How To Get Extra 2GB Of Free Google Drive Storage?

Google Drive is one of the most popular cloud services today, used by millions around the world. Every Google account holder has his own free cloud space, which integrates so well with other Google products. From simple file sharing to hosting a website, there's a lot you can do with Google Drive. Google is now giving away an extra 2GB of free space, which I am sure many of you will find welcome.

Remember: This is a limited time offer. You can retain the extra 2GB forever, but only if you claim it before 17th February!

Google decided to celebrate Safer Internet Day in style by giving everyone a free upgrade on their Google Drive storage. There's a small price to pay - a couple minutes of your time to review your account settings.

How to get the free storage?

In order to get the free storage, you need to complete a quick security check on your account (link is given below).

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Earn free storage by completing this security checkup

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After login, you will be prompted to start the security checkup.

Next, you will be taken through your recent account activity. This includes login events for your Google account, device accesses, apps authorized to use your Google Account credentials, and so on. Once all is said and done, you will see a confirmation screen.

Google says the checkup will take around 2 minutes, but it took me less than 30 seconds. It�s a 3-step process that asks you to verify your password recovery information, as well as review your recent login activity and app permissions.



Once you see the three check marks, you can close the window or continue to your account settings. you're essentially done and are eligible for a free 2GB worth of space.



You�ll have until February 17th to complete the security checkup. The additional gigabytes will be added to your account around the end of the month.



If you want to keep on top of your account security you can revisit the security checkup again at any point to ensure there has been no suspicious activity.



Enjoy your free, extra space (:

How To Implement Google's Sitelinks Search Box On Your Website?

Sitelinks are Google's way of letting users know what links could possibly be most relevant to them. They help users find content more quickly. Google implemented search sitelinks to facilitate users and make it easier for them to search for and reach the desired content on your site directly from SERPs. A lot of webmasters miss out on this opportunity though. Compared to other types of markup, implementing search sitelinks is easy. Today, we'll show you how to easily set up yours.

Does your site qualify?

This question isn't easy to answer. Not every site qualifies for the sitelinks search box, and Google isn't overly transparent about the requirements. However, if you can answer "yes" to any of these questions below, it's quite possible your site qualifies.

• Google often sends notifications to verified, eligible sites through Webmaster Tools. Did you ever get one?


• Navigational or branded search traffic - Keyword phrases such as 'mbt' and 'mybloggertricks' send this website thousands of visits. The more the volume of branded search traffic, the likelier the sitelinks search box is to appear


• Try searching for your site using the most common branded and navigational search queries that your visitors might use. If the sitelinks search box already appears, then you most likely qualify to take advantage of adding the SearchAction Schema on your site and directing visitors to your own search results page.

Making use of your internal search engine

Most internal search engines work perfectly fine, including the default WordPress search function. If your website doesn't have internal search, it's easy to get started with a free Google Custom Search engine.



For websites that use Google's default Custom Search engine, Google also has the chance to make money on ad clicks, because the free version of the Customer Search engine includes Google ads. Google offers a paid version known as Site Search that allows an ad-free experience.

Adding the schema

The next step if your site qualifies is to add SearchAction schema markup on your site. Add the following code to your homepage.

<script type="application/ld+json">

{

   "@context": "http://schema.org",

   "@type": "WebSite",

   "url": "https://www.example.com/",

   "potentialAction": {

     "@type": "SearchAction",

     "target": "https://query.example.com/search?q={search_term_string}",

     "query-input": "required name=search_term_string"

   }

}

</script>

Make sure to edit the "URL" and "target" fields to match your own website information.

If you implement the markup on your site, users will have the ability to jump directly from the sitelinks search box to your site�s search results page. If Google doesn't find any markup, it'll show them a Google search results page for the corresponding site: query, as it has already done until now.

If you have any questions, you can create a new thread over at our new forum. Good luck :)

How To Get Great Content Ideas For Your Blog?

Brainstorming for content ideas can be tough. You easily get distracted and everything seems to have already been written! To make matters worse, requirements to content concepts and titles have become much more complicated. With the growing importance of referral traffic, we now have to rethink title strategies and how they appear on social sites. If you're feeling strapped for content ideas, here are a few that can help.

Check your Comments Section

When you let people share and comment on your site, you could end up with some great blog post ideas. Your readers might ask for more information about a specific item you didn�t cover clearly in your first post, or they might share their own opinions about the topic, which could make your fingers itch to write. Reading those bits carefully could make your blogging much easier.

Check out the Competition

According to 2014 stats, more than half of all small businesses don�t have a website. As a result, your top competitor may not have a blog that you can follow. But that same competitor might be active on social media sites like Twitter and Facebook. The posts you find there could give you great ideas about topics you should cover.

If you grab an idea from someone else, be sure to tweak it or amend it or somehow make it your own. Stealing outright could get you in hot water, both with your competitors and with Google. But borrowing a good idea could help you to come up with the story idea that�s been eluding you.

Yelp Pages

People with reputation management problems are likely accustomed to the idea of using Yelp as an early warning system. When they see a poor review pop up, they know they must get to work generating content that either refutes or explains the complaint. But Yelp can also help you write blog posts about issues people either like or have questions about.

Read through your reviews and look for items that get a lot of mentions. Not all Yelp comments will contain blog gems, of course. Some might just contain complaints or random bits of praise you can�t build on. But, watching the comments closely could give you some great ideas for writing that will really resonate.

Targeted Keyword Research

And ofcourse, nothing beats good ol' fashioned keyword research. This is a fundamental part of the writing process, as it helps you find the right terms which will perform better on SERPs. But more than SEO, your searches can also help you to find out what people are looking for, and that could give you some excellent blog post ideas.

With Google AdWords� Keyword Planner, you can run a simple search on a topic you�re planning to cover. Your results page will give you keywords that are similar to the topic you�ve hit, but they come with just a few changes.

We'll soon publish an entire section dedicated to keyword research in the SEO process, so stay tuned!

Coming up with new content ideas is not easy. But if poke around and are receptive enough, with enough luck you will soon find great content ideas to go on your blog! Good luck :)

Google To Show Tweets In Search Results Pages

Twitter has just confirmed today that it has signed a Firehose deal with Google, which will bring Twitter news to non-Twitter/logged out users. For the benefit of both the companies, this deal will make Twitter's feeds directly accessible to Google, meaning that Google can now display tweets in its Search Results pages in real-time.

Google had a pretty similar deal with Twitter years ago, but that was dropped in 2011. Google previously had to crawl Twitter for new information - pretty much like it crawls every other website.

However, the new deal once again gives Google immediate access to Twitter's live data stream, which means that the slow crawling process can be done away with, and tweets can be made visible in SERPs in real-time.

The changes will incrementally start taking place within the next few months.

Back in 2009, Google was able to index tweets automatically. But that deal sort of fell away as the then CEO wanted to have control over the network's content. Now though, things have changed. Twitter is very focused now on bringing more traffic to its content and possibly monetizing that to greater effect. So this new Google deal will give Twitter just what it needs - more eyeballs for its content. According to CEO Dick Costolo;

�We've got the opportunity now to drive and aggregate eyeballs to logged-out experiences that we plan to deliver on the front page of Twitter,� he continued, �and that�s why it makes a lot more sense now.�

This can also be seen as an expansion strategy. Twitter is obviously set on targeting logged-out or non-Twitter users with this update. This would serve to bring new users over to the network,  and is exactly the type of attitude the company needs right now as it�s growth in terms of both daily active users and stock price has fallen flat as of late.

So what does Google stand to gain in all this?

This deal is being described as a win-win for both companies. In addition to potentially accelerating Twitter�s growth, it�s also good for Google because the ability to index real-time tweets is valuable for searchers.

Of course, this deal also stands to greatly benefit businesses and publishers as well, as their search engine visibility and social media audience will be amplified. Hence, a new arena for Bloggers and content markets to explore (:

How Can Websites Rank Well Without Backlinks?

A large proportion of people out there seem to believe that backlinks form the backbone of a website's SEO strategy. Having high-quality and relevant backlinks has its advantages, but are they a necessity? We have talked about this topic many times in the past. Today, I'd like to share highlights from Googler John Mueller's recent hangout where he proved that backlinks, while important, are not a must for ranking well in Google!

John Mueller is the Webmaster Trends Analyst at Google. He shared an instance of a website ranking well without backlinks during his hangout at the GooglePlex with two of his colleagues. Here's the video of the hangout, with adjusted starting position.

Someone asked at the 26 minutes and 3 seconds mark, why does Google use links for ranking at the level they do. He said, Google should use other means to rank sites. Of course, he knows they do use other factors but his point was why do they place so much weight on links.



John Mueller answered that saying they do have tons of other factors outside of just links.

John then said he has a friend of his who is �back home� in Zurich, his friend just put up a new web site for the local neighborhood. The new site does not have any links at all and over 300 pages are indexed and pages are ranking and they are getting a lot of traffic from search.



No one ever linked to the site ever, he said, but they did submit sitemaps to Google and they have an RSS feed.



The web site does fairly well without any links at all, John said. So it is not the case you absolutely need links to rank, he added. John did say that links are "obviously" it is part of Google�s ranking factors, but it isn�t something Google only relies on.



We know a year ago, Matt Cutts said Google did try turning off links in their ranking algorithm and the results were horrible. We also know that Yandex, the huge Russian search engine, did remove links from a niche segment in their ranking algorithm when that segment was spammed to death.



With that being said, let's not forget the importance of backlinks. But the point here is, there are many other factors you need to be focusing on as well.

SEO Requirements To Remember When Implementing Infinite Scroll

Yesterday, we talked about infinitely scrolling homepages, and whether they're a good design decision when it comes to SEO. While tricky and often prone to mistakes, infinite scroll has its uses, especially where usability is concerned. So today, we'll talk about some SEO requirements you should keep in mind before you go ahead and implement an infinite scroll. These tips will help you design a better homepage for users as well as search engines.

There are two parts to this story. This is the second part. You might like to read our previous post before moving on.

Part 1: Are Infinite Scrolling Homepages SEO Friendly?

Part 2: SEO Requirements To Remember When Implementing Infinite Scroll

Don't break functionality!

Infinite Scroll should be implemented as a "progressive improvement"; that is, it should function as an additional feature available to users that support it, without penalizing others or changing the technical structure of the site.

Downloading asynchronously

Asynchronous roughly means 'not bound with time'. When a regular website loads, most of its content loads synchronously - time driven, that is to say it loads when user visits. But for an infinite scroll, you cannot load the entire feed when the user first lands on the page.

For a "progressively improving" implementation, an Infinite Scroll has to load the required JavaScript elements necessary for asynchronous operation. Here is an overview of Infinite Scroll in asynchronous mode:

1. The user requests a page (eg: site.com/page/3) and gets the content of this page.


2. When it reaches the limits of content while scrolling, a JavaScript function will run, requiring new content from the server.


3. When the server responds with the new content, another JavaScript function interprets the data and injects it into the HTML page.


4. When there is more content to download, the server responds with a 404 error message that will not be shown to the user. Rather, we will post a notice that the content is exhausted. This feature works for both a scroll up as a scroll down.

The asynchronous download can cause delays in the content display depending on the server�s response time. Therefore, we must use preloading and caching. The purpose of preloading is to download the adjacent content preventatively to minimize the new contents� loading time. Caching�s purpose is to keep asynchronously downloaded content in memory.

Maintaining history

The Infinite Scroll is definitely a plus for continuous navigation, but what about "segmented" navigation? If a user scrolls for several sections, finds an interesting link and clicks it, then returns to the Infinite Scroll, what happens?

If a user visits your site, leaves, then comes back a few days later and tries to find a certain piece of content, what is their experience? How will they know where to go? The answers to these questions are found in the History.pushState.

History.pushState lets you change the URL in the address bar dynamically. When the user scrolls and reaches a new section, the address bar will change. The pushState then creates a new state in the browser navigation history. If the user clicks on the back button, it will be up to the previous URL we populate via pushState.

history.pushState(stateObject, title, URL);

window.onpopstate = function(event) {

window.location = window.location; }

Sites like Facebook demonstrate the importance of this practice. If you scroll far down on the site page with Infinite Scroll, then accidentally press the "Back" button and return immediately to the site, you will return to the very top of the scroll instead of exactly where you left off.

These were some of the things to keep in mind. We'll soon create a tutorial on actually implementing an effective infinite scroll, so stay tuned!

Are Infinite Scrolling Homepages SEO Friendly?

Infinitely scrolling homepages have become a part of many modern blogs and websites today (e.g. Mashable). The intent is to keep visitors on the website as more and more content is loaded. While it can be beneficial to adopt infinite scroll, it is important that its implementation takes into account the best SEO and usability principles. Today, we'll discuss the user friendliness of implementing this feature on your website.

There are two parts to this story. In this part, we'll discuss the SEO aspects of infinite scrolling, whereas in the next, we'll talk about things to consider before implementing an infinite scroll along SEO recommendations.

Part 1: Are Infinite Scrolling Homepages SEO Friendly?

Part 2: (In progress...)

Indexing problems

In terms of SEO, one of the major challenges that you may encounter in trying to implement Infinite Scroll is indexing. The issue stems from the fact that Google does not allow the JavaScript download to display content found below a Web page that was programmed in Infinite Scroll. As a result, when the search engine lands on your Web page, it will only see the content that is first presented to the user; the content that is visible without having to scroll.

To address this shortcoming, you must help Google detect your entire website�s content to effectively index your website and promote visibility between internal pages. You can do this by implementing an interlinking strategy.

Breaking down content

Content on a large website is often broken down into many different pages. In other words, Classic pagination. For infinite scroll, the problem arises when search crawler gets to the end of an initial page load. For a user, more content would be automatically loaded with JavaScript. But a crawler can't get any further, and hence information beyond that is 'lost'.

Breaking down content into various pages not only makes it easier for crawler, but also for users who're using an old browser, or a mobile browser with JavaScript turned off. This is not to say that you should get rid of infinite scrolling altogether. You can offer both solutions side by side. As the saying goes, never sacrifice functionality in favor of graphical usability.

SEO Benefits

The implementation of an Infinite Scroll, when well established, will not influence the SEO performance of a website. The major advantage however, lies in optimizing conversions (depending, of course, on the objectives of the website in question!).

The implementation of an Infinite Scroll on your website may allow you to decrease your bounce rate and increase the amount of content being viewed, as well as the number of pageviews. This can be extremely interesting for sites whose main income comes from advertising with CPM ads (if the advertisement reloads when users change pages with Infinite Scroll).

So long story short, infinite scroll has its uses. In the next post, we'll talk about things to consider before implementing an infinite scroll, so stay tuned :)