SEO Strategy: 5 SEO Tips to learn from Popular blogs

What are the SEO strategies, if at all, followed by popular blogs ? Do they give importance to SEO ? If they do, are there anything to learn from it ? Is it different from the regular basic SEO ? Let’s find out if we have answers for the questions above.

Do popular blogs have to follow SEO in the first place ?

One argument I’ve repeatedly come across is that if your blog is popular, then you don’t need to really work on the SEO part. Very fair observation that but I can’t completely agree, though I’d love to. The reason is that this is a chicken-egg problem. Do you have to first do SEO and then get the site popular, or get the site popular first then do the SEO.

In my opinion, SEO comes first irrespective of whether you’re popular or not. SEO is one of the basic foundations of a website and I can’t think of a reason why it should be ignored. Anyways, the fact is that many popular blogs, while they want to focus more on content, the SEO basics are well taken care of. Let’s dig deeper.

1. Healthy Publishing frequency

One of the major signals to Google, about the authority f your blog is higher publishing frequency. If your blog can churn out 25 quality post a day, that’s no amateur blog. Note that the number is not the sole factor here but the quality factor of each of them. There are several “splogs” out there that copy content from popular blogs from their RSS feeds. But none of them can be counted as “authoritative” as their content is copied and duplicate.

If an upcoming blog, can match up to the biggies with good publishing frequency and original content, then you automatically gets upped to a better authority/trust level with Google.

2. Efficient Interlinking

If you look at any popular blog out there, you’ll see that most of them rely heavily on keyword based interlinking. This means that a clever strategy is behind the whole scene. Interlinking can be done in many ways. From simple “Read more” links to proper keyword based deep linking. The idea is to use the homepage PageRank of the website and leverage it onto inside pages, interlinking them with well targeted keywords.

3. Getting the basics right

The crux of the matter is that with all that overload of content coming in, its impossible to always check for keyword densities and keyword research indexes. Instead, the way out is to create a good basic foundation built strong on SEO and then let everything else fall into place by itself. Many of the popular blogs have the basic SEO metrics covered well in advance even before going full swing with their content. Good amount of time spent building a solid foundation based on SEO is worth all the time you’d spent on it later.

4. No unnecessary focus on keywords

If you watch closely, unlike SEOs who sometimes appear to others as a little too obsessive about keywords, popular blogs does not really focus much on the keywords to the extend of repeating them unnecessarily for the sake of keyword density. The content is unique, rich and social media friendly, not entirely SEO friendly. Even if the authors wanted to, not all the time could they do an SEO formula check on articles. So beyond the basic title/headline optimization I cannot see a scope for detailed keyword analysis or focus.

5. Efficient control of Crawlable space

As a part of getting the basics right, content focused blogs has a huge challenge in front of them, of managing the bots. As important as creating search engine friendly content, is important to manage the bots and controlling them into crawling certain spaces while clearing out others. Webmasters essentially has to have a good grasp about what part of their website is important and what not. If that sounds rude, what part is search engine material and what not. So to enable the bots to crawl those pages/part of the site that’s search engine material, its essential to control them using advanced SEO tool such as Robots.txt files, Nofollow/NoIndex tags etc.

Summary

Essentially, the idea is that popular or not, you need to have the SEO basics in place to build a website, and as and when your blog gets popular, there might be restrictions to the possibility of going into details of keyword research and competition. But the fact is that if you have a good sound SEO foundation, then things will fall into place with the content building in on top of everything. However, the focus should be on building authority and trust with Google with popular, shareable and quality content.

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Avoid following Tips to Increase Google page rank

Never put ads to new sites right away as Google may mark your site as “ ad farm “ and will not index the site. You should wait for a month or so to begin ad activity.

It has been seen that Google bestows high ranking to sites having multiple inbound links. The important fact is that such links must correspond to higher ranking site only.

You will not get any benefit from any sub standard link exchange sites and more over Google will side line your site for link farming. Your inbound links must be relevant to content of website.

You can link web site with good social book marking services like del.icio.us, reddit.com, dig.com to name a few but there are many other such sites which will serve your purpose but Most of social book marking sites use rel=”nofollow” attribute which does not help increasing Page rank of website.

Google detects duplicate contents, copied content etc and never index sites which use them. It is always advisable to give relevant link and disclose the content source etc.

Always link single page with canonical URL. Always refrain from excess use of key words, over optimizing, irrelevant use of key word as this adversely affects website’s page ranking.

It has been very common practice to use invisible text and use it at the end of the main page but this is no longer a sensible thing to do as modern search engines detect it and may penalize your site. Always try to avoid query characters such as “?” as search engines never appreciate dynamic pages with such characters.

It is very essential to perform correct redirecting. When moving content from one page to another make sure to include 301 redirect codes, which indicates that page has been moved permanently.

Google suggests that there should be less than 100 links in a single page.

Always put links having equal or higher page rank sites and must be relevant to the content of the page.

Never use unauthorized software’s or programs to check rankings, submit page as you may be violating service terms etc.

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Basic 17 Essential Web Site Maintenance Strategies

The following Website features are the most important:

1. Quality of content.
2. Fast download time.
3. Ease of use and navigation.

When it’s time to maintain your site considers these design tips:

1. Create a HTML template for your Website which contains all of the items that normally appears on every page of your site. Make sure your HTML code for the page includes: DOCTYPE, Meta data, your standard images, headers, footers, links, navigation scheme, etc. This will save you time, and ensure that all of all pages start with the same format.
2. Keep your audience in mind when you update your pages and/or add new pages. Use your referrer tracking data to get to know more about your visitors.
3. Spend your time developing content, not bells and whistles.
4. Use light colored background colors with text color(s) that has a high contrast to your background.
5. Minimize the number of graphics on each page. Do not use more than two animated links per page. Optimize your graphics and always include Alt, Width and Height Tags with your image tags.
6. Use only browser-safe colors on your site.
7. Design your Website to fit all resolutions. Plus, test the most often used browsers.
8. If you change or add text to a page make sure you spell check the page.
9. Use a link checker and make sure your hyper-links are still valid once a month.
10. Make sure all your external links contains a description of the linked site.
11. On each page, ensure your visitors can provide you feedback, report broken links or advise you of other problems.
12. Website is never finished. But, do not use under construction signs!
13. Frames. My advice, don’t use them.
14. Broken links will annoy visitors making them click elsewhere off your site, thus losing a potential customer. Businesses that once linked to your site may have closed down, thus causing broken links to appear. Check for broken links on your site at least once a month.
15. The number and type of keywords used to search for information on your site can change dramatically. Without constantly monitoring your web site rankings, you may wonder why your sales have dropped. One must stay up to date with search engine changes. Adjust your site accordingly then resubmit it to the search engines if needed.
16. You may be getting a lot of hits/visitors to your site but no one is buying. Your web copy could be at fault. Try rewriting it by placing yourself in your customer’s shoes. Focus primarily on the benefits of your product. Sometimes changing one or two lines can increase the percentage of sales from your site.
17. The site statistics provided by your web host, you can monitor the amount of visits to each page, where they came from and what keywords they used to find your web site. You may then need to optimize other pages targeting alternative keywords to increase the number of visitors arriving at your site.

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Find Similar Images from a Site

Google Image Search has a nifty feature that was added a couple of months ago, but it's not so easy to find. If you restrict the results to a site and click "similar" next to one of the images, Google will only show similar images from that site. For example, if you search for [paris site:wikipedia.org] and click "similar" next to a photo of the Eiffel Tour, Google will show pictures of the Eiffel Tour and other similar monuments from Paris, but only if they are included in a Wikipedia page.



It's a great way to explore a site and group related images when it's difficult to type a precise query. The top results provided by the Similar Images feature are much better than the results for [monuments in Paris site:wikipedia.org], where you can find maps, flags, logos.


It's important to note that Google Image Search's site: operator no longer takes into account the URL of the image, so if a blog includes an image from Flickr, you'll still be able to find the image when you restrict the image results to the blog's domain or subdomain. "In the past, the [site:] operator filtered based on the image URL, not based on the URL of web pages linking to the images. Now, the operator will run your search over web sites that include images, no matter where the images themselves are hosted, which removes a lot of noise from your results and gives you more control over what you're searching for."

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Move Your Mouse Cursor Without Mouse

MouseKeys

Okay, so, the first way of doing this, is by using a feature that is built in by windows, called MouseKeys. To turn on MouseKeys, go on Control Panel, click onAccesibility Options, click on the tab that says Mouse, and check the ‘Use MouseKeys‘ box. Alternatively, you could turn on MouseKeys by pressing Left ALT + Left Shift + Num Lock at the same time. Please note that this only works with the LEFT alt and shift, as if you try it with the right side, it will not work.

Here are the controls, provided that you have a numeric keypad, to run MouseKeys.

2 = Move Down

8 = Move Up

4 = Move Left

6 = Move Right

7 = Move Diagonally Top Left

9 = Move Diagonally Top Right

1 = Move Diagonally Bottom Left

3 = Move Diagonally Bottom Right

5 = Simulate Mouse Single Left Click

(+) = Simulate Mouse Double Click

(-) = Simulate Mouse Right Click

(*) = Simulate Both Mouse Buttons Click At Once

If you’ve tried this, you may have noticed that the speed of the cursors is really slow. To speed this up, you just go into Settings, and change the speed.

 Just drag the sliders along to the maximum speed and acceleration, and it should be absolutely fine.

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Nokia enters into patent license agreement with Apple!

Reuters and Engadget report that Nokia has entered into a patent license agreement with Apple. From the press release:

Nokia announced that it has signed a patent license agreement with Apple. The agreement will result in settlement of all patent litigation between the companies, including the withdrawal by Nokia and Apple of their respective complaints to the US International Trade Commission. 

The financial structure of the agreement consists of a one-time payment payable by Apple and on-going royalties to be paid by Apple to Nokia for the term of the agreement. The specific terms of the contract are confidential.

Nokia first filed a patent suit against Apple in October 2009 and the dispute has escalated since then with the two companies filing multiple new claims against each other. This should end one of the Apple's biggest patent disputes, but many others remain active. 

While FOSS Patents sees this as a clear win for Nokia, they also suggest it may help Apple a bit as Android manufacturers are likely to also be affected.

Nokia emerges victorious, but this is a sweet defeat for Apple because its competitors -- especially those building Android-based devices -- will also have to pay Nokia, and most if not all of them will likely have to pay more on a per-unit basis because they don't bring as much intellectual property to the table as Apple definitely did.

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Get free surprise Gift from Aqua Pulse by Fiama DI Wills

Aqua Pulse is a Men Bathing Bar and Shower Gel from Fiama Di wills.It is a new product by ITC Limited which will give you an invigorating fragrance and freshness that you just can't resist.The unique Active Defense Complex protects your skin making it feel healthy. The aquatic fragrance kick starts your skin making you feel refreshed and energized. Deep-dive into the blue.It has been awarded product of the year 2011.

How to get free surprise gift from Aqua Pulse:

Recently  Aqua Pulse by Fiama DI Wills has completed 50000 fans on Facebook and to celebrate this ocassion, they are sending you a sweet little surprise just by filling a simple form with all your details.To get free surprise gift from Aqua pulse, follow the below steps:

1. First visit the facebook page of Aqua Pulse here and Like it
2. After that click on the this link to register for free surprise gift

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Facebook Now Has 750 Million Users

Facebook’s incredible worldwide growth has reached another major milestone: the service now has 750 million monthly active users, according to a source close to the company.

We reached out to Facebook for confirmation, and a company spokesperson responded that they don’t have anything to announce at this time. That isn’t surprising: the company hasn’t officially released an updated user count since it reached 500 million users nearly a year ago. Facebook has obviously been growing since then — we believe the company may be waiting until it hits the 1 billion mark before officially updating the stat again.

The last semi-official update came from a leaked Goldman Sachs report for potential Facebook investors that pegged the number at 600 million in January.

In the mean time there have been numerous reports from unofficial sources tracking Facebook’s growth. Socialbakers reported in late May that the site was around 700 million users, and Inside Facebook reported that the tally was at 687 million earlier this month. This data can be difficult to interpret because it’s based on third-party companies like Quantcast and/or Facebook’s ad tools, which may not necessarily be completely accurate.

One important thing to note: unlike many online services, Facebook’s user count metric actually means something — it’s defined as a user who has logged in within the last 30 days (plenty of sites only report cumulative users, which doesn’t take into account that many people stop using their services).

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