Publisher Scorecard: Best Tips & Practices http://t.co/HHXK9yMwKH

� My Blogger Tricks (@mybloggertricks) June 19, 2013

Difference between OpenGraph Tags and Twitter Cards?

We honestly find it completely meaningless when twitter introduced beta version of these new tags in 2012 because we already had Facebook OpenGraph Tags that are widely used even today and works just fine in fetching the right Thumbnail, Description and title. OpenGraph tags are used even by GooglePlus to fetch required data and twitter also used it. Now twitter has started a whole new crap that I hope may not encourage every new social media network to come up with their own custom meta tags. I just hope Google does not follow this trend. Else we will be forced to add bulk of meta tags for each giant online. Twitter cards are surely a bit different and creative but fundamentally speaking they serve the exact same purpose as OpenGraph tags do which were introduced by Facebook.

Following is the list of six twitter cards being introduced by twitter in order to display user content in a more friendly way on Twitter accounts.

1. Summary Card: Default card, including a title, description, thumbnail, and Twitter account attribution.
2. Large Image Summary Card: Similar to a Summary Card, but Features bigger size images.
3. Photo Card: A Tweet sized photo card.
4. Gallery Card: Displays a collection of photos.
5. App Card: Displays application profile.
6. Player Card: A Tweet sized video/audio/media player card. You can now watch YouTube videos live on twitter! Probably the best card for podcast blogs. Instead of summary link you will see View/Hide Media link here.
7. Product Card: It represents product content in a more better way.

Why this Method is Correct?

We are utilizing dynamic conditional statements available in blogger that checks for a selected data and displays the content only when the required condition is met. The code shared below will check for a Homepage logo and also Post thumbnail based on right condition. The thumbnail data variable does not work for index page but works only for item pages. As a result if you specify the following data type for thumbnail:

data:blog.postImageThumbnailUrl

then Twitter will not display a summary card for homepage but it will for item/post pages. In order to fix this problem, we have set careful conditions, which work just fine and also produces a compressed code.

Further instead of manually adding Title and description for homepage, we have used variables that automatically does the work.

Install Twitter Cards on blogger

STEP#1

Follow these easy steps.

1. Go To Blogger > Template
2. Backup your template
3. click Edit HTML
4. Paste the following Meta tags anywhere below <head>

 

<!-- Twitter Cards For Blogger by MBT -->

<meta content='summary' name='twitter:card'/>
<meta content='@mybloggertricks' name='twitter:site'/>
<meta content='@mybloggertricks' name='twitter:creator'/>

<b:if cond='data:blog.pageType == &quot;index&quot;'>
<meta expr:content='data:blog.url' name='twitter:url'/>
<meta expr:content='data:blog.pageTitle' name='twitter:title'/>
<b:else/>
<meta expr:content='data:blog.homepageUrl' name='twitter:url'/>
<meta expr:content='data:blog.pageName' name='twitter:title'/>
</b:if>

<b:if cond='data:blog.metaDescription != &quot;&quot;'>
<meta expr:content='data:blog.metaDescription' name='twitter:description'/>
</b:if>

<b:if cond='data:blog.postImageThumbnailUrl'>
<meta expr:content='data:blog.postImageThumbnailUrl' name='twitter:image'/>
<b:else/>
<meta content='YOUR-BLOG-LOGO' name='twitter:image'/>
</b:if>
<meta expr:content='data:blog.homepageUrl' name='twitter:domain'/>

Make these changes:

• Replace mybloggertricks with your twitter username for blog profile
• You can replace mybloggertricks with either your personal twitter profile or your blog profile. I chose blog profile. For Multi author blogs like in wordpress you can choose to show author twitter profile for each twitter card.
• Replace YOUR-BLOG-LOGO with your Logo Link

    5. Save your template and you are half done!

STEP#2

The final step is to verify your twitter card settings. It is really easy, just follow these steps:

1. Open Google Chrome or Safari (Twitter cards work on webkit browsers only not Firefox)
2. Go to Twitter Card Validator
3. Double Click Summary on the popup window
4. Click the Validate and Apply  tab
5. To see you have added the code correctly just enter your homepage link inside the box and hit go.

    6.  Do the same for a post Page. Select any post (which contains at least one image and search description) from your blog and test it to see it also gives the right post title, thumbnail and description. If you get a red error for twitter:description , then probably you have not added Post description. Just don't worry about it because I will tell you in next step on how to fix that.

    7. You will see a red link that says that your site is not approved, simply click it and fill up the form to submit your request for Twitter card approval.

Twitter would say that they would send you an email but they really don't do that. At least I have not received any email for our three blogs. They get approved automatically within 48 hours. Once you see summary link below all posts know that you are all set up!

Requirements:

There are two requirements for twitter cards to work properly in Blogger:

1. Always add Search Description for Posts

If you don't know how to do it or if you don't have the "search option" inside blogger post editor then you can simply optimize your blog and add the required code by following this tutorial.

2. One Image inside posts

In order for twitter to display the thumbnail, you must make sure to add at least one image inside your posts. This image can be uploaded anywhere you want. There is no requirement that it must be uploaded through blogger editor only or on picasa web albums. All that is required is an image inside a post and nothing else.

Need help?

This tutorial is made as easy and informative as possible. If you still faced any problems, then don't troubleshoot yourself and let us know for any help needed.

Free Tip: Wordpress users can install JM Twitter Cards  for any framework, be that genesis or thesis.

Peace and blessings dear buddies :)

How To Get People To Buy Stuff from Your Blog

If your blog relies on advertising to earn money, chances are you haven't quit your day job. While advertising can bring in some money, the average blog earns enough to pay the hosting bill and little else. The blogs that do earn big money from advertising are the ones with massive traffic, multiple million unique visitors per day.

Chances are your blog will never reach that traffic level, and so your blog will not earn you a livable income from advertising alone. How can you make your blog profitable then? By following an age-old formula.
Read more �

6 SEO Reasons Why you Should Stop Using Zemanta

Recently in Feb 2013 Blogger integrated Zemanta with Blogspot blogs. Zemanta is indeed a great editorial plugin that helps you to write blog posts easily but unfortunately all such automated blogging tools does not help you to write well Optimized Blog posts that could protect you from the latest Google Penguin 2.0 Penalty! Penguin 2.0 is written especially to kill spam and unnatural links.  Zemanta blogging Plugin as you will discover later in this post could badly impact the inbound and outbound link balance of your entire blog, if you are not well versed with SEO link attributes. 

 

If you are new to zemanta then you must first read this post:

• Zemanta for blogger

Following are the four important reasons why we think you should temporarily stop using zemanta to produce blog posts unless zemanta promises to improve their API:

1. Too Many external Image links

Zemanta has add-on and extensions for all major browsers like Firefox, Chrome, Internet Explorer and safari. Zemanta Plugin adds two links to the images. One inside the caption and one to the image itself. New bloggers who are not well versed with SEO pitfalls of these links often don't bother removing the caption and unlinking the image, considering it to be ethical to give credits to the rightful owner of the image.

This causes a serious imbalance between your internal and external links causing a serious loss to site wide PageRank. 

2. Loss of Image Search Traffic:

You won't get traffic from Image Search because your images wont load from your server but the site you linked. In short all these images that you add through zemanta are not uploaded on your image folder, so you are simply destroying your Image Search traffic.

3. Increase in 404 Errors:

Zemanta image links could return a 404 not found crawling errors in your webmaster tools if the images are deleted by the original owner. These images are uploaded on external servers. Suppose you added an image to your blog post which is stored on Flickr. But what if that image is deleted some months later by the Flickr account holder? The image wont display and would return a 404 error to the search crawler.This would cause a serious increase in crawling errors inside your webmasters account.

4. Increase in server errors: 

zemanta suggests images mostly from its users blogs, Wikipedia or Flickr. If too many requests are sent for an image, then the website whose image is linked could possibly exceed its bandwidth limit and could go down. Most sites often don't allow external sites to directly use their Image Links and often limit the accessibility. If the user has not put such a restriction on images and you are using his image on your blog then it is acceptable but what if next month he puts the restriction? All your images would be gone - destroying both your readership and SEO reputation.

5. Misleading nofollow Option

Now here is a funny thing. If you click on Preferences Tab inside your zemanta account and look at the bottom of page under the sub-tab Look. You will see the following description for nofollow link attribute.

If you carefully see, its written rel="link_nofollow". I wonder when did this new attribute got introduced? At least I have never heard of it on any forum! I would request the Zemanta Developer to edit this line and change it to rel="nofollow" instead. This is the right way to write it.

The problem with this option is that if you activate it then it will nofollow all links on your post no matter whether they are external or internal! If you nofollow an internal link you are simply confusing the robot with content inside your very own blog and stopping the robot from crawling your internal pages. Further this option adds nofollow everywhere but not to the image links which again is surprising.

If you don't activate it then it will pass your PageRank juice to all external sites that appear under the related posts sections unless you manually nofollow them.

Therefore I would advise never to use this option because it is poorly scripted.

Isn't this option misleading for users who are not well versed with SEO and just clicks this option thinking it may nofollow external links only?

6. In-Text Links irrelevancy

The in-Text Links option gives you the ability to automatically link phrases to related sites. But most often the in-Text links suggestions consist of root domain URLs only. Zemanta mostly gives link suggestions which point to homepages only and not the relevant page except for wikipedia. So if you are talking about a Facebook Plugin, it wont gives suggestions to the plugins page but would instead point to Facebook.com

So if you are simply throwing external links without natural relevancy you are simply making your blog prepared for a delicious punch by Penguin Penalty!

Do you use Zemanta?

We tried to be as precise and clear as possible and mentioned all possible pitfalls of using this utility on your Blogger, Wordpress or TypePad blog. We love zemanta API ourselves and we would love it even more if these SEO points are kept in mind by the team and some serious updates are rolled out to ensure that people who use zemanta may stay safe and protected from Search Engine Algorithmic updates and may not lose precious organic traffic by blindly using the tool. They can also publish some tutorials to educate their users with the SEO guidelines and better optimized use of the tool. Amazingly they just posted about Penguin update themselves on their blog but shared no tips to their users on how to better use the plugin!

How long have you been using zemanta and what experiences would you like to share with us?

Stay safe and keep your SEO plug on always. Peace and blessings buddies :)

Note: We don't share reasons without proves and have no personal offence towards any Online Business. We simply educate our readers with Search Engine requirements, policies and help them remain safe and protected. This post should be taken as a positive criticism, which if Zemanta team try to correct could change our views later.