Appealing and impressive - That was my first thoughts on trying this guy out.

Psst..(Social Median, was opened to public today)

Socialmedian is a social news network that focuses more on
personalized news and information. And I think they’ve very much used the “personalization” thing to delightful levels. (Details on how Social Median works)

I’m doubtful if I’ve experienced a good social media networking like this guy ever before, just like it promised, I could find three social media enthusiasts from India, I haven’t seen them anywhere on the other channels, but this guy helped me. I think that’s point proven.

The “Snip” feature is a charm and I’m sure many are going to use it instead of the usual IM thing, unless something strange happens. But I think it’s a cool tool.

What I’d be interested to see are news from my selected websites updating quickly so that, SM will be my first and only place of visit to get connected to the crowd and the news sources.

There are news networks available where by similar minded guys can share and network togethere and there are quite some interesting ones, that look very promising.

I think Social Media takes off the pain of three processes.

a) Keeping updated with News sources
b) Staying in loop with social networks
c) Connecting and communicating with similar minded folks

We’ll have to wait and see how quick and bug free this guy is, but at the moment, it’s looking all rosy to me at least.

I’m here on SM, meanwhile and I’ve created an Indian Bloggers Network as well, please join if you are a Social Media Enthusiast, I’m sure it’s going to be fun.

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The Wayback machine, we all know can be used for checking the age of a domain. Is it not?
And we use it before buying websites, or just checking the authority etc. But what can be done beyond that?

Gabriel Goldenberg has found that the wayback machine can be used for three more uses other than the age thing.

1 - For Checking Change of Ownership
2 - For checking the old URL and
3 - To check what was already done before you signed in

Here are the details and the original post. A good read. Thanks Gabriel.

July is almost over and I’m kind of overwhelmed - with mixed emotions.
Blogging is eating me up, taking more of my time and more energy as never before. The good thing is that the income is also going up. This is what happened in July - a snapshot.

• I’m hired for two more blogging projects.
  One for seohosting.com, a hostgator initiative, where thy have hosting plans suitable for “seo conscious” webmasters. I’ll be helping them with seo help and tips on the blog.
  Another is mashable.com, for which I’ll be writing articles, yeah the long ones I guess.
• Income from the blog has increased almost 20%, so that’s around 2K USD.
• Traffic have also increased to a significant point, mainly from the social media bookmarks Digg and SU.
• Google Page rank has dropped from 5 to 4, and I know what’s happened, looking forward to the next update.

It’s quite possible that some of your pages may not appear on SERPs at all while others do. The reason is simply because out of all the pages on your site, Google considers some to be important and some of them not. So if they are not appearing on Google SERPs that means that you’ve to do something about these pages that they appear on the SERPs. But how to?

Why does only some pages appear on the SERPs?

• They’d have been linked from other sites, mostly more than one site.
• They’d be receiving more traffic than other pages, like from a social bookmark link like Digg or Stumbleupon.
• They’d be well linked from the homepage of the site, giving them good importance and PR.
• They’d be optimized well for a top searched keyword on Google.

Now, if there are pages that does not show up on Google search results or indexed pages, here’s a list of things that you’ve to check to fix it.

• Check for incoming links from other pages on the site. If they aren’t there, link it!
• Check for meta tags on the headers, you might have used a plugin with the wrong options or accidentally used the “no follow” tag.
• Check if there are other pages on your site that has a similar title and content, it might be seen as duplicate content. Change the title/content and try linking it from other pages tha are well indexed.
• Check if you’ve submitted the same content on the page to ezinearticles.com or any other site, if the search engines found the “other” pages first, they’d simply tag you as duplicate page.
• Check if the page is properly indexed on Google webmasters (check for broken links etc).

If you thought that Google found your website around the dates that you launched it, there is a good chance that you wrong. Google finds a page/website through links, and that’s when they’ll set your “birth date” as. So if you were checking your competitors domain name age, ouch…time to recheck!

How to find out your birthdate on Google?

Try this search (with your domain of course) and find out when Google indexed you. You can see it on the left hand side of the search.

Now try the same with your competition or competing keywords. Do you see a pattern?
Yes, the top ranking ones were found first.

So, who said Google is dumb and can’t fix duplicate content.

Out of experience? Well, I don’t know, but looked like everyone is so interested in talking about getting successful on Twitter. Well, I followed many of them and, guess what? They enlightened me on the below points. With due courtesy to all of them….

1. Please follow your followers
   Or guess what happens? Your followers would be responding to your tweet and they never hear back from you. Okay, you are a pro - master - guru, blah blah…fine..but that doesn’t mean that you won’t talk or reply. Does it ?
2. Please don’t even dare say “Good Morning” or “Good Evening” or even “Good night”
   Cos, the 300ish guys subscribed to your tweet is not from your neighborhood, they’re most likely from the other end of the world. They may think you’re nuts!
3. Please try to respond, or be a bot
   I can’t think of a good reason why one wouldn’t respond. Unless it’s a bot using your profile. I’ve seen Digg bots (some of them even have the profile pic of that of a robot), but twitter bots? Come on…that’s disgusting!
4. Twitter is not a place to yawn..come’on now for God sake!
   Thou shall not yawn, or do any of those organic sounds. Remember, though you’re on your bed, the world’s watching you..err…listening to you.
5. Be logical
   This is tough to explain. Example? Here goes…

   Mr. X : I’m going out for a movie - Dark Knight.
   Mr. Y : @Mr.X - Man, that’s a cool movie. Yaay!

   (After 30 mins….)

   Mr. X : Just woke up..had coffee, off to Gym !
   Mr. Y : @Mr.X huh??

Makes sense?

Here’s another of the “Quick SEO Tips” series. Ten things to keep in mind while posting images on blogs.

1. Include the keyword in your image name.
   Ex:- Instead of “DSC1234.jpg” it’s better to name it as “Make-money-online.jpg”
2. Never use characters/spaces in filenames as they will be encoded.
   Ex: - Instead of “DSC%20123cat.jpg” it’s better to name it “DSC-123cat.jpg”
3. Use the ALT tags.
   ALT tags are recommended, though their usage is debated. Let’s put it this way. It may not give you a good push in the SERPS, but definitely, you don’t want to lose an opportunity.
4. Use the “Title” attributes.
   Title attributes are a great way to add meaningful information about the images. Use it.
   Ex:- Title=”Yellow cat sitting on the wall.” P.S - Don’t forget the image search traffic.
5. Place the image within ample text.
   So that, engines can crawl the text and make out what the image is about, if at all the ALT tags, filenames and TITLE attributes aren’t available.
6. Do not use the same ALT tags for two or more images on the same page.
7. Do not use the same TITLE attributes for two or more images on the same page/site. It appears artificial.
8. If possible, place the image amidst text ad not before or after it.

Forget long term link building strategies, they take a long time after all. Who’d wait for so long?
Here are five quick things you can do to get some cool links, the smart way!

1. Create wallpapers of your site and submit to wallpaper directories(most of the them allow linkbacks)
   Do a google search and find out the list of sites. Example.

2. Write articles and submit to ezine articles (the old grandpa).
3. Add links to blogrolls. Many of them are link exchanges, in those cases, do a three-way link exchange with your partner sites.
   Find sites that accept linkbacks by googling them down. Example.
4. Guest blog at various blogs.
   Most them offer links to author sites.
   Find them out by doing a similar search.
5. Submit ringtones to sites and get links back to your site.
   Find the sites here with a similar search.

P.S - Here on, there will be quick articles on DailySEOblog (like this), that will feature small, power packed, capsule information on SEO. No blabbering, no frills, just pure gyan. Hope you’ll like it. They’ll be called “SEO Quick Tips” and you can subscribe to themhere.

There is no doubt that one of the differences in a power user on any social media (Digg, SU or delicious) and a normal wannabe user is his access to exclusive tools. Now, tools are available for everyone but not all uses all of them, or we are selectively comfortable with a few that we ignore the rest.
Experts say that they use the power tools wisely, beyond the ordinary use and that’s the reason why they are able to perform better than the normal user.
So now you know why a top Digg user has more number of Diggs than you?

1 - Shareaholic plugin for Firefox

Requires - Firefox browser and some quick fingers
One of the most powerful plugins available for free today, Shareaholic adds a small button to the browser that you can use the page you are on currently to submit to a variety of social media sites. you can customize the number of sites from the list of available ones, but the most interesting and useful feature is - when you roll over the button, it will show you the current status of the page on the social media. Ex: If the page has been already submitted to Digg, then while rolling over it shows the number of diggs, or if it’s delicious, it shows the number of saves! So you save time in actually visiting the site and finding out the numbers yourself.

2 - Delicious Bookmarks

Requires - Firefox plugin and some quick fingers
This tool adds a col sidebar that displays your delicious bookmarks with their stats, so that you can use it for reference. A must have for all delicious fans.

3 - Twitterbar
Requires - Firefox browser
TwitterBar allows you to post to Twitter from Firefox’s address bar. A
small unobtrusive grey icon sits to the right of your address bar;
clicking on it will post your tweet, and you can hover your mouse over
it to see how many characters you have left.

4 - Digg Sidebar

Requires - Firefox browser and a Digg account

TwitterBar allows you to post to Twitter from Firefox’s address bar. A
small unobtrusive grey icon sits to the right of your address bar;
clicking on it will post your tweet, and you can hover your mouse over
it to see how many characters you have left.

5 - Friendfeed Groups - Greasemonky script

Requires - Greasemonkey and lot of friends
This is a Greasemonkey script, that lets you sort your feeds by creating groups in your friendfeed. Very useful if you have lot of friends to sort and follow.

6 - Dgg Washer script

Requires - Greasemonkey and verocious appetite for diggs
This is a Greasemonkey script, that lets you avoid stories based on a keyword on Digg.

7 - Bookmarker

Requires - Accounts with all social bookmarking sites

Compare and enjoy the power of social bookmarking, save and manage all
your bookmarks online. (Supported services: del.icio.us, digg.com,
diigo.com, ma.gnolia.com, google.com, mister-wong.de, netvouz.com,
linkarena.com, alltagz.de, bobrdobr.ru). Now that’s quite a list.

8 - Dugg it Greasemonkey script

Requires - Greasemonkey and verocious appetite for diggs

This is a Greasemonkey script, that lets you avoid already read stories on Digg.com

9 - Delicious Tags Everywhere

Requires a voracious appetite for tagging and Firefox
This is a Firefox plugins that shows you Delicious tags on every story on every site. Not an ideal plugin for people who are not comfy with tagging. But power users have admitted that tagging is a great thing to do as it helps improve your rankings on social media sites. So if you want to do more tagging, this is the damn plugin for you.

10 - Ultimate Facebook plugin

Requires - Firefox and Facebook

UltimateFacebook makes Facebook easier and more fun to use. It
simplifies the way you (as a user) can move through Facebook’s core
features, removing as many as 2-3 clicks from simple things like
sending messages, writing on walls, viewing friends, etc.

11 - Digg Comment wader plugin

Requires - Firefox
Digg Comment Spotlight does exactly what its name hints, it spots
comments that other readers have taken the time to Digg, allowing you
to easily wade through 100’s of comments in an article.

12 - Socialphile Firefox plugin

Requires Firefox
Socialphile assists users with comfortable searching
(Google, Yahoo, MSN, Google News) based on ranking of each search
result at social news websites like Digg.com

13 - Digg Thumbs

Requires - Extensive Digg usage and Firefox
This firefox plugin shows a thumbnail of the website adjacent to the story over at Digg.
This is very useful especially when I want to check if the site I’m digging is authentic or not. Sometimes the title of the story may be very yummy, but the site looks crappy on visiting. Saves quite a lot of time here.

14 - Propeller Friends activity

Requires - Firefox and Propeller account
The Friends’ Activity Sidebar (FAS) extension helps you keep tabs on
what stories your Propeller.com friends are submitting, commenting, and
voting on. This is interesting because not many people like to spend time on Propeller like Digg, so a notifier does the right job, of alerting you of interesting stories and avoiding the rest.

15 - Bookmark every Digg

Requires - Digg and other social media accounts + Greasemonkey
This Greasemonkey script shows up all the (customizable) other social media sites submission links next to every Digg story. Very useful if you want to submit the Digg story to another social media site on a regular basis, extensively.

16 - Dashblog

Requires - Firefox and Twitter
This is a personal favorite of mine. Dashblog is a FF extension where you can clip images/text or any data from any webpage to your blog(WP,Blogspot) or Twitter using this neat plugin.

17 - Long Text on Twitter

Requires - Twitter account and Firefox
If you want to publish status on Twitter which are beyond the 130 character limit, then you better install this extension. Enough said.

So there you have it, a total of 17 plugins and tool that will help increase your productivity on the traffic generating social media channels like Digg, SU and Twitter. Some of them may look dumb and staring at your face, but believe me it’s how you use them that matters. For an expert even the stupidest tool is a weapon !

Was going through some forums and found that there are quite some annoying number of questions being asked about “nofollow” tags and their inclusion to blogs. One dude was asking if there’s anything wrong in nofollowing every link from his blog and another guy was asking if he should nofollow only the wikipedia links.
Here’s my opinions on the use of nofollow tags and how to romance them.

Well, basically the “nofollow” tag is a…well tag/attribute that can be applied to hyper links and pages.
i) NOFOLLOW meta tags are used to tell the search engines whether to crawl a page or not.
ii) NOFOLLOW attributes (also called tags) on hyperinks are used to tell search engines whether to crawl/follow a hyperlink.

So essentially, NOFOLLOW is like the stop signal the policeman holds, to control traffic.

When should you use NOFOLLOW tags and when should you not use it? (The romance part comes later..)

Image credits - AleBonvini

How and when to use a NOFOLLOW meta tag.

As I told you NOFOLLOW meta tags are used in the meta section (just like the meta description and keywords tag).
You can specifically add them on to the meta section of a page, to tell the search engines whether to crawl that page or not. Usually, they are used when you don’t want the page to be crawled, otherwise you simply leave it as such. No use at all.

Here’s the format.

<html>
<head>
<title>...</title>
<META NAME="ROBOTS" CONTENT="NOINDEX, NOFOLLOW"></head>

Check this website for more details on the format.

Here as you can see there are two options available.

One - NOINDEX - Tells the page that this page is not to be indexed.
Two - NOFOLLOW - Tells that the links(all of them) on this page should not be indexed but the content read.

This tag is used specifically when the content of the page poses a threat to the site overall, either because of it’s i) Repetitive nature/Duplicate content or it’s ii) Objectionable content

For example, on a wordpress installation, there are numerous situations where duplicate content can crop up. In these cases, the noindex, and nofollow meta tags can be used successfully. This is exactly what the Platinum SEO plugin does.

How and when to use NOFOLLOW tag on links.
The nofollow attribute (commonly referred to as nofollow tags) given to hyperlinks are commonly used to suggest whether or not to crawl them.

Format : - <a href="linkhere"rel=”nofollow”>Anchor text</a>

Situations when they are used.

1. When there are numerous number of links on the page
   When there are numerous amount of links on a page, it dilutes the pagerank and authority of the page (for younger websites mainly). In such cases, it is wise to limit the number of outgoing links to atleast match with the number of incoming links or if there are no incoming links, keeo them to a minimum.
   To do so, you can use the NOFOLLOW attribute to block the spiders crawling certain number of external links.
2. When the site linked to is of objectionable content
   Sometimes, you might have to link to a website for reference purposes, but the content of that website might have objectionable content like Textlinkads, which may negatively harm your reputation. In these cases you can selectively NOFOLLOW the links.
3. When the number of incoming links to a page is minimal
   Sometimes, you may have a fairly new website and you are gathering up all your resources like incoming links to gain a good page rank next update. These times, you might want to link to only valid and authority websites and link very scarcely to other websites. Here again, nofollowing the “other” websites will save you page rank and google juice.
   
   
4. When you are deliberately crafting page rank
   Crafting page rank is a phenomenon seen widely used by SEOs to ensure “almost” equal weightage and page ranks to internal pages of a website, by crafting a particular site structure and driving links to them. Although this is a theoretically superb idea, many have disagreements to it including Google. In this scenario too, NOFOLLOW attributes are used to drive link juice to particular directions and not let it go the normal way.

What you shouldn’t do with NOFOLLOW tags and attributes.

1. Never use it to block all links on a page unless you are sure what you are doing.
2. Never use NOFOLLOW on all links without any criteria (like plugins).
3. Be careful when using meta tag automators, or you may end up using no index on important pages.