Posts

Private Blog Network: should you buy one?

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Private Blog Network is a network of blogs meant primarily to send 'link juice' to a specific blog/ website. This concentration of authority derived from different blogs puts the target website on top of search engines. As the name suggests, this network is not like open blog networks in which blogs participate to share similar interest. Since the focus is on building authority of one single website, PBN sites are not linked to one another but only to the main site unlike open networks where all member blogs are linked to one another. PBN sites are often collected by scraping the web for old websites that, though not active anymore, still have value in terms of 'link juice'. Since these come cheap, especially when bought in bulk through auction, people in the business of creating and selling PBNs create a huge resource base of such websites and selectively put them as part of different PBNs. What if you purchase a number of domains, maintain them well and link ...

Fiverr traffic: Bloggers beware!

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I am writing this short post prompted by questions blogger friends have asked about using traffic services from Fiverr. If you don't know, Fiverr is one of the sites that sell services at a cheap price. As the name suggests, most of the offers here are for 5 dollars. There are thousands of people selling a poster, a passage editing service, a SEO plan, a web-audit... for $5 or its multiples. There are many others including FoverUp, GigBucks and Zeerk and SEOClerks. On such penny-offer websites, a large number of people offer 'gigs' to do 'genuine' and 'proven' SEO and increase 'relevant' traffic manifold in a short time. They give hundreds of testimonials of 'satisfied' customers.  I would request you to NOT fall for such offers, which look attractive because of claims and the very low price charged. The claims are mostly false and testimonials are mostly procured by force or are outright fake. Their claim of having sites with 'P...

Why canonicalization is good SEO and how to implement it?

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      What does "canonical" mean?     In simple English, canonical means what is according to canon or rule. That means what is authoritative. Canonical URL is more equal among equals. In website/ search engine optimization terms, canonical has a similar connotation: the URL that you take as most authoritative out of many that point to the same web page.For example, the following URLs may refer to the same website: www.xyz.com, xyz.com, xyz.com/index.html, xyz.com/home.asp, xyz.com/index.htm, www.xyz.com/, https://www.xyz.com. In addition, one could be maintaining two websites with similar content but differing in some respects; in this case there would be two distinct URLs but with same content. Modern websites that are dynamic/ code-driven create a variety of URL paths, all referring to the same webpage, that result in dozens of URLs.  Why is canonicalization necessary?     When the same website can be reached in differe...

Blogging report 2017: better content, well promoted, more professional...

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This post is on a study by Orbit Media on the state of blogosphere in 2017 in terms of use of blogging. They have based their findings on the basis of responses from 1377 blogger to 11 questions. Summary of findings: 1. Bloggers now take more time in composing blog posts than before. The time spent on creating a blog post has been found to be increasing over years since 2014. Now a blogger spends 3 hours 20 minutes on an average in creating a post. In addition, the number of bloggers who spend over 6 hours in composing a post has more than trebled over the last four years and they have said, they get 'strong results' by posting big! 2.  Most bloggers post weekly or around that, and the overall frequency has gone down. But it is not that the drop in frequency gets good results even when the content is big. Frequency matters in getting good results, bloggers report. 3. More bloggers are using editing support than before. 4. The size of blog posts now averages 1142 ...

Carelessly removing custom domain from Wordpress or Blogger blog or website may hurt much

Users of Blogger and Wordpress free blogging platforms sometimes want to give up the independent domain they had mapped with the blog/ website. It mostly happens when they do not make good money from the blog. If you are one of them and have decided to junk the custom domain, you need to take some small but important actions so that the damage is minimal and your free blog regains life. Read on... Removing the custom domain This is the simplest task. When you stop paying for renewal of the custom domain, it will automatically be inactive. Full stop.  But just letting the custom URL vanish might create an issue for some days: when the visitor types the free URL, the browser might still try to take him automatically to the custom domain and when the browser does not find the custom URL, it might give 'Site does not exist' or 404 Error. To avoid this,  on Blogger, go to 'Settings', 'Publishing' and then click on 'x' next to the custom domain; ...

20 best practices for effective business blogging

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WHAT IS A BUSINESS BLOG Simply speaking, a business blog is one that promotes a business. It can be part of the main website, or it can be a standalone blog. I assume that you already have a website, because no business - except perhaps nomadic or hyper-local trade - can survive without a website these days. Normal websites are static in the sense that their content does not change too frequently. Even if some part of it is dynamic [e.g. share quotes in an equity investment website] or a part is updated fast [e.g. websites introducing or reviewing new products], the updation is part of the core of website. On the other hand, the blog is there for updating on matters that the website may not do routinely (We'd come to that in the third section). photo courtesy: Pixabay The blog is not only an extension of the website but also a platform to engage existing and potential customers. But unlike Facebook and Twitter,  the blog is not a 'quickie' social networking pl...

Best Indian literary blogs in English

  If you want to see the updated list please visit this list of top literary blogs in India . The post below is from maintaining archives of Top Blogs articles.   -------------------------- Topmost 2 dozen literary blogs in India We took out the top literary blogs in India out of the 2017 edition of the Directory of Best Indian Blogs. We then did a lot of web search and found a few more good literary blogs written in English by Indian authors/ readers/ reviewers. That brings you these top Indian literary blogs in English.  We might have missed one or two good blogs on literature. If you have seen such fine blogs, please tell us and we'll include them here. ajaykontham - The Shaded Shadows anieshabrahma - Aniesha's Musings anureviews - Anu Reviews artofleo - I Rhyme Without Reason bookgeeks - bookGeeks ddsreviews - b00k r3vi3ws fatema - Life As Freya geetaavij - Fabric of Life inderpreetuppal - Inderpreet's Eloquent Articulation jaiarjun - Jab...