Scrapers/ Sploggers and copy cats are the names you’d never want to hear these days. Simply because every blog has a splogger who’s scraping your content from the RSS feeds everyday.There are lot of tools available to fight scrapers, and here’s a brand new plugin for Wordpress that’ll help you to fight scrapers.

It’s the categories Autolink plugin - which will help you to link automatically to your category whenever there’s a citation regarding the category in your articles.  

How this helps fight scraping?
This plugin will automatically link to your categories whenever there’s a mentiona bout the categories in your posts. Which means more interlinking of pages and categories. This is one excellent way to fight scrapers. When they scrape your content, the interlinks to your blog is also copied, which helps you to trace them out.

Here are some of the cool stumbles from my friends on StumbleUpon.

I’d be handpicking such cool stumbles and linking to the pages every week based on how interesting they are.
If you’d like your page stumbled and get a free review, do become my friend on SU, and drop me a message there.

1. The Power of Books from Mladenpenev, (Image)
2. 101 Wordpress themes  you might even not have heard of from One man’s goal, (List, Knowledge)
3. Michelle MacPhearson’s  article on the Importance of niche, (Knowledge)
4. Top 20 theological pick up lines NOT to use  from Reclaiming the Mind, (Humor)
5. Top 10 landing pages from the pros - from Seldomstatic,(List, Knowledge)
6. How to change your personal blog to a semi professional one - from Mohsin (Knowledge)
7. 12 Wordpress editors for bloggers - from I am Karthik (Knowledge)
8. Ten tips to boost your creativity from Stylish Labs (Knowledge)
9. Top 10 reasons from Yvonne telling us why you should not blog.(Humor, Knowledge)
10. How to build your brand through Social Media by Steven Bradley, (Knowledge)

These pages get a free stumble plus a good review at stumbleupon. Hope you will enjoy the pages as much as I loved stumbling them. Meanwhile, don’t hesitate if you want to stumble it.

Recently, I had blogged about the recent trend among bloggers going crazy over ad oriented themes. Many of them went for a custom design and incorporated lot of ad spaces in the layout. I think it all started with Tech Crunch, as reported by Darren here.

I found a free wordpress theme that is more or less similar to the ad oriented themes you find with the professional bloggers. It’s here at the Askgraphics site.

This one does have four 125×125 square boxes for ads and a little bit of tweaking can make it more like a custom made professional wordpress theme. The CSS is easy to tweak if you know the basics. Download it here.

Last day, at a seminar,  I was about to give a presentation on SEO, and to break the ice, I asked a question - “Which is the one website that you can’t afford to visit a day.” As obvious, I was expecting someone to answer - Google. But he came up with an answer that stunned me. I’ll never ask that question again. :D

What happens when you overdo things? You reach the dead end. Sometimes you get stuck just because you have too many ideas in your head, sometimes because you just had too much of what you were doing. All of us need a break at times, from blogging, from researching, from calculating and coding. Luckily, there are lot of junk sites available on the net, that will help you wile away your time, just like the guy who answered me.

Just managed to create a list of those sites which will help you get a break from your chores and at the same time give you that extra juice to be more productive at work. Whenever I face a readers block, I visit these sites and all the time, I manage to get an idea or two to blog from each of them.

	Windows Live Search Now this could come as a surprise right? The reason why I select Windows live search is that it throws up weird results unlike Google, so it’s kind of fun to play around with it. Type in whatever comes to your mind, hit search and it will give you the weirdest results.
	Digg It’s interesting to see the top stories on Digg. What I personally like is to study the pattern of the top dugg stories. Doing a search to find the top stories dugg, and the top stories buried itself will give you great insights on how to create popular articles on your blog.
	Go Daddy This guy is my favorite. When I search for a particular domain, it throws me the synonyms, the antonyms and everything in between. Most of the times, just to see the results, I do a interesting domain name search.
	Seth Godin Of course you know what the man is all about. But what I admire at his blog is his writing style and how he manages to inspire you with his outstanding persona. Read a few posts from his yester years and you’ll get some awesome ideas to blog.
	Smashing Magazine These guys rock! If you ever wanted to learn what “Digg oriented stories” are, you better learn from them. They have enormous list of the coolest stuff on the internet, that you can’t deny bookmarking them. A reference point anytime.
	Mashable Pete Cashmore, does it best! One of the top websites in the world, with a traffic any website will envy for. They have all the upcoming web 2.0 stuff with them and no one misses their radar. One stop shop for all the trendy and coolest stuff online.
	ProBlogger Everybody knows him. What I’m more interested in the site is it’s archives. A read at the archives provides you with insights on how to write articles the popular way! Reading the archives is like taking a tonic !
	Gizmodo Ever felt guilty of not being able to track the latest arrivals in the technology front? Just visit gizmodo and the next day you’ll be the winner at office chats and discussion boards. Valuable information, every first time. all the time!
	Stumble Upon Another favorite of mine,perfect to wile away your time, if you are running out of creative juices. One look and a few stumbles can rejuvenate you just like an ayurvedic massage !
	Flickr We all know this guys cool ! What I’m personally interested in is browsing the flickr collection through the flock browser. If possible I favorite a couple of pictures that I could use on the blog. Good one to wile away time, productively!
	Blogging pro Everything for wordpress is here, widgets,themes,plugins,tweaks,hacks and what not? Blogging pro has links to all the resources here, perfect for bloggers, who want to spice up their template every single day.
	Lifehacker Tips, tweaks and news on technology. Gina manages to put in every information possible, on the above updated daily. Perfect if you’d like to learn how to write a technology blog.
	Digital Point forums Got a domain to sell? Have doubt on installing a software, Got Adsense doubts? There are guys here waiting to answer you. It’s like the song by scorpions - You can check out any time you like, but you can never leave!
	Yahoo Answers A great place to check your proficiency in any selected category. People ask questions there, if you take the role of an advisor, people rank you for the quality of answers you provide. A great place for knowledge sharing!
	Deviant Art Great place to rejuvenate yourselves with some art. Got loads and loads of stuff you can stare at and feel the awe! If you had enough reading text stuff, this is the place to be. A visual treat for your eyes.
	Ouch My Toe Another personal favorite of mine. This guy knows what’s comedy to you and what’s not. I can bet that he’ll make you laugh in the very first read. A good place to start your day or  escape from that stressful day.
	Google Blog Search Another great place to find interesting blogs. If you’d like to read a bit more on your niche topic and see what the competition is like, you better go here and search for related stuff. No no technorati here!
	Wordpress plugins database If you are on wordpress, you’d want to visit this place too often. Because this is the official place for all the plugins and latest arrivals. If you love to tweak your template too often and play around installing new plugins, go for it!
	A list apart No idea what’s CSS? Bad design skills? Then it’s high time you visited this site. You don’t need to know CSS deeply, but this guy will help you get a taste about it the standard way. Can get a bit boring after a few visits, but worth a visit in a while.
	Web master world One of the oldest forums around. They have both amateurs and professionals as members so you might want to indulge in. What I like personally is the conflicts and debates there. You gain yourself some knowledge being involved in it.
	Lorelle on Wordpress If you are looking for quality articles on blogging then this is the place to be for some inspiration. There could be some repetition here and there, but overall a great place to be when running out of ideas to blog.
	Facebook My favorite social networking site. With it’s rich applications and great network of members, it’s a great place to network with professionals. Yes, there are lot of junk applications available but if you know how to maintain a professional and serious profile, this is the place to be.
	Top youtube videos If you’re looking for some fun, this site is the best choice. It lists the top videos on Youtube, under various categories and it’s updated regularly.
	Download Squad This is a blog about computer related stuff. There are lot of software review and download sites available but this one stands out because of it’s quality. A visit will give you access to some cool softwares and tools which you will miss otherwise.
	Webware This is a great site for updating yourself on web 2.0 application and it’s tweaks. If you don’t want to be lost out on the web 2.0 front, you better grab these guys feed. If you are running out of ideas to do review applications, this guy can help you.

This is why I like Keith. He comes up with Wordpress plugins that are the best in utility.

He has come up with a new WP plugin that will dramatically increase the number of RSS feed subscribers to your blog. Remember my earlier post, where we discussed about increasing the number of dormant (unverified) email subscribers by emailing them and reminding them to verify their subscription?

Honestly, that is a tedious process, especially when you have lots of unverified email subscribers. Keith’s new plugin will help you email all the unverified email subscribers and request them to verify the subscription.

I’ve already installed the plugin and it works fine. You can download the plugin here. (Installation instructions included)

Following discussions on the web about reducing duplicate content on wordpress blogs, found out a few interesting things. These are things that you may not notice and may assume is normal on a blog. You may even see probloggers practicing such mistakes on their blogs. Well they are unaware of it..but they sure are mistakes

An example is - categorizing an article/post in more than one category. This practice is bad for your blog as it increases the chances of duplicate content on your blog. So Google recommends (Matt Cutts does) that you categorize articlces/posts only in one category at a time. But I’ve seen Darren Rowse tag posts in more than one category on his blog. See his latest post on page rank today. Here he tags the post into two categories. Video Posts and Search Engine Optimization.

Although I believe that it’s good to tag the posts in your blog to one category, seeing top bloggers practice it the other way makes me think… where’s the line to be drawn?

Photo courtesy FotoRita

• Google introduces new robots.txt feature where robots.txt analysis tool is able to recognize sitemap declarations and relative urls better than before.
• Track where an user clicks on your webpage - WP plugin review by Daniel, Dailyblogtips.com
• How to stop people from stealing content on your blog - Kumiko’s tip to bloggers.
• 7 tips to blogging beginners - By Nirmal TV
• Search uploaded imags in the WP admin panel - “How to” article by Shankar Ganesh
• Three Wp security tips - By Arpit Jacob
• 10 ways to increase traffic - By Sizzledcore, pretty interesting one.

When robots (like the Googlebot) crawl your site, they begin by requesting http://example.com/robots.txt and checking it for special instructions. Use this plugin to create and edit your robots.txt file from within Wordpress (using Options -> Robots.txt).

We have already seen how to control robots crawling your website using optimised robots.txt useage and..Avoiding duplicate content using robots.txt already.

Whenever a user (or a robot, more likely) appends “robots.txt” to your blog URL (e.g. http://blog.example.com/robots.txt), this plugin will serve up the robots.txt file that you created in the Wordpress admin menu.

Indeed a great plugin for novices, who are unfamiliar with the robots file and how to manipulate it. Install this plugin for wordpress and you will have an easy control over what the robots should see in your blog and what they should not.

This wonderful plugin is from Adam Brown and you can download the plugin here or here

There are millions of options and you have only seconds to make a decision. Every internet surfer has a time bomb attached to his head while surfing.
You waste your time on a slow website, and you are missing valuable information on another website.

So nobody wants to wait for information, if you don’t provide it, there are other better sites that will provide the same or better information.
This makes it crucial for every blogger to optimize his pages, so that the information a surfer is searching is delivered within no time.

- Images.
Images are crucial. You can’t take them off completely.Ensuring that the images that appear on your page are of low file size and is optimized for web, will bring down the page load time drastically. You can make sure that your images are optimized using photoshop.
Open the image in photoshop and select Save> Save as optimized and it will give the best option to save the image suitable for web.

Replacing CSS with images images with CSS, is a better option to bring down your page load time. many of the tabs, buttons etc can be easily replaced in a more professional and clean looking way using CSS.

- Tables.
Many Wordpress templates uses tables in it’s code. nothing wrong but too many tables can increase your page load time and increase the size of your code.Try to code without tables and replacing them with CSS.It helps in bringing down the page load time.

- Scripts.
Scripts from other sources are a major factor in increasing page load time for blogs. Since all of us use lot of third party addons like Mybloglog, Directory buttons, Technorati buttons, Widgets etc - all of these widgets call javascript from their own websites which increase the page load time drastically. If possible, cut down on the number of widgets, and keep only the essential ones. Otherwise, don’t put all of them on the index page at least.

- Video Ads.
Vide ads are a hot favorite these days.There are many video ads available, but unfortunately, they increase the page load time very much.
To beat it - try to place the ads in the lower end section of the template. please don’t place them at the header or top part of the template.In such a case, the content will display only after the video is loaded - on dial up connections. This will screw up the user-experience.

- Youtube videos.
Another element what’s very commonly used among bloggers. Though YouTube videos are optimized for quick loading, placing one video each in every post is a big mistake. If you post one youtube video on each post(at various times) then it all ends up on the index home page, on all the posts.This will make things horrible, forget about page load time, it gives more than one option to the user and it will confuse them.So make sure that out of all the posts that appear on the index page,only one video appears.If you have set 4 posts to appear on the home page, let there be one youtube video in every 4 posts - not more than that.

- Flash Content.
Flash is becoming less popular these days but, there are blogs that use small flash elements on the header and side templates. Very bad.As an SEO, i hate flash elements, because they only present visually appealing elements which does not work for visitors(though they are appealing to you).They are not SEO friendly and should be avoided from the template if possible.Worse, they increase the page load time by double.So cut them off your template and keep it minimal.

So, keep these elements on your template to a minimum and rely more on CSS where ever possible, so that your visitors find it easy and a pleasant experience to navigate/use the site.

If you are wondering how to find the page load time of your site or blog, here is a cool tool that will help you find it element by element.It shows how each element of your page template affects your page load time on each internet connection speeds. If you are using a T1 connection, then this post may not look useful for you but before deciding, try accessing your blog on a dial up connection. Because that is the real testing ground.If the blog takes time on a dial up connection - you need to use this tool and trim down those frills.

Dear subscribers,
Today DailySEOblog will be moving to a new host and will be in a new look on Wordpress.

If you hadn’t noticed, DailySEOblog was on blogger(custom domain) until yesterday. Because of the limitations in the features, both in site administration and search engine optimization, it was a quick decision to move to WP. Thanks to Kevin who sponsored the hosting space for DailySEOblog.

There may be some glitches in the site for another 24 hours as the shift is not complete.Kindly excuse I’ll be adding plugins and testing a few styling on this cool template. (This is the BlogTXT template from Plaintxt.org.) I like it’s search engine friendlyness and slick look. Thanks to Scott for providing it free. I’m doing a bit of customization and tweaks on it meanwhile.

Remember - it’s only a matter of 24-36 hours and we’ll be back with more SEO tips and news, in a new style of course! Thanks much for your assistance. Do drop in any suggestions that you may have