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 :)