I always thought that making the most of friends is the last word in getting popular on SU, back when I started using it. Over the time, there were even more myths like this one that I found were time wasters, and needed immediate attention. Infact, many of the things that I thought were “normal” was actually harming me in making the best of SU.

Let me share a few with you.

1. Clean up your friends list , remove all with no or less activity.
   I was under the impression that the more friends you have the better. Wrong.
   Be very careful when selecting friends. The basic idea is that the stumbles you do are passed on to your friends as well, which is how the traffic is generated. Now, what if out of the allowed 200 friends, 199 are accounts that haven’t even logged in the past weeks together? The stumbles you make doesn’t travel and the traffic is null.
   So go to your friends list today and remove all of them who doesn’t have any activity or less activity listed.
   Check out their number of stumbles and reviews received.
   Set a number for minimum stumbles required to be your friend, anyone who goes below should be avoided. This may sound harsh but if you don’t it defeats the purpose. As an alternative, you can add those “idle” profiles to your other social media like facebook. They probably will fit better there.
   Ex:- I was surprised to see Amit Agarwal’s profile (a top blogger in India) to be an inactive one. Removed him from the list, and added him on facebook.
2. Join the groups that suits your profile better.
   Unlike Digg, there are lot of groups (yep, active ones) on SU that you can join in and start making friends. There are weird topics available to throw in your opinion on starting from Windows hacks to IPL Cheerleaders. Get involved in them, there are lot of active people out there who’d love to meet new people.
3. Talk to top stumblers who are online now.
   Earlier, I used to send messages to other members I befriended on SU, but would not get a reply. The problem was that they never were online. So if you want to make conversation with that top stumbler (may not be a right choice), you better talk to the ones that are online. SU shows an updated page for live stumblers. Make use of it.
4. Add relevant tags to your already stumbled stories and delete wrong ones.
   Man, in the hurry to stumble stories, I should admit that I had even used wrong tags on some stories. Big big mistake. Abhijeet told me the other day, importance of tagging stories rightly on SU. And he was right. If I would tag a story wrongly, it wouldn’t be accepted by other stumblers and would be considered as close to spam. So stumble the stories properly, so that your friends can have a better SU experience and least not screw the whole system.
5. Don’t be a fan of someone who refuses to befriend you
   You knew that popular blogger, so you’d add him as a friend, and until he accepts it you remain a fan of his. Not good. It only makes sense if you are mutual friends. He may or may not see the stories you are stumbling but, if he has not accepted you as his friend then the story will not go viral (chances are minimum). Had it been his friend, you could have got a few stumbles extra, now that the fan is “inactive”, you miss it. So what’s the point in being a fan? Drop him and get a new friend.
6. Don’t change your avatar often, make it universal
   The avatar is your identity. So make it as exclusive as possible. I’m not sure how you should go about it, it depends a lot on creativity and one’s taste, so there are no limits to what you can do and there are no thumb rules as well. The point is to make a unique avatar so that people recognize you quickly. Least said, please don’t use the default ghost image. That sucks! And there are a million others who look like you.
7. Add all those 200 friends
   Just in case you have not added all of them, do it today. Pick the best, those who are active, who are open to friendship and those who share similar tastes as you. Find them and befriend them, when you have 200 slots why not make use of them?
8. In the about section, add your URL. Yep just one.
   In the about you section ( Top near your name in the default layout) if you add your blog URL, people can easily make out what you are. Give the most important link there, if you have an active blog, list it, or you can also give other social media profiles here. The idea is that, while interested people visit your profile they should check your URL and decide quickly as to whether to befriend you or not
9. Use the “Send to” option to let your friend know of a new story
   So when you wanted to share that wicked story you found the other day, what would you do. No no… please don’t tell me you’d send a mass mail or IM them, use the bloody “send to” button it’s been there for a while and you’ve not been using it. The beauty about it is that, while you send the message not only do you make sure that the guys is visiting the site but replying to you with a thumbs up/down. You get him engaged which is the best thing.

There are some great articles around that I found interesting… Sramana writes about the death of Indian outsourcing, which I think is a very honest article on the “outsourcing bubble”..The interesting fact is that though there are disagreements on some ideas, overall it’s a very transparent and “in your face” kind of ideas. Very true and honest.
Here are top rank blogs 5 reasons why corporate blogs fail, a good read although I can’t possibly agree with all the reasons. Lee has his own convictions though.
Ever thought what would happen to SEO’s and Google (the relationship) five years from now? Hell yeah! Slightly shady SEO has some “calculated predictions”.
Is your site social media friendly? Search Engine Land has some suggestions, for ya.
Have you been using Digg? Here are five tips from Manish on being successful on Digg.

Today, we have with us an interesting personality - Neil Patel, co-founder of ACS.
Neil is a respected authority in the social media arena. He’s a man the industry looks upto for his experience with the social media and seo, which explains why he’s a much sought after Marketing Consultant today.

Thanks Neil for this interview, next time we’ll have an audio one, people always love to listen to you.

1. How did you start with Social Media, when did you recognize the potential and how did you get involved with it?

I got started with social media once I noticed that people were getting thousands of links from sites like Digg.com. The way I got started was by first networking with the top users who were successful on these sites. By interacting with these users they taught me how to leverage the social web so that I could be successful.

2. Which is your personal favorite and which works best for business/clients?

Not sure exactly what the question means, but if you are referring to social sites… then my favorite is Facebook. If you have a successful application on Facebook you can consistently get over 20 million pageviews a month.

Although Facebook is my favorite site, it doesn’t work well with all clients. Due to this, I would have to say that Digg is best for business/clients. It is much easier to leverage Digg than it is to leverage Facebook.

3. Everyone is talking about getting on the front page of Digg and being popular on SU, Is that all to it, or do you think efficiency is measured in any other way on these tools?

It may sound easy, but there is a lot to leveraging Digg and StumbleUpon. Success can be measured by getting on the front page of these sites, but ideally it should be measured by the amount of traffic/links you get.

4. I’ve read that you’ve done something on YouTube as an experiment that taught you the potential of social media (especially with videos), could you explain us what was it and how did it happen?

I have no clue what you are talking about.

Overall YouTube is a great site to leverage. Because of universal search you can create videos and get them ranked for competitive terms on Google.

The only experiments I can recall were faking views to see how many days in a row I could get a video to be number 1 on YouTube. Or how few links you can point to a YouTube video so that it would rank for competitive terms. And lastly, how many users I could force to subscribe to my YouTube channel.

5. Now, big brands like Virgin and Coke are opting for social media marketing, recognizing the potential of online space. Could you please tell me your thoughts on it?

I think it is great that companies want to embrace the social web. Once more large brands start leveraging it, social media marketing will become more mainstream.

One thing I think many companies don’t realize is that you can’t control what people think of you; especially on social web. Due to this some companies may end up with a sour taste in their mouth.

6. What according to you is a good strategy (generally) for offline retail brands to adopt when they get to the online space? (Like Nike)

I think it is good for companies to adopt it when they get into the online marketing space. But before they try and jump in, they need to try and understand how it works.

7. Personally I believe Social Media Optimization is dead. Agree/ Disagree - what are your thoughts on it Neil?

I don’t think it is dead. I think it has just really started to become mainstream. More people are leveraging the social web and more companies and getting budgets for social marketing.

8. Digg, SU, Sphinn, Mixx now there are lot of them and each has a typical character to it considering the user behavior - If I were to ask you to match these sites with a particular crowd, how would it be? Ex: - Digg = Geeks?

I wish it was as easy as Digg = Geeks, but as these sites keep on evolving more people are starting to leverage them. Due to this it is hard to say that one persona type uses each site. For example on Digg people who are into politics also love the site and in many cases these users are not geeks.

9. Are there any “loop holes” available in the Digg system still? We’ve heard you knew a couple of them earlier.

Not really anymore. There are still things you can do like build powerful accounts or network with other members, but the best loop hole is to write great content. Sadly, writing good content isn’t much of a loop hole.

10. Suppose “Mani Karthik of DailySEOblog” is a new entry to the online space, what would you recommend as a strategy to me to get popular on the social media.

Best advice I could give is writing really detailed content such as how to guides. Things that are timeless usually do well and build the most links

What is Blog Outreach?

This might be a lesser talked about article but I’m sure all of us are aware of it, experienced it and involved in it in one way or the other.

Blog outreach is the derived new channel in the New Media, which is the process of targeting and connecting to specified audiences through the medium of bloggers and blogs that are specific authorities to particular categories of a large market.

Well, simply put, a marketer using the power of a blogger to sell his product is basically blog out reach.

For example, a cell phone company using the power of a technology blog like TechCrunch to sell/advertise/get the buzz on it’s new product is a form of blog outreach.

Blog outreach is a much more sophisticated form of media channel these days. Where it would have been an easy guess that a technology review blog would be the best medium to reach out to tech savvy online users, these days more and more products and services are getting online and the necessity for more specified blogging authority channels are required.
Of course technology is the best and most common channel on the internet. And there are more technology/review blogs than anything else.

Problems with the Traditional online marketing.

But think about it when a detergent powder company like Ariel or Surf comes online and wants to make a buzz about it. As the traditional methods suggest, Ariel or Surf can go for banner ads, paid ads on Google and “assume” that they have the visibility covered.

The problems are less obvious and transparent but clear from the results.

- A blind strategy like banner ads can get you traffic but it is necessarily not the best target. If it was all of the should order a packet of detergent powder online. That rarely happens.
- A CPC ad campaign on Google can get you ‘X’ number of visitors for ‘Y’ number of ads shown for ‘Z’ amount of money blown away. But apart from numbers how much value would it bring to you? And if you are in a competitive market, just to make sure you are on the right spot, you’d have to pay more than your competitor even if your budget didn’t allow it.
- The failure in connecting dots
Online marketing is different from other forms of marketing that there is no room for error or you’ll burn your hands. In traditional marketing, if you have the luxury of putting up billboards on the road, where everyone passes by, here in online marketing you can only put up a billboard at places where your audience exists. And that’s a utopian concept.

In blog outreach, you have precise information on who your audience are, what is they behavior and in what number would your product would be sold. This is extremely vital for marketer. In fact, that’s what he needs.

What is the scope of Blog outreach?

Incredible. People are moving more online (almost done isn’t it?) and the scope of delivering content to them is almost humongous. It’s like the cable TV industry. Remember the confusion and excitement that came along when it came first ?

Examples of Blog outreach

There have been numerous examples of blog outreach. You might have been involved in it knowingly or unknowingly like the Proto.in free pass thingy discussed here.
TNX have been buying bloggers to write about them.
Nokia have been gifting bloggers with mobile phones to get the buzz.
Online companies give all sorts of promotional items to bloggers to write about them.

How can bloggers make sure they are a part of the whole phenomena?

- Have a blog
Well, that’s the basic step. Have a blog and write your thoughts there. The world is a platform for everyone today, everyone have their own piece of audience. So start blogging today.

- Be an authority
Whatever you blog, be the best in it or join the league of the best. When someone wants to select you as their partner for selling products, wouldn’t they want you to be the best guy? So be an authority. Only an authority will have a following, and he will be a credible guy.

- Find niches
You can’t be an authority in everything. You can’t be the best in everything. So choose a smaller area, which you are comfortable of. If you are good in reviewing movies be a movie reviewer and if possible find a specification in it as well. This helps to remain focussed.

- Be honest and write for your readers first
Once you have a lot of readers, learn to respect them and write for them rather than for the guy who is paying you to write a review. The internet audience is very sensitive and has a bad temper, so take no chances and don’t fake. Right from the start, be honest in your reviews and attitude. If you fake it, everyone can easily make it out and won’t value you.

How to get on top of Digg? How to get popular on Digg? How to get a front page Digg?
These are questions being thrown upon day in and out at the forums, at the coffee club and everywhere bloggers get together. Everyone wants to know how to get to the top quickly with the minimum effort. It would be nice if someone found out a hack that helps anyone to get on top of Digg in 24 hours. Unfortunately there have been none so far, but yes there are theories flying around that claim to put you on top of Digg, or make you power users on Digg in even less than 48 hours. I wished if one of them truly worked.

Well, taking into consideration some basics, there are few facts all of them agree on.

• To get a front page Digg, you have to -
  - Be Popular
  - Have lot of “friends”
  - Have submitted lot of stories prior
  - Be popular on Digg
  - Have commented on many articles
  - Be regular with using Digg
  - Have a good reputation on Digg

Many of these points are easy to listen than achieve. For instance, it’s known that you have to have a good “following” or “friends” on Digg to get a top Digg. The reason is that when you submit an article, there has to be enough guys to digg the same without even checking the title, but just because you Dugg it first. Now, this is linked with “Reputation”. One would digg a story you submitted even without checking it’s title, only when they believe that whatever you are digging will be good, the truth may be/may not be right. “Reputation” on the other hand is linked with “Reference”. Where does one find you first? Either they could’ve found you on one of the top Dugg article OR they could’ve “befriended” them. “Reputation” is alos linked with “Image/Brand”. When one first sees you, what do they absorb from your profile? When you have some already top dugg stories, people get the idea that you are a top class digger. OR they might see the number of articles submitted and make out if you are active on Digg or not.

REFERENCE
( Seen first on top diggs/from a friend )
V
NO. OF FRIENDS
( the more the merrier )
V
REPUTATION
( based on latest dugg story/ top duggs )
V
HISTORY
( Topics active in/ top diggs )
V
V
Action : ADD AS FRIEND

So essentially, being a power user on Google has got to do more with “influencing” people and “making friends”.

Keeping all this in mind, here are a collection of resources that are worth a read and bookmarking. The best resources on the internet that will tell you how to be popular on Digg and always hit a front page with your submissions. It sounds a bit glossy, but there is value in each of these articles for sure.

• Become a power user on Digg in 48 hours -Earner’s blog
  Non realistic article, but the theories makes sense.
• Factors that will help get a story popular on Digg - Forum discussion
  A good thread where there are lot of information on the basics. There is some non-sense as well.
• How to submit stories that make to front page of Digg
  Pretty good article that gives a good insight on the behavior of Digg users.
• How to get popular on Digg - 15 Tips
  A presentation that will give you pointers on getting popular. Great illustration.
• What type of content is popular on Digg?
  A cool article that illustrates the crowds behavior and how you can utilize it. The statistics are awesome.
• Tuning your content for Digg
  Chris G has a small write up on writing content that is favorable and “likely” to get popular on Digg.
• Tips from a top 10 Digg user on how he made it to the top of Digg
  John TP extracts the best of tips from a active top 10 digg user.
• How to get on top of Digg
  Not a great article, but some excellent pointers on the importance of titles.
• How to be a top Digg user?
  Interesting article, especially the mentions on the shady practices and why you shouldn’t do them.

There are many more articles available, but many of them are repetitive and does not pass any value at all. Hence you won’t find them in this list.

Did you ever had an opportunity to Google your name/product/service/company name and come up with a negative result? An abuse or some comments on a sleazy site? Cases of damaged/torn online reputation have been reported more than any other time these days.

With lot of UGC (User Generated Content) thrown up these days, the possibilities of your online reputation getting damaged is high. Online Reputation Management is important for companies and brands these days. Here’s how I would depict it in a flow chart.

Googler looking for information associated with your brand/name ===> Uses search engines
Scans top results on Google ===> Finds information regarding you/product/brand
If positive review ===> Buys/commits to you.
If negative feedback ===> Ditches you.

In the process flow, the crucial point is when he makes a decision. And precisely at that point, if you don’t have the vital information, then you lose out.

So how do companies or brands make sure that they preserve their online identity?

Well, it’s not possible to completely create a positive environment for every online identity, be it a person or a company or a brand. And with products and services, it’s a different story altogether. With everyone writing their reviews (and then re-writing it again) on all services and products online, it’s come out that unless you have a fair amount of both negative and positive results, you are not seen as a genuine guy. So the idea is to minimize the negative results and keep control of the online identities.

What if you had negative reviews about you on the SERPs?

Well, before dealing with the problem, let’s understand that there may be more than two situations to this.
One - Where you’d have genuine negative reviews, like for example if you have a product or service, that’s been honestly reviewed by bloggers. If it’s a not so good product, then of course people will write/report about it honestly. There might occur both good and bad reviews.

In such cases, a healthy approach using SEO and effective SMM strategies, can get you out of the situation. However, if the product/service is a failure product, then we might have to fight a but hard to clear all the negative results. Honestly, that’s an utopia. What really can be done is to minimize the number of negative results.

Second -The case of wrong identities
This happens with names and individuals more than companies and brands. Like for instance if someone else is sharing your name, you’ll have a tough time sharing resources online for each other.
Last day I had come across two cases where the person was suffering from negative reputation, because of wrong online channels. His name was associated with a negative story on one of the authority sites, while the only thing he had in similar was only the name, He wasn’t the guy in the story. But, when others search for his name online, they might come across the negative story causing him trouble.

In such cases, a clever mix of SEO, SMM and online branding can solve the problem.

Essentially, Reputation Management is very important in todays scenario when people use the online space heavily to find information about things.

Brands, Companies and Individuals have to harness the power of social media to build their reputation online, or else it’s going to be too late.

Just got a nudge from the Proto.in guys that their brand new event for the season is happening this July 18-19 at Delhi. If you don’t know what Proto.in is, you must’ve been living in a cave !
The Venue for the upcoming edition of Proto.in is finalized in the halls of the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi, for the dates of 18th and 19th (Friday, Saturday).

This time around, the guys say that they’ve raised their standards and only the best of the best companies will make it to the stage. That’s interesting to hear - something worth following.
The Proto folks are expecting a good crowd of 600-ish technology related guys to turn up, so it’s likely to be a good event worth attending.

Also, the Proto guys have offered two blogger’s passes for two regular readers of DailySEOblog. It would cost you Rs.500 otherwise. So if you’d want to be there, do let me know.

The official Proto.in blog
Proto.in on twitter

One of the things that gathers moss as we go along is the site design. And it’s even worse with blogs. Wordpress unfortunately has got lot of plugins and frills available for free, that we all keep on adding them until one day we find that it’s all biting back on the blog.

For instance, all the styling and the plugins we add, do you have any idea how much extra junk is added to the code? You might want to check today. Code ratio, Page size, and a lot of stuff get affected, and the funny thing is that you never notice it but is under the impression that they are all doing good for your blog. Let’s de clutter the blog with all those unwanted fancy stuff and allow that fresh rush

1. Plugins and widgets
   How many new plugins have you added recently? It’s great if you can keep track of all the plugins you installed and uninstalled by keeping a document log about it because, not only does it help you to keep track of things but also help you to find out what went wrong. Sometimes, when you come across unexpected errors, most of the times it’s due to a new plugin you installed or it’s non-compatibility with another one. If you have non-running plugins at this time, go ahead and delete the plugin file from the directory.
   Or if you have been running a stupid plugin that you don’t use, remove it and you’ll save quite a lot on the code size.
2. Check for duplicate meta tags
   Although meta tags are not really important in getting ranks on the SERPs, they are still important in attracting visitors to your site. Check your “site:www.yoursite.com” search on Google, and you can see the title tags and meta description for all the pages indexed.
   There are instances like using two plugins UTW and HeadSpace or UTW and All in One SEO, which results in duplicate meta tags and description. See which plugin is causing the duplicate content and delete it or change the settings accordingly.
3. Check your page size
   Use this tool and check your page size. Make sure you have an optimum page size so that it doesn’t take ages to load your page on a slower internet connection. Most of the times, there would be additional codes added to your pages by various plugins and widget scripts. Use the tool to find out how much time it takes to load your page and is it under acceptable level or not.
4. Check your theme on various browsers
   Whenever I talk about cross browser compatibility issues, there’d be someone who says that we’ve done it all. And I ask them how far they’ve done it only to know that they’ve tested the theme on Firefox, IE. Opera and may be Safari. That’s the end. Well, that’s not what we are talking about here. your blog is viewed by numerous type of people on the internet and you got to check if they are all able to see the website/blog the same way or not. For this you have to check the blog/site on various browsers/ resolutions and with and without elements such as Javascript, flash etc. Also there is an array of web browsers available and things doesn’t end with FF and Opera.
   Fortunately there is a nice tool available that will help you check our blog on various browsers and give you screenshots of it. So you can see yourself if there are any problems with it. Here is the tool.
5. See if you have any broken links on your site
   Go to Google webmaster Tools and find out if there are any broken links from your site. They don’t do any harm but it’s always good to keep them away. Either use a spider crawler to emulate the crawling and find out the broken links, otherwise use Google webmasters to find it. The less broken links the better.
6. Optimize your images
   No I’m talking about ALT tags LOL. Check as to how many images load on your homepage ans see how much time they take. You can use the same tool I mentioned in the first point. If they take too long to load, optimize them by converting to gifs or smaller Jpeg versions.

Okay, let’s continue with this tomorrow, meanwhile, do your initial checks first.

That’s the most frequently asked question to an SEO. A very simple question to which the answer may not be very simple. To be honest, this question triggers a chain of answers and theories in me, none of which would be of interest to you. let me try and put this as simple as I can.

Ranking number one on Google is not an easy task. Many SEOs fail to get a top rank (even a number one listing) because they just do the basics right and nothing beyond. SEO has grown beyond H1 tags and strong tags. The reality is that if you just get these basics right, the chances of getting a top rank is difficult, especially when you are targeting competitive keywords.

Essentially, to get a number one rank (or a page one listing) on Google, you have to be very strong in analyzing your competition. And when you are better than them, you rank better.

That’s the story in a nutshell. Analyzing your competition and fighting the way up is indeed not an easy task either. A bird’s eye view of the whole process looks something similar.

- Finding out who and which are the sites that are ranking top 10 for the targeted keyword.
- Finding out all the SEO metrics about them.
- Finding out their quality links.
- Finding out their onsite optimization strength.

Beating all those metrics in a very natural way is the key to success. Of course, it may vary as to how much time it takes and how high you get. Sometimes, Google even thinks that sudden increase in the SEO metrics is artificial so even if you’ve done everything white hat, it may take some time before Google let’s you rank high. But once they find that you are not black hat and everything is genuine, it’s just a matter of few days before you make it to the top.

Although, beating your competition is the right way to get a top rank on Google, you have to make sure that, you don’t end up doing the quick fixes and shady stuff or you are taking a big risk.

Forms were always the same on wordpress. While the rest of the world had all sorts of fancy ones with immediate response alerts and immediate database checks, wordpress users were all stuck up with the traditional form with a captcha that throws up errors galore !

Well, to break out of this, here’s a brand new form available for wordpress, which is a clean lite weight, ajax powered one that’s slick and cool. It performs quick checks and throws up error messages if the form is not rightly filled, as and when it is being filled. Yes, no annoying re filling.

Check the plugin here. It’s worth a change from the traditional forms. Demo of the form is here.