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This post has been updated in 2018 end. The historical perspective and facts of 2011 are retained while links and obsolete information has been updated.   Now that we are in the last leg of compilation of the Directory of Best Hindi Blogs , we present before you our detailed observations on the world of Hindi blogging. Like they say in journalistic parlance, we can get major details on a news event by asking 5 W’s and 1 H [what, who, why, when, where and how], we’ll try to share our findings in that manner, answering the first question here and the rest in one or two next posts. ITB’s is perhaps the only team that has manually checked over 35,000 blogs, examined a quarter of them for specific attributes and reviewed nearly 600 blogs in fine detail. We tend to be very nasty in our comments when we review blogs. However, in these two posts, we will avoid sharp value judgments or advice. What types of blogs are there in the Hindi blog world? What is written on Hindi...

A blog is a diary, fine; but a blog is also a public space [except for private blogs] on the www. In the latter sense, blogs are a form of media, like newspapers. Therefore, blogs are expected to maintain minimum standards in terms of web ethics, design, content and updation. We have numerous posts on how IndianTopBlogs scrutinises blogs for putting them in directories and ranks them as ‘Platinum Blogs’, so we won’t repeat the process here. We have also a number of posts on various quality aspects; in fact our ‘blogging tips’ section is full of tips on maintaining quality in different aspects of blogging.   In this post, we give a list of practices / features that spoil the quality of a blog,  and we add to that our experience with Indian blogs that we've checked for the last nearly two years of blog ranking, reviews, showcase, etc.    Major blogging mistakes Poor navigability Too many - and useless - widgets Too long pages Pages wider t...

Post updated in July 2020 This post is written keeping in mind blogger friends who are not technology-minded and have been brainwashed into believing that getting search traffic to the blog needs big-time HTML tweaking and SEO.  SEO ‘experts’ often advise bloggers and website owners to necessarily put meta tags in the HTML of their blog, or put ALT attribute on images. So as to impress the blogger, they talk about robots.txt and sitemap.xml, rich cards and such other jargon. The blogger starts feeling that he must try HTML tweaks suggested by SEO experts or to hire an expert so as to bring the blog among the first few results on search pages of popular search engines, e.g. Google, Bing and Yahoo!.  In this post, allow me to debunk one big myth: “ You must know HTML to optimise your blog properly for search engines. If you do not know it, you should hire an SEO expert. ” The reality is that you need not know any HTML for fairly good part of search engine optimization! In fact...

updated: November 2020 In this post, let's check whether our blog or website uses SEO practices that Google likes and avoids the ones it hates. Why Google? I am not weighing Google vis-à-vis Yahoo, Bing and other search engines here. But the reality is that at present Google is the industry leader in the search domain and therefore doing something that this giant search engine hates means low reputation and low popularity, even chances of being penalized. Moreover, Google has been more transparent about what it likes and what it hates as compared to others. When search engines [as well as reputed directories] look at content on the web – including text, images, links, comments, archives, tags/ labels, affiliation, advertisements, messages… – they look for relevance and quality in deciding the value of that content. They do not like manipulative tricks – tricks that are employed to fool search engines and directories into seeing a poor web resource as one with high value. Take the...

Updated: November 2020 In this post, I analyze SEO tips that we often read on the web. I have colored good advice in green, bad in red and so-so in orange. After each tip, I've given my views in italics . Give the blog a nice, specific name. Give it a good description.  Sure. Relevant and memorable name along with a description that amplifies its identity are good SEO practices. Have the blog on your own platform, not Wordpress or Blogger.  Not necessarily. If you are a new blogger, you may like to mature your craft on these excellent platforms before going for an independent platform. However, I strongly recommend giving your blog an identity even if you are on free platforms. Blog frequently.  Yes; but a quality post once a week is better than copy-paste content seven days a week. Comment on others’ blogs.  Yes, but only if you feel like. Make your comments thoughtful. Just ‘Liked your post’ or ‘You look lovely’ look like spam. Scratching each o...

  Thoroughly revised in August 2020 We wrote a post long back on the quality of writing: ‘ Top tips for writing blog posts ’. We talked about good content and gave tips on writing well for the web and elsewhere. If you do not want to visit that post right now (though I will strongly advise that you open that in a new tab or bookmark it), let me list the tips given there: Choose the topics for each post/ article with care. Give the post a heading that attracts attention. Be original and do not copy-paste content. Be passionate about what you say. Advise only if you are an expert. Talk to humans, not to search engines or yourself. Be pleasant, welcoming in tone. Write like a journalist: use inverted pyramid style, don't write an essay. Compose the post well in terms of formatting, sentence structure, etc. Don't ignore search engine optimization (SEO). Don't publish a post in a hurry. Edit it well. In the present post, we take the subject forward, with a greater focus on the c...

A large number of bloggers with a sound grounding in polity and politics, business and economy, justice and security systems and the society do enrich the Indian blogosphere. It is heartening that many of their posts generate a good debate around various topics. Some important media organizations have their own blogging platforms, and their editors / reporters / columnists / experts contribute regularly on these blogs. Add to these other serious blogging platforms / aggregators and their bloggers. Another category of bloggers who drive good traffic to their blogs and generate good level of discussion are celebrities in various fields, e.g. politics, television and cinema. Among celebrities, we noticed that many  start blogging but either stop it altogether or do so infrequently. It could be a coincidence, but we have found that usually the celebrities who are serious about their profession are usually serious bloggers too – it is a different matter that some of them might ...