There are of course a bunch of basic SEO elements that you should check your site for occasionally like the W3C validation, redirect errors, sitemap generation errors etc. These crop up unknowingly and are identified only when a problem occurs. Example - If you are using the All in One SEO plugin, in the settings there is an option to specify the xml file template. Now, if you had uploaded the SEO plugin to a directory after renaming it, then chances are that the template fails to load and your sitemap will be broken. Where as if you upload the plugin directory without renaming it, then there won’t be errors. This happened to me sometime back with another site of mine.

So, basic errors like this one goes unnoticed and often requires checks. A few things that you mus check regularly are,

1 - The sitemap of course
Check for updates, frequency set, unwanted URLS etc, Rebuild the sitemap if updates have not been made, check the sitemap accessing from the Google webmasters, if template is broken, check the folder name on FTP and suggest the right URL.

2 - Broken links
Check for broken links on Webmasters, if you find them, download the entire table and correct them by either suggesting a 301 redirect or pulling them down from the site.

3 - Titles
You know that titles are crucial, so checke them for duplications and wrong code. Sometimes, there could occur a clash between the theme code and plugins that even double entries occur in some cases. You might want to do a bit of code tweaking to correct it.

4 - Meta headers
Of course, meta headers like description and keywords are not an y longer going to help you in deciding your SERPs ranks, but the meta description tag is very important as it decides the “clickability” on the SERPs. Assuming that your site appears on teh SERPs in the first or second age, if people have to click it, the meta description or the snippet should be interesting and compelling. So make sure you don’t end up using the same meta description for all posts, instead make it exclusive for each article.

5 - Typos in URLs
Well, I can’t surely tell if they are errors or not because some bloggers say that they have good traffic coming from typos. But for the guys who wants to have things in place, make sure you check out your site listings on the SERPs with the “site:” search and find out typos on URLs. If there are typos, make sure you give a redirect on the old URL to the new one, before the new one is updated on Google index.

6 - Dual H1 headers etc
Sometimes due to your theme options, there could occur two or more H1 tags on a single page which is not good. It is always advice able to use the standard format of H1, H2, H3…H4 according to decreasing priority of text. H1’s generally occur only once on a page, but duplication of the rest are fine.

7 - Robots.txt exclusions
Sometimes even though we might carefully use the robots file to exclude files and folders, due to continuous usage there might be files and articles we wrongly placed. Like placing an article into a category that was once banned by the robots file. It is advised to check the robots.txt file once a while for indexing issues.

8 - Inline style v/s Stylesheet clash
We all have issues with stylesheets (at least I do) and sometimes we all use inline styling to get things fixed. Excessive use of inline styling can lead to a bloated code and this might result in bigger file size and cross browser incompatibilities. It is advised not to use inline styling a lot, and if there are particular codes that you’ve been using, try to incorporate into the stylesheet.

9 - Redirect Issues
This is not very common but happens with guys who have done a lot of moving around from hosts and deal with Apache mod redirects. Although 301 redirects are fine, usage of generalized code for redirect can cause unwanted redirect issues on articles that came later. Like a 301 redirect issued to all URLs in one category, that redirects all articles that came past the redirect.

You can either do these checks manually or use the numerous site validation and SEO check tools available online. I use this tool, for basic checks and of course the Google Webmasters console occasionally.

Been speaking to a young blogger who asked me, “Isn’t all blogspot blogs owned by Google, so why don’t they promote it up the SERPs?”

We’ll I’d be running out of job in that case, and I’m glad it’s not. But the answer is that Google wants an accurately indexed data that’s completely based on relevancy. It does want to show up the most relevant site/sites based on a keyword, be it on Google or Yahoo network. So it’s the accuracy and relevance that takes the front seat (and all the rest of them too), well nothing else matters to be honest. And Google has an algorithm that’s always updating to flush out irrelevant results while updating with the most precise and accurate information.

So, in the flurry of blogs, how can one make sure that his website meets the right criteria for relevancy that it gets the right visibility on the search engines including Google?

Clearly, the answer has to break out of H1 tags, and Keyword densities to more complex SEO and SM strategies.

So imagine you have a very young blog or a pretty old blog with great content. Somehow, you’ve not been able to get the right kind of visibility and movement.

You are there on the Google index but not at the first page.
You have great content but does not get lot of comments for it.

Let me suggest you a simple ten step strategy that will catapult your site to getting the right traffic and the right search engine love. I’ll make sure I don’t use any jargons, if at all something in comprehensible creeps in, feel free to comment for all your doubts.

Step 1 - Get a clean, error free, SE optimised backend
This is the foundation of your entire empire. So take lot of time analyzing and tweaking it. Whatever you do today is an investment for the future and if you are not doing it right today, you can never do it. Get a complete search engine friendly and optimised theme/design/platform. Once you set it right, make sure you forget about it and you’re not going to waste time on it anymore. So do it once and for all.

Step 2 - Find out how strong your competition is
Next, find out with whom you are sharing the same domain with. I don’t want to call this competition, because who knows, at one point of time they simply won’t be. So find out who are the big players already there in your domain, if they are too big, find out a niche, or else study your competition thoroughly. Find out what they are doing, how good and how bad. Many a times, when you are clueless about where to start, just take advantage of your competition and take inspiration from them. Do what they are doing - but in a better way, don’t ape them. The goal is to cover whatever they’ve done in a better and fresh way. Don’t rush with it, but plan accordingly. For example, say you have a big blog in the same domain with 360 articles to their credit. Plan on writing 4 posts per day and in three months you’ll be better than him.

Step 3 - Find out where and how big your market is
Also, find out who else are you competing with, and how big the audience is for all of them collectively. If there are five great blogs in the same domain that you wanted to start, remember that all the subscribers to all the five blogs is what you want. And it doesn’t mean that you have five guys to fight with, the audience on all the blogs would be the same, and you just need to beat one guy and you’re up there. Finding out how big your market is really important as you don’t want to spent your time and energy on something that isn’t there at all.

Step 4 - Understand your market and audience
Next up, find out what your audience behavior is. What type of content do they like, and what do they hate. What would they buy and what would they deny? Carefully analyzing your competition will answer many of those doubts. Pick up clues from it and mark them down as your core values. You will only leverage on those kind of topics and products. This ensures zero wastage of resources and maximum returns from your efforts.

Step 5 - Find out where the demand is, and make it your core competency
Now, that you know whom you are catering to and whom you are competing with, find out where the demand lies. This is all about finding new opportunities. Your competition might not have been doing this, but while you do your homework, you can easily find out what’s missing in the market. Once you find this out, plan ahead on how and what tool you are going to use to deliver, to it precisely. Now, this would’ve given you a clear idea on what you need to do when you start and what your core competencies should be.

Step 6 - Discover what you can deliver - Stretch
Now that you know what your product is and what your core competency is, find out ways to deliver it. Your competition churns out 5 articles daily? Then you got to do 10 posts a day and that too with all the targeted data we found from the above points. This initial stretch work you do will give you a great push that will out you in top gear.

Step 7 - Raise your quality bar, Increase your time spent
Now, while you do the stretch work, it is quite possible that you lose focus or face lethargy. For this raise your quality scores. Try to exceptionally well, churn out exclusive stories that none has done before. And people will instantly recognize you.

Step 8 - Indulge in networking, utilize it
You cannot win alone. All the big guys are already up there, and have a huge fan following. If you have to do something similar, with less time in hand, the only thing you can do is contribute to others, as many as possible, and try to network with more. Write down somewhere in your mind that you are not here to benefit from others but to help them win. But as you try and help others more, your network will grow without your knowledge. The only way to succeed in social networks is by contributing more to it. It is directly proportional.

Step 9 - Listen to feedbacks and tweak yourself
Now while you are at it going full throttle, spare some time for feedback. Feedback helps you to check if you are in the right path or not. Listen to criticisms and suggestions, share it with others and filter out the weeds. If a particular element in your template code is creating problems with the user, tweak it. Do this constantly over a period of time and at one point of time you’ll get only the weeds you filtered out earlier. You know what to do with it.

Step 10 - Remain consistent at whatever you are today
That brings us to a full circle. Now go to step 1 and check if you are in the same domain or nearing it to the competition. If you notice any remarkable changes, like in SERPs that means you are doing things right. The only thing that you have to keep doing is be consistent on your model. Keep researching on niches and keep delivering articles that are better i quality to your competition.

Well, the above said points are strategies that will help you catapult your product/service/blog to the major leagues if you are starting new within a smaller time period. I haven’t mentioned the technical side here, because it will differ on a case to case basis and cannot be generalized. What strategy you pick depends largely on what domain you are in and what competition you are facing, so that’s up to you.

If you are looking for examples on how this 10 step model works, here’s a client of mine called Great Wraps. They are one of the first sandwich franchise chain in America. Based in Atlanta, Greatwraps had a pretty cool website(beware of the flash stuff, it’ll start making funny sounds), but they somehow couldn’t make it to the top of SERPs, which even some late comers made it to. I had worked on this site for a while now, and we are only about quarter past the total efforts and we are making good progress. For keywords that we weren’t ranking at all for, we are now on the first page or the second page. That’s a good start according to me. Apart from the keywords, it’s the quality of content and the clarity in what you want that will make your path to success clear. With a good vision and planned strategies like the 10 step one above, you can hit the sweet spots wasting zero energy and time. So, start with the low lying fruits today.

What is a ‘Nofollow’ link attribute? Is it the same as ‘Nofollow’ meta tag?
Many of us often get confused with this question. Most of whom I ask this question to believe that there is only one Nofollow tag. One that’s got to do with the links. I’m inclined to believe that there are two usages of the nofollow tag.

One - The Meta Nofollow “tag” and..
Two - The Nofollow link attribute..

Technically the nofollow tag does a basic function. Instruct the search engines how they should value a particular link, by either following it or not. Despite the command, search engines behave differently in understanding the Nofollow tag.

The Nofollow Link attribute
A nofollow link attribute is used on selected links by adding the rel=”nofollow” attribute to it.
As far as Google is concerned, it does follow the link (technically) but does not indexes the linked pages content or passes any value to it (link juice or page rank). In effect, the linked page is irrelevant to Google.
Format Example: <a href=”http://www.dailyseoblog.com” rel=”nofollow”>Anchor Text</a>

The Nofollow meta tag
This meta tag is added onto a page instructing the search engines to clearly stay away from all the search content and/or the links on that page.
Format Example: <meta name=”robots” content=”noindex,nofollow”>
There are two factors specified here. One- the content and second the links.
Noindex attribute means none of the content on the page will be indexed by the search engines (May be read but not saved or remembered).
Nofollow attribute specifies that all the links on the page must be ignored and not valued for.
(If the page is to be indexed,and links ignored then the attributes can be content=”index,nofollow”)

When and How to use the Nofollow link attribute on blogs - The Good practices
If you are on Wordpress, by default all the user generated links (comment area) are nofollowed unless you modify the code or use a nofollow remover plugin.

1. Use nofollow on sponsored links or advertisers
   Sponsors or advertisements on the site may not be relevant to your sites content all the time, so it’s better to nofollow them and let the advertiser know why you’re doing it.
2. Use nofollow on comments
   Comments can throw up any number of completely unrelated links, and is a major concern to your authenticity. While removing nofollow on comments will encourage comments, it largely affects the quality of content on your site.
3. Do not use nofollow on all the links on a page if content is genuine
   Some bloggers believe that they can save all the google link juice coming into their website by not letting any of it go to external websites, by nofollowing them. This is not true. Linking to external sites will not affect your pagerank and is purely based on who links to you. I’d say it’s foolish and selfish not linking to any external website.
4. If there are pages or information you don’t want to appear on Google, use meta nofollow tags
   Be wise. There might be some content on the website like duplicate content, or some files/pdf’s that you want not to appear on Google index. Use nofollow in these cases wisely.
   
5. Use nofollow on external links that are not related to your sites content
   When linking to websites for reference, check if the sites content matches with your’s or compliments your sites content. If it does not, and have the possibility of falling into bad neighborhood, it’s good to nofollow those links.

Essentially, the selective use of Nofollow is encouraged because it tells Google that you respect their algorithm and will do all that you can to support and not corrupt it in any way.
While it is possible for us to completely ignore this, and link to anyone and everyone you find interesting, there is nothing wrong as Google has it’s own ways of finding out if a website is good/bad/ugly and does not depend on one particular website.
But as a good practice, it’s always good to stick to good networks and selectively allow/disallow links so that you gather the authority and authenticity as you move along.

More information on how differently Google, Yahoo and Live sees nofollow tags, check this article.

But that’s the end of it. The basis UI is the same and the user experience average.
Delicious has a new UI and revamped look. Check it out.
Yes, there are some more features that they claim to have, which will help your bookmarks to organize better and align in groups. The hottest and the most popular tags are also seen on the homepage now, (wasn’t it there earlier too?).

I think that’s a good way to “keyword research”

But despite the “new features” I’m delighted to see the new interface design as it’s looking fresh and less cluttered now. Guess more people will be using Delicious from now on.

Hey.. you had an account long ago right? Recover the password and log on.

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).

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

Include the keyword in your image name.

Ex:- Instead of "DSC1234.jpg" it’s better to name it as "Make-money-online.jpg"

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"

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.

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.

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.

Do not use the same ALT tags for two or more images on the same page

Do not use the same TITLE attributes

..for two or more images on the same page/site. It appears artificial.

If possible, place the image amidst the textual content

Cleverly embedded in it and not before or after it.

Name the folders with your keyword variants in place

Ex: – Instead of wp-content/uploads/DSC00123.jpg try placing it in keyword1/variant/filename.jpg

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.

Somebody had to do it and Rajesh from Tech Bliss Online is the man to do it. Even though All in One SEO was the most downloaded plugin, I wasn’t quite impressed by it’s functions. Sure it took care of the basic functions, but it wasn’t versatile. There were so many other functions and features a real SEO plugin had to take care of, AllinOne SEO ignored many of them. There were some better plugins available like the Headspace one, but it was too complicated for new users of Wordpress.

Rajesh has the new Platinum plugin now, which is an improvised version of the AllinOne SEO plugin. It does everything that AllinOne was doing and also some extra cool features. I’d say that this one is more closer to the real SEO plugin I was talking about. It takes care of pretty much everything, a bit more advanced than a basic SEO plugin but easy to use as well.

Here are the features.

• Optimized Post and Page Titles for search engines - Present in AllinOne SEO
• Generates all SEO relevant META tags automatically - Present in AllinOne SEO
• Helps you avoid duplicate content - Present in AllinOne SEO
• Lets you override any title and set any META description and META keywords, for any post or page - Present in AllinOne SEO
• Compatible with most other plugins, like Auto Meta, Ultimate Tag
  Warrior and others.However you may have to disable All in One SEO pack
• You don’t have to fear changing permalinks. If you are not
  satisfied with the current permalink, change it through
  Settings–>Permalinks in your admin panel, without worrying about
  loss of Page rank or google penalty.Platinum SEO plugin will take care
  of issuing a 301 redirect to the new location.This is a new essential
  feature, not present in All in one SEO - Absent in AllinOne SEO
• Add index, noindex, follow or nofollow, noarchive, nosnippet,
  noodp, noydir meta tags to any post/page.These options are not
  available in All in one SEO Pack.Find out why this option to set
  post/page level Meta Robots Tag useful? - Absent in AllinOne SEO

The best part of the plugin is that it helps you to block certain pages like category, tags or any posts by Google, Yahoo and search engines by including “no index” tags at these specified pages/posts.
You don’t have to tweak Robots.txt hereafter, just select from the page as to which page/caegory is to be blocked or no indexed and the plugin does it beautifully.

So far I haven’t come across any glitches but the good thing is that unlike AllinOne SEO, Rajesh is available for support on this plugin. I would rate it a 4 our of 5 !

If you are on Stumbleupon, there’s no chance that you missed Babychen Mathew a.k.a Dancewithshadows. He is the only Indian to reach the top stumblers list yet. He’s from Delhi, and lives a life completely online. Dancewithshadows.com is his website.

I managed to catch up with him on chat to interview finding out his experience with stumbleupon, tips and tricks he’d like to share with us and help in ensuring a better stumbling experience.

We discussed everything from starting off, building your community on SU, finding good friends, sharing and reviewing, the goods and bads of stumbling, the do’s and dont’s, and some SU secrets from Babychen’s experience. Hope you will like it.

Mani Karthik: So you are the only top stumbler from India as of now. How do you feel?
Babychen Mathew: Hmm, good, of course. I never thought about it that way till I got your message!
Babychen Mathew: I keep trying to find other Indians and make friends with them though all the time!

Mani Karthik: So how did you start with stumbleupon and other social media?
Babychen Mathew: I started with digg, and while trying to learn about digg, heard about SU for the first time. Generally i hate all toolbars, so stayed away for a while. When I finally tried it out, I was interested in the promise of SU that it will throw up sites which you like. Seemed to work better as I used it more, so kept using it and trying to learn a bit every day. I liked the fact that SU is not obsessed about politics, and not as negative as Digg is!

Mani Karthik: I agree. So where do you like better now. SU or Digg?
Mani Karthik: And when did you start with SU?
Babychen Mathew: for breaking news, I prefer digg anyday. Or for top ten lists. Digg seems to be obsessed with top tens, and I dont mind much. And of course, a front page on digg can send you an amazing amount of traffic - so I have to keep a foot there for the future for my own site. And for networking with those who are active in social media, digg is good as everyone is there.

Babychen Mathew: started with SU long time back…
Babychen Mathew: forgot all about it (the general negativity towards all toolbars!)
Babychen Mathew: and then came back to it
Babychen Mathew: I think I started SU almost 2 years back, though I have really been active only in the last one year

Mani Karthik: I must agree. Tell me how does your daily routine look like online? Many people have the idea that power users are geeks who sit rooted in front of their PCs, hours together, and fail to get a life. What’s your thoughts?
Babychen Mathew: Hmm. I am afraid I belong to that category too! But most of my time is spent on my own site, and social media stuff keeps happening in other Firefox tabs! Yes, I spent most of my waking hours in front of the PC, but I spent a lot of time reading news (past journalist background!), reading books and watching TV and going out for something or the other once daily for a break.
Babychen Mathew: as i work from home, I have to invent reasons to go out though

Mani Karthik: Do you use any tweaks for SU? Greasemoneky / Scripts anything?
Babychen Mathew: For SU, none at all. I am happy with stumbling, thumbing up, reviewing and adding tags.

Mani Karthik: Great. So, what do you think are the type of articles that are adored by the SU crowd?
Babychen Mathew: from what I have seen, serious articles don’t do well in SU as far as popularity is concerned. The SU users seem to love pictures (even when they are dupes!) and funnys stuff as long as it has pics. My feelign so far is that almost any topic will do much better if it has interesting pics on it, and the visitors can get a grip on the story at one look. So I guess big fonts and pics should do it for any topic. There is a lot of interest in Bizarre, Science, Gadgets and humor from what I see, but I have seen Su stories going popular from every topic. Pics are critical, I think - more chances of people photoblogging your stuff then.

Mani Karthik: I agree and SU gives a lot of cool pics if you are bored.
Babychen Mathew: yea.

Mani Karthik: Do you agree to the idea of using SU to leverage traffic to websites?
Babychen Mathew: Why not. Every available venue on the Net (or in the real world) will always be used commercially, there is nothing wrong with that. But you would get SU traffic only if your content is good - and appeals to the sensibilities of the SU user. I have come across several sites which I think are using SU for traffic - no harm in that!

Mani Karthik: I agree. So what are the best practices for a newbie to get popular on SU? Or shall I say what will make him powerful to thumbs up a site and give thousands of traffic to it?
Babychen Mathew: hmm.. one important thing about SU is - you don’t need to be a top stumbler to send a lot of traffic to a website. That depends to a large extent on your network of friends. the top stumblers page shows who contributes more to SU (through discoveries, activity, tags, reviews) and usually top stumblers have big networks of friends too - but you really don’t need that. There are stumblers who have been around for long and never made it to the top stumblers page I think.
Babychen Mathew: Traffic is more a function of your network and the topic you are stumbling upon…
Babychen Mathew: For newbies though
Babychen Mathew: the immediate thing I would suggest is to get active. Stumble a lot, search for people who are likely to share your interests, add them and message them. Do not beg for thumbs and traffic the moment you join!
Babychen Mathew: Most newbies have no patience, and want to do it all in a week!
Mani Karthik: I agree.
Babychen Mathew: If you give it time and you are loyal to your stumbling, friends and networks are not a problem at all.

Mani Karthik: I Agree. So your network matters more than anything. so would I be doing the right thing if I keep on adding anyone I see on SU?
Babychen Mathew: of course not. Add only active stumblers who seem to like topics you are interested in too. Adding someone as a mutual friend - what I do is to add someone, watch their activity for a while, and if they are not active or are here only for marketing their own websites, remove them. However, If I find that someone contributes a lot to SU, and is meanwhile trying to get some traffic to his own site, I don’t mind that at all.
Mani Karthik: I get it and completely agree.
Babychen Mathew: I would strongly advice - if anyone doesn’t look like stumbling actively, remove him immediately!
Babychen Mathew: Like all social media, in th end, you have to give it more than you get.

Mani Karthik: Yes, makes sense. It works more like MLM isn’t it? Inactive members are like cancer. Right?
Babychen Mathew: Well, comparing MLM to SU … I wouldn’t do that! But inactive memebers - why add them as friends anyway? There is no point to it. The same way, adding top stumblers only as your friends - there is not much point to it either - they often can’t add you back as they have reached their 200 mutual friends limit!
Mani Karthik: That’s right.

Babychen Mathew: I would yes, you really cant MLM to SU - as MLM is purely about marketing, but in SU, it can never work unless you give it more than you take.
Mani Karthik: You are right.

Mani Karthik: How are the groups in SU doing? I’ve seen that many are not really active. Are they any good joining them?
Babychen Mathew: Some SU groups seem to be very active. And probably it is a good place to find new friends. However, I have never been active in any groups at all.

Mani Karthik: What do you think is the best way to find similar minded folks on SU?
Babychen Mathew: When SU shows you a page and you really like the story or topic, click on the reviews icon on the toolbar and take a look at those who have reviewed it and given it a thumbs up. You will find a lot of like-minded folks there. You can also click directly on the tags you like on the Buzz page, check out the people who are actively stumbling your topics, visit their profiles and thumb up their fav stories.
Babychen Mathew: I sometimes keep checking the friends of my friends too - you find likeminded people there often!
Mani Karthik: That’s indeed a cool tip there.
Babychen Mathew: also, people are curious. Visit the page of someone you like and thumb up a few of theirs, and they are quite likely to come visit your page - and then if you want them to like you, make sure your own blog has quality stuff.

Mani Karthik: Correct.Are there any do’s and dont’s on SU, apart from the official ones. Anything from your experience that you want to share?
Babychen Mathew: Do’s - get active. Discover, review as much as possible. When you can’t thumb it up and tag it. When you can’t tag, at least thumb it up! Visit other stumblers profiles, send messages when you want to tell them something, add only like-minded people and very active stumblers.

Mani Karthik: How about the don’ts?
Babychen Mathew: Don’ts — please try not to stumble your own site. It is a dead giveaway that you are here for marketing, as oftne your name and site name are the same! I did that too. Do not vote up the same sites too often - regular stumbling of the same site seems to reduce your power to send traffic re: that site.

Mani Karthik: I agree. But what if you found many cool pics on flickr? They are all the same site. Any probs in this scenario?
Babychen Mathew: I don’t SU has a problem with that. See, they have an option already called Stumble Thru this site. So it wont matter much. Same for Youtube.
Babychen Mathew: However, Flickr is not dependant on the traffic you send them, so it doesnt matter. When yo continuously stumble the same small sites everyday, your vote keeps geting discounted more and more. But this is purely my observation, and I haven’t seen any strong data on this.

Mani Karthik: Right.

Mani Karthik: What are the SU secrets if at all you have any? (Apart from what you’ve said eaerlier)
Babychen Mathew: I am sure there are SU secrets! But I don’t know many, frankly. I became one of the top stumblers without trying, in fact. I was on a mission to get very active and see what would happen, and a friend told me I was listed there!
Mani Karthik: Shall we say white hat SU?
Babychen Mathew: lol
Babychen Mathew: yes! I mean, white hat SU as you call it is not difficult at all, so why bother with black hat stuff!
Babychen Mathew: The general environment in SU is positive, and its not like everyone has to destroy another site to get your site in front of more people - unlike in, say, Google!

Mani Karthik: True. I’m all for white hat methods.

Mani Karthik: Babychen if I were to ask you to put things into a formula, finally. how would you formulate it?
Babychen Mathew: Very difficult for me Mani. I am all for active stumbling and a bit of patience, and you will see results. I do not have a brain that can really do things systematically!
Babychen Mathew: I can tell you one thing though.
Babychen Mathew: When I get very active in SU for a few days, my Su top stumblers ranking goes up. I move up a few positions as I discover, review and tag more. When I slacken, I go down. The number of people who stumble sites I discovered go up when I am higher up (probaly more people visit my profile then) and when I am lower down in the listings, less people visit me and less people naturally thumb up what I discover.
Babychen Mathew: The take-away from that is, more activity in SU seems to directly affect your strength in SU.
Mani Karthik: Wicked stuff !
Babychen Mathew:

Mani Karthik: Some personal Qs. Which are the websites you run and what are they about?
Babychen Mathew: My main website is www.dancewithshadows.com It is a 4 year old site which now gets a substantial amount of traffic. It is a general news and features website with content from a varied number of topics. I have other experimental sites too but nothing as big as this
Babychen Mathew: The main traffic source for it though is not SU - it is google
Babychen Mathew: Su probably makes up 1-2 % of the traffic it gets.

Mani Karthik: Great. So you live a life completely ON
Babychen Mathew: guess so, but on the Net, you are always lagging behind someone, in something. For example, I have been an abject failure in Digg!
Mani Karthik: There is a piece of cake for everyone. You have yours.
Babychen Mathew: Agree completely! And choose the social media site that is appropriate for your personality - and be happy with it!

That’s it. Hope you got something to take home from it.