Top blogs

With a number of virtual assistants available on desktops/laptops, mobile phones and standalone devices (e.g. Google Home, Siri), people are going to search more and more by giving voice commands.  Voice search will take natural language search forward by leaps and bounds. Are present search engine optimization (SEO) actions geared towards this change? Will voice search ever be popular or is it just a hype? Talking is easier and less boring than typing. You need not be in a particular posture and tied to the device with fingers working on the keyboard. You can give the command while you are doing another task. Voice commands are unobtrusive and instant; you remember something suddenly or you need some help while doing a chore - and you speak to the device for an answer. The trend may take some time before it breaks out in full swing and then becomes the norm. 2020 could be the time when voice search would have started becoming mainstream and  2021 when it becomes th...

Update: This post has been retained as an archive of our past work. We no longer issue a category-wise version of the list of best blogs of India. Kindly click on the link, if you reached here while looking for the latest list of top Indian blogs .  ---------------------------------------- The eighth edition of the Directory of Best Indian Blogs was released on 1st June, 2018. We are glad to announce that the category-wise version of the list of top blogs is now out. This year, as discussed in the directory release post last year, we have added lifestyle as a new category. A large number of bloggers, mostly women bloggers, have come to this field. Considering that 'lifestyle' is now in vogue in blogging, we had earlier talked about lifestyle blogging in this post: Lifestyle blogs are highly professional . We would be grateful if lifestyle blogger friends engage in discussion around this theme so that those attracted by this niche have a clear understanding of where they stan...

After the GDPR regulations came into force on 25th May this year, there is a lot of concern among website owners about using cookies on websites and among users whether to accept cookies or not. In the present post, we have collected useful information from highly authoritative sites so that you, the blogger, can yourself take informed action on use of cookies and displaying your cookie policy on your blog.  What is a cookie? A cookie is a small piece of information that websites leave on the visitor's browser. It helps the website in many ways such as assessing the user behavior so as to give the user a better 'user experience' later on or tracking how he/ she has responded to an advertisement placed on the website. Typically, cookies are small text files with a small piece of information in characters and digits. They are not malware and do not contain viruses or malicious code.   A cookie can be session specific or permanent. The permanent cookie resides on...

What is disavowing a link? Disavowing a link in terms of SEO is to tell search engines, 'Please do not use this backlink (a link on some other site that has a link to my site) for assessing the quality of my website.' Why disavow backlinks? Search engines use many factors for assessing the reputation and relevance of websites (that includes blogs). One of them, a very important one, is backlinks. The argument here is that if a website A is giving a link to website B, A is in some way endorsing website B. It would also mean that A considers B relevant for the anchor text used by it (website A) to give link to B. Since the number of backlinks seems to be a ranking parameter, it is possible to fool search engines to believe that a website getting many (though useless) links is a good website.  This mechanism can be used to harm others' websites. Many black-hat SEO guys, spammers and even competitors use this very tool of backlinking to harm others' websites and ...

Hashtag (#) is used in the web world for labeling an expression as important and for associating with a social media trend. Twitter gave this little character an important place in social interactions, and it soon became sort of generic across the social media.  Twitter remains the biggest user of hashtags. It uses hashtags for curating all tweets associated with a hashtag and also estimating number of tweets being published on a topic over a period of time.   More characters, more hashtag abuse Hashtag, especially on Twitter, is very useful in gathering support for a cause or against a social or political happening (#SaveGirlChild, #GunControlNow), showing one's approval or disapproval for some action by a leader/ political party or supporting someone in a big way (#ModiFor2019,  #PutinsPuppets), public commenting on excellent or disastrous performance by a player, singer, performer (#Barcelona), tagging all information relating to an event (#hurricaneIrma) or...

Bloggers often ignore some basic points when making a photoblog or making a photo feature for any blog or website. These include inaction or wrong actions relating to design as well as content. 1. Putting many high-resolution images on the blog You should not put more than one or two high-quality photographs on the blog. One or two you may, because you might like to expose your talent to prospective buyers and other visitors.  High-quality photos mostly have a high pixel value, which may lead to slow loading of the page. In addition, stealing of photographs is rampant on the web. Stealing hurts in many ways and the worst non-commercial damage that someone can do is to edit the photo and misuse it especially if it has a person (especially children and beautiful faces). It is more difficult to morph low-quality photos. 2. No 'alt' attribute, caption or title on the photos Photos cannot be read by search engines, at least as of now. So, they cannot index the photo unles...

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 ...